#hoping to bring that spiteful energy into all my other commissions but uh

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

Sometimes, mental health is very difficult to manage and you have extreme executive dysfunction that makes it almost impossible to task switch or accomplish certain tasks.

This also means that, sometimes, you accidentally don't work on a commission piece for months except for a couple hundred words every other week and feel extreme guilt until the client contacts you asking for a refund.

And then, if you happen to have a very Oof bank account statement and are made of sheer stubborn will and spite, you will finish that commission by cranking out 6,000+ words in four hours.

I'm not sure where I was going with this, but if you commission me I guess the key is to threaten me by asking for a refund??? (Also, I don't do refunds once I begin writing a story anyways, but considering I essentially left this story on read for months, that was all on me.)

[corvidfeathers]

a storm’s light

In the moment before the spell struck, Naomi could see the magic hanging in the air.  Around it, other power swirled in eddies: the warmth of the roaring fire; the vague traces of the storm raging above their heads; the gift that rested against her breastbone, humming with chaos beyond even that of the storm.

In that moment, she reached out with that barely-bound chaos.  Fingers clutched around her focus, she took hold of those little remnants of power in the air, seizing them with one impulse.  Protect.

A fic(let) written for @choppedlesbian, about her DnD character, a human sorcerer!  I promised these would be 500 words, but this one uh, got out of my hands, and it’s much, much longer.  What can I say, I had an idea.  I hope you enjoy!

(complete fic beneath the cut)

If anyone’s interesting in commissioning me to write a similar work featuring your oc(s), hit me up!

The roof of the inn sheltered Naomi from the rain, but she could still feel the power surging through the sky, in the rumble of thunder and roar of rain against the old timbers overhead.  She peeled off her soaked kaftan, draping it over a chair by the fire, and then sank down into the chair with a shiver, extending her hands out to catch some of the fire’s warmth.

“I’m glad to see you again,” the innkeeper, Miranda, said, coming out from behind the bar with a mug in her hand.  “I was beginning to think the margrave might have snatched you up and pressed you into service.  Not many mages of any real talent passing through here, nowadays.”  She held out the steaming mug to Naomi.

Naomi laughed, and accepted it gratefully, bending her head to breath in the steam.  The scent of chamomile and anise filled her senses, and some of the tension from her audience with the margrave unraveled.  “He seemed honorable enough.  Just grateful someone had dealt with the problem,” she said. “He was generous, even.”  Her satchel clinked as she tossed it onto one of the other chairs.  

“Good,” Miranda said, eyeing Naomi for a moment.  “You alright?  The margrave treated you with respect?”

“Of course, I mean- he seemed rather impressed,” she said with a little, self-conscious laugh.  She hadn’t admitted the noble what she’d told Miranda the day before: all it had taken to stop the werecrow’s antics was taking the time to explain to the mischievious creature the important of the crops he was disturbing.  Sometimes a few words worked better than a spell, even for a… mage.  That was what they called her.  The title rested uncomfortably on her shoulders, but who was she to say otherwise?

Miranda was still looked at her a critical eye.  “And the creature hasn’t given you anymore trouble?”

“Of course not,” Naomi said, blushing a little at the scrutiny.  She was all too aware of her bedraggled appearance: dress soaked, skirts mudstained from the trek from the margrave’s stronghold back down to the village, hair wet and frizzy from the static of the storm.  

But Miranda’s gaze was warm, worried maybe, not measuring.  Naomi blinked, and dropped her attention down to her mug of tea.  “Honestly, I’m well.”

“I’m glad,” Miranda said, smiling.  “And glad you could wring some money from that old bastard.”  She rested her hand on Naomi’s shoulder for a moment.  “I’ll fetch you some blankets from the storeroom- don’t want our savior to catch her death from the cold, after all.”  She grinned, and stepped away.

Naomi’s blush deepened, and she buried her face in her hands for a moment, uncertain of the pride Miranda’s words had kindled in her chest.  Pride and… something else.  Something that warmed her even more than the inn fireplace.

Pushing the feeling away, she cast a glance around the inn commonroom.  The locals had already taken up their customary places, farmers and shopkeepers drinking and gossiping.  The racket of the storm overhead drowned out their words, but there was something in the way they talked to each other, a sort of animated warmth that made something in Naomi’s chest ache for…  something.

Among the locals, there were a scattering of strangers, talking little as they bent over mugs and plates or ledgers.  They all had the tired, dusty look of people who were accustomed to spending their lives on the roads or forests.  Settlements this far into the mountains drew few visitors, aside from rangers on patrol and merchants travelling the trade route that ran through the pass.

