Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » "I'm RETIRED, for magic's sake!"

Well... it's a start, Jasper thinks as his tongue flicks again. The baby's fear scent is weaker, but still strong enough to burn. At least it's stopped screaming. With a little butt-wiggle reminiscent of a cat prepared to pounce, the little brown and blue dragon launches himself into the air and flutters toward the next lantern down the hallway toward the kitchen. After all, what isn't more effective than food at elevating one's mood?

With a slight clink as his claws hit the metal wall-mounting, he does the same thing to the second lamp as he did the first, lighting it with a small jet of flame.

Briefly, he has to wonder where the little two-leg's minder is. He hasn't been around any himself before, but he's heard from the older dragons that the babies this small aren't often unattended. He also has to wonder if the baby's presence has anything to do with the strange furry creature that Platinum picked a fight with the day before. Both were new arrivals, perhaps they arrived together? If so, he should probably be careful. The feathery-furry creature was not to be bothered, according to Platinum's report of the fight. He said that the man upstairs decided they had to be nice, despite its weird habits and dirty animal brain.

In a little over a minute, Jasper has all of the lights leading toward the entry hall lit, and now only one half is dark. But babies need to be minded, this he knows, and so even when he is done with the last one, he flies back to where the baby is curled on the floor and immediately sets about inspecting it. He sticks his nose all over, sniff-snuffing every nook and cranny he can reach, in between legs and arms and all over its head. It doesn't smell like blood. No injuries, then. Just sadness. Well. Hm.

While the little dragon thinks, he loafs-up on the floor in front of the baby, again much like a cat might, and watches him with curious blue eyes. He smacks his lips and swallows, thinking of all the good table scraps that will be waiting for him after lunch, now entirely distracted from his original train of thought and--

Oh! Right. Food.

Jasper reaches out tenderly to bite the edge of the baby's sleeve and give it a tug. Follow! he tries to communicate as best he can with the tugging gesture toward the food-place. Tasty morsels await, little baby!

-

Jonathan barely has time to dismount before he's descended upon by the recently-hired stable boy. He tries only halfheartedly to bat the man's arms away, effectively useless as Gable is just so much bigger than him and easily overpowers the wizard. He's more annoyed than anything, but he knows he probably looks much worse than he actually feels. After all, he did try to wash his wound out in the creek. He saw firsthand how red that water was. Now that it's too late to hide the evidence, the best he can do is tolerate the hovering and wait it out.

"Stars above and fires below, there's two of you..." he grumbles, otherwise patiently enduring Gable's makeshift first-aid treatment. "I assure you it looks much worse than it actually is. Just a little stubborn about clotting is all. Give it an hour or two."

"It's an hour ride from here to the stone circle, and I know you didn't take it fast." Maddox glares, finally shaking off the shock of finding their roles all shuffled up. Usually he would be the one chasing after Jon with a roll of bandages, and instead here he is getting Frost cleaned up while the person who is in charge of the horses while Gable takes over the hovering. "If it hasn't stopped bleeding by now, it isn't going to. We can stitch it up inside."

The wizard opens his mouth to argue with both of them, but doesn't say a word when he realizes the look of abject horror on Gable's face. It seemed to have arisen out of nowhere, mid-conversation. Jon frowns, looking up into the man's face and tracking his gaze.

"Mr. Kendall? Everything alright?"

Chills. Terrifying isolation. Suffocating blackness pressing in on all sides, and suddenly Gable is smaller than he can ever remember being.

Lee.

What had been little more than a thready awareness of his son’s existence a few weeks ago has quickly blossomed into a bond more gripping, more demanding, more real than Gable has ever felt, and nothing has proven it so thoroughly as this sudden squall of unparalleled terror. A very small part of him can recognize the broadcast for what it is: Lee’s experience, not his own. The rest of his mind and body are at the mercy of the thrall. His breathing shallows and quickens; his face pales; disjointed from his own body, Gable stumbles back against a stall door with his full weight and now it's the only thing keeping him on his feet. When the wizard’s words reach him, they sound like they’ve traveled a very far distance through a very wide tunnel, possibly underground from another realm on the other side of the world. Somehow he still understands the question and his response drops from his lips in a strange rasp: “I… I can’t see.”

Fragmented images flare through his mind: the broom closet at home, but the shelves are much higher than Gable remembers them; a shadowy hallway that feels like it should be familiar, yet mutates constantly so that he can’t really place it; the empty field where Gable first met his own father… but in a different season. Were these his memories?

The height of the child’s turmoil subsides quickly in proportion to its intensity, and Gable is left dazed in its wake. His vision clears, the black splotches subside, and he blinks at the other men, whose faces bear expressions that make him wish he was alone. His color returns in a blaze of warmth. Gable tests his knees before easing away from the stall door to stand on his own strength. He keeps his gaze lowered.

Unwilling to put any more half-truths or cover-ups between himself and the Master, even at the risk of being seen as an increasingly peculiar liability, Gable takes a moment to find the most true, least strange words to explain his behavior. “Lee can find me with his thoughts a little like I can find the magic in the wood. He just woke up, it seems, and I reckon it was from a mighty awful nightmare. He gets them sometimes.”

Glancing at Master Eris but speaking to Maddox with an apologetic frown he adds, “I’ll clean the pony, Mr. Rex. Just let me go to Lee first. He's afraid.”

-

The little lizard doesn’t exactly resemble the soot drakes that like to rummage around the refuse pile behind Lee’s old house, but it mimics the mean critters just enough to make the small boy hesitant to move a muscle or let it out of his sight. Lee already spent all his truly fearful energy on catastrophizing an empty hallway, though, so by the time Jasper has flown too far, he realizes he’s not scared of him at all and cries out, “Wait!”

To his surprise, the little creature eventually obeys him, almost in the same way Catcher would. And just like the much larger, furrier griffin, the dragon gets to work snuffling him all over, seemingly looking for treats or sticky sweet spots on his hands, his face, even his armpits! Lee finds that to be uproariously funny, worthy of a sudden belly laugh which nearly takes a turn for the worse to become more tears when it goes on for too long. Big emotions are complicated like that.

Then they stare at one another for a while with Lee catching his breath and the dragon licking its chops. Both studying the other with open expressions of young, mutual curiosity. Despite its catlike behavior, Lee’s too timid to reach out and pet the dragon because of its scales, but when Jasper stands and tugs on him, it isn’t unlike the way Catcher nips whenever Lee would get too close to something the griffin thinks is dangerous—like striped socks that resemble poison snakes. He isn’t afraid of the dragon’s mouth on his sleeve and, although Lee thinks of himself as a big boy capable of monumental tasks (so long as the lighting is good) it isn’t beneath his dignity to allow himself to be shepherded. Especially when the creature guiding him is so funny and gentle.

“Yeah? Where d’you wanna go, lil pardner?”

The path is somewhat familiar to Lee and as they ascend the stairs, the clink of kitchen utensils and the waft of savory treats confirm that they’re headed in a favorable direction: breakfast! Surfacing into the brilliant, blinding room stuns the boy for a moment; when he can un-squint his eyes again, he spends the first minute of his time hovering in the doorway scanning the crowd for signs of his father. But the longer he looks, the more father-less the room appears, and he loses his nerve. He tries to hide behind the doorway again out of sight (he thinks) of being noticed by the noisy strangers.

No, no, no! Don't stop there, little baby! Jasper returns to his insistent tugging when Lee tries to hide behind the doorway. No matter how good a hiding place it seems, there are too many people who walk that way, and there are no good morsels to be found outside the dining hall. No. Under the table, now that's the prime hiding spot! And the little dragon tries to demonstrate this by darting under the nearest one, then poking his head back out. See? nobody bothers you under the table!

But the boy seems unconvinced. Still frightened of big feet and bigger voices, and that's something Jasper can understand. So he decides to sweeten the deal.

There are tangy pork buns on the table for lunch today. And those are easy to hold, so there aren't as many morsels just laying on the floor for him to snap up. Which means he'll have to sneak up and grab a fresh one. So the little brown dragon looks for a familiar pair of skinny legs and mud-caked boots, because the gardener never pays attention to what's on his plate. Quietly, smoothly, like he's stalking the prey that the big dragons hunt, he pokes his head out and over the edge of the table, opens his mouth, and--

"Jasper!"

Somebody shouts in that loud, disciplinarian tone that's supposed to men 'stop', but can't they tell he's on a mission, here? There's a hungry baby by the door and he's not about to let a loud voice stop him. So he snaps his jaws shut around the bun on the gardener's plate, and scrambles away from the small army of hands that try to catch him as he flees. Luckily, he has had plenty of practice stealing from the dinner table, and after dodging around and between a few pairs of legs, they give up the chase and leave him to make his delivery in peace. And so it is with a bit of a prideful strut that he skitters back toward the doorway with his prize.

-

"I see." Jonathan looks very much like he has a lot of questions he would like to have answered sooner rather than later, but he understands the importance of the man seeing to his son as well. "Go and take care of Lee. Frost will still be here when you get back."

Maddox opens his mouth as if to protest, but a quick glare from his master shuts him up before he even makes a sound. He waits until Gable leaves the barn before trying again, putting Frost's halter on and tying the lead rope to a ring mounted on the wall of the barn aisle in the meantime, after which he stares back at the wizard, his face a mix of concern and suspicion.

