A Little Birdy Told Me

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

"Most people tend to stick with the same wand or staff for their entire life," Vanora said. "Their entire life as a mature spellcaster, I mean. You probably will go through a couple in your youth before finding that just seems to work best. There's also the practice of having a different wand or staff for different jobs. Some people might have a separate wand for love spells, one for enchantments, one for curses. And so on." She drew an Eye of Horus in the center of the canvas, in a white area between two spell circles.

"Is that right?" She paused when Enelen said that the mana of his world simply existed to be. "I suppose, that's theoretically possible here as well. But it helps that we have so many different sources of magic that people aren't always drawing from the same place. It sounds like your world just overestimated how much use could be sustained. I'm sorry to hear so but calculations like these are very difficult to get right and sometimes the depletion just won't give off warning signs until the last possible moment."

"I am surprised, though, that you had no active entities intervening on the situation. Usually when something that big disrupts the fabric of magic, plenty of the higher beings will come forth because they have personal stake in it."

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

She thought for a moment, playing with the brush in her hands and letting the paint splatter a bit on the picture. "So you are a bit familiar with that idea, at least," Vanora said, regarding Na Lan's opinion of the situation. "I always find that the elemental spirits themselves are good consultants for this sort of topic. They are usually the ones most affected by changes in the balance."

"It could be, however, that your world was in the process of ending a cycle." The old woman traced around the edges of her work, showing Enelen. "Here is the beginning, there is the peak, the fall, the smothering until a new cycle can begin. For those who dabble more with the higher balance, these cycles are important. Maybe it was never that your divinities did not exist. Maybe they had been watching all along, but they were waiting for the time after your time ended so that this creation could begin anew. It seems cruel to some people that the higher powers will only watch but that, from the magician's point of view, is called being fair. You have your chance, and so did the ones who came before or will come after you."

"If you mess up, that may be sad, but at least you can say that it was your own doing, and not because anybody else had it in for you."

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

"You're angry about it." It was easy to see from his voice alone. Vanora approved of it highly. "It's good that you are. It means that you see the people and not the numbers that comes from all of that balance shit. People like to delude themselves with the idea they do things for the Greater Good or some higher purpose. That's the stupidest nonsense I've ever heard, and you should never be drawn in by that sort of thing. You do things because you're human and you shouldn't try and use some grand justification to shield the ugly bits."

"But, you see, that's the problem, too," Vanora said. "We're human. I can't speak for your hypothetical gods, only the ones that I know are here in this world. Some are kind, some are cruel. Most are simply indifferent. Too many people talking down your ear. Too many humans in the world. Too many reasons to care deeply and too many reasons why you shouldn't intervene because the most dangerous person that exists is the one that short-sightedly or naively thinks they're helping, only to make the situation worse. Humans, spirits, whatever you are. Most of us may not be either good or bad by design but we do tend to lean towards the good. Live too long and it does things to you."

She looked over at Enelen. "You can probably see it by now that I'm certainly not young. I don't have immortality in any capacity, so my life is merely extended a little more by magic. Maybe two hundred years is all I've got at most, maybe a hundred and twenty. I figure that's about all I could take anyways. I want to be able to enjoy what life has and make my peace with how it works. Any longer and I guess I might have doubts and I've always hated going back on myself."

"Be glad for what you have is what I'm saying. Life is hard and the higher powers may be cruel but you can beat back some of the coming tide just by living and saying you survived with all of your facilities and empathy in working order."

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

Vanora chuckled a bit. "You've got a good head on your shoulders," she told him. "It's best if you be mindful of that. I've had too many kids come in and out of that door with all of the right ideas in their heads, only to lose them to the wrong person or emotion at the wrong time. I would be a little more than cross with you if the next time we met, you'd be going on about some things just must be done."

"I really do recommend some natural science classes here, however." She squinted at her desk for a moment, trying to remember if she had remembered to keep some of the course listings there. Sometimes the newer students needed to be redirected elsewhere, to classes not nearly as active as hers. Seeing that the familiar sheets were there, she jerked her chin. The canvas that had been lying partially under them flicked itself up, sending a booklet into Enelen's lap.

"Page eleven, I recommend Introduction to Earth Science and Chemistry 101," Vanora said, contently going back to her painting. "In terms of the pollution question, I'm guessing that you don't have the full story on that yet. The problem isn't that it's happening, the problem is that there's too much. It really is a bit like your own world in a way."

"I suppose, too, if you're here, that your people thought of the same solutions ours did. Just as you migrated over to this world, people have been playing with the idea of moving off to others if things ever get especially bad. I don't know how much you know about cosmology but some people are thinking that it might be best to move to a different planet in maybe a few centuries or so. Magic isn't well known so the thought of migrating to different realities hasn't cross minds yet."

There was no use in giving him a whole heap of worry without anything to balance it out. So she made sure to add, "We are not yet to the point of no return. We've still got, at the very least, decades ahead of us. It's probably more and probably will be more once the supernatural community decides to actually help combat the issue. There's still old wounds from the witch hunts going on and they haven't quite healed. Although, to be honest, in this day and age, if you're too open with magic in the non-magical community, we may very well see a return to them. That's the problem with too many connections in the modern world. We've gained too many factors that will just push us over the edge."

Though that may just worry him more, Vanora did see it as her duty to inform him of what exactly it was like outside of the island. Coming from a world where everybody had magic, to be suddenly dropped off in a place where magic was thought to be either utter nonsense or the devil's work could be disastrous. She wasn't going to let a student get burned at the stake just because he didn't know.

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

Ah, so he didn't know then. Vanora frowned a bit, wondering if she ought to break it to him gently but decided that deviating from her natural personality might just serve to worry him even more. Instead, she continued to paint, applying a few coats to the same area absently as she spoke.

"There are a few prejudices about magic around in this world," the old woman said, decisively trying to act normal about the issue even though it was extremely serious and this boy seemed like the sort to absently do magic in a crowd of non-magical people. "It was all well and old in pre-history but then a few hundred years back, people started to get very scared by it all. The magical population isn't very large, maybe ten percent of the four billion people total who are alive at the moment. Even that may be a generous estimate, though. With so few of us around, I suppose it's a miracle nobody felt threatened earlier on."

"And then, you can add religion into the mix and everything becomes ten times uglier. As I said, people tend to draw magic from different sources. Most of those are neutral but some of those are linked directly to gods or other higher beings and unfortunately for all of us, a few of those have bad reputations. Not always unjustified reputations, mind you, but to an average person with no magic and no real knowledge of magic, it's easy to see the bad and just assume that all of us are the same as that."

"A handful of centuries ago, a paranoid bunch of people decided it was better to simply take action and root out as many magic users as possible and the trend exploded. They didn't get too many real practitioners, mainly unfortunate people who were brought in on circumstantial evidence and had no way of properly defending themselves. Looking back now, all of civilized humanity finds it a black mark on our history but seeing as most of humanity also doesn't think magic exist, I wouldn't go pushing your luck outside of the islands or other well established magical communities. If you're really interested in seeing the world, though, I've always got some spare time to tell you about the larger pockets of practitioners around."