• Memory • A New and Hungry Spark Arises - I

[Yrmellyn Cole]

A New and Hungry Spark Arises - I

Trial 3 of Cylus 707 in Rharne

Her initiation to Attunement had taken place on the last evening of Zida 206. They were in the darkness of Cylus now. Yrmellyn was still a novice at magic as well as at painting and that other practice named enso-something which her mentor Mariuz Armin had said he would teach her but hadn’t said so much about yet.

As she had only known her mentor for one season, Zida of arc 706, she was actually still new to him too. Their relationship was close, but also very new. Her decision to take him up in the offer to make her his apprentice had been rushed, due to her somewhat troublesome financial situation. This didn’t mean that she felt the decision had been wrong or that she didn’t like him, not at all. She felt that Mariuz was the best that had happened to her in a long time and she was both impressed by him and truly enamored. Her feelings were however still an early infatuation with a person she hadn’t seen so much of yet, but found brilliant, generous and interesting judging from what she had seen so far. She counted herself lucky to have settled down with such a man.

She saw no signs of the lethal illness Mariuz had told her he suffered from and the initially worry she had felt about it had faded out. Yrmellyn didn’t think of it anymore, except for very fleetingly. She was prone to forget it. That threat to her current happiness and good luck didn’t seem real. If floated away from her like a trace of a dream she hardly was able to recall.

Yrmellyn was fine with that. She had other things to think of. If she wanted to worry about something she could worry about her own mental change, which she had only just begun to feel. Her spark of magic was small and tender, but it had already begun to nudge her with a need for knowledge beyond what she had ever experienced before. After a lifetime of avoiding to know too much in order to not be found dangerous by people who had secrets, she felt a new and voracious curiosity which demanded to be satisfied.

Must know, must learn, must investigate, must test, must understand, must search, must find...

She recalled her own life history but it felt like it was about someone else. She had been another person before she had become the one she was today. The association this inspired in her was similar to reading a letter where the text that had been erased and rewritten, on top of the shadow of the first version which was still shining through, although it wasn’t important any more. It felt strange. Her mentor had told her that she still experienced the aftermath of initiation but it would pass and she would eventually grow to feel convinced that she was now her true self.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

"Some newly initiated mages make the big mistake to rush straight to using magic without first learning meditation."

Mariuz Arbin put papers, pens, ink, charcoal and other things they needed on the table. He was going to teach her about drawing. Yrmellyn looked forward to it just like she looked forward to most any knew knowledge these days. This didn't prevent her from feeling impatient. She wanted to try out her new magic abilities at once. She could draw later! It didn't appeal to her that he added a meditation to the things he said she must learn first.

Yrmellyn was annoyed but she concealed it, or so she thought. She smiled at her mentor, a practiced smile, a courtesan's faked smile meant to distract him from his trail and soften him up so she could easier get what she wanted. "Drawing, meditation ... I thought we were going to have magic here, but now it seems like we are going to be priestly? Perhaps I should don a pristine and priestess-like dress in order to better match the situation?"

Her voice was soft and her tone was playful. She had spent arcs concealing her true feelings and acting like she was comfortable with what she didn't like. Being newly initiated mage didn't change behaviors and habits which were still so ingrained in her that they were more or less automatic. To act sweet and childish and try to influence people with subtle raillery and jokes was a tactic she often had found effective. Little did she know that it wasn't effective at all when she was dealing with her mentor.

"Your knowledge about attunement is still very limited" he said. "A bad mentor might allow you to immediately rush to your own downfall. You are enormously curios and you crave knowledge. This is nature of attunement, our kind of magic. It's often very useful for an artist ... but I can't emphasize it enough how dangerous it would be if you would allow those cravings to make you do more than you are ready for. This is the main reason for why there's no books or anything else written about attunement. The apprentice would often not be able to withstand the temptation to browse the mentor's books when they are alone and try out things far above what they can deal with. "

"I would never be tempted to do anything I can't do". Yrmellyn spoke very sweetly, but Arbin just laughed out loud.

"Stop acting" he said, still laughing a bit. "It doesn't become you. Leave the mannerisms of your past behind, at least when you speak with me. I don't really care if you fool others, but don't try any tricks on me. An experienced attunement wizard is hard to deceive, as you eventually will learn by your own experience."

"Well, what do you want then?"

"I want you to stop pretending to be a small girl. I want you to pay attention, be serious and learn."

A rebuke. Yrmellyn looked down at the paper in front of her. It was blank. She felt totally void of inspiration to draw.