"What was that?" The redhead asks once he's sure Gable is out of earshot.

"More evidence of magic the man has no idea how to use, no doubt." The wizard sighs, unbuckling his sword from the stallion's saddle and clipping it back on his belt. "I'll need to have a word with him about it later. It's one thing to carve uncanny likenesses of a creature one has never seen, but it's quite another to lose one's senses in a building full of animals that could easily kill you if the mood struck. What if he had been in Revyn's stall when that happened? She could have easily stepped on his skull and left Lee an orphan. Or the very same if he had fallen into the water trough. If he didn't outright drown from not knowing which way the surface was, he might have easily caught a chill and frozen this time of year."

"I feel like that's a tad fatalistic of you, but I see your point. Regardless, that'll have to wait until you've both eaten, and I've had a chance to stitch your neck back together."

"Oh come now, it isn't that bad."

"Jon. The man tore his shirt for you, and you've already bled through it."

The wizard scowls, lifting is fingers to the cloth bandage at his neck, but the sour expression dissolves when his fingers come away bright red. Perhaps Maddox has a point. In fact, the longer he stares at his fingers, the clearer it becomes: He feels awful. His body is sore. His neck stings. His ribs protest with each breath he takes. And all the boundless energy he woke up with seems to have burned off like the morning mists when faced with the warmth of the sun.

"Fine. I suppose I should clean myself up before someone sees me and starts getting ideas."

Maddox gently pushes Jon toward the barn door. "The only ideas anyone could possibly get from seeing your neck caked in blood are bad ones."

"I think it makes me look dangerous." He responds with a smirk, heading into the house via a side door so as to draw less attention to himself.

"It makes you look deranged, Jon. Go clean up. I'll be along with your lunch and a sewing needle in a bit."

“No! No!” Lee whispers, trying in vain to shoo the critter away from him without actually touching it, because it still looks an awful lot like a crafty soot drake or venomous serpent or something else that Catcher wouldn’t approve of.

When Jasper peers back at him from beneath the table, Lee’s wide eyes have already strayed away to search the human faces for something familiar. The closest thing he can find to a friend in the group of adults is the lady who makes the apple tarts, but she wears a terribly serious expression now, and it frightens him to even think of her looking in his direction. She might make him scrub the floor or wash the dishes and he hates doing that; his tiny slippery fingers aren’t very good at the job and it always ends in more yelling. The only chore he was ever any good at (and really enjoyed) was beating the rugs. Sadly, that only happened once a week. He wonders, did the carpets on the walls have to be beaten? Would someone ask him to do it?

It isn’t until somebody shouts and startles him that Lee’s gaze snaps back to the food on the table and the tiny thief who’s taking off with it. As Jasper scrambles people the way Pop scrambles quail eggs, Lee ducks behind the door out of sight.

“That’s bad,” he says to Jasper firmly when they meet. Sighing and putting his hands on his tiny waist he speaks his father’s sober words: “We don’t steal. If we don’t got food, then we don’t eat, but we never steal.” …However. These words were not necessarily Lee’s words, and besides the impulse to please and obey, they meant very little to him. It didn’t make sense that some people should have a lot of food, or clothes, or toys, while others had none and were expected to accept it with a good attitude. So Lee eyes the pork bun and takes a seat and holds out his hands. When the dragon gives it up, he splits the bun almost down the middle and gives the thief his (slightly smaller) portion of the spoil. Very gently, his empty hand runs along the lizard’s neck and back while its mouth is too full to bite him.

-

Besides the occasional jolt of panic or stab of joy broadcasted from the boy’s mind into his, Gable realized over his relatively short career as a full-time father that he could feel Lee’s presence even when he couldn’t see or hear him, perhaps in the same way an arthritic person might feel rain even before clouds formed on the distant horizon. For him, it is a hum. A low-frequency, warm, almost giddy feeling in his mind that could seep throughout his body if he focuses in on it, and it becomes much stronger with proximity. It’s a little like being in love. And he is.

It has already occurred to him dozens of times that he’d missed years of this experience while hopping from one odd job to the next; struggling to provide for his little family meant he never had any time to be a family. Maybe that’s where Alice went mad: he’d courted and married her only to shackle her to a ghost who kissed her every few weeks. And the ghost’s baby. He could understand her resentment against him for that, in a way. But he would never understand how it had extended to a sweet little thing like Lee.

The humming has gotten very warm on this side of the house, and he attempts to reach out to it like he always does.

Throwing open the back door of the kitchen, Gable pushes his way through Ariathel’s army of assistants, murmuring “Afternoon’” and “‘Scuse me” on his way while trying not to bowl any of them over (and temporarily not caring even if he does.) As he breaches into the dining hall, he’s breathless, a little sweaty, and as tense as a bowstring. Oh. And missing a large portion of his shirt, the least of which is a sleeve that would otherwise cover a particularly muscular and somewhat hairy arm.

“Miss Ari, have you seen Lee?” His gaze is focused. Penetrating. His hands have fisted at his sides and he raises his voice to ask the room, “Has anyone seen my son?”

Before the cook or anyone else can answer, however, his eyes lock onto a little face that peeks around the dining hall entryway at the sound of his voice. Gable’s face drops, and suddenly nothing else in the world exists. It’s only another moment before he’s crossing the room in as few strides as possible. “Lee.”

“Papa!”

Gable scoops the boy up and squeezes him to his chest, surrounding him with strong arms and the steady pounding behind his sternum. Lee cleaves to him, too, and speaks in soft petulant tones.

“I was with the ponies,” Gable murmurs back, and kisses his head. “If I’m not with you, that’s where I’ll be.”

Jasper watches the tiny two-leg talk at him in a stern tone, but doesn't listen. He's gone through all this trouble to find food for this baby, effectively his baby until its real parent shows up, so like it or not, he's getting the pork bun. And so he waits until the little one is through with his lecture, and as expected, hungry tummies win out and he holds out his hand to accept the offering. He doesn't expect to be paid for his charity, but he also certainly doesn't turn his nose up when half the bun is offered back to him.

With his own lunch secured, the little dragon loafs up next to the toddler once again, holding the bun between his front paws as he rips smaller hunks of it off to eat. Almost subconsciously, his neck and back arch up into the boy's hand as it strokes his scales, while he makes a pleasant trilling sound. Not many people pet Jasper like this. Just the man upstairs and sometimes the gardener when he forgets that everyone else thinks Jasper is Naughty and deserves paps on the nose and not long soft strokes down the back. Not like Sapphire and Onyx and sometimes Platinum, although Onyx does not like the pets, so maybe he could take her portion? He's offered, but she just snorts and spits little drops of acid at him that itch and make his scales turn pale until they molt off. Hmph.

He hasn't even finished his half of the bun when large, fast footsteps come charging over, and Jasper has to quickly snap up the rest and skitter up to one of the tapestry hooks on the wall to ensure he is out of the way. He briefly wishes the baby could fly too so that he could be safe up here with him but alas--

Oh.

This is the baby's parent. At first he isn't sure, but seeing the way the big man scoops him gently off the floor and holds him tight, but not like a predator, convinces him. That's how Sapphire holds her babies, after all. Tight and close to her chest so they can hear her heart when they are scared. His tongue flicks in and out, smelling the parent and committing his scent to memory. Yep, the two certainly smell the same. Sweat, fear, and animals. There's no doubt in the little lizard's pea-brain now: These two are related.

-

Jon's mind reels as he goes through the motions of doffing his armor and cleaning himself up at the washbasin. He doesn't bother with a full bath today, there's no time for that, but a quick once-over with a damp cloth to get the blood, sweat, and dirt off will do just fine. Unfortunately, as his armor and clothes both have to come off, so too does the makeshift bandage around his neck. While the flow of blood does seem to have slowed a bit, the wizard has no doubt in his mind that Maddox will still demand it be stitched closed.

If nothing else, today's odd events have shown that something must be done about the new stable hand. Yesterday, Jonathan was perfectly happy to take the man at his word that whatever arcane gifts he had would be kept under control and not interfere with his job duties or the other residents of Black Pine Crossing. He was content to live and let live, as he had done with Bralthrawn all those years ago when he first started showing an uncanny skill with gardening. Bral hadn't wanted to study further either, happy enough to tend the flowers and shrubs around the grounds and let a potential future following his druidic heritage pass him by. But unlike Bral, Gable's gifts were already proving to be a bit of a disturbance, at least the ones he knew of. With how cagey he had been about his history, and how little he was aware of his own abilities, he had no doubt in his mind there was more he wasn't being told.

There were two obvious solutions: Educate the lad, or cut him off from his magic. One was quick and easy, a one and done thing, and the other was a longer, harder but ultimately kinder road.

"Put a shirt on, Jon." Maddox calls from the doorway, bearing a tray with his lunch and an additional steaming bowl he knows to contain a recently-sterilized needle and thread, along with a brown glass bottle that makes the wizard sneer when he catches sight of it.

"Why? I'll just bleed on it."

"Mostly so I don't have to look at the mess of bruises your ribcage is, but you do have a point." The redhead grumbles, scooting the dragon figurine aside so that he can lay his master's meal out on the table. "Sit down and eat, I'll get to work on your neck. I brought your medicine just in case. It's there if you want it."

