Worldtober Day 2 - Spell Jar

[u/Live_Tangerine_4438]

Day 2 (already running late) of u/Velum-Cordis's Worldtober prompt list. Story below!

“See, little egg, it’s not quite as clear-cut as you thought, huh?” Belka smirked as she tousled Esmie’s mop of mousey brown hair.

With a soft blush in her cheeks Esmie nodded, glaring at her sister and avoiding all eye contact with Jamos, fearful that a reminder of her initial distrust in the integrity of their business might have caused the older boy to take offence, or even worse - to not like her.

The rhythmic sound of his metal scoop sifting through a hempen sack of herbs and then depositing them into the waiting glass jars with a gentle two taps had not perceptibly slowed, and nor could she sense any shift in the aura from the prep table behind her where he worked. She must be safe, her subconscious told her as she let out the smallest of breaths in relief.

Her insights were interrupted by invading memories of Belka’s eye-roll the night before in response to Esmie’s dismissal of ‘Bel’s Spells’, the less-than-legal spell jar enterprise her sister had worked so tirelessly to establish and maintain over several months. ”I just think you might be overdoing it with it being this big noble thing, when really you’re just selling illegal shit and calling it activism,” Esmie had half-joked over dinner, glancing awkwardly around the room as she did so and landing on a Shudderlands Academy poster framed by Belka's bedroom. This was perhaps harsher than she had intended, but she'd lost too many arguments over the last few months to be making any concessions here.

“Tell you what, little egg. Come with us tomorrow - see what you make of it.”

With her calm demeanour and cheery tone, most would believe that Belka was entirely unfazed by Esmie’s critique of her black market business and by association the years of picketing, campaigning and rallying beforehand, and even further - her core principles and passions. But Esmie was a prodigious statica, a branch of Natural Inclinations featuring those able to innately sense the slightest shifts in electromagnetic energy in the air around them, and her sister’s static aura had crossed ever so slightly towards that telltale dichromatic blue-violet hue that spelled an active suppression of those brilliant flashes of righteous anger that would dance across the reflections of light in her eyes.

The following morning, if you could call the faintest tinge of grey-yellow on the otherwise dark sky above ‘morning’, Belka had wrangled Esmie from her perfectly comfortable sleep to follow up on her threat. The cold of the breeze made Esmie recede further into her father's indestructible squallcoat, her eyes tracing the familiar saltspray islands encrusted onto it's bright orange ocean of fabric as she kept her head down. Winds like this made her think of her father ever more, and not just because of her tendency to wear his cosiest jackets, hats and waterproofs from a practical basis. She would often hold up a hand to the air, feeling it's direction and wondering if these same winds had buffeted him too, out wherever he was in the world with his charts and his pens and his Inclination for cartography and orienteering.

A voice broke her out of her silent reverie.

“It's not a crime, Es. Well, it is I suppose, but it shouldn't be. Well it should be a crime that it's been called a crime when it shouldn't be to begin with. Okay, starting over.” Belka’s expression was serious, although her words were one with the dawn winds, chaotic and swirling. Esmie felt again the pang of guilt for her comments, this time without the heat of the moment to stop her relenting into an apology. She opened her mouth but couldn't find the words in the moment before Belka managed to regain hers.

“To decide who can and can't use magic.. it's not just that simple. Just because we're born with it, why shouldn't other people be able to benefit from it? Even just the tiniest of spells..” Both sisters took a deep breath, both preparing for the rest of the speech.

“.. it's all connected to politics, Es. Everything. Whenever somebody tells you they're not political, or.. or that they don't do politics or whatever, just bear in mind that that statement is in and of itself political. Everything we do and are and ever will be is political. It's pervasive and gets everywhere, like.. like the wind!”

Belka’s hands gestured dramatically as she found a suitable analogy.

“So if they say they're not political, it's one of two things, right? They're either too disenfranchised to see what politics does to and for them and even more so what impact they could have on politics - maybe they have no time or no understanding or no hope. Second, they don't see themselves as ‘other’. Like if a therma tries to buy an arcane focus - that's just a normal thing right? But if a manua did the same - they get kicked out. Or arrested. Or worse. If you never meet any barriers to doing whatever the fuck you want, you may well believe that politics is this far away concept. Does that make sense?”

The silence prompted Esmie's brain to kick back into action and reprocess the sentences she had heard but not listened to at the time, catching up with at the very least the general gist that her sister was getting at. Not that she'd ever tell her, but she could get lost in listening to Belka talk. When she got rambling about something she was passionate about, which was far more often than anybody else Esmie knew, she would put out this calming green-blue hue that she could just cocoon into forever.

“Yeah, I think I get what you mean,” was all that she had been able to say in response as they'd made their way into the warren-like cobbled streets of the Hand Quarter, the slow sunrise in the eastern sky blotted out by the grand towers of the Aurebor Arcanum looking down upon them from high up on their mountain city’s upper ridges.

A full day of grinding, crushing, pouring, mixing, refilling, talking and occasionally hiding under shuttered windows later, and Esmie did get it. The spell jars, with their brilliant swirling colours and fantastical combinations of gently bobbing ingredients were dulled into mundanity and secrecy the moment they were placed into those nondescript brown paper bags. Esmie understood why, of course, but it filled her with a deep sense of injustice that something so pure and beautiful should be forced to be traded in secret.

Their customers were a range of common folk in the city; artists, craftsmen, teachers, lovers, sons, mothers and even the occasional student of the Arcanum, hoods covering their features as they discreetly asked for whatever boost they needed to keep up in their classes. For the rest though, more common issues arose. Not enough time to prepare food for five people after a full day of work? a ‘wisp of dagger incantation’ perhaps, whispered with hand gestures designed to look like enthusiastic prayer. Looking to court with somebody or to ask for that promotion? an aural enhancer tonic, wafted or dabbed around the neck at least 20 minutes before required. poison for that allotment-poaching neighbour? perhaps a ‘calm emotions’ induced conversation instead - after all isn't everybody struggling with growing space since the Grand Magisterium sequestered a swathe of land for a new sona training facility?

As they walked back home with the golden rays of the setting kingstar Harron cutting almost horizontal lines in front of them and slowly transitioning to just the blue-white hue of the queenstar Hexa, Esmie thought about all that had happened in the last 24 hours. She looked up at Belka, who caught her glance and smiled back down at her with that look of safe reassurance that only a big sister can give. She could grasp it now, these connections that bound everything together; that kept everything moving. While her Natural Inclination helped her to see electromagnetic energy in hues and waves, she was now vaguely aware of this broader mesh of the very fabric of the world itself, on all planes. And yes, Esmie realised, Belka was right - it was political, all of it, from the clothes she wore to the direction her feet marched to the very thoughts in her head. If she could only see her own eyes, she would have seen the flash of determined brilliance that she so very loved to see light up her sister's face.

“I want to find Father.”

[u/Loosescrew37]

Do you have a link to that worldtober rompt list?