RS, Author, Novelist on Nostr: #PennedPossibilities 13 — MC POV: Tell us a quick love story. CW: The story must ...

#PennedPossibilities 13 — MC POV: Tell us a quick love story. CW: The story must end badly.

How do you describe a guy you knew before you remember? The same but different from a brother? Close as family? Someone you know deep inside will be a part of you for the rest of your life? My earliest memory of Feldspar was us bathing in a warm tub, splashing suds, laughing, and making our wooden ducks glow and spin. His family took care of me when my mother was on the road (I thought she sang for a living), and Feldspar and I often slept together in the same bed.

More than a friend?

The other half that made a whole?

Workings fascinated us, even before we understood the miracles I could perform were more special than most adults could do. He was nowhere as good at performing them as I, but he figured out stuff I was incapable of. I was his instrument. His cello. He learned to read and write to make it happen, then taught me to my mother's delight before I entered school, just so we could puzzle out the big dusty thaumaturgy books that multiplied alarmingly in my library.

It alarmed us that we couldn't read them as fast as we wanted!

When my mother and mori were killed in the service of the nation, and declared heroes by the woman who ran it all, only Feldspar held and comforted me. The woman, who claimed to be mother's friend, never thought to hug me and tell me it would be alright. She gave me two gold medals.

I never slept over at his place again. My studies became more intense, and I didn't realize that I was so very young for that, but I insisted Feldspar could help. I also insisted we could play in the park, swim in the pool, and not be hounded by responsibilities my station mounted on me by the week—at least for an hour or two each day.

He discovered a centuries old working, a child's miracle: we could work a pair of coins and separate them, then talk the night away in our beds in our own homes. My guardian wondered why I sometimes fell asleep in my oatmeal, but he never found out. It was through the coins Feldspar said to me, "Aurora so bright / What glowing light do I see to-night / With her nose oh so rosy red / and her halo all aglow?"

I recognized poetry, not stupid. I recognized what it meant when a guy said it! I was almost 9; a girl understood these things, and why a boy became quiet, chuckly, and wouldn't repeat it having said it.

That was the night before.

The next day, I climbed one of the dozen standing flimsy bookcases added to my extension library and former entry hall. Servants, not trained as librarians, re-shelved things randomly. We made a game out of finding titles, but you shouldn't shelve the heavy grimoires, tomes, and tablets on top shelves a girl might climb. The unit tipped. A ton of books rained down as I fell, each shelf a blunt axe, each book a cudgel.

I screamed, closing my eyes.

I never struck the ground.

I fell and fell... tumbling, my stomach insisted, down shifting around me, making me dizzy, even as metal-encased books clattered against stone tablets, pages fluttering. Things whooshed around.

I looked.

I floated suspended as Feldspar's miracle warped gravity around me. The bookcase creaked as it righted. Books thunked as they shelved themselves. Down became earthly down, setting me on the tapestry carpet.

"Feldspar?" I asked, but as I turned around, I saw him.

His halo expanded to encase his body. He got a beatific expression as the scope of the miracle he'd performed sunk in and changed his body. This time I hadn't worked the miracle—he had, and he had warped gravity to move a hundred things individually. Extraordinary. I could move a place setting or lift a chair. Him? Revelation. Realization rose through his body like vines and tendrils until he nodded. The glow faded.

He looked out the door. It was open to the street as the day was hot. He walked, then ran.

"Feldspar?"

Gone. I heard him outside. I heard voices. Laughter.

He'd found his revelation, a miracle beyond the pale. Something he'd never need me for.

I waited. A minute? Ten? I walked to the door and slammed it.

I jumped in shock when my guardian asked, "Will the young sir be returning for tea?"

I stalked toward my room, saying, "I don't want to see him. I don't need him," and slammed that door, too.

Feldspar had shelved everything in standard librarian order.

Two days later, I missed Feldspar. He wasn't at school. The teacher told me the national academy had learned of his feat and offered him a seat, and he'd gone.

Like that. Used. Abandoned. Not needed. Discarded. /* Betrayed.*/

Friends always leave you in the end. I accepted the tutors my guardian wanted for me and never attended school again.

[Author retains copyright. I will likely use this tract in a novel, so it may prove spoilery.]

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