by Dan Wingreen
Just a lit candle.
He choked out a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. "P-please tell me that's exactly what's supposed to happen."
"Aye," Eallair said, suddenly right next to him and vibrating with so much excitement that anyone watching would probably think he was the one who had just used magic for the first time. "Pitch perfect casting."
Aidan felt wetness trickling down his cheeks and realized he was crying as he watched the candle flame dance and flicker.
I…I did magic.
It was the only thing he could think. He did magic. Properly did magic! He absently noticed Eallair was congratulating him and excitedly ruffling his hair, but he couldn't look away from the candle. Every hope and wish he'd ever had was in that flame, every stupid little thought about how unfair life was, every cold night and stubbed toe, everything that was a minor inconvenience to everyone else, but could kill someone without magic, was burned up in that tiny little fire like it was a roaring inferno cleansing a lifetime of hardship.
He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
Aidan didn't even realize he was laughing until it turned into a yelp as Eallair grabbed him in a too tight hug and spun him around.
"You did it," Eallair said, breathing a little heavily as he put Aidan back on the ground, keeping his hands on Aidan's hips. He grinned so wide it was amazing his face didn't split in two, and Aidan found himself returning the expression.
"I—" His voice shook and caught in his throat. "I lit a candle." He laughed. "I lit a fucking candle with magic!"
He could see it just past Eallair's shoulder. Beautiful. Absolutely and completely beautiful.
Aidan's eyes slid back towards Eallair. But maybe not actually the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Thank you," Aidan said, smiling vibrantly up at Eallair.
Eallair gently stroked his cheek with the back of one hand. "You did it on your own. Nothin’ to do with me."
"It has everything to do with you," Aidan said. "You gave me magic, Lee. I—" He almost said it, then, but the word got stuck in his throat. Even after this, he still didn't know. "I-I'll never forget that. You changed my whole life. You changed me. And I'll never forget you either."
He looked into his sorcerer's eyes and hoped Eallair could see what he was feeling, every confusing and wonderful emotion, even the ones Aidan could only hope were there. Then he kissed Eallair. For a moment, what the Shaman said about rivers being consumed and changed flashed through his head, but he violently pushed it away. He didn't want anything ruining one of the happiest moments of his life.
He pulled back a few minutes later, surprised as always that he actually had someone he could do things like kissing with, and smiled at Eallair's slightly glazed look.
"You know what I wanna do now more than anything else I've ever wanted to do in my whole life?" Aidan asked, looking around Eallair and letting his eyes fall on the bed behind him.
"What?" Eallair asked hoarsely.
He stepped closer to Eallair, sliding one arm around his waist. Eallair's breath hitched in his throat as Aidan pushed himself against the sorcerer, searching for something with his roaming hand. He made a small, satisfied noise as his fingers closed around what he was looking for. Then he stepped back and held the battered book out on front of him.
"I wanna do more magic!" he said.
Eallair blinked, confusion and some other feeling Aidan had never seen before passing across his face.
"Oh," he said slowly. "Um, right, then. What do you wanna do first?"
Aidan immediately forgot about Eallair's strangeness as he tried to pick something. The problem? There were so many things he wanted to do. He fully intended to do them all, too, but that still didn't solve the problem of which one to do first. The candle flickered again, casting a fluid, serpentine shadow across the wall. It reminded Aidan of another light, flickering and weak, and buzzing and casting shadows of its own on the walls of the Wizards Anonymous meeting room. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
"Let's break something," Aidan said excitedly, grinning. "So I can fix it!"
Eallair stared at him for the longest time, an almost adorable look of bewilderment on his face. "I…" he started, then shook his head and gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "Okay."
Aidan laughed, and spun away, looking around for the first thing to destroy.
◆◆◆
They spent the rest of the night casting spells, until Aidan practically passed out from exhaustion.
They broke chairs and Aidan fixed them. They got takeout and Aidan burned the garbage. He raised the temperature of the room, lowered the temperature of the room, banged his knee on the edge of a table—accidentally—and healed it, changed the shower water to ice mid-stream—which just dropped onto the shower floor and shattered instead of freezing in place and looking beautiful like he wanted—, cleaned all his clothes, cleaned himself, made a few shields then had Eallair throw things at him, and anything else he could think of. He was like a kid again, dreaming of all the wonderful things he could do with magic, except now he could actually do all of them.
There was hardly five minutes that went by when delighted laughter wasn't echoing off the walls in the small hotel room.
Eallair was happy for him, of course, and often his less giddy but no less genuine laughter would join Aidan's. However, he kept trying to get Aidan to focus more on combat magic. He kept saying it was hard to master, even for a sorcerer with years of training, and in his opinion, Aidan couldn't start soon enough.
That night though, Aidan just wanted to have fun. He had years of desires and frustrations and suppressed resentment to work through and being practical wasn't on the list right then. As he was lying in bed, finally exhausted but with a smile still pulling at his lips, a small sliver of worry pushed itself through the haze of contentment that had settled over him. Maybe he should have been a bit more practical. He dismissed those thoughts as soon as they formed.
There's always time tomorrow…
Chapter 5
Aidan was standing in a sea of roaring fire.
