Time-traveling Caleb meets Essek as a child please.
(from the ask me about my WIP meme)
This WIP was one of the first things I wrote when I decided I wanted to learn to write late last year!
It began as a snippet I was writing for a prompt in the big Essek discord, something along the lines of “kid Essek proposes marriage to Caleb” -- pretty fluffy, lighthearted, and cute. Naturally this meant I plotted something bittersweet about love and the grief for selves who never were and whom we no longer have a chance to be.
The premise: Sometime in the future, Essek and Caleb are together and have developed a spell that allows temporary travel to a decayed or decaying timeline. Caleb uses it and accidentally winds up much further back in time than intended, where he meets Essek as a child. Young Essek is lonely and hides Caleb on the Thelyss estates for a week or so while Caleb rides out the spell. From there, it’s a character study as Caleb gets to know Essek in his early life.
I don’t know if I’ll finish this one. Reading through it, if I returned to it I’d want to rewrite most of it since I understand writing and these characters a little better now. So who knows! Have part of 2 scenes. :)
Scene: One hour before the spell ends and the timeline decays for good
At the sound of Caleb’s footsteps in the courtyard, Essek turns slowly to face him, posture exactingly correct in a way that speaks of both practice and nerves. He inclines his head and folds his hands in formal greeting, the grace of the gesture falling a little awkwardly on his small frame.
“Master Widogast,” he begins, and then stops. Takes a shallow breath. “I know you are to depart today. I- I wished to speak with you before you are gone.”
His tone reaches for the chilly gravitas of his mother, but a muddled panic lurks around the edges of his words. Caleb returns the formal greeting, but lets his lips curve into a friendly smile. “I am here to listen. What would you ask of me?”
The lines of Essek’s shoulders ease a fraction. He drifts over, ignoring the whorls of the tiled labyrinth below in favor of making a line straight to Caleb. He stops a foot and a half away, as close as etiquette allows, and fidgets, one hand twisting the edge of a sleeve.
“I...there is a parting gift I wished to give you.” Essek’s small fingers shake a little as he draws the line to open his wristpocket. The spell takes and he lets out a satisfied hum as a small black codex tumbles into his hands.
“I made this,” he says, pride suffusing his voice. His courteous smile brightens into unguarded excitement, before fading into something small and hesitant. “It is for you. I know you are going far away somewhere, so...so in case you need to study the floating spell I taught you, I thought you might wish for reference.”
He thrusts the book up at Caleb. “Do not show anyone. Ah, Verin said I should not have told you things at all and I could get in trouble, so maybe keep it secret.”
Caleb turns the object over in his hands. It’s a small booklet of notes on dunamancy, written in a child’s scrawl. Essek has written out the directions for the cantrip that lets him float, each step of the spell thoroughly but ineptly diagrammed. Here and there in the margins are poorly-drawn creatures it takes Caleb a moment to realize are cats.
No, Caleb realizes, not cats: cat. All of them are Frumpkin, and all of them have been drawn with the earnest appreciation of a young boy who has seen exactly one cat in his entire life and is making up for lost time.
Caleb traces a finger over the drawings, despair catching at his throat. He wants nothing more than to gather this desperately lonely child into his arms and shield him from the future that will turn him jaded and cruel, that will rip out this tender heart and replace it with callous intent.
But he can’t. He can’t save this Essek. This young echo will be gone forever in an hour. Caleb swallows the lump in his throat.
“You are very kind, Master Thelyss,” he says a little hoarsely. “It was an honor to be your student.”
Scene: Caleb returns from the spell
“Welcome back.” Essek’s silhouette is bent over the desk in front of him as he scratches out notes on a large piece of vellum, but he straightens and glances in Caleb’s direction. His sleeves are rolled up and there is a bit of ink smudged on his nose Caleb is sure he doesn’t know is there.
“Hallo,” Caleb says, meeting Essek’s eyes. They are worried and lovely, and a little tired.
Essek scans Caleb’s body, as if checking to make sure he has all the same appendages he left with. Satisfied, he lets a lopsided smile curl over his face.
“Hallo,” he replies. “That was longer than expected. Did you find the information you were looking for?”
“I did, eventually.”
Essek's eyes narrow, gaze assessing. He sets the pen down on the desk, and turns to fully face Caleb. “But…?”
There is no point in hiding it. “The spell took me back further than intended. I also met you there. As a child.” Shock briefly paints itself on Essek’s face.
