Open Post: This Is Where The Magic Happens

[rememberettersberg]

A new notice has appeared on the welcome table and at several well-traversed locations around the mansion and its grounds. It invites residents to stop by a certain summer house (which has recently sprung into existence on the shore of the lake) if they are interested in the discussion and/or instruction of magic.

Should anyone's curiosity take them in that direction, they'll find Nightingale there with a pot of tea always on the go and a rotating selection of snacks and nibbles. He's started to cultivate (heh) a small library of his own - important texts in the history of his magical tradition, textbooks for the study of a number of dead/archaic languages, and a growing pile of his own notes.

He'll be delighted to catalogue the differences (and similarities) in the way various worlds practice magic, conduct experiments to see if they can use each other's traditions, and (in the case of Laertes and anyone else that seems like they might be a fit candidate) begin some basic magical instruction.

Closed.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji, curious on several levels, hovers quietly for a moment in the doorway of the summer house in question. He has not encountered Nightingale in some time; several things have changed since then. He recognized, he believes, some kind of kindred spirit in the man.

Once he has decided to make his presence known, he steps inside and makes a polite bow to announce himself.

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale sits at a wide desk, tapping slowly but steadily at the keys of a typewriter. His jacket hangs over the back of his chair, his shirtsleeves are rolled up, and there is a pencil tucked behind one ear. Upon sighting Lan Wangji, he rises hastily and returns the bow, gesturing him further inside.

"Hello there! Come in, come in. Long time no see." He dusts off another chair and pulls it closer to one side of his desk, where a tea set sits with teapot steaming. He points at the pot and raises an eyebrow, the offer implicit.

[lightbearinglord]

The typewriter, in its immediate foreignness, is the first thing to draw Lan Wangji's attention, a quick and sharp glance. He is too polite to mention it, however, and takes the offered seat. He will also never refuse tea, and flicks his sleeves back neatly to pour one cup for each of them.

"I've intended to ask how you would prefer that I address you," he says as he watches the steam rising.

[rememberettersberg]

"Thank you." He settles back into his own seat and adds milk and sugar to his cup. "Oh, honestly, just Nightingale is absolutely fine. My work title is Detective Inspector, or just DI, but that has no import here, and my apprentices are traditionally supposed to call me Master, but that's not the done thing any more where I'm from." Especially when one is a well-to-do older white gentleman and one's apprentice is a Black twentysomething, he doesn't add. "What would you prefer I call you?"

[lightbearinglord]

Observant, Lan Wangji watches as Nightingale adds things to his tea. He frowns passingly but copies what he does. The tea does not smell the way he expected it to, but perhaps it would have been more surprising if it had.

In answer to both the explanation and the question, Lan Wangji hesitates. "Nightingale," he repeats, reluctant to use no title but equally reluctant to disregard Nightingale's preference. "Most address me as Hanguang-jun, if they are not close enough to use my name. Before I earned that title, I was typically introduced as the second young master Lan."

[rememberettersberg]

"Hanguang-jun," Nightingale repeats, raising his cup in a little salute. "If you don't mind me asking, what does it mean?"

Recalling the green tea Lan Wangji had served him when he first arrived, he pushes forward another empty cup. "If you find a good old British cuppa is not quite to your taste, it's perfectly acceptable to drink unadulterated."

[lightbearinglord]

Before answering, Lan Wangji takes one careful sip of his tea. His face betrays nothing, but he sets it down and, with some unexpressed gratitude, does indeed pour himself a fresh cup with no milk or sugar.

The matter of his title is more difficult. The meaning is, to him, evident. He repeats it but with a careful pause between each character, hoping whatever force the mansion employs will understand his intent: "Light-bearing lord."

[rememberettersberg]

"That's rather lovely," says Nightingale. "If honorifics are more comfortable for you, by all means add a DI onto the beginning of my name. It's of no consequence to me either way."

He smiles. "What brings you to my summer house today, Hanguang-jun?"

[timebethine]

Laertes comes to the summer house with a smile on his lips and a dictionary of Latin under one arm. The prospect of learning magic fills him with a pleasant buzz of anticipation; he shifts from foot to foot after he's knocked, already eager to begin.

[lightbearinglord]

"Detective Inspector," Lan Wangji agrees with some relief. Nearly everyone here is younger than him or around his age, but he is fairly certain that Nightingale is his elder.

He sips the fresh cup of tea, also with relief. The flavor is not exactly to his taste, but it's much more palatable than it was with milk and sugar added. "I'm interested in your work. Whatever you would like to share."

[rememberettersberg]

"Laertes, welcome! I see you've come prepared." Nightingale hauls a half-filled bucket of water over to some seating gathered around a low central coffee table. "Come and take a seat over here. Did Sagramore approve of the ring?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It's a rather extensive topic," Nightingale muses. "I supposed I'm interested in the various ways the practitioners here harness what I assume to be the same base energy for all of us." He sips at his tea with evident satisfaction. "I can only assume that magic is also what has brought us here, but I can feel no trace of its source. I'm not quite as anxious to leave as I once was, but I would like to know what's going on. I wondered if perhaps someone from a different tradition might have more luck."