He had no idea how he got there, or why the flames weren't burning him—why they weren't even warm. He didn't know where the writhing inferno had come from, but he somehow knew it was his fault. He could feel it, gnawing and clawing, the feeling of knowing he screwed something up and trying desperately to remember what it was. He looked around frantically, but all he could see was a sea of flames that stretched off to the horizon, dancing and burning, but never consuming.
There were shapes in the fire.
He only caught brief glimpses of them, like solid black shadows peeking out before the blaze swallowed them back up. Aidan ran towards the nearest one, the flames reluctantly parting as he pushed through them, but when he got to where the shadow had been there was nothing. Just more blazing inferno.
Movement behind him. He spun around. Nothing was there. He swallowed back a cry of anguish. He needed to see what was there. He needed to see what the flames were hiding. That need consumed him, right down to the marrow of his bones, burning him up in place of the fire. If he could see, then he'd know what he'd done wrong. If he knew what he did wrong, then maybe he could fix it…
The fire seemed to laugh at him, a deep, rumbling echo that, the more he listened to it, the more it seemed like two different sounds. The loud one that seemed to vibrate throughout his whole body; but just behind it was another voice that was wan and sickly. That was the voice that made Aidan shudder, not just because it scratched at his soul like nails on a chalkboard, but because he was sure he'd heard it before—
There!
Another shape, this one right next to him, he spun towards it and—
This one didn't disappear. It was black like a statue of obsidian, but as he watched, he saw it filled with color and detail until he was looking at something that was almost human, but too still to be alive. He quickly walked around it, trying to get a better look, and
gasped when he saw its face.
Two Rivers.
But not like he'd seen him before. This Two Rivers was lying on the ground with his throat opened like a second mouth, a pool of rock-solid blood surrounding his head.
It was a horrible thing to see, but no matter how much Aidan knew he should be upset by it, he couldn't feel anything. He knew this wasn't the thing he needed to see. With a frown he turned away, only to see another shadow statue slowly come to 'life' in front of him. This one was of the Shaman, also lying on the ground, with his head resting next to him. It looked like it had been brutally ripped from his body, but there was an incongruously serene expression on his face. As if he was perfectly content with being separated from his body. But still Aidan felt nothing, and so he turned away from that one, as well.
And then he saw it.
The second he did, the flames intensified, like they were trying to block his view, but he was already shoving his way through them. They were thick and solid in a way even magical flames could never be, more like writhing and shifting drapes than actual fire. It didn’t matter. They couldn't keep him out. He needed to see.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of pushing through flames that became thicker and more substantial as the seconds went by, he burst through them, stumbling in surprise when he realized he was actually out of the fire. There was a perfect circle made of stone, about twice as large as a person, completely free of the flames surrounding it. The odd gray stone seemed familiar somehow…
But that didn't matter, either. What was in the center of the circle held all his attention. This statue wasn't black. It was full and detailed and not a statue at all because it was moving.
It was Eallair. Pale and shaking, with burns and gashes, fresh and oozing all over his naked body. He turned and looked at Aidan with bloody ragged holes where his eyes should have been.
And this time Aidan had no trouble feeling. Pain and anguish tore out of his throat in a horrible, gut wrenching sob as he collapsed to his knees. This was what he was supposed to see. This was The Thing he was responsible for.
"Your fault," Eallair said. Except it wasn't Eallair's voice. It was thin and raspy. The voice of the dead. "All. Your. Fault."
And then Eallair froze in place, the color fading from his torn-up body as he turned into a cold black statue. Yet even as his face turned to stone, Aidan could still hear that voice, echoing off the flames. Its words wrapped themselves around him, smothering him.
"All your fault!"
Aidan screamed.
◆◆◆
"Hey! Come on out of it now. Aidan! Aidan!"
Aidan's eyes snapped open, the sound of his own screaming echoing in his ears. His eyes darted around, looking for the fire. There wasn't any. Just the hotel room with its dim lighting and its now-spotless ceiling after Aidan had cleaned the stains—
And Eallair, bent over him with a worried look on his face.
Alive!
He sprang up and threw his arms around Eallair's neck, feeling the warm, solid weight of him. Relief flooded through Aidan. Eallair was alive.
Of course he's alive, idiot. That was just a dream. A stupid, stupid dream.
Still, Aidan had to suppress a shudder. It was real enough. One of those nightmares. He'd never had one about a specific person before, but still…
Just a dream.
His breathing slowed as he relaxed, then he tensed up again as he became acutely aware that he was clinging to a shirtless Eallair while he was wearing nothing but a thin white t-shirt and his underwear. Even worse, Eallair had just seen him having one of his stupid, childish nightmares.
He quickly let go and scurried back on the bed until he was pressed up against the headboard and clutched the blanket tightly around his waist. Aidan swallowed, briefly distracted by Eallair's scarred, beautiful torso before flushing and forcing himself to look away.
"Are you all right?" Eallair asked warily.
Aidan ran his fingers through his hair. "Ah, yeah." He glanced at him for a brief moment, then looked away, focusing on the wall just above Eallair's shoulder. It was way too embarrassing to admit this while he was looking into his eyes. "Sorry. I…was having a nightmare."
