A young Solas peeing magic.
Sera: You can make magic anywhere, Solas? You ever piss it by accident?
Sera: What? How would you not remember something like that?
Solas: We were all young once.
Welp, here it is. Solas, age nineteen, pissing magic. From the POV of Ghilan’nain. This is a Teen Wolf story. <3 Thanks, @5ftgarden, for making this possible.
Winter was a colorful chill that year,mild. The sky was red. Ghil had been hanging out in one of the alleys nearWinter Street in Arlathan with a couple of girlfriends. They were snottybitches who wore too much make-up and drank prissy booze, and she knew theyonly kept her around like a pet because of Solas. He could get the good drugs.He knew all the good parties, and he had a leg-up in every casino in town. Freedrinks. Ghil put up with these girls because otherwise, she had nobody but him,and that seemed a stupid way to be.
She wondered whereall the regular girls were. The ones who just smoked and liked to lie down onrooftops and look at the shapes in the stars. She had begun to wonder whetherthis was a kind of girl that actually existed, or if they were all exactly likeher, and this is the thing that kept them separate from one another: they wereeach taken up by some tender, cute boy who felt everything but didn’t know howto show it. Ghil loved Solas so much those days, it made her teeth hurt.
These mean girls withthe make-up, they all lived in dreamy castles in Arlathan, but they were smallpotatoes. They were anything but nobility.Their families were stupid foot soldiers to the actual queens and kings. Itwas like a joke. Even still, they thought Ghil’s country life a trashy novelty.They looked at Solas and they saw an unattainable treat from the wrong side ofthe tracks, and he sort of let them bat their eyelashes at him for a while, becausehe liked the attention, but that was it. He always went home with Ghil. Or, shewent home with him, rather, as she had not actually spent the night in her ownhouse for near on a month.
Ghilhated it there. She wanted to be free. She wanted to spend her nights at Solas’shouse where his mother was the kindest witch in all the Weathers, and evenafter all these years, she still showed Ghil how to do special kinds of magicwith the roots in the earth, and she would braid Ghil’s hair for her in themornings and make ice water. Ghil showed her once how she could grow babyanimals from the knots of trees—like baby chipmunks, baby eagles. Solas’smother found this very impressive, which was high praise. Solas, meanwhile, justliked to build shit. He restored an old train car at the back of their propertyto working order. He put it on a track and everything. Ghil still wasn’t surehow he’d gotten it back there, but he did, somehow, and the magic he’d used wasso confusing, he’d had to write it down. Just a bunch of math, she thought.
Ghil could witherbirds and flower them back up into the shapes of hats, but Solas once cut ahole in space and took her through it, and together they walked in a tunnelmade of stars and that somehow dropped them into one of the floating castles overArlathan. How the fuck? said Ghil. Hetried to explain. She could make animals, but he could fold the physics of theworld in on itself and somehow write it all down, and this, to her, was theheight of genius. But he didn’t seem to care. He had very little ambition. Hejust wanted to restore old train cars and experiment with worm holes in thesky. When she asked him what he planned to do with such superior magic, hemerely shrugged his shoulders. “What do you mean?” he said. That was it.
So tonight, she washanging out with the snotty bitches of the upper-middle-class of Arlathan,waiting for Solas. He was supposed to be in the Ring, but Ghil thought maybe hewasn’t there that night. He had gotten sort of sick of the knuckle fights andprobably he was actually in one of the casinos instead. He played a lot ofcards in those days. She thought maybe this meant he was calming down, butthere was no way to be sure. Solas was just…Solas. He did what he was gonna do,and she couldn’t stop him. Nobody could.
“This root sucks,”said Hallavune. She flicked the joint to the sidewalk. She had very prettyblack hair. It was so shiny, it could have been a creature slicked in oil.
Ghil sighed. “I’mgoing to the bathroom,” she said.
“Where?” said Areina.She was blond like Ghil, but her eyes were like ice cream cones, kind of droopyand wet all the time. Hallavune and Areina didn’t really want Ghil to leave.Ghil knew this. Because if Ghil left, that meant no Solas.
Ghil looked around. “Oneof the casinos,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
She went down theblock a little bit, took a right into the casino called Pale Dreaming. It wasthe one with the tree-shaped candles, and she liked it here. It was the softestof them all, and the bartenders were nice, and they mostly knew her, because ofSolas.
“Hey, kitty cat,” oneof them said. He was an older man, like forty-two, sleeves rolled up, polishinga rocks glass behind the counter. “What can I get for you?”
“Gin,” she said.“Just a little. On the rocks.”
He poured her thedrink, put a little sprig of rosemary. “On the house,” he said.
She smiled, sippedher drink. She did not like to drink very often, but when she did, she likedgin. She liked juniper berries. Gin tasted like the woods. “Has Solas been by?”she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” hesaid. “He’s here now.”
“Just stumbled outback for a piss, I think.” The bartender winked. He was a married man and verysturdy and somewhat handsome, but he had a deep scar going from the root of hisleft eyebrow all the way down to his earlobe. She wondered what could have givena man like this a scar like that.
“Thanks,” said Ghil,reaching for her purse. “Can I tip you?”
He clicked histongue. “No, ma’am.”
She went out thebackdoor. One of the bouncers showed her out. Usually, only employees got to goback there, but she was different. She was special. She was Ghil.
She found Solas notfar, his head pressed hard to the wall, pissing in the alley. He had his eyesclosed. She leaned right beside him, plucked a joint from her pocket. Themoment she lit the end, he smiled.
“Are you a literalwolf now?” she said, smoking, debonair. “Marking your territory?”
He zipped up, gaveher a look, smiled. “What are you doing back here?”
“I needed to get awayfrom Hallavune and the other one,” she said. “They hate my elfroot.”
“Not good enough forthem?” said Solas. She passed him the joint. He took a drag, passed it back.
“Certainly not,” saidGhil. She sighed. “Did you even make it to the fights tonight?”
He shoved his handsin his pockets. It was chilly out there. “No,” he said. “I think I’m done. Forreal this time.”
She got on her tip-toes, gave him a kiss. “Ithink I’m gonna just hang out at the bar,” she said. “If you’re going to be awhile.”
“Not much longer,” hesaid.
“Can I bring thebitch brigade in here? Or will they get kicked out for being too pure.”
“You can bring themonly if they promise to make a face when I tell them I have no elfroot. I’mcompletely dry.”
“Yes, but apparently,it’s shit.”
She shoved him. Helaughed into her ear, kissed the highest tip. “It’s cold,” he said.
She tossed the joint,stamped it out with her boot.
But as they turnedaround, she saw something weird, on thewall. “Solas,” she said. “What the fuck is that?”
He raised hiseyebrows, took a step around her so he could see. Where he’d taken a pissbefore, there was a little vortex. Like, cutting into the plains of existenceand pulsing black and silver, like a little mouth. “Holy shit,” he said.
“Are you that drunk?”she said. “You’re pissing magic?”
“I am not drunk,” he said. He kicked the wallonce, and the vortex disappeared. “I don’t think.”
She sort of laughed,let him win. He kissed her on the hair and they went back inside.
One day, they wouldreally miss this place.