[timebethine]

"Most heartily, and returned it in kind," says Laertes, holding out his hand to show a ring of gold with angled bands crossing and recrossing. It's still new, the weight of it on his finger; it still makes his eyes go soft to acknowledge it. "My thanks for the gift of your skill, then and hereafter. I hope I'll repay your teaching well."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji absorbs this, quiet as is his way for a thoughtful moment and allowing the tea to warm his hands. He is not bothering to use the handle of the cup.

"I have investigated as best I can," he says. "My cultivation is high and when I played Inquiry, any extant spirits should have been compelled to answer. I received only a single laugh and then no more. My cultivation partner is exceptionally clever with talismans, and he has invented several new ones since arrival, but has had no better luck."

[rememberettersberg]

"It's a beauty," he says approvingly. "No need for thanks or repayment, my having found purpose here is quite enough." He smiles. "This initial lesson might feel quite tedious and unrewarding, but it is the first step towards understanding the way magic is shaped and utilised in my world. Are you ready to begin?"

[timebethine]

"Of course." Laertes schools his expression to gravity, standing straight and attentive.

[rememberettersberg]

"Yes, you mentioned when you first met that you channel qi through music. Is that the standard way of things where you are from? Are your partner's talisman's a different expression of the same abilities?" Nightingale unearths a notepad and a pen in case notes are necessary.

"In my world, magic has always existed and people have always muddled their way into being able to use it, but a codified system for its use has only been around for several hundred years. I work within that system because that is what I know, but I could theoretically figure out entirely new ways to channel magical energy. Anyone could."

He suddenly finds himself missing Peter so much that his chest aches. His apprentice would have classified every tradition in the place by now, made up a few new spells, and possibly set the mansion on fire. That last thought shouldn't make him feel fond, but it truly does.

[rememberettersberg]

"I'm going to conjure what we call a werelight - a simple glowing orb without heat. I want you to focus very hard while I do it and attempt to feel the forma in the air around me as it happens. Forma is the invisible shape a spell makes and vestigia are the lingering traces left behind when magic has been done."

Nightingale holds out his hand, palm up, and curls his fingers into a fist. "Watch carefully," he says, and then, slowly and clearly, "lux". His fingers unfurl to reveal a golf ball sized globe of pearlescent light.

If Laertes has an aptitude for magic, he will already feel the shape of the forma as something like a catch in the air, a soft noise in the silence, the muted clunk of a key opening a lock. The vestigium Nightingale leaves in his wake is sharp and precise - the steady ticking of a metronome, the near-silent whirring of well-oiled machinery.

[timebethine]

Laertes feels ... something. Not what he had expected--a ghostly, numinous presence, like a veil of drifting smoke; a shivering, silver feeling, a sensation of moonlight on the skin. Something otherworldly and sublime. He frowns, then meets Nightingale's eyes. "Might I try again?" he asks. "It felt more like clockwork than magic. I might have mistaken it."

[lightbearinglord]

"Musical cultivation is my sect's specialty, but others can do it." In fact, Wei Ying cultivates with his dizi, but Lan Wangji is feeling characteristically protective of the details. Wei Ying himself would most likely not care. "It is all cultivation, but with differing methods."

He sips his tea again. The taste is easier to accept on a second try. "It is possible for anyone to become a cultivator, with training and diligence, but beginning in childhood confers a significant advantage."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale waves away the werelight, looking quietly delighted. "Of course," he says. "Since this is such a small and simple spell, the vestigium you feel will simply be my magical signature, or signare. It has often been likened to clockwork."

Holding out his hand once more, he again makes a fist. "Try to feel beyond that signare to the moment of the spell taking form. Lux." The orb forms once more, spinning lazily above his palm.

Going deeper, Nightingale's power is evident as a jumble of sensations - the smell of grass, the rub of wet wool, sweet high-pitched song, all overlaid with that continuous tick-tick-tick - but perhaps beyond that, the shape of the spell becomes more clear, like a sudden beam of sunlight through cloud or the pop of a stuck jar lid coming loose.

[timebethine]

Laertes has to laugh at that--it feels so much like the feeling of Hungarian on Sagramore's lips that it startles him, to recognize something familiar and beloved. "This is like learning music," he says, delighted. "It hath a timbre to it."

[rememberettersberg]

"Just so in my world. My apprentice is beginning his journey in adulthood, but my training started at the age of eleven."

He thinks for a moment, tapping pen against paper. "You said you played Inquiry. I assume that there are unique melodies for different purposes? Are they standardised things that each cultivator may learn, or must each person begin anew?"

[rememberettersberg]

"You're exactly right," Nightingale confirms with a grin. "But this next part will be less exciting, I suspect. I want you to hold out your hand in the same manner as I have been doing and try to replicate the shape, or the melody, or however it is the spell has resonated with you, in your mind. As you do so, open your palm."

Nothing will happen just yet. Nightingale will urge Laertes to repeat his attempt a number of times, interspersing this with demonstrating the spell over and over. The forma of the spell should become increasingly clear in Laertes' mind, a fuzzy sort of anticipation growing stronger and sharper with each failure to produce light.

[lightbearinglord]

"The melodies are standardized, and many are part of a long tradition." Lan Wangji recalls the Cloud Recesses library, the pavilion on which he has spent many days of his life. "Inquiry facilitates communication with spirits. Rest suppresses and calms them."