Reluctantly, Jon saunters over to the table and sits, bare from the waist up, his torso a mottled display of old scar tissue and colorful bruising, and scowls at the array before him. A bowl of the same mash he eats every day, the brown bottle with a yellowed label in writing only he can decipher, and... a very small spoon. He stares in bewilderment at the utensil he's been provided with. It's absolutely miniscule. Carved very well, but very little, clearly meant for hands smaller than his. And it reeks of weak illusion magic. It almost has the same aura as the statue in front of him, and them being made out of the same material, it isn't hard to guess the spoon's origin.

"Maddox, why is there an enchanted spoon in front of me? And why is it so... small?"

"It's... an experiment."

"Explain."

Jon can hear the grinding of his chief of staff's teeth as he frowns and smears ointment over the cut on his neck. "Mr. Kendall brought it to us last night, said that he carved it for Lee and that he somehow managed to will enough magic into it that if you think hard enough while you eat, you can make what you put in your mouth with it have whatever flavor you like. Ari tried it out last night, and it worked for her."

The wizard can't help but groan as his head drops into his hands. Of course that's where it came from.

"Don't move." Maddox admonishes gently, though he's clearly just as irritated by this point. "I was about to start stitching. We thought it might be worth a shot to have you try it and see if it could help make your food more palatable."

Part of him wants to laugh, but an equally strong part of him wants to scream, and so the two end up cancelling each other out and he just grunts instead, taking the tiny spoon in hand while the redhead seals the rent edges of his flesh back together, something he barely feels thanks to the ointment. The first few bites are unremarkable, unchanged from the bland beige paste he always has, tasting of a mild blend of vegetables and pheasant, probably made from last night's leftovers.

But then...

It's gone. And in its place is the salty tang of fresh seafood chowder. He can almost feel the chew of clams and boiled cod, the soft give of the potatoes that barely have enough structure to stay together in the bowl, the pungent onions and fragile celery... In an instant he is transported home, his mind lost in the roar of the sea and cry of the gulls circling overhead, hoping for a few scraps thrown out from the kitchen to fight over.

"Jon?"

Maddox's voice sounds like it's coming from underwater, drowned out by the surf, the ringing of bells in the harbor, and the shouts of fishmongers selling their catch.

"Uncle?"

A familiar hand squeezes his arm, and his mind slowly finds its way back into his skull. After a long blink and a deep sigh, he returns the redhead's concerned gaze. He gives the man a weak smile, and has another bite. It's just as intoxicating as the first.

"Everything alright?"

"Perfectly fine, Maddox. Although I think I'll most definitely be needing that meeting with Mr. Kendall after lunch."

In his father’s arms, all worry, fear, and even the existence of helpful little dragons is put far from Lee’s mind. The only negative feeling that remains is hunger, and even that is soon satisfied to a much greater capacity than half a pork bun. But it’s a meal on legs, because Pop’s in a hurry.

After a rushed lunch, which is really breakfast for both of them, Gable carries Lee to their room and hurries through the ritual of exchanging tiny pajamas for something warm and weather-resistant. He also swaps his own tunic for another, though this one has a rip in it, too. Most of them are in need of a little mending, which he hopes to accomplish in his free time. He tucks that part into his pants for the time being. “From now on, you’ll come with me to the barn first thing every morning. It will be dark, then, but you can sleep when we get there and play when it’s daylight. Do you want to bring the pine family today?”

“Nasty Larry, too!”

Gable suppresses a soul-deep sigh of regret for ever crafting that cigar-toking force of corruption in the first place and patiently tells him, “So long as we stay at Black Pine, Nasty Larry has to stay in this room. You can take him out whenever you feel like it while you’re in here, but I don’t think the others would like to meet such a nasty scoundrel, and we want them to be our friends. It’s important who you make friends with. Do you understand?”

Lee doesn’t, really, but he agrees to the conditions of playtime and shakes his father’s hand as if closing on the largest and most important contract of his life. It’s impossible for Gable to resist smirking. “Good boy. You can put Larry over there by the window, so that he can look at you while you’re in the barn.” When Lee is ready, he slings the bag of small pine figures over his shoulder and follows his father out the door, looking as burdened and grave as a mountain dwarf hauling ore.

As Gable turns to lock the bedroom door behind them, his eye catches on a bare space of floor inside that looks about the right size for a toddler’s rocking pony. It will be good for Lee to have a piece of furniture that’s his very own, now that they’ve got someplace to put it, and it would make a wonderful fifth birthday present. He tucks this thought away and shuts the door soundly.

In the barn, Lee settles down in the hay on a soft deer hide his father brought for him and pulls out the bear, the dog, the wolf, the mountain lion, three sheep, and one pine cowboy.

One hand wielding a curry comb and the other strapped with a brush, Gable works the dried mud from Frost’s coat with deft, caring, rhythmic sweeps that are both in tune with the animal and highly automatic, freeing his mind to relive the mortifying embarrassment of what happened earlier. If only he could learn to block the worst parts of Lee’s… visions. He would never want them to fully stop—losing that connection would be like cutting off his own arms—but he’s also aware that it’s insane to allow a toddler to hijack his mind.

The bond with his own father has never been this strong. A sense of one another’s presence, yes, and general impressions of emotions or shared images, certainly. Even Catcher can do that to some extent. But Lee has never even shown signs of being a shifter, so how could he communicate even more clearly than one? Does he even know he was doing it?

Master Eris’s solution regarding the lycanthropy cure might not have felt as useful as Gable had hoped, but he has to admit, he’s certainly landed in the right place to ask questions no one else could answer.

After all of that to do about the baby, Jasper finds himself honestly a little reluctant to leave it to its errant parent. What if he leaves again? Then the baby will be all alone stinking up the hallways with its fear smell again. Better follow, but at a distance. The big man does seem to be very protective of his offspring after all.

And so Jasper follows them, all over the house, through the dining hall (where he swipes another pork bun, unnoticed this time), into a bedroom where they both change their soft skins, and then out to the barn.

The barn is a wonderful place. It's full of smells, sometimes tasty morsels in the form of vermin that get into the grain, and home to the best burrowing material known to dragon kind: hay. Well, maybe it isn't the best, given its flammability, but if one has good control of their nostrils, it can make a wonderfully warm nest in the wintertime. So as soon as the baby settles on the haystack to play with his also-flammable trinkets, the little brown and blue dragon reveals himself, creeping up toward the little two-leg and giving him and everything around him a good sniff. Yes, yes, all is good. Baby is fed and nothing is on fire. Yet.

Now, down to business. After all, if he's going to dig a burrow big enough for him and his baby, he best get a move on.

-

The the great relief of everyone involved, Jon sits still for the remainder of Maddox's coddling. He eats quietly while the redhead finishes stitching up his neck, says nothing when the younger man cleans the last of the blood and excess greasy ointment from his skin, and says nothing when the suggestion comes that perhaps he ought to take some medicine and have a nap, and leave this meeting business for tomorrow. It does, however, garner a rather displeased glare and a grunt. Once the bowl of usually-tasteless paste is finished, however...

"No, Madds. This needs to be dealt with today." The wizard says as he stands up, perhaps a bit reluctant to be leaving that magnificent, minuscule spoon to the mercy of the dishwashers. He can't keep it in his possession forever, though. "If he's hidden this much, how much more is he not saying? I know a lot of it may seem innocent, but magic is strange and unpredictable in new situations. I doubt Mr. Kendall has ever lived with a mage for very long before, I could be inadvertently drawing out things that have lain dormant that even he doesn't know about. I'd rather have him be honest with me so that preparations can be made in case things... escalate."

"You think he's that powerful?" The chief of staff's eyebrows come together as he watches his master dig through the wardrobe until he struggles stiffly into a plain gray tunic and billowy overcoat. It's one of the lighter, silk ones, decorated in swirling patterns of gold and shades of blue. He must not be planning on going back outside, then.

"No, I think he has no control over what power he does possess. And no matter how small or great that is, uncontrolled magic is a hazard that I am not inclined to tolerate in my home. I had the same conversation with Bral when he started showing signs, and taught him enough to keep himself in check. Now we have a garden that blooms until the first snows and sprouts again as soon as the sun melts it away. I'm not saying Mr. Kendall will turn out the same, but I would rather not have him accidentally carving a lemon that burns my house down."

"A... lemon?"

"Well, not a lemon specifically, but... ugh." Jonathan rolls his eyes as he makes for the door. "You know what I mean. I have to get something from the vault. Feed yourself, then send him to the library, in that order, if you please. I'll meet him there."

-

Maddox wears a frown all through lunch, and into his walk toward the barn. He barely ate, mostly picking at his food to Ari's great chagrin. She teased him about being worse than their master, and asked how things went with the spoon after she saw it making its way through the dish line. A smile flickered briefly on his face, but he told her he'd prefer to discuss it later. That, of course, sent her spiraling into a panic that it had gone horribly wrong, which it hadn't, but she needed the reassurance anyway. Maddox just had other things that were a little more important to think about at the moment, but he promised to tell her everything once those things were taken care of.

And so it is that he has significantly less enthusiasm in his step when he finally enters the barn.

"Mr. Kendall?" He calls, peering around and into stalls until he finds the man he's looking for. "Master Eris wishes to speak with you. He's asked that you meet him in the library, when you have a moment. He did mention that he needed to do some things first, so he might not be there when you arrive. Just wait by his desk we sat at yesterday."

