Saint Joseph School

'Okay I can do this...Focus...' Sweeping her hands in front of her she quickly forms 14 different hand signs and begins to emit a low hum from her throat. On the 15th sign she slips and coughs violently and collapses. "*Cough cough* darn it! Why can't I do it right??" she lays back as she grows dizzy. Allowing her hair out of her bandanna she lies on the grass and takes deep breaths watching the clouds pass overhead.

"Okay!" She cries climbing back up "I can do this!" closing her eyes she re-ties her bandanna and begins the slow motions first then begins again moving faster and hums once more. On the 11th sign she missed connecting her fingers and the air was expelled from her lungs with enough force to knock her down on her back. "Oooww..." she mutters before a smooth blackness over comes her.

"Hey! Hey! Eek! Are you alright?"

"Mmm... Hmm??" she tries opening her eyes. "Owie...*cough* what happened?!" opening her eyes she sees Barj sitting next to her "Hiya Barj!!!"

"Hiya Alice! What happened? I saw you collapse from the air! Are you alright!?" he smiles and helps her sit up.

"Aw...I was working on new spell...but I keep messing it up!" she swats a stray leaf on the ground. "I either miss the sign or I forget to breathe right. And flying is hard and then hiding... it's alot to think about all at once! I don’t know what to do! I try and I try and I try and I try and I try but I can’t get it!!!" Sniffling softly she pulls her bandanna off again allowing the wind to sweep her hair around her face.

"Heehee! Its okay! I'm sure you’ll get it, Alice!" Barj smiles at her "practice practice, that's what it's aaaall about.” He leans in conspiratorially. “You want to see?” Alice beams and nods enthusiastically. Barji sweeps his hands dramatically and mutters a low chant, rather surprisingly lower than his normally high voice, and suddenly a ball of fire burst from thin air in front of him and floats there before vanishing with a 'poof' and a wisp of smoke "See? It took foreeeeever to learn that the right way, but I kept practicing and I got it!"

"Oooooh!! Cool!! Can you teach me that!? That would be so neat! I’m sure Ves would love it!! Then I could do more to help her then fly around and confuse things and get into trouble for her to have to come save me..." her voice takes a sad tone at this and she looks at the ground.

“Um! Well.” Barji frowns in thought. “Maaaaybe, but my magic is... eeeenh... it's kinda different." He thinks about it for a few moments before coming to an idea. "But I'd love to help you practice! Meet me here tomorrow and bring a lunch okay? I have an idea, but I'm going to need to look something up!"

"Yay!! Thanks sooooo much Barj!!" She pulls him into a sitting hug and the takes flight to begin getting things for lunch as Barj zips back to his room.

Jay Taggart was surprised to see only Barji's legs sticking out from under his bed, but not too surprised. The kid was weird, no doubt about it. Jay had gotten more or less used to the occasional strange phenomenon that went along with sharing a quad with a wizard--thermomancer, actually--in training. Jay hardly even batted an eye when things went flying across the room anymore, seemingly of their own volition, or at the smell of sulfurous smoke Barji sometimes brought in on his clothes.

"What're you doing?" Jay asked Barji's legs, which bounced in response. He was moving around under there.

"I've got some silver dust down here I need to teach Alice this thing she wants to do!"

Jay rolled his eyes. He was sure that if the two of them were in the same room together for more than a minute they'd tear the room apart with their overexuberence.

"Oh, and I need my lodestone!" Barji's head popped out from under the bed. His face was covered with sparkly stuff--silver dust, Jay guessed. He'd had a silversplosion. "Have you seen it?"

"Don't know. Thought you kept in that drawer of yours." Jay said drolly. "That one with them animal doo-dads."

Barji screwed up his face in thought. "The top one or the bottom one?"

"I don't know, the bottom one?" Jay pointed to a drawer then shrugged and went back to his own business.

"Oh! Thanks, Jay!"

Barji flew out from under the bed--literally flew, feet not touching the ground--toward his desk, and pulled the brilliant, heavy stone of the drawer. A mouse skull flopped out onto the carpet.

