Chapter 2

  Conversations

  That very morning, in a room where only the sound fr the pages of a book could be heard, her eyelids slowly opened.

  They felt heavy, never before had she had this much difficulty opening her eyes. Her entire body felt heavy too, not being able to move a finger as if her body was made of solid rock. What happened?

  She wasn’t entirely sure of what happened, how she ended up like this, or where she even was. Her memories were completely messed up, the very act of thinking felt like as much of an endeavor as pushing a giant boulder up a hill, only for it to fall to the bottom before reaching the top.

  It felt surreal, the exhaustion wasn’t like anything else she had ever felt, but at the same time her brain was wide awake and attempting with every part of itself to understand the situation. It more closely resembled being paralyzed than just 'tired'.

  She wasn’t asleep, that much she could make out, and after agonizingly getting to open her own eyes she caught a glimpse of a wooden room, from her right there was the sound of paper every once in a while. Nothing else could be heard. She could barely distinguish some pieces of furniture like shelves, tables, chairs, and the like. Then finally, she noticed her body covered in bandages from head to her toe.

  “... What happened?” She thought.

  Her head was foggy, and could barely make out her situation. Was she injured? How? She couldn’t remember anything of what happened, and it hurt to even think about. The last she remembered was arriving at a village with her uncle to spend the night and... No use, nothing was coming into her mind. Her head only felt heavier and heavier the more she tried. What’s more, the sound of paper still rustling to her right had become slightly annoying. At the very least, she would like complete silence to fall asleep again.

  Moving her neck to the side felt incredibly difficult, just how tired her body was? She couldn’t exactly tell but, maybe, this served as a good example of her how much she needed to rest. Forcing her eyelids to open allowed her to get a glimpse of whoever was reading, maybe if she could muster a few words, it could get it out of the room and enjoy some sweet silence.

  There, she saw a small boy. He was holding a book with undivided attention, reading page after page while roughly pushing the pages with noticeable speed. His hair was messy, his skin fair, his clothes simple and lacking in any soft of extravagances. He was rather cute boy... With great difficulty, Ellyn opened her mouth to try to muster any sound she could. If she can get herself going, she could at the very least communicate with him what she needs.

  “... Ah.”

  Her voice was hoarse and strained. Talking was even harder than she thought.

  Thankfully, the room was silent, so much so that the slightest of sounds wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the boy looked up in her direction at the mere hint of her voice leaking. His dark-amethyst eyes seem full of surprise when they look directly into hers. Despite all the difficulty, she was able to muster the words out of her mouth with all the little strength she had.

  “You’re... noisy.”

  Those were the first words she ever spoke to him.

  “Ngh...”

  Two weeks had passed, and Ellyn now was capable of walking, albeit very slowly. It was early in the morning and only the raven-haired girl was awake. While carefully making her way to the entrance, she opened the door and silently got out of the house.

  She had a better grasp of the situation now, the two people that saved her life and what transpired that night. However, only she and a few others knew about it, and Marco asked her discretion if she happened to be asked about it by someone else. She agreed, though, not exactly knowing the full extent as to why she should, thinking that it was the least she could do as a way of gratitude.

  Her body was still in a great deal of pain, and Ellyn was told to not move as much during, or it would take longer to recover, but certainly, she can’t start the morning without doing going outside for the sunrise.

  The grass made a soft tickling sensation on her feet as she walked towards an old bench next to a tree, in front of it: The entire village.

  Marco’s home was built in a slight elevation, nearing the backside of the remote village she was in, it allowed for a sight of the entirety of it. Having heard about it from Marco and the boy, the village was nearing the size of at least a very small town, she didn’t know why they insisted on calling it a village when it no longer was, but it wasn’t that big of a deal, maybe she could ask later. All that mattered to her was that it was there to see.

  Towns and villages had their particular type of attraction to her, if she had to put it into words, it’ll be the blending of architecture and the natural landscape into an image of something only capable by human hands; People living day by day while only being bothered by issues that aren't too complex to handle. Human society flourishing while not trampling over the land and nature not dominating in such a way that it came across as an unforgiving place where people are constantly in the fight for survival—a balance where both can prosper.