Almost as an afterthought, he adds, looking for the lad in question: "I can keep an eye on Lee, if you want?"

An epic battle of wills unfolds in the hay pile: the fearsome mountain lion Big Boy has the higher ground above John Good and his three sheep, but the cowboy’s trusty dog and his very loud shouting voice (which sounds exactly like Lee’s) is enough to make the big cat think twice about advancing upon them. For now.

When the little lizard appears and begins his inspection of him, Lee squeals and sniffs him back. Now unafraid of the scaly thing, his hands move over its head, neck, and back, and even (with a tiny bit of caution) one of its wings. After they’ve both had enough of that, Lee watches Jasper disappear into the hay until he’s out of sight. Then, no longer entertained by him, he returns to his figurines. Papa tells him not to shout anymore, so he whispers John Good’s fierce insults.

-

“Here, Mr. Rex,” Gable calls from Frost’s stall.

To say the stallion’s coat has been ‘cleaned’ would be a gross understatement of the meticulous care Gable invested in the horse’s appearance. ‘Polished like silver’ would be more accurate, adorned with fresh braids in his mane and tail to boot. The scrupulous pampering was partly fueled by Gable’s shame and fear of getting sacked for his behavior (first seeming like a drunk when the Master stumbled upon him in the hay at the crack of dawn, then the unfortunate incident with Lee nearly melting his brain) but mostly Frost can thank his new stable boy for the royal treatment because the lycan, too, hates the itchy, sticky feeling of an ungroomed fur coat. Gable could never stand it, and he won’t ask the horses to, either.

Gable greets the chief of staff with a smile, because he hopes to ask Maddox if he thinks the Master would be willing to speak with him privately about Lee’s abilities. It’s for this same reason, though, that his smile drops. If Master Eris wants to speak to him about the incident, then it could only mean one thing…

His lips tighten for a moment, preemptively steeling himself against the eviction notice that’s undoubtedly coming his way. After a sigh he says, “Thank you, Mr. Rex. I wouldn’t ask you to babysit him any more than you already have, except…” He wouldn’t want the wizard to think he was using his son as emotional leverage, and Lee didn’t need to witness his father being turned away from work. Again.

“He’s over here. Lee? Honey, I’m going up to the house for a little while. Mr. Rex has come to play with you for a minute and learn about the family, so will you please tell him a nice story while I’m away?” Gable has knelt to be eye-level with the boy, which makes it easy to give him a goodbye hug. Turning his face into Lee’s hair with his eyes squeezed closed, he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Lee doesn’t comprehend or reply to the apology, except to give his father a happy pat on the back. When Papa has left them, Lee holds out one of the pine figurines to the man with the funny hair and tells him, “You can be this sheep and the mountain lion’s gonna eat you. Ready?”

-

In the library, Gable takes a private moment to bask in the light of the towering windows. He runs his fingertips along each alluring gilded spine of several dozen books, and gently rustles the parchment of a scroll just to smell the scent it releases when he touches it. He imagines they all seem to be as disappointed as he feels that he’ll never get to read here on a Sunday morning. Windows liked to give light, after all, and writing liked to be read. They could have been good friends.

After one lingering, pining look around the room that fills him with more pain than satisfaction, he settles into the same chair he’d tipped over when Catcher raised hell the day before. Silently he rehearses the Master’s speech on his behalf to prepare himself for the worst. It's quite damning.

When Master Eris enters the room, Gable stands and bows his head out of respect. “Sir.” He keeps his head lowered for another moment because he feels he might cry. When the sensation passes, he clears his throat lightly, sits, and rubs his knees as he awaits his fate.

Maddox blinks down at the child, a little flabbergasted but pleased that Lee seems happy enough to have him around as a playmate. He shrugs, taking the offered sheep and doing his best to play the role he's been given, using his best sheep noises and being very dramatic about his inevitable death when it does come, hoping he can at least make the boy laugh a little.

Jasper, meanwhile, continues digging his hay-nest, occasionally sending large amounts of forage flying out into the aisle of the barn, which isn't something that the horses complain about one bit. A little extra lunch just within mouth's-reach? Thank you very much!

-

Jonathan flicks his wrist as he steps through the door to his room, disappearing from sight and reappearing in the vault beneath the house's foundations. There is no door to this treasure hoard, and so the only way in or out is through the use of teleportation magic, which suits the wizard just fine, even if it means he ends up making weekly trips to collect the salaries for his employees, at least it keeps his belongings safe. Most of it is spoils from the various war campaigns he's been unlucky enough to be a part of, but there are a few other trinkets and magical items that were gifts, or other acquisitions he's accumulated over the years. As such, it takes him a while to find what he needs.

It is one of these trinkets that he searches for now. A woven gold bangle, easily mistaken for a simple piece of jewelry, in a carved box inlaid with purple velvet. It's a hefty thing, something Pamoyan gave him as a gift once it was clear he would survive his injuries after the War of Frozen Fires. Jon had been offended at the time, and so had Ramona. He still was, honestly. When asked about it, the old cleric had tried to brush it off as a joke, but nobody involved found it particularly funny.

The last person to wear it had been the man who tried to kill him.

He steps away, and with another spell, reappears in the library. Gable is already there, and he nods a response to the man's greeting as he passes around the desk. He doesn't sit, however, instead placing the gold bracelet just slight to the left of the center of the desk before turning to peruse one of the bookshelves on the other side of the room. He knows what he's looking for, scanning the spines until he finds what he's after and removes it from the shelf. It's a plain book, well worn and bound in black leather with the title embossed in gold on the front: The Unseen World: An Arcane Primer. This, he places on the desk slightly to the right of center, and then finally sits down, his hands folded and resting on the wooden surface before him.

"I suppose I should preface this by clarifying that you aren't in any trouble, Mr. Kendall." The wizard sighs, reading the obvious tension his employee is radiating. "You aren't being asked to leave, or told to, or whatever it is that you're worried about. I promise you, this conversation, while serious and necessary, is not the doom that your body language tells me you think this is."

"It has, however, come to my attention that we need to address some things moving forward. Now, these things are largely a matter of safety, both yours and that of the other members of my household. Much as you might not like it, you have demonstrated that you possess an amount of innate skill with magic. Carving figurines of creatures you've never laid eyes on. Carving spoons that change the flavor of whatever you're eating. Sharing a telepathic bond with your child the likes of which most deep elves would be jealous of, though how much of that is you and how much of that is him remains to be seen. You mentioned yourself that you have little say in what you craft, and I imagine much the same applies to the telepathy."

"I need you to be honest with me, Gable." Jonathan leans back in his chair slightly, trying not to seem threatening, as that would probably only result in more half truths and coverups. "I need to know what you are capable of and how much control you have over it. You're living in the presence of a very powerful wizard now. It is not unheard of for untrained talent to grow unexpectedly in these sorts of situations, like weeds around strong fertilizer. It's possible that some of what you have has been passed to Lee, if it was hereditary, in which case it is even more imperative that you be as clear as you can with me. Uncontrolled use of magic, be it intentional or not, is a potential hazard whether its wielder is four years old or four-hundred years old. And if I can help mitigate that hazard before it becomes a problem, I think it is in everyone's best interest that I do."

The nature of the wizard’s silent greeting does nothing to ease Gable’s nerves. His gaze moves from the strange piece of gold jewelry to the elder mage’s back, then to the book that’s set on the desk without ever changing his carefully neutral expression, though his brows do quirk inward when he tries to read the book’s title upside down.

When the other man breaks the silence, Gable startles a little and meets his gaze. He nods and briefly chuckles at being called out on his discomfort, but the tension remains; his jaw muscles flex and his palms pace in circles on the tops of his thighs.

The phrase ‘a matter of safety’ ignites a rush of crisp night air, crushed pine needles, fresh prey, and bounding through acres of virgin land, immediately followed by the shock of being caught in the barn with his clothes torn and hair unkempt. Gable opens his mouth before he even knows what he’ll say—some kind of apology, probably—yet the wizard continues. Gable’s eyes widen.

“No, n-nothing. I mean, I’ve been honest.” Gable’s face twitches at the lie. He didn’t mean to say it, and he would have held it back if he could. But he can’t take it out of the air now and he can’t tell the whole truth, either. How much can he say?

He scrambles to mentally isolate just one of his ‘abilities’: the mindspeak (telepathy, as Master Eris called it) was passed down to him and his half-brother from their father and possibly from himself to Lee, but Master Eris has already guessed this much. The danger lies in explaining why they have it. The shifting bones. The inhuman tendencies. Being a therianthrope in itself is no crime, of course, although they are rare enough that he has never met another outside of family… but that confession could easily lead to a request for demonstration (either now or later, when Master Eris decides to call upon him for his keen senses) and Gable can no longer demonstrate his natural form. Only the twisted, monstrous infection that most definitely will label him as a ‘safety hazard.’ But he’s in control of that, and it would be foolish to throw himself on the mercies of this man whose fear might move him to strip Gable of his freedom… quite painfully, too.

So what about the wood carvings? Well, he knows much less about that side of himself, but at least it’s something. The best he can do is repeat himself: “I always thought it was the wood’s magic, sir. And I've been content with that." But what if that isn't enough? What if the mage divines that he's holding back? Gable wets his lips.