The door of the inn creaked open, and a pair of the margrave’s guards in worn armor clanked in out of the rain.  Naomi recognized their faces: they’d been standing guard at the stronghold when she was summoned before the margrave.  They eyed her curiously as they shed they cloaks and hoods before the fire and went to settle at the bar.  

Was it her imagination, or was there a glint of suspicion in their eyes?  She gave them a little wave, pushing away the reflexive fear.  She had been afraid for so long, she’d gotten practiced at it, gotten good at binding all the things she did not understand and shutting parts of herself down before anyone could even notice she had erred.

It had been necessary, in Ivora.

But she was in Ivora no longer, and the guards eyeing her out of the corners of their eyes meant nothing more than they were cautious of strangers.   Young mages travelling alone were not unheard of, but certainly an oddity.

She forced herself to take a breath, and then another.  She could feel the surge of the storm buzzing around her, energy swirling through the air, wild and tumultuous, just above the roof of the inn, just beyond her fingertips.  Each breath brought her closer to being able to reach out and touch it, this cacophony of power so similar to her own and yet so massive.

Barely aware of the inn around her, or the fire roaring in front of her, she leaned down and smooth a hand over a mud-stained section of her skirts.  As her fingers brushed over the fabric, the mud fell away.  Where the embroidered hem had been caught and torn by travel, the thread reknit and joined together, restoring the delicate patterns to their former glory.  She drew focus from the task, pulling little by little from the chaos in side of her for this little piece of order, careful not to draw too much at once.  That had had… unexpected consequences before.

Thunder rumbled overhead again, and lightning cracked down in the next breath, power biting into the earth and buzzing through the moisture of the soil.  Naomi could almost taste it.  If it were only a little different, she could reach out, pull it worth and harness it…  But as it was, she could only feel it, and the restless energy inside of her sparking and stirring in response to the delightful chaos of the storm.

The door of the inn slammed open.

Naomi started, and suddenly she was in the inn again, the power inside of her fading to nothing more than slight hum.  She spun in her chair, all the wild composure of the storm slipping from her fingers again.

A figure stumbled out of the rain, bringing the cold of the storm in with them.  They seemed to struggle with the door for a moment, only pulling it shut with a colossal effort, and then stumbled to the bar.  The long, deep blue cloak that hid their face and body glimmered strangely, seeming to draw in a little of the lamplight and reflect it back.  Something on their person clattered as they leaned against the bar, seemingly short of breath.

All the eyes in the inn rested on the stranger, waiting.  Miranda, emerging from the storeroom, lingered at the other side of the bar, where Naomi knew she kept a crossbow for dissuading some of the more troublesome customers that passed through the village.

After a moment of breathing raggedly, the stranger straightened, and pulled back their hood.  “I’m looking for a room,” she said, in a rasp of a voice no louder than a whisper.

Her request was nearly drowned out by the burst of murmurs that spread through the generally taciturn crowd.  Naomi remained silent, but she couldn’t help but stare.

The stranger’s pointed ears and grey complexion marked her as a drow, a member of the ground-dwelling civilization and an uncommon sight in the mountains.  But that was not what drew murmurs from the room.  The drow’s eyes, pale violet, were deeply shadowed, and her cheeks and neck were marked by strange, dark veins.

“I’ve a message for your margrave,” the drow said, again in the soft, painful rasp characteristic of those who had survived whisper-sickness.  She ducked her head, tugging at one edge of her mantle, clearly aware of the stares resting on her.  “The guards at the stockade will not let me through until morning.”  

Naomi glanced around the room, seeing the growing disgust and fear on the faces of the townspeople.  Ivora’s sequestered nature sheltered its community from horrors common in the outside world- while cultivating an entirely different set of horrors, but that was beside the point.  There were many things Naomi was only now beginning to learn, and one of them was the fear of disease that pervaded the communities of every country, the fear of the plague that rose up and spited even mages’ intervention.  Whisper-sickness, she heard, had originated in an elven country to the west, and spread little, by virtue of being very deadly.  But it left visible marks on its survivors, and their strangeness along with the murmurs of how horrific the disease’s effects were… well, Naomi wasn’t surprised the townspeople were frightened.

But that was no reason to send a stranger out into the storm.  In the silence that settled over the tavern, Naomi was more and more afraid that was what Miranda was going to do.