  That was why the place in front of her looked so oddly comforting.

  It was quiet, very quiet. The village had at four giant mountains far into the distance that looked almost out of place considering everything aorund was grassland and small hills, but she knew nothing of the studies of the land. Still, captivating for sure, they loomed over like guardians that filtered anything that came from the outside. All the while, the lush foliage painted the base of the stone-gray titans into the same as the grass beneath.

  The houses looked like there wasn’t one exactly like the other, varying in shape and size but rarely going into a two-story house, neatly divided by a humbly made road. It wasn’t exactly wide, but it spoke to how the people who lived here inevitably were on their way towards more complex infrastructure.

  Ellyn’s gaze, however, remained lost on the houses, and how close together they were, like a group of oddly shaped squares put together on relatively flat terrain, to be only separated by the main road or the smaller walkways meant to lead to more houses deeper inside. The small pond of homes seamlessly blending with the grasslands and sea at the end of it all it looked straight out of a painting.

  She didn’t know the idea behind having small homes sitting on below larger ones as if the bigger house was an extension, her only guess was that some families could just be large enough that they required more space and so they built their homes like that both necessity and display of wealth—whatever wealth that could be had for a village in a remote place. Either way, the multiple houses put together as a whole in this infinite green and blue struck her as a mesmerizingly beautiful aesthetic.

  “Aah”, She breathed, “...Haa.”

  The sun had just begun to rise, and the village still remained asleep. No sound could be heard except for the chirp of birds, the fluttering of tree leaves, and the surrounding wind that almost lulled her back to sleep.

  She had made a habit of this ever since she became capable of walking again, and while she should only move in case of pure necessity like going to the bathroom, washing her body, or changing her bandages; staying inside that room had begun to feel suffocating. So, she sought any way to feel the fresh air on her face. This was the solution she found. The atmosphere brought her a sense of peace, ever since she woke up in his house, there hasn’t been a moment where her mind didn’t feel like a mess. When she started taking those mornings of fresh air she could feel as if the wind blew away all the troubled thoughts in her mind the same way it blew all the fallen leaves, scattering them across endless grassland.

  “... Uncle.” She whispered.

  Whenever she thought about it, a nasty sensation swelled up in her stomach, pulling her insides with great force, and making her feel like vomiting on the spot. Her wounds covered in bandages and stitches would ache in reaction. An ever present sensation of pain sweeping throughout her entire body—an overwhelming sensation that threatened to get her this time around, as it failed the last time... over and over again.

  It made her clench her teeth.

  The raw carnage of that night, the inhuman side that belonged to something more in line with a demon than it did to a person. No, it did belong to a person, many horrible people are well capable of doing just as much if not more, and it was something completely possible within the wide realm of human cruelty. That was exactly what made her so nauseous about it, so terrified. If she really was to think about it, then it was only natural that it’ll come to that.

  Ellyn took a look at her right hand. That not-so-lady-like hand of hers covered in a bandage. Sure, it still retained the aesthetic of a girl’s hand, the slenderness, softness of the skin; she was a girl after all, and a beautiful one at that. She was told as much by both her uncle and some of the people she encountered while traveling with him. And yet, she saw clearly every callus on it, between the fingers, the knuckles, the unmistakable sensation of arid, hardened skin that had been built on every occasion she drove her fist into someone else.

  Just thinking about it made her nauseous; her injured body ached once again. Her head became more and more cloudy.

  “Breath... in... and out... Haa.”

  She tried to suppress her rapidly declining state of mind by taking deep breaths. Taking as much air as possible for a couple of seconds, holding the air for a little bit, and then letting it out in a long exhalation before breathing again, as if forcefully removing the thoughts out of her mind with each cycle completed.

  Ellyn was taught of it recently after her mind almost crashed completely, just a day after the incident. All those events came rushing violently in an instant, like a twig succumbing to pressure, Ellyn wasn’t capable of withstanding the thought of it.

  And her screams were heard loudly across and even outside Marco’s home.