"You must learn to walk before you can run. You need to learn to draw before you learn to paint. You must learn to meditate before you begin to practice magic."

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Arbin was silent for a moment. His apprentice was also his lover and even if the relationship wasn't particularly equal neither financially nor when it came to knowledge about the magic and the professional skills he was going to teach her he knew that it would be a great mistake to think of another mage as inferior. The spark they shared was identical. In him it had grown stronger, but due to his illness it would probably also die with him within a few arcs. In Yrmellyn the spark was a till very small and new, but it had been passed on and if everything went well she would carry on the spark long after his own life would be over. The last thing he wanted was to make her run away in order to get more freedom to develop in magic at the pace that suited her. Attunement tended to make people dangerously curious.

"I love you" he said. "I don't want you to harm yourself. You will learn to use magic. You just need to have the patience to learn it the right way. I hope you trust me and respect the procedure."

Yrmellyn nodded, but her enthusiasm for drawing and meditation was low. Ordinarily she would have clapped her hands and exclaimed that she was so exited and wanted to learn to draw and meditate "above all else". It was different now. As he had told her to stop acting she didn't try to seem any more interested than she was. It felt weird, but it also felt surprisingly good to have carte blanche to be rude and not even try to feign exitement.

The words about love were sweet though, whether they were just sweet-taking or truth.

Arbin found it best to start and teach. He trusted the spark's hunger for knowledge to soften her up and make her interest rise.

"Drawing requires a lot of attention. The artist needs to make detailed observations of what they are drawing and put in effort to express it properly to paper. In the beginning you will probably struggle with it. Eventually you will find that practice will make you better and better at drawing and you will be able to draw a multitude of different motifs in different styles, but as a beginner it's good to focus on the basics and it can pay off to keep to one single kind favorite motif. "

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Oddly, she started to feel curious as soon as her mentor started to speak. She felt a great hunger after more and more knowledge. She must learn more! The spark of attunement, integrated with her mind and soul, was like a sprout rooting in her, aiming to grow to a small plant, then a sapling, then a tree and eventually become immense and giant-crowned tree reaching all the way to the heaven and beyond. The sky was only a step on the way and the universe was it's destination.

Such a future power to be didn't want to subordinate itself to a mere mortal host, just a mortal body and soul it had acquired in order to live and grow there to it's full potential. For a moment she felt the whole impact of the spark's potential, what it could be. It was just a fleeting vision, like a glimpse of a dream, but it ran through her with blinding force. It felt like it swallowed her and she ceased to exist, except for as being fused with the endless power, one with it.

She blinked and the vision was gone. What had happened? Her mentor must have perceived it, because he locked eyes with her and when he spoke his tone was intense.

"You must learn to control the magic while it still is new and weak. In order to do so you must train your mind and gain strenght, so you don't succumb and become a slave to the magic instead of becoming it's master and making it your tool. That is the reason for the meditation training."

He paused a bit before he continued. "I was going to start with the drawing, but now I think we will begin with a short lesson about meditation instead."

"But the drawing?" asked Yrmellyn with the hungry eagerness the spark inspired in her. "What about the drawing? Are we still going to do it? I want to know more about it ..."

She had already grabbed one of the many pens and held it in her hand, feeling like she must immediately get to draw. She wanted it. She saw no reason for why she wouldn't get to draw immediately ... her cravings were unreasonable and total and she felt like she was entitled to get anything she wished.

In parallel, on another level she was aware that she was getting ... obsessed, or maybe unleashed was a better word. She craved immediate gratification, but was this anything new? Hadn't she always felt this enormous greed deep inside herself, resting there like a sleeping predator under the layers of common sense and reason.

She had been taught that people couldn't have everything they pointed at, but in the dust it was only words without meaning and relevance. People there never learnt to hold back their desires, because they never stood a chance to get what they wanted. If things they hadn't even dared to dream of came within reach, many had no previous experience of limiting themselves.

Hadn't Yrmellyn herself eagerly jumped at the opportunity to live a luxurious life as courtesan just for the immediate gratification it gave her? Maybe the transformation to a mage had just unlocked something that had always been there, a part of herself.

... don't succumb and become a slave to the magic ... don't succumb



The storm of speculations calmed down and she stared at the pen she was holding. Mariuz took it from her hand and she let him do so.

The echo of her mentor's words had reached her through the onslaught of cravings and introspektive speculations. She felt like she had been at war inside herself and won a temporary victory over a force which wasn't conquered, but had just retired to regroup.

