@entales.
We obsess. It’s in our nature. / from caleb!
deathless.
his use of we doesn’t go unnoticed. it’s quite clever, really: an appeal to some shared nature between them, as fellow magicians. to an extent, it even works. aster can count on one hand the number of magicians she’s met on this side of the veil, and she does feel a certain kinship with caleb as a result.
with anguis, it was always we. us, ours. you and i, together alone. he said they were the only ones of their kind, but now aster thinks they were very different kinds after all. she doesn’t yet know what “kind” caleb is.
❛ magic— magic is a gift, ❜ she tells him. ❛ once you’re given it, it’s yours to do with as you please. and in this country, i’ve seen it do terrible things. ❜ many people wish they could bring reality to its knees, and many people would not use that power kindly, or wisely. she is loath to create another anguis who will bleed the world dry. ❛ i would not hand you a knife without first knowing how you’ll use it. ❜
caleb found eye contact difficult to balance even at the best of times, when he was young. before a queen, it is an impossible thing. even if she weren’t a queen, maybe, for he is --- what he is. what he is and isn’t and always cannot be, now. so he stares too long or blinks too hard and fast or, as now, looks down at the meager, hoarded collection of magic words in his spellbook and away from her.
“magic is – a loan. to me, it would be.”
he wonders what would happen if he said, so have i. magic is his great joy, perhaps the only thing in his life that truly gets his heart working. ( except... except for nott, but she is not a thing, and he can neither bear the thought of losing her or of keeping her. ) he also knows that he has done great harm with his so-called gift. he cannot promise not to do terrible things again.
“it can be earned, paid off. or taken away.”
frumpkin puts out his paw to trap caleb’s finger as it travels up and down the book’s binding. his green eyes flash. caleb does not try to interpret the look.
“although i do not suppose you would let someone do that to you.”