  “AaAAahAahAaaAHH!! NgHG!” She wailed from the top of her lungs.

  “What’s going on?!” Marco came rushing in, “Are you alright?!”

  “Aah... U-Uncle... Aaah!!” Her voice cracked with an ear splitting screech , “What have I-!”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Calm down, calm down! Don’t move so much, or you’ll open up your wounds again... Take a moment to breathe, follow my lead, okay?”

  In that usually quiet room, a cracked, high-pitched voice wailed desperately over the horrible realization of her actions.

  Ellyn continued doing deep breaths for several more minutes, combined with the soothing atmosphere she was surrounded by; she slowly started to feel better. For something as simple as breathing at specific timings, it really did a lot to soothe the mind; maybe it was because she had to concentrate on her breathing to do the exercise properly, so it kept her distracted. It didn’t really matter to her why it was, though. She was happy that it helped her as much as it did.

  Now, she could go back to enjoying-

  “Yo! Good morning.”

  Ellyn thought she could go back to enjoy the scenery.

  “Out here again? You really have no intention of listening to Marco, do you?”

  His voice was a bit groggy, like he hadn’t woken up fully yet. Also, a tinge of disappointment could be felt within his youthful voice.

  Ellyn didn’t want to look at him; she knew what he would say to her for being outside like this.

  However, noticing her lack of intent of looking at him directly, the boy moved his body in front of her. He was short, or at least shorter than her by about a head, he was of a thin body and his face gave away how relatively young he was, particularly to Ellyn who could easily guess she was a at least 3 to 4 years older than him.

  He wore dark blue pants and jacket on top of a dark purple shirt. Long boots to endure long walks, fingerless black gloves and a thick book on his hand. Ellyn was already familiar with the look of that boy as he was the other person that saved her life alongside Marco. Someone with whom she was grateful too, yes…

  …But still hated the earfuls he gave her.

  “Rigel...” She grumbled, “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, Ellyn.”

  Rigel had his hands on his hips. After taking a deep breath, he began to scold her in a tone of voice slightly deeper than he was naturally capable of.

  “Listen you!” He explained, pointing a finger at her, “You are still recovering! Your injuries are still fresh, and they will take months to heal! To the point reckless movement puts you at risk of them opening up and bleeding you out!”

  Ellyn avoided eye contact. She had heard him say that same line several times already, so she will give him the same response as usual:

  “... I need fresh air, Rigel. It helps me calm down.” She spoke in a deadpan tone.

  “Then why do you insist on going out on your own? You know you can ask Marco to help move you outside without as much risk as you go through by wandering off on your own.”

  “It’s just a few meters outside.”

  “And what if you trip, fell, and some of your wounds reopen and start bleeding?”

  At that moment, Ellyn went silent, “... I’ll manage.”

  “What’s with the pause...?”

  Their exchange proceeded as usual, with Ellyn enduring the earful that Rigel gave her for her lack of self-care. In truth, she knew Rigel was correct, she could indeed just ask Marco for help to get outside, he had taken up the role of her caretaker voluntarily after all, with the help of a woman she hadn’t met yet that often came to the house, a woman of who she only knew by a particularly loud voice, and Rigel who often came along with her, they were there to oversee her recovery from the incident.

  That being said... to her... they were strangers. Kind strangers, yes, strangers that saved her life... but strangers nonetheless. The very idea of asking these strangers for anything unless it was unbearable or of absolute necessity felt alien to Ellyn. As if the idea itself didn’t even enter her mind—and so, her first and most commonly chosen option for something like this was: ‘I should try to do it myself instead.’

  Rigel sighed and dropped his shoulders before speaking.

  “Look, we don’t mind, okay? If you feel as if you were suffocating in your room, then ask us to take you out until you feel better. Just ask us and we’ll do it.”

  Ellyn looked at him with doubt on her face. Her eyes went from his feet up to his face and locked in his amethyst-colored eyes that looked at her so amicably that she scanned them thouroughly as if she were looking to know what was the catch. She didn't had her suspicions confirmed.