"The closest I’ve come to hoping I was special might be stories of my grandfather, but they’re…” He laughs suddenly, flushing at the stupid thing he’s about to say. “It’s legends. My father’s a real narrator, you see, and he’d always spin these yarns late at night when he’d get a little drink in him. Silly stuff about Grandpa being a, well, sort of an angel or something like that.” He lifts his hand in a dismissive, embarrassed flutter, as if brushing away the fairy dust from this tall tale. “My mother always played along and said she’d met him once. Said he was seven feet tall and fearsomely handsome, and o’course Dad would always say that’s where he got all his charm from and…” Gable shakes his head at his own rambling and shrugs helplessly.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody, Master Eris, and if Lee needs training or whatnot, then I’m more than happy to take it out of my pay for him. He’s never mindspoke to anybody else, though, so far as I…” A freak. Isn’t that one of the nasty words Alice had flung at their son? If the memory weren’t so grim, maybe he’d smirk a little at the thought of Lee scaring her. But no, it really just makes him more sad for her that she couldn’t embrace the bond that he’d come to feel was so special. Quietly Gable admits, “Well, he might have. But I’m not certain of it.”

Jonathan keeps his face carefully neutral as he listens to the man's story, nodding along at the appropriate times. Celestial heritage, while not common, is certainly not unheard of, and could explain a good deal of Gable's unique talents. Unfortunately, arcane ancestry could be nothing short of unpredictable from generation to generation, with environment playing almost as much a factor as heredity in what sort of magic an individual might develop, if they showed any at all.

"I understand." The wizard taps his fingertips on the surface of the desk thoughtfully as he speaks, weighing out their options as he does. "My primary concern is, as you may have guessed, preventing a repeat of what happened in the barn earlier today. I think we were all very lucky that Lee's emotions came over you when they did, and not when you were bent over the water trough or working closely with one of the horses. Not all of them are as mindful of human fragility as we would like them to be, and I have no doubt you could have been seriously injured in that case." He grinds his teeth to keep himself from elaborating further. Gable doesn't need to hear about all the possible ways he could have died by not being able to see for a few moments and ended up making Lee an orphan. This conversation is serious enough without the additional gory details.

"As much as having Lee able to control his errant thoughts would be the ideal situation, he is still young enough that he may not have the emotional maturity to reach that point just yet. Eventually, yes, he should probably have some training in the matter, but not just yet. He's a child, and controlling the thoughts that leak out of one's skull often takes practice and discipline, all of which can be washed away in a moment of heightened emotion. The more reliable option, in my opinion, is to find a way to prevent him from overpowering you."

"I've come up with two possible solutions thus far, but if you have another idea, I would have you share it, as you know yourself and your son better than I." Here the wizard pauses and picks up the golden bracelet turning it over in his hands. He holds it up so that Gable can see it a little better. "This is a suppressor. It is a tool used primarily to restrict a mage's natural generation of--"

Jonathan stops himself short of explaining further, realizing that he's likely getting ahead of himself. The man he's speaking to probably won't understand the detailed explanation of how the band works that he was about to launch into. The nuances of naturally creating the fuel to cast spells from one's life force and how the device prevents that, leaving the wearer permanently exhausted, would be utterly lost in translation. Gable is educated, but not in matters of magic, if previous conversations are anything to go by, and so he opts for a more high-level approach to the explanation.

"It stops magic from happening. Intentional or unintentional, the wearer simply cannot cast spells, nor can they be affected by things such as telepathy. You simply wouldn't hear his thoughts, regardless of whether it was you or him that wore it." He pauses, pursing his lips and tapping the bracelet against his palm. "It isn't recommended to use these sorts of devices on younger individuals. Especially in Lee's case, it might prove quite distressing to have a voice you've heard your whole life go immediately and inexplicably silent. To be perfectly frank, I don't fancy the idea of either of you having to wear one of these, but it is available if we need it."

After he returns the jewelry to its spot on the desk, the wizard focuses his attention on the book.

"Alternatively, I can teach you, and Lee as well, given time, to..." Jon makes a face as he tries to word things in a way that is simpler to understand. "... mute each other, is a good enough way to put it, I suppose. You would still catch his thoughts and emotions when he shares them, but it would be like listening to him speak while having cotton stuffed in your ears. It will take time, during which we will just have to hope the boy doesn't catch another fright whilst you're working, but I find it to be the far more permanent and humane solution for everyone involved."

At first it seems like he is finished with his proposal, as his voice drops off into silence for a few seconds, but he speaks up again a moment later, the hard tones of a governing master morphing into something far softer.

"I want to trust you, Mr. Kendall. Honestly, I do. But I need to ensure the safety of my people, and now that includes you as well. I don't want you or Lee to get hurt because I saw something that was potentially dangerous and did nothing about it. I hope you can understand that. Now, you mentioned that this gift of yours possibly runs in your family. Do you remember having similar issues with your parents growing up?"

Gable shakes his head before the wizard can even finish his explanation of what the bracelet can do, because no matter how naive he is in the way of magic, he can see where this is going. The pain of separation is impossible to consider. It’s as if they’re talking about murdering Lee instead of taking his presence out of Gable’s mind. It’s a great relief to realize Master Eris is not forcing him to wear it, yet Gable’s eyes rest on the golden bangle as if he doesn’t quite trust it not to leap across the table and attach itself to him anyway. It is, in a way, an ultimatum, and its very presence is unsettling.

Hearing about ‘muting’ and control doesn’t lighten Gable’s heart, either, like slamming a door between himself and Lee when Lee has been used to having all of him at any hour of the day... But therein lies the problem, doesn’t it? While the wizard is briefly quiet, Gable nods his head slightly to convey that he’d be more willing to go that route than the other. Despite the wizard’s willingness to hear a third option, none come to mind; his brain won’t even consider a real, physical separation, and he can't begin to conceive another magical alternative.

The Master’s next words might as well be some kind of fire spell raining down on Gable, because they sear his conscience to the state of charcoal.

I have to tell him. Now’s the only chance I’ll get for mercy. It has to be everything, right from the beginning. The lying, the half-truths, and the cover-ups can’t keep going like this. It boils his stomach and shames his morals. Silently he mocks himself: How valuable is his own stupid freedom? Is he really so foolish that he would risk breaking this man’s trust and ruining Lee’s chance at having a home here just to hold onto the past? To the fur?

The old wizard is clearly genuine in his care for all the souls under his roof and Gable is almost overwhelmed at being counted among ‘his’ people. He isn’t used to receiving protection he hasn’t earned by a long, toilsome show of faithfulness.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he wants to blurt. It almost happens. But when he opens his lips to will the words out, they brace themselves against his teeth and refuse to budge. Surging at his hesitation, the voice of distrust admonishes him: “Now’s not the time for loyalty. You tried that already, and look how it turned out for you! You haven’t hurt anyone in all this time, and you’re not going to start now. You can trust yourself. You're the only one you can trust, so just cool it and keep your answer simple.”

After losing his inner war, Gable sighs and rubs his face. He explains as best he can, in a circle around the heart of truth. “No. My mother is perfectly regular, but my father and brother can mindspeak like I can. It was never so intense with them; a little bit of feelings, some images. Like you said: as if we’ve got cotton in our ears or something. Or at least compared to what Lee feels like.”

Still wanting very much to be helpful, he continues, “Dad and Al and I can talk to each other, and to some animals, but not the natural kind like your horses. Maybe the dragons, probably. Catcher. Little muties and things that creep around in the nighttime.” Gable pauses briefly to consider how lucky he is that the horses can’t sense him that way. “To be honest, sir, we were never around each other much for the… connection, you might call it, to grow. Not like me and my son. The connection got much stronger when Lee and I started spending so much time together, but before, when Lee’s mother was acting cruel to him, I never felt it from him at a distance and when I was home, it was just sort of a… funny feeling, like he’d look at me and I knew he didn’t want me to go again. But I thought–”

Gable’s gaze drops to the edge of the desk, where he self-consciously smooths his hands across the grain. It’s another moment before he can speak evenly. “I just thought it was normal to want your father. I didn’t realize he wanted me to take him with.” He swallows and shrugs, exhausted because he still hasn’t slept, the let-down from his fear of being thrown out, and now the turmoil of almost wishing he was tossed to the curb. He deserves it. But Lee doesn’t.

"I see." Jon says, considering the man's family history, or at least what has been revealed of it. He still gets the feeling that Gable is hiding something, but until more comes to light, he'll have to be content with what he knows thus far. "Much like the development of magical talent in the presence of other powerful mages, I don't see a reason why proximity couldn't also play a role in such things. You've been apart from Lee for most of his childhood, and now he's had you all to himself for quite some time, it sounds like. If I were him, I too might be tempted to enmesh my mind with yours as tightly as I could. And now, because you've set no boundaries for him, he barges into your head and overpowers your senses whenever he feels like he needs you."

He isn't trying to sound like he's blaming the stable boy for his own situation, but it comes out sort of that way anyway. He can't really help it though. If Gable had known that he needed to keep Lee from getting this attached to him, and been able to more importantly, things might have turned out different. But as it stood, it sounded like the two of them were both traumatized to a degree, and so sought comfort in each other by getting as close as possible.

