Summon Me Into Your Heart

Ithai

One moment ago, Ithai had been at his desk, cheek pressed against the pages of an open book and napping in the early afternoon sun. It was Wednesday, which meant that the bookstore was very definitely closed because some studies showed that Wednesday was the most dangerous day of the week and Ithai was hoping he would manage to hold the place in one piece until he died.

At some point, however, there had been a faint not-quite ringing in his head, a sure sign of somebody trying to give him the psychic equivalent of a tap on the shoulder. Blearily lifting up his head, he noted that whoever it was had probably gotten a hold of his name. That would account for why the feeling lingered.

Ithai was fairly certain that he had not done anything that warranted anybody contacting him. Still, he was curious enough to follow that line of thought with a tentative, Present?

He was not expecting the ground to suddenly swallow him up. Nor was he expecting for it to soon spit him up in front of a blonde-haired young lady.

Ithai

Um was a pretty good summary of events, at least in Ithai's opinion. He was a few inches taller than this young lady who had presumably summoned him, this pale girl with golden braids. It was a little hard to tell, however, since the force of the transport had knocked him backwards onto the ground. Propped up on his hands, he blinked at the stranger all but shining in the sunlight, the grass soft under him and the breeze still warm for early autumn.

"Sorry, have we met?" He drew himself up, head tilted to the side and ready to sway with the wind. That was how it felt like in his mind, anyways. It really was a nice day, though it would be nicer to have been inside napping. His eyes swept over the girl again before absently concentrating on the sparkling lake. He wondered briefly if he were to do something else and his hands itched for one of those How to Socialize for Dummies books. They didn't really help but they did amuse him.

For some reason, Ithai felt that this young lady really wanted him for... Well, that was vague. It felt kind of like she simply wanted him to be there which was more than strange.

Ithai

Bemusedly, Ithai took the hand that was offered to him with a smile of thanks as his senses hummed with a very strange, single-sourced desire. He was aware enough, at least, to not put all of his weight into yanking the young woman down with him and managed to carefully force himself up, using her just for the sake of balance.

Once he was on his feet again, he listened to her explanation as attentively as he could between the tugging urge to do this, do that, be himself? What? and the thought that it was straight up weird that he had been coughed up by the earth instead of falling out of the sky like his summons usually did. Actually, though, would summoning himself even be possible? Normally, what people wanted was for things to be brought to them, not taken away. Not the tangible things in any case.

Ithai blinked, catching the last part of her introduction and latching onto it. "Ahhh, nice to meet you? I'm Ithai?" That probably wasn't supposed to have been a question but he couldn't help it. "I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've been on the other end of a summoning spell."

Itchy, that was what the sense was like, he thought as he stared off in a random direction. It just so happened that the young lady was standing right there. Back to the itchy, though - It was the okay kind of itchy, not irritatingly bad but also not that great. Er. If "itchy" could be described as "great."

Inexplicably, he felt like he was seriously disappointing somebody. It was probably one of his old computer science teachers.

Ithai

"Oh, that makes sense," Ithai said, because that really was all he could say. He licked his lips, awkwardly glancing around to check if he had picked up any sort of unwanted passenger during his summoning. Sometimes creatures had a tendency to latch onto each other in passing, after all. Off-handedly, he added, "I'm descended from a wishing-well spirit. Your summoning probably took its focus from that."

He wondered, though, what exactly was that ritual she -Orlena- had used. What was it exactly that had connected the selection of the magic to him? A name? Blood? A trace of ancestral power? Or maybe it simply tugged at the nearest being that fulfilled a certain set of markers. Ithai had experience with all of those, certainly, even if performing some of those were out of his reach.

Still, that did explain a bit about why he kept feeling instinctual tugs to just -be. Be there. If she was a student practicing summoning, maybe she was just happy to see anybody appear at all. And I'm ruining it by showing up here. That made him feel a little bad.

Deep in thought, he stared in Orlena's direction, his eyes shadowed as he tried to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do now and how exactly was he supposed to help along her wishes. He did want to help, of course. That was just part of his blood but more than that, Ithai was just the sort of person who liked to help others, too.

It was a bit unfortunate, then, that he always chose to brainstorm his options right in front of them. The expression on his face had a tendency to wander somewhere between thoroughly zoned out and slightly creepy.

Ithai

He blinked. "Oh, right, sorry!" But he still wasn't doing a great job of not staring because there were so many possibilities. She wanted to summon things, of course. Maybe he should help her with that? No, what was he thinking? That wasn't even a question at all! He had already made up his mind on that a long time again. The extent of his own summoning abilities, however, was limited and it didn't look like they used the same system. Mixing up magic systems was simply not something to be done lightly. Hers was more of the hermetic type, he guessed, while his was more of a will-it-into-being-right-here-now.

And wait. He was still staring, he should stop. Also, wow. This was a lot more social interaction than he was used to. Maybe he should stop that, too -no, no, there was the helpfulness part coming right back in.

"Book, book, I need to get a book," Ithai muttered to himself. Not a summoning one. "Maybe just a linguistics one." It was possible that she had simply messed up her pronunciation in the spell; those were common enough. At the least, he was glad that she hadn't summoned something really awful like a demon that could have ripped her to pieces with a thought.

General linguistics, though? Or a specific kind? Did he need to go for history books, too? It was always a good idea to get background information about summoned beings beforehand. Oh, why not both?

He snapped his fingers twice, just out of habit. It was nice having an audio indicator for when he was using magic. Then, because he had to take something as payment for his help, he said to Orlena, "Could you please hand me that stick by your foot?"

The magic in him was very happy to have something to do. Ithai was very happy to have something to do. Helping people was the right thing to do, after all!