Protected #2
Aaryn stared up at Thea with glittering eyes and a smile biting down on barely-contained excitement.
"So… magic?" Aaryn prompted, and made grabby hands.
Thea had to close her eyes, lest she perish.
"Magic, sure." Thea nodded, swallowing harshly. "Where do we even start?"
"What's it feel like?" Aaryn asked. "I've heard bits from the Awakened, but mostly about the… awakening part. Not so much just the magic part."
Thea hummed, unsure how to explain it, and lifted her hand.
One of the first spells she ever learned slipped from her lips, and she felt the Hoard tighten around her, gather, and manifest in her palm with a sprinkle of chills over her skin, a bit of warmth tucked low and away in secret.
Thea explained the sensation with stuttered words and warm cheeks, and at the end, a dull light flickered to life.
It glowed pink, for no particular reason.
"It's… easy. Natural, once you get used to it. You kind of have to train yourself to sense the Hoard at first."
Aaryn drew close, eyes wide and full of wonder.
She lifted a hand and hovered it over the small orb, pausing just before contact, looking to Thea for permission.
"It won't hurt," Thea assured her. "But it'll feel—" The words fell off her tongue too late, unsure what might've even tipped off its edge.
Aaryn waved her fingers through the light like she would the tip of a flame. It fluttered, but did not disperse.
Thea watched the sensation of magic dance along Aaryn's skin, goosebumps tickling up her arm and to her spine until she shivered. "Oh," she said softly. "It feels…"
"Good, right?"
"Tingly." Aaryn wet her lips.
The clay dragon's dull eyes glared at Thea judgmentally. She looked away.
"Magic is everywhere," Thea said, searching for distraction. "It's all around us. For you, however, it'll be different."
"What do you mean?"
Thea let the flame in her hand flicker out. "Awakened don't reach out for the Hoard—they reach within, because it's already inside them."
"Is that what I'm... awakening? All of—" She shivered again, and pointed to where the orb had been. "That?"
Thea nodded, and Aaryn's cheeks flushed.
"Oh."
Thea tilted her head to the side. "What is it?"
Aaryn cleared her throat and tucked her smile into her fist. "Nevermind," she squeaked, and motioned for Thea to carry on. "Tell me what, uhm—so. The Hoard."
"Yes?" Thea prompted, trying not to smile, trying not to let curiosity eat her alive.
"Can I access the Hoard from…" She waved a hand around. "...Here, since I can't access it here?" She turned her palm, Evergale's twisted rune still branded in her skin. "Or do I have to wait until this is broken before I can do magic?"
"You can do magic regardless."
"Will you teach me something? Just something tiny. Like the light thing!" Aaryn's eyes were doing that big round shiny thing, and Thea agreed too quickly, lest the rustling dragon behind her join in.
She laughed at Aaryn's excited expression, so open and at ease with her.
You're ruining it.
Thea choked down the barbed emotion and cleared her throat.
"The Hoard is everything. Everywhere. It's as natural as the five senses. Sight, sound, scent, sensation, savor."
"Why the five senses?" Aaryn asked.
"What do you experience nature with? How do you tap into it? You see it in sunrises and sunsets. You feel it on the breeze, in the warmth from the sun. You smell it—cedar and earth. You… savor it. Like the taste of rain drops or the salt of the ocean on your lips."
Lips Thea yanked her focus from.
"Romantic," Aaryn murmured, gaze warm and sticky, trying to catch Thea. It felt like a trap of her own making, and she stepped away before the teeth could close around her.
"Unpredictable, sometimes. It might not manifest like ice or fire or light, like with most dragons.
The Awakened have a deeper connection with magic, with the Hoard, and that proximity can lead to different results.
You'll know it when you feel it. Vaelen used to tell me that to know nature, you must know yourself," Thea rambled.
"Sounds like Vaelen," Aaryn mused. "Very wise."
Exactly. The wisest. Which is why Thea should act normal and just kiss Aaryn like she wanted to, instead of agonizing over the stupid pin—no matter its purpose.
But Thea couldn't shake the feeling that she was making a mistake with every moment that passed.
"So how do I do it?" Aaryn asked. "How do I feel it?"
"It's like something just out of reach. You have to both look for it and not, at the same time," Thea suggested.
"Wow, that's so helpful," Aaryn drawled.
Thea waved her arm out defensively. "Listen, I'm not the best at this!"
"At what?"
"Teaching," Thea bit out with crossed arms.
"That's not what I hear," Aaryn cooed. "According to everyone, you're multi-talented, brave, kind, generous, intelligent, good with kids—"
Thea sputtered. "What the scale are you talking about?"
