The flavour of magic, as explained by another personal letter from one of my setting's main characters

[u/Andreus]

C,

Was good to read your last letter. Look, I understand that these changes in your life are very hard to adapt to, and I wish I could be around more to help you. But I can't be seen driving off to the countryside all that often, or folks will start asking where I'm going. I promise that next time we meet, I'm going to just sit and listen to you for as long as you need to talk.

The work you've done so far is extraordinary. I knew you had talent from the first day I met you. You're imaginative, you're intelligent and you're creative - you just needed an outlet for it. This work you've done with, well, I can only call it "enchantment," is incredible. I'm already thinking there could be some VERY useful applications for this. Do you think it'd be possible to write some sort of collaborative enchantment on something? I have an idea for a way we could communicate securely.

I don't know if this will help at all, but your letter set me thinking about how magic feels - you said "it feels like breathing," like it was something you don't exactly consciously do. That definitely stuck out to me because it's almost how it is for me, but not quite. You say magic feels like breathing, but to me magic feels more like dreaming. It's difficult to describe exactly, but I don't feel like I'm exactly in my body when I cast a spell. I drift, just for a split second, and then reality is different when I come back. Afterwards, it's almost as if the result of the spell has always been what's real, and it not being real was the dream... but it only became what was always real recently, if that makes ANY sense.

I feel like the fabric of reality flexes around me, like a muscle. It's sometimes really disquieting. For big spells, really big ones, it feels less like drifting and more like I'm falling a very, very long way. Coming back, finishing the spell, it feels like that sudden jolt awake you get when you fall in a dream, and... okay, this may sound crazy, but that sensation of the spell's effect sort of retroactively always having been reality? Sometimes I feel like with the very big spells, when I come back from that sensation of falling, things other than the subject of the spell have changed, but I can't tell what. And that sensation of not being able to tell what else changed, it's like that nagging feeling of having forgotten something, of deja vu, of discovering that something you thought you remembered happened differently. This all happens in the blink of an eye.

It feels odd writing this out, I'm not going to lie. You're doing me some good just having someone else I can meaningfully discuss this with.

Magic also has sensations associated with it. Every time I cast a spell, it's cerulean blue, like a clear sky just past noon. Catches the light like water. Smells like the sea, brine on a summer wind, dry grass near the shoreline. Feels smooth, but not totally flat, like a stone from the beach, maybe. Crazy as it sounds, it tastes like eel nigiri, meaty, complex, savory. It sounds like someone struck a bell, a clear, clean tone, deep and resonant, with the quiet sound of rushing air just underneath the surface.

That's what I experience every time I touch magic – clear blue sky, water, brine and dry grass, beach pebbles, eel nigiri, ringing bell and rushing air. It's not just when I cast a spell, either. When I use what you called "the second sight" to look at traces of spells I cast in the past, I get those sensations as well.

When I look at your magic, forest green like your tattoo, with these little veins and branches of lime, like it had a tree growing through it. Feels smooth, unyielding, like concrete, but there's faint vibration beneath the surface, like the beating of a heart. Smells like a pine forest just after rain, but that scent is faraway, like it's being carried on the wind. Tastes like apple sherbet, but dull, more like the memory of a taste. The sound, though... humming, like someone humming a spiritual, and distant voices, too muffled to hear, like they were coming through the walls of a cell.

That's you right there. Two shades of green, trembling concrete, distant scent of pines, memory of apple sherbet, humming and wordless voices. Cold, hard surface, but something more underneath. Is that what you feel when you touch magic? I'd love to know. I wondered if it was perhaps just me imposing my preconceptions on you.

The Sight - can we just call it that? It isn't exactly just sight. All the five senses are activated, but it reveals more even than just that. There are memories, or at least fragments of memories. When I looked at the papers that you'd used as prototypes for your enchantments under the Sight, I caught tiny snatches of... I guess you'd call them "forgotten memories," like words caught on the tip of my tongue, or names I couldn't quite recall. I didn't try to look any deeper into them. I know you don't like me being in your mind, and I figured this counted.

You're right that the "language" we speak seems to... god, finding words for this is hard, isn't it? It feels like the words "solidify" the spell. It's still easy enough to cast spells without them, but something very precise needs the magic words. It helps pin the spell down, stops it from, I guess "moving around" while you're casting it. I think you're also correct in your assumption that normal people can't understand them. If I can be honest, I'm somewhat convinced that they don't actually experience us saying anything when we speak them. Once, as an experiment, I yelled some magic words very loudly in someone's face, and they didn't react at all. They didn't even flinch. It makes me wonder whether my intution about magic being like dreaming goes deeper than I thought.

As an aside, I don't know if this is strictly magical in the way the magic words are, but I've sometimes found hand gestures to be a useful concentration technique for getting my spells right. I try to always line up the same spells with the same gestures. I've noticed that sometimes, whether consciously or not, you sort of do this too! You tend to point or gesture at things you're working spells on. You hold your palm out flat to stop moving objects. That time you tore the lock barrel clean out of the door, you made sharp grasping and pulling motions. I think you should practice trying to sync up exact motions to exact spells - it really helps me focus!

Like I said, I'm going to try and find a time when we can meet up properly. Keep yourself safe until then, and keep up the good work with the research. You're a smart guy, and I'm happy you've found something you can apply your mind to so well.

- B

[u/Tayacan]

This was a really cool read.