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

[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?"

[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."

[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]

"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."

[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]

"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.

[timebethine]

The force of attention required for this work is excruciating. Time and again, Laertes opens and closes his hand, but his mind slips away to some other subject--the declension of lux, the inscription on his ring, the sound of the tea kettle singing. The forma grows clearer the way a sore tooth grows clearer when probed with a curious tongue.

[rememberettersberg]

Eventually, Nightingale claps him companionably on the shoulder and steps away to make a fresh pot of tea. "It might not feel like it, but progress is being made," he tells Laertes cheerfully.

"We'll take a break now, then I'd like you to continue trying for the next couple of hours without me demonstrating for you. You can stay here or go wherever feels comfortable - just be sure to have water nearby. A common beginner mistake is to produce heat as well as light and you'll need something to douse your hand if that happens."

He pours them both tea, making Laertes' strong and sweet without discussion. He'll need the energy boost. "This first spell is the most difficult to achieve. Nothing concrete may happen for a good while yet. Until it does, practice for several hours a day and come back to see me every day or two so that we might refresh your memory of the forma."

[timebethine]

He takes the tea without complaint, and although it's sweeter than he had expected--he prefers to take bitter coffee with Sagramore--he appreciates the way the milk cuts through the sharpness. "How long did it take you, to make your first light?" he asks.

[rememberettersberg]

"I honestly don't recall." He grins. "I was eleven years old and it was more than a hundred years ago." He does know it was far quicker than average, but it doesn't feel right to mention at this point. "My apprentice, Peter, took several weeks. And has progressed remarkably well ever since."

[timebethine]

Laertes eyes him up and down with new admiration. He'd noted in passing that Nightingale was handsome, a distinguished older man much to his tastes; now, that handsomeness seems less luck than miracle. "More than a hundred years! What salt or wine do you sleep in, that you should be so well-preserved?"

[rememberettersberg]

"It's as much a mystery to me as to anyone else," he admits, shrugging. "I reached almost seventy aging in the usual way and then slowly began to grow younger. I think the process has finished now, I've looked like this for some time."

[timebethine]

"Are you subject to other mortal wracks? Disease, or wounding?"

[rememberettersberg]

"I was shot last year," he says, unconsciously touching a spot underneath his collarbone. "Not for the first time, so I do have some basis for comparison. I was struck down and recovered in the usual human way of things."

[timebethine]

"I'm glad of it. Not that you were shot," Laertes hastens to add, "but that you recovered."

He finishes his tea, then sets the cup aside and bows. "My thanks, Nightingale. I'll practice as diligently as ever I may, and hope to vindicate your faith in me."

[rememberettersberg]

"Think nothing of it. Don't forget your Latin textbook - you'll soon enough have need of it." Nightingale points at him with his teacup mock-sternly. "Take plenty of breaks and try not to become disheartened."

[timebethine]

"In Denmark, I was a peerless fencer; no man I met could go above one pass in five with me," he says wryly. "Here, there are few I can equal, and less I can surpass. My heart has learned to bear disappointment cheerfully." He grins. "Farewell, Nightingale."

And with that, he gathers up his book and sets out to practice by the lake shore.