And now that they needed to be apart, if even for a few hours to facilitate Gable's work, problems were arising.

He shouldn't care this much. The two had been on his property less than 48 hours, he shouldn't care this much if one of them died because of complications he himself failed to prevent. And yet he does. Fiercely. Perhaps it is the man's naivety that has him so invested. Gable didn't know he needed to do things a certain way. In a sense, he was as helpless as Lee in this situation. Thus was the reason hereditary magic so often died out: Parents who did not teach their children to manage their gifts, and so could not teach their own children to do so before whole families were destroyed from within.

"One of the first things a mage learns..." The wizard trails off as he picks up the book again and flips through the pages, coming to a stop about a quarter of the way through. When he turns the book to show Gable, it displays a complex diagram of several symbols outlining an irregular shape, inside which sits a far simpler illustration of a line drawn in the dirt, a stone wall, and a wall of shields. "... is how to protect their mind from outside influences. I can't force you to set these kind boundaries with Lee, nor do I want to. In fact I'd rather not have to come between you two at all. But I think it would be to your benefit if you at least understood how to do this, and perhaps had some practice with it, so that you could if it became necessary."

He closes the book, and sets it on the surface of the desk in front of Gable. That he take it and study is only a suggestion, albeit a very strong one, otherwise he would have handed it over directly.

"If you find yourself with free time, you can find me here every afternoon." His offer comes with the patient practice of a parent, or a teacher, which he supposes he is sort of acting as at least one of those at the moment. "If you need help understanding something, if you want to practice something you've read, I am here to help. Today, however, it seems you probably need sleep more than you need tutelage. Take the rest of the day off, if you can bear it. Rest. Read. Sit out in the garden for a bit if you don't mind the chill. Spend time with Lee. Maddox and I can handle the evening feed and turnout. Tomorrow we can all start fresh. Sound reasonable?"

“More than reasonable, sir.”

After leaving the wizard’s presence with the arcane primer gripped tightly to his side, Gable returned to the barn to relieve Mr. Rex of his babysitting efforts. Lee immediately introduced him to "Splatters" the brown and blue pseudo-dragon he’d adopted that undoubtedly belonged to Master Eris. After a little exploration in the garden (where Catcher attempted in vain to rescue Lee from the winged snake following him around) and a bite to eat, Gable, Lee, and Splatters retired early.

With Lee breathing softly curled along his side, Gable peels back the front cover of the primer with great care. Even as a young boy, his interests never strayed into tales of knights and dragons and mages. Inspiring though that might be for some people, he’d been born a worker, not a hero, and daydreaming about adventures he would never see was not only an impractical waste of time that could otherwise be spent learning a useful trade, it was… a bit painful, to feel just how regular he was in comparison. Still, the romance of it all whispered to him in dark tavern corners, through the lips of passing travelers who wore outlandish cloaks with gilded daggers on their hip. Forbidden. Captivating. In his heart, he always knew it would only take one glimpse into that vibrant far-flung world for him to be unsettled and discontented with Little Hen and the domestic life forever. For a little farm boy, that would have been like drinking poison; it would have ruined the quiet charm of everything he held dear.

But he isn’t a farm boy any longer. Nor is he the man he thought he’d turn out to be. The peculiarity of life has changed that course. He doesn’t really know what he is or wants to be anymore, or if he even has the potential to become anything more than this in-between man who’s good for grunt work and maybe being a decent, steady father. Holding the arcane primer as though it’s as delicate as a newborn bird, one thought drowns out a myriad of other uncertainties and fears: Master Eris has handed him answers to questions he’d never even thought to ask.

When the candles have burned to stubs and every word and illustration bleed together so that he finds himself dreaming with his eyes open, the cowboy reluctantly parts with the book for a few hours of deep rest.

After getting an early start on the horses, Gable moves like a spectral through the dining hall during breakfast, materializing only long enough to make up two plates and to swipe a fork (Lee has one of his own in his knapsack, though it isn’t magical like the spoon) then disappears down to the servants’ quarters again to get a few more chapters in while they eat.

Back in the barn, he slogs through the rest of his morning chores, wishing very much that Lee could read the final three chapters aloud to him. Wouldn’t that be a neat invention? A spell that could make a book read itself to you so your hands and eyes could be busy with something else… It’s during lunch that he squeezes the last drops of information from the primer. This is also when he makes a rather interesting mistake.

True to the wizard’s word, Gable finds him in the library after the lunch hour.

“Good afternoon, Master Eris.” He greets the wizard in a particularly loud voice. Despite pulling another all-nighter, and opposite of the strung-out, red-eyed look he’d sported the day before, Gable’s face is bright with enlightenment and his whole body seems to be a conduit for something with a lifeforce of its own: Passion.

“All that bullpie about my granddad being something from the skies could really be true, couldn’t it?” His eyes move restlessly across the treasure troves lining the walls on his way to the Master’s desk. His voice is still unnaturally loud for polite conversation and a bit forceful, like each word takes effort. “And if it is true, then someone like me might be a sorcerer.” He glances to the wizard for confirmation or correction, but doesn’t give him much room to reply before plowing on:

“And people who raise dead people aren’t just in stories, although there was a slew o’ stories about real people in there who do that and—well, that got me thinking more than anything that maybe magic ain’t light work, ‘cause most of those folks went mad, half-dead, or toes-up in the bone orchard and– y’know, I tried that shield thing like you said, but I can’t hardly hear myself think and–” he drops the book on the desk and himself into the chair, leaning forward on his arms to stare at the wizard with great focus and intensity, “I can hear all sorts of chatter that doesn’t belong to me, sir. I think I did something wrong.”

He probably shouldn’t be grinning, but he is. And he shouldn’t be so happy to be on the brink of a migraine, but he can’t help it. An entire Unseen World has existed around him, sensed but unobtainable, feeling as distant as a million gold coins or catching a star, but today he reached for it. It reached back. “I can’t make sense out of any of it. Just noises, like music without a melody, and voices without any words. I don't think I'll ever sleep again if you don't help me.” He probably shouldn't laugh, but... it's a giddy and halfway delirious giggle. In a word: drunk.

Jon hadn't actually expected him to take the book, and if he did he certainly hadn't expected the near reverence with which the man handled it. Gable had claimed to be well-read, but well-read didn't always mean that one had the healthy respect for written knowledge that typically comes with a formal education, where tutors drilled that sort of thing into a child from an early age. That was the sort of education Jon himself had received alongside his siblings, and it had served him well when his studies shifted so extremely from economics to battlefield strategies to basic war magic within the span of less than a year.

Painful memories fight for dominion in the wizard's mind as he sleeps that night. Fear keeps him from finding any meaningful rest, as he dreams over and over again of failing his new pupil in the same ways that his mentors failed him, answering his questions with poisoned words laced with bitter jealousy while he tried to learn these simple principles chaos of a war zone.

He wakes late. Breakfast is already cooled, but he scarfs it down like a man starving. He doesn't need Ari's hovering today. He feels raw, constricted, and so the dresses the same as he did the day before: simple trousers, simple shirt, and a loose robe over the top. No shoes, just bare toes. Today's robe is blue and green, embroidered with silver thread, silk again, so it is light. He's always liked this one. It reminds him of the sea. It reminds him of home. And he sorely needs that comfort today.

Funny, when he looks in the mirror after running a comb through his hair, it looks like the edges of the wound on his neck have healed together almost completely. As tempted as he is to pick the threads out right now, he refrains. Maddox will worry if he sees, and that is the only thing he wants less than Ari's hovering.

When he finally leaves the third floor, he does spare a brief glance back at the dragon statue perched on the table, where it has been since it arrived. Curiosity mixed with suspicion bring him to the decision that he'll need to do some closer inspection of it to figure out what it does, exactly. He has a strong hunch already, given the closed wound at his neck and the significantly-lighter-than-it-should-be bruising over his ribs (he thought for sure one or two were broken, and thanked his lucky stars that Maddox didn't bother to check), but hunches are never good enough when it comes to magic. Always better to be certain.

He spends the remainder of the morning in the library, writing away as he responds to the never-ending tide of correspondence and does a bit of personal work as well, documenting the results of the past year's pseudo dragon crosses. Ari brings his lunch to him at his desk, and he thanks her. She doesn't stick around, though, and sends someone else to collect the dishes an hour later.

Not long after that, the quiet haze of an afternoon spent in the library is quite suddenly and spectacularly shattered by Gable's arrival. Jon jumps, magic swelling around him for little more than a nanosecond as he prepares to defend himself, before realizing it is the stable master who startled him and not a more threatening entity. He had told the man to seek him out if he had questions, and, well...

"Yes, according to the definition of the word, however--"

The wizard is cut off before he can say anything more, but he isn't upset. In fact, he's found himself growing rather amused as he slowly pieces together what has happened. By the time Gable gets around to actually admitting what happened, Jon is openly chuckling.

"Wrong? No, Mr. Kendall, I wouldn't say you've done it wrong, per se, though you're quite right in that your attempts at shielding were... less than successful." The wizard smiles and shakes his head, then pushes himself out of his chair. "But let's get your head closed back up before we talk further, hm?"

Jon pads over to one of the shelves, bare feet making almost no sound as he moves, to peruse the trinkets displayed there. He picks up what looks to be simple stone carving of a wolf, about six inches long from nose to tail, and carries it back to the desk where he sets it in front of Gable.