"Thanks, Jay! Bye, Jay!" He zipped out of the room like a dart.

"What a freak," Jay thought.

Alice came back outside to find Barji juggling fireballs hand-over-hand.

"Oooooooooooh Barj!!" She hollered. "I got the mirror! What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?"

Alice startled him so much that the young mage nearly jumped out of his uniform. Two fireballs sputtered into nothing. A third hit the ground and puffed into a tiny mushroom cloud, setting the grass ablaze.

"Hi Alice! Is it a good mirror? Can I see it? 'Cause it would be best if it was--um, is something wrong?"

Alice was doing the strangest things, jumping around and making squeaking noises and pointing at the ground.

"Alice? What is it?"

"Fire, fire, fire!! Barj! Eeeeeep!"

Barji whipped around to look. "Eek! Fire!" He squeaked, Alice squeaked. There was a moments-long frenzy of squeaking. They clung to one another for a bit while the flames lapped at the grass.

"We've got to do something, Barj!"

It took him a second to pull himself to some kind of state of composure, he was so caught up in Alice's excitement. He was a thermomancer! Putting this out was well within the scope of his abilities! What was he doing?

He pulled off of Alice and took a few steps back away from the flames. "I think I got it!" he said. He stood in a wide stance, braced himself and held out his hands. He summoned the part of himself he knew could bend reality, pulled from it without looking at it the way he'd learned to. He spoke a few words of ancient Oranbegan, his voice loud and pitched a few octaves lower than was normal. It met Alice's ears like a voice booming from the other end of a long, empty hall. In the space between moments the fire ceased to exist.

Alice bent her enormous torso at the waist. "Oh my, my, my!! That was scary!!” she giggled brightly before turning to Barji “OkaysoIgotthismirrorthinglikeyouaskedmeto!"

Barji frowned at the patch of blackened grass that used to be part of the well-manicured lawn. "Yeah. Um… About that? Do you want to maybe go practice somewhere else?"

Alice sneezed, presumably from the lingering smoke. "Um, okay!"

The two bounced off together.

Alice and Barjnal walked across the grass in a small shade covered corner of Perez Park. Alice, carrying a medium sized mirror, and Barj carrying a sack full of odd magical items.

“Here looks good.” he stated and promptly sat down facing Alice who giggled and did the same.

“Okay, you have come along way with the minor spells and stuff but for today I think you are ready for something a little tougher!” he smiled and pulled out the lodestone and silver powder from his bag. He placed them on the ground and took the mirror from her and laid it flat facing up on the grass. “Want to see what a leyline looks like?"

“Oooooooooooh what’s that!?” she exclaimed looking at the items in wonder.

“It's a thing you haven’t seen before, silly,” he said giggling and produced a small flame above his right hand and picked up the bag of silver powder with his left. “Okay watch and be veeeery still… I’m still working on this one, too.”

With that he began pouring the powder into the flame until it became a molten ball of metal instead of fire. He looked up at Alice “Okay, now focus like I showed you and hold this, okay?”

“Okay!” She smiled seriously and nodded taking the white hot ball from him and held it suspended in mid air above her own hands. Barj turned to the stone and using it as a tool began carving strange runes into the glass of the mirror taking special care not to break it.

“Hedonro, Mercitrpe, Credtiaml, Poderdi!” the runes vanished into the glass.

“Wow Barj!! That was amazing!!” Alice said letting her concentration waver only a moment “ OWIE!!” the silver had dripped to her hand burning her palm. She winced and refocused herself and the glob of metal pulled back into the mass. She looked at the small burn and let it be a reminder to focus more.

“Alice!” Barj yelped. “Are you okay? Be careful!” Barj set the mirror down and looked at her. She nodded that she was fine. “Okay now for your part. Hold the silver over the mirror and try to look through the mirror rather than in it. Then pour the silver onto the mirror and you'll see something reeeeally cool.”