“Ah. Unexpected, I- Well,” he says, slim, dark fingers twisting over themselves once before falling still, “I’m sure that was an enlightening experience.” Essek’s voice is light and carefully neutral. By degrees, his smile evens out, grows soft and pleasant. Opaque. Untouchable.
It is the last thing Caleb wants to see right now.
He crosses the floor and Essek looks up at him, eyes shuttered. Caleb cups his face and guides him into a kiss, soft at first, merely comforting himself with Essek’s presence. Essek leans into it. Comfort for the two of them, maybe.
Caleb is good at kissing, and over the last decade, he’s made a dedicated effort to be good at kissing Essek, specifically. He nips at a lower lip and deepens the kiss, drawing a decidedly unchaste noise from Essek. It soothes something in Caleb to hear it, this spark of passion beneath the mask. After a moment, fingers curl into Caleb’s shirt.
Caleb pulls back and whispers into Essek’s ear, pleased to feel him shiver in response. “You were quite the, ah, charmer. You offered your hand in marriage. Scandalous.”
Essek lets out an undignified little snort that charms Caleb to his bones. “I should think I have made my desire for you quite clear in the present. Do not try to play me against my child self, Widogast.” As if to emphasize the point, his fingers slide from Caleb’s chest, over his sides, and onto his back with deliberate slowness. Caleb doesn’t even try to repress his own shiver, and he can feel the resulting smugness radiating from Essek.
“You also taught me to float. You were a very enthusiastic teacher.”
“Did I?” Amusement drips from Essek’s voice. “It is handy for you that you figured that one out yourself years ago.” Over Essek’s shoulder, Caleb can see the notes and diagrams he’s working on. All letters and lines are crisp and precise; not a single wasted mark. There is no hint of embellishment here, Caleb sees. There are no more earnest drawings.
He buries his face in the crook where Essek’s neck meets his shoulder, taking in the comforting, familiar scent of him. Essek shifts to allow him better access, and Caleb breathes him in, letting grief settle in his chest.
After a moment, Essek’s fingers begin to trace lightly across his back, drawing comforting and repetitive patterns. Spell runes, Caleb realizes, and closes his eyes.
You were an earnest child, he does not say, and so achingly desperate for connection that you hid a strange mage in your house and taught him your favorite spell. He does not say, you were kind and you still had hope when you were young. You still talked to your brother. You loved magic like a friend, and no blood stained your hands for it.
Essek knows. Essek does not welcome pity, and Caleb cannot blame him for it. Caleb does not welcome it either.
Since I adore your feeblemind fic, I thought it might be fun to share the one I've been mulling over! It's mostly notes and thoughts, and I'm doubtful it will make it to a finished product, but as with many day-dreamable fics there are some juicy scenes to mull over:
While Essek is still acting as Shadowhand in Rosohna, he receives a message from Verin in Bazzoxan - a human has been found wandering in the barbed fields. This might not be too remarkable, except he’s carrying the favor of the Bright Queen, which makes it Essek’s business. The first thing Essek does is message Jester… and there is no reply. Scrying on her is similarly blocked. What’s afoot?
The human turns out to be Caleb, of course, and Verin is astounded to see his brother absolutely lose his noodle over this discovery. They've been on good terms, he and Essek, but he's never really known his brother to care much about anyone else, and certainly not enough to struggle at keeping his courtly composure. Caleb doesn't understand anything that's happening, but he recognizes Essek - the first familiar face he can remember in a sea of disorientation. Verin is shocked that when the disheveled human throws his arms around Essek, his brother not only allows it, but comforts him.
A Bazzoxan cleric will be able to attempt restoring Caleb the following day, and in the meantime there is plenty to think about. Plenty to talk about. Essek enlists Verin's help in figuring out what happened to the Mighty Nein, and the urgency of the situation makes him far more forthcoming than he would usually be. They haven't properly reconnected in many years, and while this is not an ideal circumstance for it, Verin is fascinated to see how his brother has been changed by a rag-tag bunch of adventurers. In some ways it makes him uneasy - Essek is vulnerable now, and it's clearly already being exploited and threatened by whoever hurt his new friends.
The fic musings peter off at that point. I like Verin as an outsider POV on Essek and the M9, and the potential to explore the sibling relationship, Essek being faced with a Caleb who so obviously trusts him (but only because the spell has made him forget his reservations) and the impact of that experience once Caleb is restored. Writing this has been mostly held up by the fact that like Essek and Verin, I also don't know what happened to the Mighty Nein. XD
If you could make all your friends read one book, what book and why?