His eyes flicked back to Eallair's face, expecting to see disbelief or, more likely, one of those amused smiles, but instead Eallair was looking at him severely. "No, you weren't."
Aidan blinked. "Wh-what?" He scowled. "Of course I was."
"No, Aidan, you weren't."
He sounded like he was trying to gently break something to Aidan and that just annoyed him even more.
"Are you saying I don't know what a nightmare is?" he asked, crossing his arms.
"No—"
"Because I know what a nightmare is."
"I'm—"
"I've been having them for years, so I've got a pretty damned good idea what a nightmare—"
"You weren't sleeping."
"—is. It's not…" Aidan paused, losing track of his rant as what Eallair said registered. "What do you mean I wasn't sleeping. Of course I was slee…ping…"
He trailed off at the almost apologetic look on Eallair's face. Aidan shifted, growing discomfited. Why was Eallair looking at him like that?
"Aidan," he said.
Aidan shifted nervously. It always made him a little uneasy when Eallair said his name like that. The gently concerned way his accent got deeper rarely led to anything Aidan wanted to hear.
"Up until right before you snapped out of it, your eyes were wide open."
Aidan opened his mouth to protest, but it caught in his throat when he realized Eallair wasn't lying. He wasn't teasing either, not when he was being so serious, so…solemn.
"Then…how was I dreaming?" he asked hesitantly.
"You weren't dreaming."
Somehow, Aidan wasn't surprised by that answer.
"No, no, I was definitely…" Aidan looked away, unable to finish as a thought he'd never had before started to solidify in his mind. He'd always known there was something different about those dreams, the special ones. The ones that kept him up in his chair all night, jumping at shadows. The ones he could never forget.
Even when they are not understood, they are never forgotten.
"You were having a vision," Eallair said gently. "A prophetic one."
The magic inside of him began to swirl with an undeniable certainty, the same way it had when Eallair had told him he could cast spells back in the Shaman's yurt.
Aidan’s magic was many things, but it had never lied to him before.
Eallair was right.
Nononononono… Aidan shook his head rapidly.
"I'm sorry." Eallair placed his hand on the blankets over Aidan's leg. "I know whatever you saw was probably terrible—"
Aidan didn't hear anything after that. Terrible…oh Merlin, all those horrible dreams… His nightmares had always terrified him when he thought they were dreams. He'd been scared of things his whole life just because he dreamed them and now…
How many of them came true?
That was a question he wasn't sure he wanted an answer to. Most his dreams were vague, but some weren't, some were awful in their clarity and Aidan had no idea how many had already happened and how many were waiting for him—
And then he remembered the one thing he'd been trying to push out of his mind since he heard the word 'vision'.
He started shaking as he stared at Eallair, unable to stop from seeing his bare torso covered with seething, open wounds and his gentle, reassuring smile twisted in pain. Those bloody, empty eye sockets, boring holes of their own into Aidan’s soul with terrible indictment. All of it, somehow, inescapably, Aidan's fault.
"Hey," Eallair's voice cut through Aidan's thoughts. He held Aidan's trembling hands in his own and frowned. "It ain't that bad."
Aidan pulled his hands away and shoved them under the blanket. He couldn't touch Eallair right then. He didn't want to feel his warm skin turn to cold, dead stone.
"Aidan." And there was the other way he said Aidan's name. With worry and comfort and love, everything Aidan had always wanted and everything he wanted to push away in that moment. Those soft tones were like a fire in the night, and Aidan deserved to be in the dark. "What's wrong?"
Aidan laughed. How could he not? What wasn't wrong? Suddenly, he could see all too easily why Eallair kept things from him. Saying it out loud made horrible things more real. Especially when they were said to the person who was going to suffer for it. It was so tempting to keep it all inside, to force a smile and say nothing was wrong just so he wouldn't have to see Eallair's eyes darken with worry or, even worse, that same condemnation from his vision. Just so he could pretend it wasn't real. That this feeling of it all being his fault and his responsibility to fix it would fade by morning and they could just get on with their lives.
But, he'd read enough novels and had been dragged to enough plays to know nothing good ever came from a character keeping his mouth shut about possible danger in the future. The smart thing to do would be to tell Eallair.
So, he did.
Silence filled the room when he was done. Aidan was staring at the floor, unable to look at Eallair. He kept seeing the dream Eallair over the real one, like the double image he'd seen of the People back in the village—
Was that some kind of prophecy thing too?
Eallair finally broke the silence, but when he did, it was by saying the last thing Aidan would have expected.
"Is that what you're worried about, then?"
Aidan's mouth dropped open and he shot Eallair a disbelieving look before he could even remember why he didn't want to look at him.
"Of course that's what I'm worried about!" he yelled. "You just told me I could see the future and that's what I saw! You…you…" He swallowed roughly and looked away. "You died."
"In a vision," Eallair said. He took Aidan's hands again and tightened his grip when he tried to pull away.
"Of the future!"
"You don't know that," Eallair said as calmly as he could. "Visions are tricky. They ain't hardly ever clear even when they seem so, and they can have a bunch of different meanings other than the most obvious one."