“Sera,” she called, using the elven honorific she’d heard elven traders call each other.  “Come, warm yourself by the fire.” She jumped up, running her fingers absentmindedly through her wave of curls as she walked over to the bar.

“I’m sure the margrave will see you in the morning,” Naomi said, leaning against the bar beside the drow.  The drow turned towards her with a start, and took a little step back.  “But if you could tell me something of how the roads are travelling west, I’d be glad.  I’m planning to set out in the morning, and I’ve never been that way before.”  Her eyes pled with Miranda, who was still giving the drow a wary look.

The drow’s eyes narrowed, and her eyes slid from Miranda to Naomi.  “I’ve travelled them before, yes.  Only once.”

“Come, share my tea and tell me about it, then,” Naomi said, with a smile.  She would have reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder, if she didn’t exude such a desire to not be touched; she could feel the tension still humming through the room, the distrust that whispered quietly, evoking her own fears.  She would dispell it.

She met the eyes of the drow with a small, genuine smile.  She had pretty eyes- dark violet, which was now and then brown in the flicker of the lamplight.  Her cloak, Naomi saw now she was closer, was a dark blue fabric woven through with thread of gold- explaining how it shown.  Naomi wanted to sit down and examine the fabric right then, to understand how it had been made thus, but it wasn’t the moment.

After another moment of tension, the drow smiled back.  “Very well,” she said.  “I have a good memory, if nothing else.”  She let Naomi usher her one of the seats by the fire.

Naomi retrieved the kettle from over the fire, and poured more water into her mug as the drow stripped off her soaked cloak.  Beneath it, her clothes were equally fine: a dark coat over light leather armor.  Strange metal contraptions clinked from her belt as she sat down.

“My name is Naomi,” Naomi said, settling back down on the chair and offered the drow the steaming mug.

“Isadora Wix,” the drow said, taking the mug after only a moment’s hesitation.  “Engineer.”

It was Naomi’s turn to hesitate.  “I… I do this and that,” she said softly.  “I.. fix things, sometimes.”

Isadora quirked a brow at her, and then smiled. “I do, too.  Sometimes.”  She held the mug out to Naomi.  Naomi took it.  As her lips touched the rim, she could feel the room’s eyes on her, on the mug, on the black veins crawling up the drow’s neck.  She fought the urge to shrink into herself, to hide from the hated feeling of eyes.

Instead, she sat up straighter drank deeply.  

“What sort of message are you bringing to the margrave?” she asked, after she felt some of the tension in the room subside, the townspeople turning back to pick up conversations dropped when Isadora entered.  Naomi suppressed a sigh of relief, relaxing.

Isadora frowned.  “In truth, I don’t know; an acquaintance only said it was of the utmost importance, and I happened to be travelling this way.”  A smile crept over Isadora’s face.  It was sly, clever, and Naomi wasn’t sure if she liked the look of it or not.  She leaned closer, conspiratorially.  “She wouldn’t put it down on paper; insisted I commit it to memory.  It’s good I have a good one.”  She laughed- in her scarred throat, it sounded more like a hacking cough- and sat back.  “I suppose one can never be too paranoid, in days like these.”

Naomi caught herself nodding like she had any idea what the woman was talking about, and stopped, tipping her head instead.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “In my experience, living in paranoia hardly feels like living at all.”  

Isadora pondered that for a moment, and was just opening her mouth to answer when a spark of power crackled through Naomi’s awareness.  Smaller than the storm raging outside, far more different from her own, something smoother, more controlled, like the point of a stilletto.

She was on her feet before she could fully comprehend what was happening.  She saw the ranger in the corner, his fingers finishing a complicated pattern before making a thrusting movement.

In the moment before the spell struck, Naomi could see the magic hanging in the air.  Around it, other power swirled in eddies: the warmth of the roaring fire, the vague traces of the storm raging above their heads, drawn in by Isadora’s entrance.  The gift that rested against Naomi’s breastbone, humming with chaos beyond even that of the storm.

In that moment, she reached out with that barely-bound chaos.  Hand on her crystal focus, she took hold of those little remnants of power in the air, seizing them with one impulse.  Protect.

The ranger’s spell broke to nothing against transparent, golden lines of the tower shield formed in the air between it and Isadora.  Isadora spun, dropping the mug with a cry and reaching for one of the strange contraptions at her belt.

In the same moment, the chaos Naomi had drawn from her, held loosely in her fingers and her crystal, slipped free, and exploded outwards in a burst of golden light.

Naomi had the impression of all the eyes in the room, once again, staring at her.  And then she passed out.