Hi, friend! ♥
Oh, this is a hard question. Both because I'm generally very persuasive (and/or my friends are very patient, bless) and they end up reading whatever I recommend, and because there are SO MANY BOOKS that I think everyone should read.
I'm going to go with the first title that popped into my mind, which is unsurprisingly The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: the closest a novel has made adult-me feel to that sweet, irreplaceable feeling of making friends with make-believe characters you only get when you're a child.
I love so many things about it: the character-driven, episodic structure, the cleverness of the world-building, the way aliens feel properly, well, alien but their cultures and mores make total sense, and the fact that the author approached this with such a strong "cisheteronormativity? don't know her" attitude. I recommend the sequels as well (reflections on mortality and what makes us human? space racism? found family, so much found family?) but this book, to me, is a staple.
Also I'm very grateful to it because it's the reason me and @dawl-and-dapple are friends, so cheers to that!
Curious about "sea cottage" and "so you've decided to write shadowgast" <3
“So you’ve decided to write shadowgast” was already deconstructed here, so I’m going to do sea cottage!
This fic was going to be a fjorclay AU where Fjord moved to a cottage in the middle of nowhere in the northern part of Wildemount fleeing the sea after his experiences with Vandren and Sabian (instead of meeting up with the M9). It was really an excuse for me to write a lot of sweeping seascapes based on some of my travels in Scandinavian countries, and what I have of it is really dreamy. It’s at 4,000 words and permanently abandoned, rip.
The cottage was cool in the late spring morning, the door frame covered with a layering of dew and damp to the touch as Fjord fumbled with the large keyring in his hand. The lock on the front door was rusted and ancient, but the labeled key slipped easily inside, the door opening with a soft click and allowing Fjord to finally escape the humid sea air, which had followed him this far.
His one travel pack was quickly dropped on a small, square table as he surveyed the cottage he had lent, sight unseen, at the rental office in the small village nearby. It was quiet in the dim morning light and decorated with a kitschy sea theme, clearly meant for travelers visiting to catch the northern sea breezes. Framed watercolors of the ocean hung on the walls, and Fjord found himself drawn to one in particular that hung on the wall opposite the large bay windows that looked out to the cliffs and the ocean beyond. The painting depicted a ship caught in a maelstrom, tossed among the waves of a stormy sea, lightning crackling in the background, and Fjord traced the outline of the ship’s hull with one finger, a chill down his spine.
It was coincidence, part of the aesthetic of any oceanside cottage, he told himself. It could not find him here. He was far from Port Damali, far from the Menagerie Coast, off the rough northern seas that bordered the Empire. His ghosts were far behind him.
A sudden burst of sunlight reflected off of a metallic model of a lighthouse that stood on the mantle as the sun came forth from a cloud, surprising Fjord out of his reverie. He shook himself, feeling foolish, and continued his appraisal of the house. It was small and smelled of salt and sea air, but it would do for what he was looking for, especially once he located the small bedroom off of the outdated kitchen, which contained one four-poster bed made from heavy wood with sea-themed coverings and had two large windows overlooking the ocean beyond.
Finally, Fjord thought, breathing in deeply. Finally, there was a chance he was free.
He also dreams of Caduceus (I never got to their meeting, sadly). This part gets a bit long so I’m putting it after the jump, but I think this piece has some of my most evocative writing and I wanted to share it!
The ship shuddered around him—
And then the dream halted.
Fjord blinked, frozen in time. He still stood on the deck, but it was no longer swaying. The mystery figure, who looked like Sabian if Sabian had been seven feet tall and possessed glowing yellow eyes, was no longer piercing him with his stare. The rain didn’t beat down on him, and Fjord could no longer feel the droplets coursing through his hair and down the planes of his face.
“What is this here?” a gentle voice asked. “What strange magic you have.” Fjord whirled around to look behind him, but no one was there.
“Who are you?” he demanded. The dreams had never stopped before, not before they were ready to spit Fjord back out, coughing up salt water and bile, a foreign sword clutched in his palm. “What are you?”
“I should ask you the same question,” the voice replied, still calm despite the panic that was coursing through Fjord. At least the dreams were familiar. This was—this was something else.
