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sandry

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There's a young girl sitting in Milliways with a steaming mug of tea in her hands. With summer wearing on in Emelan, Milliways is a bit chilly by comparison. Enough to make her glad of the extra layers of black cambric she's wearing this evening, and even of the black veil covering her hair.

Sandry has spent the day visiting her great uncle at his citadel in Summersea. It's for this reason that she's wearing her fine mourning instead of a more comfortable dress. Duke Vedris is not the sort of man to fuss at her over her clothes, but Sandry knows that he appreciates his niece being turned out properly.

It had been a very nice visit, and Sandry looks happier than a child clad all in black should rightly look.

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A young man in a strange green robe is walking nearby, carrying a cup of tea and a plate of small honey cakes. The sight of someone actually in a good mood draws his attention--it's so usual back home, but so rare here--and so he turns his steps towards her, carefully so as not to trip over anything or spill his tea.

"Greetings, friend," he says, holding out the plate. "Would you like a cake?"

The green robe immediately makes Sandry think of the Earth Temple dedicates at Winding Circle, thereby giving the young man an air of familiarity although Sandry has never met him.

Honey cakes are a bit of home too. And Sandry has learned the effectiveness of making friends by sharing sweets; she politely accepts one.

"Thank you," she says.

"Would you like to sit? You rather seem to have your hands full."

"Thank you." He smiles, setting the plate and tea down before he takes a seat. He's found it's easier that way, less likely he'll spill something.

"You look different from most of the people I know here. You're not from London, are you?"

Sandry has heard of London in Milliways, but only enough to glean that it is a city--and quite a crowded one apparently. Where tea is extremely popular.

She shakes her head.

"No. I'm from Winding Circle Temple in the realm of Emelan."

Sandry looks at him curiously.

"Different how?" she asks. Most people that she has met here seem to be as human as she is, albeit with a wide range of manners and customs.

"Well... the way you're dressed, mostly. It doesn't look like something that'd be easy to climb trees in, and most people I've met wear things that they could. I apologize if that's an odd conclusion to have, but we're very sheltered, and that's the sort of thing I can notice."

He picks up his cup of tea again. "You're from a temple?"

Sandry has noticed that many Milliways patrons, male and female, dress in odd ways. But she has never thought much of it. When her parents were alive she had traveled far and wide with them, and is by now well used to the notion that different peoples have their own ways of doing things.

And long dresses have never prevented her from climbing anything she needed to climb.

"Yes," she says, in response to his question. "I go to school there."

"Where are you from?"

There are some kingdoms that are well known for not welcoming strangers from the outside. It's possible that this young man is from such a place.

"I'm from Orbora. I spent several years in the temple there, studying, but no one studies there anymore."

He takes a sip of tea. It's not that his people aren't welcoming of strangers, more that there just aren't any. Well, there sort of are now, but that's different.

"What do you study, in yours?"

Sandry swallows a bite of honey cake.

"The usual things. Reading. Spelling. Mathematics. Spinning thread. Handstands and cartwheels."

Granted, those last three aren't exactly standard. But the dedicates of Discipline Cottage have a good deal of free rein in what they teach their students.

"And magic," she adds. "My friends and I were brought there by a man who saw magic in us. Our teachers are helping us learn about it."

"Why does no one study at your temple anymore?"

The idea of a temple where no one studies is like a needle with no thread. Simply not natural.

"It was for the priests, and we haven't got any anymore. Now we've just got people. We still have ceremonies at the temple, and gatherings, but that's all."

At least he's heard of the things she studies, which is rare for him.

"What kind of magic do you have?"

"What happened to them?" As a rule, priests don't just up and disappear. "And couldn't other people simply learn to be priests?"

Unless the priests were a certain caste of people in Orbora, the way they are in some countries Sandry has heard of.

Sandry wipes her sticky fingers on a black-bordered handkerchief and begins to take some items from the reticule hanging from her belt.

"It's not a very big magic," she admits as she lays out a green drop spindle with several feet of almost smooth thread wrapped around its shaft, a strip of raw wool, and a spool of silk thread.

As her hand hovers over the items, the wool fibers draw themselves up like a cat who wants its back scratched, and the silk thread uncoils itself and snakes around her fingers. "My magic is with thread and the things that make it. But I've just started learning about it."

He watches the fabric and thread, impressed. "Everyone must start somewhere, but I'm sure that will be a very big magic before long. Thread is very useful, and it's nearly everywhere."

He picks up a cake from the plate. "I used to be one of the priests, but it turned out some of them were hiding a terrible secret. We made the secret known to the people, and since the heart of the purpose of the priests was to keep the secret, we had no need for them anymore. And the people wouldn't trust them anyway."

Sandry smiles. "That's what my teacher, Lark, says. People can do without alarm spells and love potions if they have to. But everyone needs and uses thread and cloth."