When she came to herself again, the first thing she saw was Miranda’s worried face.  She realized groggily that her head was in the innkeeper’s lap, and someone had wrapped her in another blanket.  The storm above raged, crashing against her over-exposed senses.  She shivered, trying to pull her awareness back, rein in the power still crashing around in her skin.  Her palms were still glowing faintly, she realized.

“Are you alright, love?” Miranda was talking to her, she realized.  She blinked, and might have answered, if a scream hadn’t distracted her.  

She sat up, and then struggled to her feet, ignoring the spinning of her head.  With strange Naomi wouldn’t have guessed she had, Isadora had pinned the murderous ranger to the far wall, and was holding one of her contraptions in her hands.  “Why were you trying to kill me?” she whispered, her broken voice suddenly terrible in the quiet of the inn.  The townsfolk looked on, a few looking faintly disturbed, but none contesting the action.

As Naomi stared, she brought it down on the man’s fingers, splayed out on the wall beside him.  He shrieked.

“Stop!” Naomi cried.  Her voice rose, and hung in the air of the inn, draw on the power still lingering in the air and somehow becoming even bigger than her.

Isadora started, and stared at Naomi.  “He was trying to kill me.”

“So we turn him over to the margrave,” Naomi said, staring at the two guards who were still sitting in the corner, and didn’t even look like they had thought about standing to do anything at any point in the situation.

“I’m not in the habit of not finding out why people are trying to kill me,” Isadora growled.

Naomi stared at the man.  “So he owes an explanation,” she said, walking closer.

The site of her seemed to frighten the ranger.  He squirmed in Isadora’s grasp, trying to pull away.  Her palms were still glowing faintly, so she let go of a little more power, feeding the glow until it lept to be almost an illusory flame of light in her hands.

“I- I don’t know!” he gasped.  “I was only supposed to kill the drow!  Supposed to do it on the road, but I… I… I missed her in the storm!  Some bloke paid me well, that’s all I know!”

Isadora’s fingers tightened around her weapon, and Naomi was sure she was going to kill him right then and then, right in Miranda’s tavern.  She stepped forward with speed she didn’t know she possessed, catching Isadora’s wrist before she could bring the blow down.

“Isadora,” she said, looking into the drow’s eyes.  They were dark with rage, but still very pretty, she thought.  “Please.”  She was too tired to justify it, to form the why, the what they should do.  Her whole body was trembling, like a leaf in the storm.  She just didn’t want to see anyone else die.  Even this would-be murderer.

Not in the would-be bastion of home.

The sharp planes of Isadora’s face softened, and she began to lower her contraption.  The was all Naomi registered, before she started to swoon.

Isadora caught her with one arm, and a considerable difficulty.  The drow was trembling too, Naomi realized, but she couldn’t find her feet to stand up again. The world was spinning again, and she was so exhausted even keeping her eyes open was an effort.

She was only barely aware of being handed off to Miranda, of Isadora shoving the ranger into the hands of the reluctant guards and pointed at the door.  Of the clamor of voices that broke out all at once, now that the danger was passed.

When she came to herself a little more, she was sitting by the fire, wrapped in a blanket, with a fresh mug of tea in her hands.  Isadora was sitting in the chair beside her again, tinkering quietly with something metal Naomi couldn’t name.

“I’m a mage,” Naomi said, softly.

Maybe the word fit a little, after all.  It felt familiar on her tongue.  

Isadora blinked, and looked up at her.  

“I told her earlier, I fix things, sometimes.  Well.  I mean… what I meant is… I’m a mage.  A sorcerer.”

A wry little smile broke over Isadora’s face.  “I never would have guessed.”  She brushed a lock of dark hair from her face, her expression growing serious.  “Thank you.  You saved my life.”

“I think… I think that’s what I’m supposed to do,” Naomi said.  “Being a mage, and all.  Protect things.”

Isadora laughed.  “I’ve certainly met plenty who didn’t adhere to that.”

“Well, it’s what I do,” Naomi said.  She hadn’t realized the truth of them until she said them, and they brought a smile to her face.

“Well, maybe you can tag along with me, if you’re still travelling west,” Isadora said.  “I could use some protection.”

Naomi studied her.  “I’m not sure you need it.”

“Everyone does, sometimes.”

Naomi couldn’t argue with that.  “Of course, then.  For a few days at least.”  She leaned back, feeling the warmth of the fire on her face.  The roar of the storm outside faded to a murmur as her eyes drifted closed.