“Show yourself!” he shouted, manifesting the falchion in one palm and brandishing it in front of him like he was ready to fight air. “I’m already haunted by one demon, I won’t hesitate to fight another!” It vaguely registered in his mind that he was speaking with his true accent, here in the dream, so different from the musical lilt that he’d adopted from Vandren in the past few months.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the voice said thoughtfully. “No, I think that would create more problems than it would solve.” He felt a warmth on his forehead, as though a large palm had been placed across it to check his temperature. The voice drew closer, murmuring in his ear. “This isn’t good for you. I’ll release you from this dream.”
The ship, the storm, Sabian – they were all gone in an instant, and Fjord found himself jolted awake, sitting up in alarm in his too-warm bed, breathing in the sea air.
What had that been?
Fjord slid out of bed and walked to one of the windows, staring out at the sea and the wide expanse of stars beyond. It was hard to tell what hour it was, although one of Exandria’s moons was just setting over the horizon, which suggested it was several hours past midnight. Everything was silent other than the crash of the waves against the shore below, and Fjord felt the tug of the ocean like a magnet. Still fuzzy with sleep and disconcerted by his dream, he found himself pulling on his boots and a light jacket before slipping out of the cottage.
He’d explored the area around the cottage in daylight two days before, discovering a small trail down to the beach below the cliffs a couple minutes from his new home. He headed for that trail now, helped by the faint glow from ((one of Exandria’s moons)) and his own half-orcish dark vision. He wanted to stand before the ocean, look out at the force he loved so much that had turned on him. He wanted to clear his head.
Making his way precariously down the trail, Fjord paused halfway down the cliff when the beach first came into view. The beach that resided beneath his cliffs was unlike the sandy paradises of the Menagerie Coast and its accompanying islands, instead covered with rocks as far as the eye could see. It wasn’t a comfortable spot for walking or sitting, but all the same, a figure was sitting cross-legged at the shoreline in the distance, barely visible in the darkness. Long hair of an indecipherable color flowed behind the person, and Fjord was reminded of the stories of ghosts at sea, waiting to drown unsuspecting sailors.
After the dream, Fjord was definitely not up for dealing with a ghost – he began to back up the path the way he had come, hoping to get back to the top of the cliff before the figure spotted him. Without meaning to, the falchion appeared in his hand, a solid and comforting weight. The sea could wait.
Fjord didn’t send the falchion back to wherever it rested when he didn’t need it until he was back at the cottage door, breathing hard, feeling foolish for being so spooked at the figure of a person on a lonely northern beach in the small hours of the morning. Needless to say, he didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
vibing with the fact that i got this from four separate people
i’ll be your mirror | the velvet underground & nico | when you think the night has seen your mind, that inside you're twisted and unkind: let me stand to show that you are blind. please put down your hands; I see you
moon river | frank ocean | wherever you're going, I'm going the same.
line without a hook | ricky montgomery | you’re a pond & I’m an ocean--my emotions feel like explosions when you are around!
first love/late spring | mitski | and I don’t wanna go home yet; let me walk to the top of the big night sky. please, hurry, leave me, I can't breathe; please don't say you love me. 胸がはち切れそうで. one word from you and I would jump off of this ledge i'm on, baby
uuu | field medic | take my darkness and make it bright.
my whole Fjord playlist is like mid-2000s Christian rock and I'm not sorry but "Be My Escape" by Relient K in particular
OK BUT FOR REAL THOOO MID 2000s CHRISTIAN ROCK FITS HIM SO WELL FOR SOME REASON SDKLSFDJK
ALSO, ALSO, i have had be my escape stuck in my head for MONTHS and i was definitely getting fjord vibes off of it
the “i’m begging you i’m begging you i’m begging you...be my escape” over and over always makes me think of the first dream he had underneath the tree where melora pulled him out of the uk’otoa dream? the whole song is just so...earnest and open and sort of just, i don’t know...laid bare? clearly Trying? it has such Trying vibes which is very fjord.
also,, “i’m giving up on doing this alone now / cause i’ve failed and i’m ready to be shown how”....very no-powers-at-the-kiln-and-accepting-the-nein’s-gifts feels
My other piece for the @yoiscifizine, a Full Metal Alchemist AU!
@catalists brought this universe to life by writing a fic, and in return, I drew a comic for her hahaha. The fic and the comic are both inside the Improbable Possibilities Extras PDF, but you can also find them inside the AO3 link below (:
a cruel and random world by Chrome and Cirrha
https://archiveofourown.org/works/18134954
Thank you so much to Cat for collabing with me, and thanks again to the team for YOI SciFi for making everything possible <3