  “...I don’t think your delicate body could carry me outside.” She said as she gave a quick gaze towards his thin arms that barely had any muscle to them.

  “That’s it. I’m taking you inside.”

  His eyes, which were filled with the genuine feeling of helping out, instantly switched to animosity. His eyebrow twitched several times, and his attempts to keep his smile in place were clearly falling apart.

  “...With what muscle, though?” She joked with a plain voice.

  Rigel’s cute and youthful appearance contorted as he moved one step foward, raising his arms and then giving up and dropping his shoulders once again.

  “You!” He clenched his teeth, “I swear to...! Haa... Whatever, recover soon, so I can give you a smack in revenge.”

  “Mnh~” She replied partially amused.

  He really wanted to at least pull her hair once, but he restrained his urges due solely to the fact that he was talking to an injured girl still in recovery. He wouldn’t lay a finger on her during such a state, but he silently decided that she would repay him with interests when she eventually recovered.

  Ellyn chuckled with a faint smile as she looked at him with a tinge of mischievousness. Rigel, however, remained silent, and his expression became calm and curious, confused even, not so much by her actions but by what he was looking at.

  The girl was Ellyn; he had learned her name the day after she remembered the events of the night and suffered a breakdown. Rigel had already seen her awake and had spoken to her several times, but it was mostly about anything she might need while bedridden. They were short exchanges that weren’t that impactful to him as they didn’t leave any room to learn anything personal about her.

  But what was noticeable... was the girl’s behavior. It was deadpan, lacking in any significant surge of emotion, as if the emotional toll from the day after that night drained everything out of her and left a walking husk at the end.

  She hadn’t lost her emotions or her ability to feel. She still reacted to things around her, made jokes with Rigel, laugh, albeit painfully, and overall, still showed that her mind still worked properly. But they were all... drained. Lacking in any energy, as if she was… tired of everything.

  A week later, she started going outside of her own, much against Marco’s complaints as a physician. She stood on the bench outside his home and stared into the landscape that was in front of her. When confronted, she gave the excuse of the room feeling suffocated, and she needed fresh air. Despite still returning to that same room on her own, even when Marco moved her from the special room where he treated patients into a bedroom with wide windows that could deal with the issue of needing fresh air. She did it on a nearly daily basis.

  Rigel was first to notice her behavior. When he asked her about it, she gave the same replies, at first in a deadpan tone, lacking in interest and emotion, but after that, her replies became ever so slightly livelier, as if the act of watching the sunrise or getting fresh air slowly lifted her spirits.

  To him, however, what made him the most intrigued about the peculiarity of this girl was the contrast of what he had seen. Right now, she felt no different from a normal countryside girl who just had a very unlucky accident, and to an extent, she was just a girl who suffered a very unlucky accident... that was of her own doing. Back then, he saw what looked like nothing but a demon…

  But now that was... nowhere to be seen.

  At the very least, he would like to keep it that way.

  After her soft laughter died down, two remained still on that old bench that was practically an extension of the tree above them, silently reading his book. Ellyn tilted her head and took a peek at the cover:

  ‘The Fundamentals of Star Magic; Guide into the core principles of the forces that rule the cosmos. By Etlan G?tting & Angelika vom Schnee’

  “What are you reading?” Ellyn asked.

  “Star Magic, I study and practice it to become a proper mage in the future.”

  He replied without looking, his eyes locked in on the contents. Ellyn made a single ‘Huh.’ noise before continuing her inquiry.

  “I see, but don’t you need an instructor for it?”

  “Not really,” He explained, “it fastens the learning process, yes, but the schools of magic have been around for a long time-”

  The boy lifted his face as he began his explanation, seemingly eager to talk about his interest in the ways of magic. He did not look at Ellyn, instead, he fixed his gaze into the landscape before them and potentially the great beyond.

  “Easy ways to pick up on your own, shortcuts into the spells, experimentation of its limits, and detailed explanations of how it works and how to do it are in most books nowadays thanks to years of research done by many generations of mages-”

  He casually smiled at her; a friendly gesture that felt a bit odd to her given how he is usually with her in the few exchanges that they made. However, talking about this topic immediately seemed to have put him in a good mood.