Her brow furrows at his account.

"Well...that's good then, isn't it?" she ventures. "If the priests were doing something bad."

She's curious as to what it might have been, but fears it might not be polite to ask.

"It's good that things are honest and open, now. But in a way it's bad, too, because the priests ran people's lives, and now they're on their own. It's like if one day you woke up and your parents were gone, and all the other adults too, and all the children had to fend for themselves. Everyone's lost."

Sandry does know something about what it's like to be in that situation. Parents and nursemaid dead while she, for all she knew, was the only living soul left in the palace at Hatar. Perhaps in the whole city.

She doesn't flinch or tear up. That's not her way. If anything her smile simply becomes fixed and very cheery.

"People will learn," she says brightly. "You said you were a priest yourself. You can help them do so."

He's lost his parents, but the rest of the world has always been there. When there are so relatively few people on your entire planet, it's like one big family, even if, in Neric's case, they were like distant cousins you don't see often but you know you can count on if you get desperate, because you're family.

"I was a healer, before. And now I serve on the Council, to help sort out all the problems that have come up. After that... nobody knows."

"I'm certain that it will all come out in the end."

It's not entirely the naivete of a person who is, after all, a relatively young child. It's also the experience of someone who has spent most of her formative years at royal courts listening to the concerns of councilors. and of someone who has passed through darkness and emerged whole on the other side.

Sandry's smile loses its fixed determination and becomes much more natural.

"I'm Sandry, by the way," she says, belatedly introducing herself.

That seems to happen to her a lot in Milliways.

She's probably much more worldly than he is, even at her age. He's only recently become aware of the existence of violence and hatred, and it hasn't gone well for him so far.

"I'm Neric. It's nice to meet you."

Such things rarely go well for anyone, no matter what age they are introduced to them.

"It's nice to meet you too."

She's been distracted enough by the conversation that her silk thread has coiled itself around her hand and is trying to work its way up her sleeve. And the wool fibers have been worming their way to the edge of the table, no doubt drawn both by her magic and the wool fabric of her dress.

"Here now--that's enough," Sandry says firmly, loosening her hand and shaping the wool back into a neat strip.

She blushes at bit, embarrassed to have let them get away from her.

"I'm sorry--I'm still working on making them mind." They do most of the time, but not always.

He smiles, reassuringly. "It's perfectly all right--when I was younger, and my powers were stronger, I couldn't control them as well, and there were... situations. Sometimes you don't want other people to know what you're thinking, you know?"

He takes a sip of tea. "Is magic strong, in your world? Do many people have it?"

"No, I suppose I wouldn't like that," Sandry replies thoughtfully, though she is not entirely certain what he means by that.

She does understand about 'situations' though.

"One of my friends has magic that's tied to the weather. She has to be very careful of her temper. Otherwise things tend to get struck by lightning." Sandry pats her spool of silk. "There's less trouble you can get into with thread."

Sandry wraps her hands around her own tea cup.

"I'd say it is," she replies. "There are plenty of mages in my world; they train at either Lightsbridge University or Winding Circle. Magic is used nearly everywhere it seems. I never really thought about it until I came here and found out that there are some worlds with no magic at all."

"It's hard to imagine, don't you think?"

"I'm going to try to teach Nancy my powers, because my people are the same as hers, just separated by time. She ought to be able to learn... I hope. But magic has been fading, in my world, for a long time. And even when it was strong, it was nothing like what you're describing in yours. Do people have one thing that they work with, and that's it?"

"Some of them do."

Sandry takes a sip of her tea.

"A lot of mages--mostly the ones from Lightsbridge--work all sorts of magic. Lightsbridge is known for academic mages. Winding Circle works a bit differently."

Her knowledge of the differences is somewhat vague. She's mainly repeating what her teachers have told her.

"My friends and I have magic that only seems to work through certain things, though. Mine is with thread. Tris's is with the weather. Briar's is with plants. And Daja's is with metal."

"Ours is more... general. Everyone who can do it, they can do the same kind of things, but not everyone can do all of the things. We can sense other people's thoughts or feelings, or send our thoughts and feelings to others, that's the most basic level. Some of us can heal, some of us can help plants to grow, some of us can move things with sheer spirit. Small things, though. Only working together can any of us do bigger magic, and that hadn't happened for hundreds of years."

"Why not?" Sandry asks.

That doesn't seem like the sort of skill that people would want to lose, especially for centuries.

"Nobody knows for sure. I have a theory, though. It's all tied together with the troubles we had, and are still having. And why we don't have priests anymore. There was a... disagreement in ideology, and a group of people were imprisoned underground, secretly. Our people were divided, for hundreds of years. Each side was only half of the whole, and divided, our powers are much weaker."

He takes a sip of tea. "That's what I think, anyway."