Magic was way harder to deal with than she had expected. Suddenly she felt very interested in learning meditation.

She wanted it now, immediatley, without any delay ... and although she wasn't too sure, she believed that this desire came from some other source than the magic in her.

"I'm ready to learn meditation" she said.

"We'll start with a very basic meditation. It's an easy tecnique, but nonetheless it can be powerful in it's own way ... and remember one thing Yrmellyn, the power of a meditation tecnique depends on the practitioner, not on the tecnique."

"So?" Yrmellyn felt a bit nervous now. She had hoped that some vaguely described tecniques she had heard other people mention would "do the trick" and make her achieve what she vaguely wanted. It seemed like Arbin was saying that it wouldn't be so. "Are the techniques not important ? I thought it was just to follow a tecnique. People say ..."

Arbin shook his head. " People often mistake tecniques for meditation, but they are just what they are called tecniques. Mental tools. The meditation is something else. It's what happens in your mind as a consequence of practicing a technique. There's sometimes people who don't understand a thing, but nonetheless they don't hesitate to roll out a whole lot of would-be-wise statements about what meditation is. Self-overestimating windbags. When people think they know everything they don't know anything. "
,
"But Mariuz ... what is meditation if it's not what people say it is ?"

"I don't know. I can teach you the techniques, but I cannot tell you what meditation is. It's a secret you find inside yourself if you practice meditation. Make sure to never tell that secret."

A long silence followed. Yrmellyn pondered what Arbin had said. His final statement seemed as final as final comes. She realized that it would be futile to ask for more explanations so she just waited.

Some bits passed and then Arbin asked her to just stay sitting on her chair, close her eyes and be totally still. She was to just be still, rest in the stillness and experience it. Whenever her thoughts would stay to something else and she became aware of i, she was to bring herself back to the stillness.

Yrmellyn did as she was told. In the beginning she felt restless and eager to get next instruction, but eventually the eagerness and the cravings for fast progress receded. Finally she just sat. Her physical stillness spread slowly to her mind and aligned body and soul.

The stillness reigned and she experienced it, stayed in it, rested in it. Once in a while she found herself thinking of other things, the magic, her relationship with her mentor, her new profession as artist, what to wear in the evening when they planned to go out, what to draw, what to have for lunch ...and once in a way she realized that she was straying and went back to the stillness, it continued that way and she lost her feeling for time. It was with a feeling of surprise she heard Arbin tell her that the meditation was over and it was time for her to open her eyes, look around a bit in the room and then start to move her body again.

She did so.

"Well, I feel refreshed, sort of, but was this all? I mean, I didn't do anything, nothing happened, I didn't experience anything in particular, didn't see or hear anything amazing if you don't count that I got new ideas for what to draw and what to have for lunch. Nothing changed me one bit. I just sat there. Everything stayed just like it was. Just like it still is. To be honest I thought there would be more than just this. "

"The experience is your own. Keep practicing. Keep experiencing. Don't expect anything in particular. Don't try to achieve anything specific. Just practice. Practice this meditation every day for a while. "

Although Yrmellyn agreed to follow his instructions didn't say more it was apparent that she felt seriously disappointed.

Arbin decide that they were done speaking about meditation for to-trial. "You said you got new ideas for what to draw? Let's go on to the drawing lesson now and see if you find it easier to focus on it and get things done! I have tasks I want you to work at, but if you feel inspired to try your own ideas you can add them and explore them as well. We will start with the basics ... "

Continues here

[Kesindir]

Thread Rewards

Yrmellyn Cole

Overview

Glad I grabbed both parts of this little memory. I'm going to scuttle off to go read the second part here very shortly, but can I just say, your writing is enjoyable. It flows nicely, and you can feel the earnest nature of her mentor wanting to ensure she learns things in the proper order. It's out of love, and protection, not malice or ill intent. Can't wait to read part 2! Well done, well written, enjoy your rewards!

Points

10

Loot & Renown

0

Injuries

None

Knowledge

Knowledge:

Meditation: Withstanding the mindless urges of the newborn spark
Meditation: Sitting totally still
Meditation: Experiencing the body’s stillness spread to the mind
Meditation: Bringing your focus back to the stillness if your thoughts stray
Meditation: Coming out of meditation in a controlled manner
Persuasion: Influencing people indirectly via jokes and raillery

If you feel I've missed anything feel free to reach out to me in PM or on Discord and we can chat. I'll slap a completed stamp on your review request found here.