  “They made it so even I can learn Magic over here, in a nowhere village— even if slowly, y’know?”

  Disciples of the school of star magic aren’t uncommon across the world, being one of the most researched schools due to their application in multiple areas of the workforce due to the nature of what it does: Miniature reconstruction of the great energy giants that make up the sky.

  As knowledge gifted by the Great Star God, the earliest mages learned how to mimic his celestial craft in a matter their bodies could handle, in turn, much research was done over generations to understand the powers bestowed to them.

  Originally made for use in the military due to the potential of the sheer destructive power of a star colliding with an object, only to be found unsuitable due to it being outclassed by the War God’s power as a force multiplier, so its usage was shifted to open possibility within the rise of alchemy, it’s the ability to form elements thanks to the massive concentration of mana within the artificial star in a process of fusion. It was like the perfect marriage for the schools of magic and alchemy. The light of possibility shining bright within the stars.

  However, despite generations of books and experiments, its ability to produce materials such as iron that allowed multiple areas of whole nations to develop, as well as being functional light sources for major developed cities to lit up during the night. It's output remained rather... conservative. The metal produce was impressive yes, but it would take much, much longer before it was used to create entire cities of it, as well as the infrastructure requiered to light the night of the world just wasn't there for everyone to wield. For reasons like those, many experts believed that the potential of Star Magic remained very much untapped.

  Like a child being given a book too advanced for their young minds, many experts considered that the power of Star Magic was limited by the human mind and its idea of how the world works and that such narrow-mindedness is what prevented human society from catapulting into a future as bright as the cosmos itself.

  She tilted her head like a curious owl. She had seen practitioners before but only at a distance, it was a good chance to see this magic in action, “I see... Can you do any spells?”

  Rigel lifted an eyebrow, but after a few seconds, he faintly smiled and put his hand in front of him.

  Faint sparks of light started to appear in front of his fingers. They appeared, pop! Then disappeared, collided and roamed around the tiny designated area at increasing speeds, like minuscule detonations of white light that celebrate the coming of a minuscule, brown and red sphere, the size of a ball and enough to fit into the boy’s hand. Once it the wild energy subsided, it was there—a star had been born.

  A Red Dwarf, the smallest type of star that existed beyond the skies, and the most common, at least from what is detailed in ancient texts that claimed word from the Star God himself. Its form was stable and when thrown with sufficient energy it could pack quite a punch. As far as academia was concerned, however, its heat was insufficient to perform a large variety of processes and experiments, more akin to a hot ball of dirt and mud concentrated than the mighty sun that rules over all, and could do it all. Still, it was the required first step into the path of a mage that wished to pursue this kind of knowledge.

  Rigel furrowed his eyebrows and his forehead started to sweat. His hand moved in a singular motion and the star followed, like an instrument moving at the guidance of its conductor.

  Up and down, left and right, then in circles like dancing a rapid song the tiny star left a red trail behind; small sparks of white light trailed around it as it went, matching each movement with the boy's finger. Ellyn followed it with her eyes wherever it went, never losing track of it like a hypnotized cat.

  But after five minutes of the small spectacle, the star faded, reduced to nothing in a second. Ellyn turned around towards the boy to ask what happened, however she stopped herself after seeing Rigel already tired, sweat falling down his forehead, and his breathing being considerably louder than before.

  “I can’t really do much more than a Red Dwarf. Neither do I have the stamina to keep up with, lest I want to hurt myself, sorry.”

  Ellyn smiled, “Mn. Don’t worry about it. Thank you for showing me.”

  She shook her head and gave him a faint smile, to which he smiled back in response.

  Silence fell upon them, letting the wind soothe their minds into relaxation. The beauty of the land in front of them was all they looked at as the morning continued. They would remain there, enjoying the view of a closed-off land, where time moves slowly, gently, untouched by the outside world...

  ...At least until Marco woke up and forced Ellyn back into her room.

  -Aftertone