"I'm afraid we'll have to add a little bit more noise to your world before we can quiet it down, though." The wizard sighs as he comes to stand behind the other man and snaps his fingers. With a little spark of purple light, the stone carving comes to life, sitting on its haunches and swishing its tail as the little wolf begins to howl. It isn't an unpleasant sound, just a constant drone of arcane noise that would add to the cacophony in Gable's mind. Jon can just barely hear it, but that's because he already has walls protecting him from the majority of the magical background in his home.

Jonathan finds that he almost can't bring himself to do what comes next.

His hand hovers, an inch away from the back of Gable's head, as he remembers what it felt like to be in the younger man's position. Because for him it had come all at once: As soon as Blackstaff adhered herself to his soul, everything was ripped wide open. His ears rang for days afterward with the arcane feedback of being on a battlefield surrounded by powerful mages slinging spells all around him. He felt like he couldn't hear at all the first day. Then Coryn had come, and sang for him a spell that built walls around his mind, blocking out the hum of magic that threatened at every hour to overwhelm him, the same way he was trying to do for Gable now. The change had been so abrupt at that time that Jon had fainted straight away, coming to a moment later in a world gone silent, with tears in his eyes for how great the relief had been.

He can't help but remember what it had felt like that first time. Slipping into a warm bath after a day in the frigid snow. A heavy bear pelt wrapped around the shoulders, soft and comforting. The gentle nuzzle of a horse's nose looking for treats. Coryn's magic had been kind. It felt the way a teacher's should, stern but gentle. But Coryn had had other places he needed to be, and so it was left to Eswell to rebuild those walls any time they were blasted to smithereens by an enemy mage's psychic attacks.

Eswell had been Khallha's most senior apprentice, and as such was deemed the best individual to mentor Jon, knowing already some of Blackstaff's habits and having helped teach some of his master's younger pupils the basics of magic. Had he been more even of temper, that logic might have rang true, but his bitterness at being passed over as his master's successor prevented him from being anything short of cruel whenever his attention was needed.

Be the mentor you wish you had, some part of him implores. Do better for him than was done for you.

The wizard swallows and looses a shaky breath, then moves his hand forward so that it rests on the back of Gable's head. He allows his magic to pool around the younger man's mind like water, flowing in and around until he's sure he has enough material to work with. Unsurprisingly, he meets no resistance.

"Focus on the wolf. Tell me when you can no longer hear it."

The wizard’s laughter and words are met with an uncomprehending squint and more grinning, but Gable catches the last part clear enough and bobs enthusiastically. “Oh, yessir, I think that’d be best.”

Turning in his chair to follow the wizard with his gaze, a thrill of unexpected camaraderie tickles Gable at the sight of the man’s bare feet. From there, his gaze continues to sweep upwards into the shelves and over their treasures with unrestrained curiosity. Which of the ornaments are magical, and which aren’t? What can they do? Who invented them and how did they do it? He’d spent his life mistakenly assuming that mundane objects could be trusted at face value, but very recently, his own craftsmanship had debunked that belief and blasted open the eye of his imagination.

More noise? The thought of it doesn’t thrill him, but Gable nods. He hasn’t reached the point yet when the thrumming cacophony is truly painful (or as intense and disturbing as what Lee put him through the day before) and if he has to endure worse for a little while… He’s willing to trust that the wizard will only do what’s necessary.

Although for a brief moment, he fears what ‘necessary’ might mean in this situation when the wolf is presented to him. What is its significance? Has he given himself away somehow? A glance at Master Eris’s expression doesn’t seem to forecast doom, so Gable smooths the concern out of his own.

The wizard’s hesitation to proceed with the ritual doesn’t register with Gable. He’s too reoccupied by the impossible little statue that came to life in front of him, and he runs a tender fingertip between its ears and down its back. What a trick! If he could learn to do something like that, Lee’s pine figures would be… well, probably causing a lot of trouble and getting underfoot, honestly. Especially Larry.

Before he’s prepared for whatever will come next, the wolf’s chin tips back in a howl that seems to be on the same frequency as his very soul and Gable’s teeth grit. The dull ache behind his eyes becomes a thudding squeeze throughout his brain. His smile slackens and he does what he can to breathe through the discomfort while gripping the arms of the chair. Only a few seconds of the reverberation has him asking When will it end?

Then, mercifully, he can feel the presence of something remarkable and peculiar rushing over him: the Master’s magic. Fresh and invigorating like rainwater, yet as unbudging and resolute as the mountains around his home. It almost smells like him, or tastes like him, or sounds like him, yet Gable is fairly sure he isn't sensing the energy on such basic, carnal terms.

Under the magic's influence, the droning noise gradually becomes softer, and even somewhat reassuring, like familiar voices murmuring in the next room when you’re a child tucked in bed after dark. When the noise has finally stopped altogether and the library’s silencing magic envelopes them in total quiet, it takes some time before Gable recognizes that his ears are ringing, but he can no longer hear the figurine’s howl. He snaps his fingers on both sides of his head before he can believe that the wolf has gone mute without himself going deaf.

“I think that’ll do it.” His voice is reverently soft in the peaceful quiet and the tension in his back and arms melts away. His head rolls back to look at the wizard upside down with a little smile of relief.

Jonathan starts small, with something akin to a gauze curtain, light and porous, woven from the aura of his own magic, that he constructs between the soft glow of Gable’s mind and the rest of the world. He feels like amber and woodsmoke right now, wild and tenuous, but still homey: a warm hearth, to contrast the firestorm that rages within his own mental barriers. From there, he grows the shield into something firmer, more solid. He makes sure to move slowly, gently, trying to set an example for what it should feel like when the lad tries this again on his own. The last thing he wants is to cause hurt or confusion.

He knows first hand that neither are pleasant.

”Useless usurper!” Eswell had shouted, adding to the din in Jon’s head before abruptly dropping stiff, tight barriers over his mind, making him feel very much like his head had just been shoved into a helm two sizes too small. It was agonizing, but he made sure not to let the older mage know it. If giving him the reaction he sought would have eased the tension between them, Jon would have long ago given in and groveled at his mentor’s feet. In reality, it only encouraged more abuse. ”Cant even guard your own mind against a cantrip. Blackstaff should have been mine, and you know it.”

The wizard takes a long, deep breath, willing away the tension that’s crept into his back. Now is not the time for his past to affect him. There have already been tears, he has already mourned what was and should not have been. He can move on.

Be gentle, his inner voice reminds him.

Only once Gable informs him that his world is once again as it should be does Jonathan let go of the spell and pull his hand back. After a moment he subtly tests his work, prodding lightly at the barriers he’s just made. They’re nothing fancy, but they’re sturdy. If Lee wants to speak mind-to-mind with his father now, it will take significant force of will from him to do so. No more sudden bursts of emotion, he’ll have to actually put some effort in, like reaching through a barrel of honey to grab a coin at the bottom, rather than the almost resistance-less water he’s used to. Of course, if he does manage to break through, the shields will need to be rebuilt all over again. A skilled mage might be able to penetrate the mind in such a way that left them intact, but Jon knows that most toddlers have all the arcane skill of a raging bull in a china store. Brute force is typically their strongest quality.

"Good... that's good." His words are shaky with relief as they come out, and his hands rest on the back of Gable's chair, on either side of his head. It would seem he did alright, then. He didn't hurt the lad, and everything has come out fine, despite his fears that he would do quite the opposite.

The wizard seems almost reluctant as he pulls away and wanders back to the other side of the desk, snapping his fingers again and causing the little wolf carving to return to its previous state of inanimate being. Part of him wants to stay there, close to Gable, and just exist in the same space. He wants to have what he couldn't with his own mentor, even if the roles are reversed. But he certainly feels safer like this, with the desk between them. A little distance, a barrier to keep them apart. Seeking comfort, he runs his toes through the fleece of the small sheepskin rug beneath his desk. Usually Jasper is curled up there this time of day, napping after robbing what he can from the lunch table, but the little brown dragon is strangely absent. Oh well, probably nothing to worry about.

"So, it seems you couldn't help yourself, then." Jon can't help but smile, thinking that his unexpected student was so driven to learn that he made what might normally have been a week or more's worth of progress in a single night. No small part of him hopes the drive was due to excitement and not fear. "I've heard it normally takes students a fair bit longer to get to the point where they can hear the arcane energy around them, weeks or more, but you've managed it in less than a day. I suppose congratulations are in order. Annoying as it may seem, becoming aware of magic, being able to feel it in the environment around you, is the first step in being able to control it. Until this point you've been at its mercy, but now, there's a chance you can a say in the matter."

"Spell-casting is a very visual practice. Magic itself is an unseen force, but by visualizing what we wish to do with it, we can have greater control over it. If we did not have the unfortunately urgent end goal of training you to control your son's telepathic influence over you, I might spend more time on the matter, but we can revisit it at a later time if you wish. For now..."

The wizard sighs, looking pensive. He had hoped to take these lessons a bit slower, perhaps work through Gable's first attempts at building his own shields together so that he could help, but here he had gone and just done it for him in a moment of something that looked like mercy but tasted more like pity the more he thought about it.