Aaryn laughed, and the sound made humor threaten to bubble up in response amongst the confusion. "Apparently druids love gossip as much as the Tethered do. I hear whispers all day long about how admirable Thea is."
"Well, that's—" Thea was at a loss for words. She didn't deserve all that praise. Especially because they'd left out probably the most telling truth.
Liar.
"None of that has anything to do with how shit I am at explaining magic," she muttered, tilting her head up as if the sky would offer her clarity. How else could she explain something that came so naturally to her now?
Something that was always just out of reach, welling beneath the surface of the air itself. How had it been explained to her?
The memory came back to her with a grin. "When you have to sneeze, you know how you have to concentrate a little to actually do it?"
Aaryn's lips twitched. "Yes."
"It's kind of like that," Thea said, cheeks flushing for some reason. "It's always there, you just have to be a little more conscious of it to feel it. And when you do… you grab it. But like, with your whole…" Thea waved her hands as if to encompass the shape of Aaryn herself. "Essence."
"My essence?" she repeated, smiling.
"Oh, just shut your eyes," Thea urged with a playful snap. "Maybe sit down, actually."
Aaryn sank into a cross-legged position, and motioned for Thea to join her. The clover beneath her was soft, orange blooms casting Aaryn in a gentle, golden light. "Now what?"
"Hand," Thea prompted, and Aaryn lifted her right hand, the one unscarred.
Thea laid her left hand atop it, hovering palm to palm. A suggestion of contact, but not contact itself. Around them it was quiet except for the chirping of insects, the whisper of nature, and Starspark's lazy breaths.
"We're not touching," Thea said.
"Right…"
"But you can feel my hand there anyway, yeah? The warmth of it? You're… aware." Like Thea knew the weight of Aaryn's gaze, or the tightrope of tension between them that couldn't be ignored.
Aaryn blinked, staring at the hair's distance between their hands. "Yes."
"Try finding it like that, focusing, being aware of its presence." Their voices had softened as the night closed around them, cocooning them in this moment.
Thea slid her palm beneath Aaryn's hand, making room for her magic.
Aaryn's brow furrowed as she concentrated on the shape of her palm.
"When you feel it, just… tug. And bring it forth by repeating after me."
Exchanging whispers, Aaryn picked up the incantation—runes were more advanced, apparently—and echoed the words accurately.
And finally, moments later, after muttered complaints and hushed impatience, a flicker.
A gentle spark, a glow that twinkled and seemed to grow with Aaryn's inhale of delight.
They paused, admiring the magic, Thea so round with pride and full of affection and excitement for Aaryn—
Aaryn, whose gaze caught with Thea's and lingered, her wonder and appreciation shining and lit by the shimmering of Aaryn's own magic for the first time.
A glow similar to that of the sky at dusk… decidedly purple.
Something just like magic itself seemed to swell in Thea’s chest, its presence just as unfelt, just as natural, until moments like this when it was large and took up space and couldn't be ignored, no matter how accustomed one had become to doing so.
Only just then did the light of the orb reflect off two large bright green eyes right beside them. Starspark, suddenly close and ever curious, sniffled at the magic, and promptly—
Sneezed. The magic blinked out of Aaryn's hand at the gust of air, and her surprised and disappointed expression locked on Thea, full of humored betrayal.
Laughter burst and bubbled out of them, and they collapsed against Starspark in a fit of giggles.
And that so very un-ignorable feeling remained.
Thea decided somewhere between the next sunrise, when Aaryn bounced on her toes to get in the sky with Starspark, and near dusk, when Aaryn dragged her to their corner of Dragons’ Nest, that Vaelen must have it out for Thea.
Because it wasn't just an unfortunate circumstance that Thea could not escape Aaryn when she most wanted to put distance between them.
It was—well, something less severe than an order, but not something Thea would consider disobeying, either.
Especially not because of a mess she'd gotten herself into.
So that new presence curled up behind her ribs and continued to swell and grow like a young dragon. It battled for space with the guilt, with the lie she kept having to swallow, only for it to steep and brew and become bitter with each passing minute.
So Thea took Starspark into the sky with Aaryn, tense and nervous, and placed her hands a safe distance away on the back of the saddle.
Thea tried to be polite, to keep proper inches between them, but Starspark was excitable, and his clumsy darting through the sky kept crashing them into each other.
It was safer just to hold on tight. Pressed shoulder to hip, thigh to thigh.
When their feet touched the ground again, the clay dragon might as well have been glaring.