The Words of Magic, a story-bit of Stranded

This is in part to requests for non-Roundtree (Seasonal Siblings) Stranded stories, part in reply to anke‘s rather old request which I could not find if I’d fulfilled or not. And because the discussion around said request involved the Language of magic TV Tropes Page…

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“Eye of the blind, open for me.”

Most people, Nilsa knew, didn’t need to do chanting.

“Feet of the crippled, walk forward for me.”

As a matter of fact, in all of her time working with the Strands, she’d only met one other person who did formalized ritual with their Strand-spells (and only one other person who called them spells).

“Mouth of the mute, speak your words only to me.”

She drew the final line in her chalk diagram and settled into the middle of it. She’d talked to several Workers who thought that her teaching had gone awry and that had caused her dependence on spell and ritual, and three who had heard of Strand-weavers who used rituals and chants.

“Windows gone dark, open your curtains to me.”

Which was a lovely thing, in theory. She knew there had been others like her; she knew why, more or less, she was the way she was.

“Clock of the world, show what your hours have seen!”

But until now, she hadn’t had a way to see why her teacher had crippled her Strand-weaving like this. She opened her eyes wide, as the projection began playing on the wall, thousands of Strands working together to make a video of the past.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1087614.html. You can comment here or there.

4 thoughts on “The Words of Magic, a story-bit of Stranded

  1. <ponders> Autumn’s mode of strand-working — and to a lesser degree Summer’s — seem more limited by form than those of their siblings. On the other hand, that can also translate into influence where they aren’t actually present or actively tied. I’m tempted to swap “vision” in for “video”, as the latter has very tech-y overtones to me, but my usage may be too narrow and/or that may be correct for what she’s doing. 🙂

      • If she was only taught to execute existing spells and not how to construct new ones, that seems like a terrible gaping hole in her education (possibly because her teacher was similarly limited?), but it sounds like she’s pursuing further information with an eye to fixing this …

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