"For now I've built a barrier for you. You won't be able to change it, to modify it or even dispel it without my assistance, but it should keep the world quiet enough that you can do a bit more studying... and practice... before trying again. It won't block out Lee entirely, don't worry. But he'll have to work quite a bit harder to reach you mentally until you can build your own shields. It's a complicated process, and as you've likely discovered, exhausting as well, at least at first. Eventually you should reach a point where you can drop and raise those shields as easily as you might drop or throw a pebble."

Like an embrace that ended too soon, a sentiment cut off mid-sentence, or even a captivating fresh wind filled with the comforting aroma of summer suddenly dying down, the wizard’s magic withdraws and leaves behind an unfamiliar feeling of longing. Gable couldn’t put it into words if he had to describe it, yet somehow he understands: this newfound sixth sense is young, but already hungry and in need of consolation.

“Never could resist a good book, sir.” Gable mirrors his master’s smile, then adds earnestly, “And… I reckon I owe it to you to learn fast, before you come across me in some kind of trouble. Or hurt.” Master Eris had restrained himself from painting a morbid picture when listing the ways Gable could have gotten injured if he’d been alone, but Gabe’s own mind made the last gritty leap for him: leaving Lee an orphan. He’d seen firsthand the that damage a hoof and a few hundred pounds could do to the soft flesh of a man. At least Wesley had made it out of the ring alive, but not many would have been so lucky.

The wizard’s congratulations bring out a warm glow in Gable’s ears and cheeks and a happy smile that he tries to suppress for humility’s sake. His delight wins out in the end, however, and he bows his head and picks dirt out from his nails to hide it. “Nothing uglier than a silly grin on a man who mucks dung for coin,” Little Hen hisses.

“I’m sure it’s got to do with that thing you said about me being around you, sir.” But he dares to hope it has a little to do with something inside of himself, too. Some kind of spark that hasn’t been snuffed yet.

The way the wizard explains things, it seems like they’re discussing more than just ensuring Gable can perform his work duties without his toddler overtaking him. In fact, it feels an awful lot like Master Eris is hinting at the opportunity of a lifetime. …Once they do ensure his toddler won’t overtake him anymore. “I do wish,” he interjects softly during the wizard’s brief pause.

He listens to the description of the barriers with his head at a slight tilt, fully focused and recording each detail. Even while Master Eris is speaking, Gable’s mind pushes softly against its new walls. Because proximity seems to help, he'll wait to try communicating with Lee until they can look each other in the eye.

“A pebble? That sure is a relief, ‘cause before all that noise happened, it felt like I was wrestling a greased up pigeon-toed bronc to the floor.” Gable’s starry-eyed, mischievous smirk pops the dimple in his cheek. He looks about ready to take on the bronc again, though not quite yet; he still has tack to clean, and he’d like to scoop the side paddock he's been using to turn Buddy out separate from the mares before the good light fades. Even for someone who can see in the dark (especially these nights, when the moon's silver is so bright) it’s easier to avoid stepping in manure while the sun’s up and everything is in color.

Standing to his feet, Gable's gaze flicks to the arcane primer he’d put on the Master’s desk. Wetting his lips to gather his courage, he taps a finger on it and asks, “May I keep it for a little longer, then?”

Halfway to the door of the library, a thought turns him on his heel, and he wanders back to the desk. “Me and Mr. Rex are planning a little mixer, by and by, as a chance for me to meet the others. This weekend, likely. If your schedule isn’t too busy, maybe…” He pauses here to consider who he’s speaking to and what he’s proposing. Despite the Master’s display of care and modesty, history cautions Gable against trusting the appearance of friendship between the ranks. With a little shrug to brush off any potential disappointment he finishes, “Well, I thought you might like to come and see what Mr. Rex looks like when he's not all worked up. My coin says his hair goes brown.”

Jonathan lets out an amused snort at the analogy. Yes, wrestling a greased horse was certainly what it felt like when things first started out for him as well. With some notable differences, of course. There wasn’t a war breathing down Gable’s neck, for starters. Sure, there was the stress of ensuring he didn’t hurt anyone by letting his toddler take over his brain, but that was small potatoes compared to the threat of being completely annihilated on the field of battle if the timing of his shield spells were off by half a second. With this newly discovered voracity for learning, the wizard had no doubt in his mind that he’d pick things up fairly quickly, all things considered.

“Absolutely. You may take the tuner with you as well, if you like.” He gestures toward the stone wolf as he speaks. “See if you can figure out which of the cantrips in the primer you can use to activate it. I have a few others you can choose from if you don’t like the wolf. A bird, a hanging bell, they’re a fairly common tool for new mages, so I’ve accumulated a few over the years.”

Jon tilts his head thoughtfully at the mention of a party. It makes sense, given the sheer number of new staff members that the estate had accumulated recently, to give everyone a casual environment in which to make connections and get to know their neighbors. That being said, he very much doubted that many of the newer employees would consider the environment all that comfortable if he himself attended. Most of them hadn’t reached the almost-friendly rapport that had developed so quickly between him and Gable, at least not yet.

“I suppose I could make a brief appearance.” He shrugs casually, making a mental note to grill Maddox over the details later that day. “Although I’m afraid Mr. Rex’s hair color is quite hereditary, and as such is unlikely to change color. His face, on the other hand, oh that one can turn all sorts of shades. If you ever need a good laugh, try asking him if he’s ever gone skinny dipping in the swimming hole, you won’t be able to tell where his face ends and his hair begins.”

There’s a faint smile on his face as Gable leaves. He wants the pleasant glow of successfully having helped the lad to stick around, but it doesn’t. The warmth dissolves disappointingly quickly, giving way to self doubt and a pit of despair that settles in his gut like a bad meal.

What am I even doing? he asks himself darkly as his head drops into his hands. He needs a teacher that knows how to train an apprentice. I don’t even know where to start.

Bralthrawn had been easy to train. He was still a child when he started studying, and so he wasn’t trying to balance work and education at the same time. There was also no pressing matter of a magically gifted child threatening to overcome his senses. He could take his time, digest the material, start with awareness of the immaterial magic around him and then move on to cantrips, instead of working the other way around like he was having to do with Gable. Even then, Bral was happy only knowing the handful he needed in order to do his job and keep himself safe.

Gable seems to want more.

And that scares him.

Everything Jon knows, he learned through war. He doesn’t know how to explain many of the basic concepts of magic particularly well, despite practicing them for hundreds of years. “I tried until I got it because I knew I would die if I didn’t,” wasn’t a particularly useful explanation for any number of skills it could apply to. Hopefully Gable was gifted enough he could figure most things out by feel, but even still. Would relying on the lad’s natural talent inevitably set him up for failure in the future?

Wolves aren’t Gable’s favorite animal any more than someone might say ‘people’ are theirs, but the canine is reassuring and reminds him of home. Taking the little wolf into his palm he smiles slightly and shakes his head to the other options Master Eris offers. “This’ll suit me just fine. Thank you.”

He vents a soft, guilty laugh when he imagines Mr. Rex’s embarrassment. The smile lingers. “I just might,” he replies, though it’s highly unlikely that he ever will.

The following days pass by in a grubby, tiring mixture of muddy horses, reading and rereading whole chapters, and fruitless candlelit attempts to activate the arcane tuner. Gable can feel flickers of something now and again when he follows the book’s instructions, but the movement is always outside of his body, and never the same as Master Eris’s magic had felt. Although it occurs to him more than once that he could ask for help, the wizard’s praise had tasted very sweet, and it’s tempting to hold out until he can return with something equally impressive to show him. However, unlike with the matter of the shields, this exercise is only urgent to Gable’s ego, and so he admonishes himself for feeling disappointment in such a short frame of time.

But the disappointment remains.

As a result, the initial exhilaration Gable felt when his imagination flooded with new information has temporarily waned to a more tolerable level of interest, and thoughts featuring the mountains and another taste of whitetail become increasingly more seductive. And increasingly more persistent. His gaze roams to the peaks when he’s working; pages of information blur and his mind transports him into a wild chase across uneven terrain; he lives in that other skin while he dreams at night, and during the day his mind salivates over crisp memories. Some of them are recent: raw, violent, powerful strength ripping across the landscape at three times the speed he’d ever known. But his heart aches for the way things used to be, and his mind returns to flatland wanderings when the coyotes and needle-nosed skullcap grouts gave him little more than a curious glance when he passed by. Now even mountain lions leave him alone. Very alone.

“There’s so many people,” Lee just about groans in Gable’s ear the day of the party. Gable surmises the real problem is that there are too many grownups and not enough fellow hell-raisers for Lee’s liking, so he reminds the boy that ‘Splatters’ will keep him company and, if he wants to escape outside for a little while, Catcher is always willing to play nanny.

“If you go out, tell me first. And stay right over there, where I can see you through the big windows. If you can’t see me, then I can’t see you. Understand? Hello, Mr. Rex. Lee has a present for you.”

“Happy birthday!” The toddler flings his arms out so that the other man nearly has to catch him to prevent a tumble out of Gable’s grip, but his father is successful in keeping his lower half firmly in place so that a tumble does not happen. Maddox gets a tight hug around the neck and a little oblong shape that has been wrapped crudely in some leftover writing parchment and a cord of leather.

“I told him you were throwing a party and he took that to mean it was for you,” Gable explains. With a smirk and pointed glance at the present he adds, “I do believe you’re an official Sheep, now.”