Barj knew this would be very trying for Alice because he was also new to this spell but felt she could handle it. He wished he could calm her and help her focus but it was all a test of will with magic. “You can do this Alice…I’m right here with you.” He smiled at her encouragingly and she smiled back behind her goggles, and gift from her father, and began to chant the scrying spell he had taught her.

Slowly the silver began to drip and fall from her hand and pool on the mirrored surface of the glass. When she finished the silver had covered the mirror but it looked no different. The Barj gasped and pointed. “Alice look!”

“Oh my, my, my!!” Alice gazed into the arcane mixture, as a face appeared, blurry at first but gaining in clarity. Her face became shock horror, “Oh…. that’s!” was all she could make out before fainting. Barji tried to catch her, but only managed to get squished underneath her.

“Alice? Alice!! Are you okay!? Wake up!” Barj called to her.

“Nnmm owie…” she thought before opening her eyes. “Barj…?” She blinked, something was wrong… ‘My goggles!!’ she thought “Wherearemygoggles!?!?” she screamed.

“Alice! You’re awake!” Barj hugged her tight

She pulled back from him and covered her face. In a very calm and very unlike-Alice voice she asked “Barjnal, where are my goggles?”

Barj stopped dead, having never heard Alice speak like that before. “Um…here they are, Alice…I had to take them off after you fainted to check and see if you were alright.” She held out her hand and he gently set them in her palm.

She straightened up and looked at his face, meeting eye contact. He tried not to look at her but couldn’t stop himself and looked back into her solid pupil less eyes and winced involuntarily. “Alice, what happened to your eyes? Why are they…”

“White? I…I don’t know Barj…” she sniffled and put her goggles back on. “I was trying so hard to hide them…please don’t tell anyone!!”

“I won’t, I promise.” He looked at her and she looked down at her hands. She always wore some cloth wrappings around her forearms and wrists. “Alice…can I ask you something?”

“Why do I wear these and my goggles?” she beat him to the punch

“Yeah…but you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” He sat there cross-legged and hoped she wouldn’t be too upset with him.

“Are you sure you want to know? I…It’s something I haven’t told anyone else…and you’re my closest friend…” he nodded and smiled encouragingly at her “Okay…I was born on another world much different from this one….”

She then confided into Barj the true history of her life. Being born and raised under the tyrannical rule of the Council Empire and the suffering she endured when they found out about her sonic gifts. She told him that the image she had seen in the scrying mirror was her brother whom she had seen killed trying to protect her.

She spoke of the beatings and starvation she and many others had endured. The branding of her arms with a serial number to mark her as nothing more then a lab rat, a rodent to them and nothing more. She pulled her coat off and undid the wrappings around her arms to show him “See? ‘SG-4-709’ Specimen Group four, number 709…that’s me…”

She then told him of the countless other horrors she had buried deep inside her memory. Watching other prisoners slowly killed before her eyes, as she and dozens of other watched in terror, praying they weren’t next. Being only a young girl she received unwanted attention in some of the most horrific ways from the Archons and Galaxies. If she refused or fought she was starved and beaten. Before her father Question Mark? Had saved her she couldn’t speak. How her family was among the first to be killed in the Councils cruel attempt to force her into revealing her sound powers, hoping to gain insight into how they worked and thus sharing them among the ranks, making them even more powerful.

After she had finished they both sat there in silence. Barj kept his hand on her shoulder; Alice felt fear. Barj didn’t know what he had asked of her but he was her friend and had listened to her story. Alice didn’t have many people to call friend or family.

Barj sat there and thought over the tale he had just heard. He offered to teach her magic and had befriended her; she shared her pain with him and trusted that he would still there for her. She was the last of her family in a strange world with so many new and different beings. She loved the amazing world around her and had at last found a place to call home. Barji had an odd smile on his face, part sympathetic, of course, but with a curious knowingness to it. He took her hand and helped her up—as much as he could at least, given the difference of scale between them. “You did really well, Alice. Let's get some lunch.”