Suzy and Timo are together, in her quarters at night. They are in zero-g, as her sleeping quarters were in the space colony of her origin. There is sort of a wall-mounted sleeping bag and a small fan, along with numerous stickers of her friends and family attached to the various walls. Other than a couple of empty locking drawers, there is not much else in the way of personal effects.
"You know, Timo, you said I was a Magical Adept back there. Could you tell me what that means?"
"Well.." says the floating gray cat. "It's a stage of development of your magical powers. A big one. It means your powers have reached maturity, and your future is yours to decide!" Timo spins about once, with some excitement.
"Oh?" says Suzy. "Like the other ones.. Neophyte, and Novice, right? So are you leaving me now?"
"Oh, no, Suzy, I'm with you as long as you want me to be. I'm happy to stick by you for the rest of your life. Adept might mean maturity, but it isn't the end of your life, or the development of your powers."
"So then what does it mean?"
"It's freedom. You might not wake up with new powers anymore, or have odd changes in how much you can do, but you can still learn new things, even develop new powers. It's just that instead of having them come about spontaneously, they'll come about deliberately. Like, we can practice, we can find new artifacts, we can discover new techniques, and we can add them to our arsenal. We could build on previous changes, combine abilities, learn new ways to use them.. and explore the universe. It's freedom."
"Yeah? The sky's the limit?"
"Well, your basic powers of creating and directing energy, and that of adjusting and changing materials around, are so useful I'm not sure there is a final limit. It might take a lot of work, or a long time, but if you want something, we should be able to get it for you, even if we need to discover how to do it. I mean, when you were just starting out..
...would you mind telling me the story of how this all started out again? I do love hearing you tell it."
Suzy floats about a bit, bracing herself lightly against the wall-bars.
"Well, the first thing I can remember was that it was always cold in my sleeping rack. Always cold, and I didn't like it. And then one day, it felt better.. it was warm.
Over the next few days it stayed warm, and then got hot. It felt great, nice and comfortable, just the way I'd always wanted it to be. But, well.. I felt warm everywhere I went, even in the airlock, or inside my suit, or when checking the water source. And then my parents noticed. I had a fever, they said, and it was quite high, high enough that I needed medicine.
They gave me some pills and it stopped. The fever was gone, and I was cold again, cold in my rack. They weren't worried about me anymore, but I'd missed it.. the fever didn't feel bad, like it usually does when you get sick. It felt good.
The next thing that happened was also in my rack. I turned the lights out and I could still see. It wasn't all the way dark. And I couldn't see where the light was coming from. And this time I tried to will it, make it change."
"And" says Suzy, smiling. "It did. I could make it light in my rack, or I could let the light go out. Eventually I found out it was coming from my body, my hands in particular, but every part of my body.. ..and, if light, why not warmth? And then it was warm again."
"I think you came around a couple weeks later. I could make it hot, and could make my hands glow, and I was going to show my friends, and then you turned up, Timo, saying I was a Magical Novice, and helping explain what was going on.
..Say, where did you say you came from again?"
The cat then interjects. "The other side. I came to you from the same place your magic did.. the other side. Your body discovered how to use magic, and sort of made a hole to let in the magic power. My people look for people like you, people who discover magic, and then we go through the pinprick, the little hole, to help the magic user on the other side adjust to the situation.
..You have good powers. Some people have it a lot worse. They have magic that changes them, or they have powers that cause very big problems or hurt other people. I've heard of one person who could create poison. Nothing else, but created poison all day. Poison in the sweat, poison in the breath, poison.. it was not good, and it took a lot of work to turn that power into something that was useful. You, you're getting to save the universe! That's great.
But.. back to the original question. The labels are just names. Someone who is starting to have magic but hasn't met one of us is a Wild Talent. It can be fun, but as powers grow, so does the danger with them, and things can end up very bad. Once one of us is with them, and their powers are still developing, they are Magical Novices, because they're still learning. When their powers have mostly developed, they become Magical Adepts, and can choose their path.
There are other terms for people with specific kinds of powers or who decide to use them in different ways, like if you learn how to manipulate objects and put magic inside them, you'll be an artificer. If you learn the basic rules and develop ways to use the foundations of magic, instead of your powers, you'll be an Occultist. If you use your magic to change your own body, to become a magical creature, you'll be a Sorceress. If you learn to tap into the power contained within others, you'll be an Evoker. ..and so it goes, different words for the thousand varieties of basic magic."
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Topic: Solar Graveyard - Starlight (Read 20707 times)