Aurora’s World: Atecia: Harrison: Learning to Control Fire

[k_a_webb]

Written for LJ user wyld_dandelyon’s prompt: the fire of poetry.

Blooming was, in some ways, the easy part, because he’d known what to expect. Learning to control the magic afterwards was much harder. The loss of the mages who’d been studying the different ways that each person could use their magics and the books they’d spent generations creating meant that no one really knew how their power would show itself. Harrison had always believed that he was the first son, so he’d never even thought about what having magic would be like. Supporting Aurora, who was sure that she would have magic, had always been the most important thing to him.

Then his eighteenth birthday had arrived. It hadn’t been a day Harrison was looking forward to, simply because it meant that Aurora’s eighteenth birthday was another day closer, but waking up just after midnight to a pain he knew without any doubt was his magic showing itself changed everything. He knew enough about the different powers people had to realise he was in real danger. Fire was the most difficult elemental power to control and that was the power he was going to have. He just didn’t know what he could do to bloom safely, because he knew that if it went wrong he could kill his entire family.

Harrison had turned to the one thing he had always used to help when he was feeling overwhelmed or emotional. Poetry was something he’d relied on to help him deal with things, because no one knew he wrote it and he didn’t plan on telling anyone. Normally he wrote in a notebook, but knowing he might set fire to it he chose a single piece of paper. Two lines later it went up in flames. They were small flames, thankfully, and as he watched them he realised that the pain had faded away a little.

On another piece of paper he wrote another couple of lines and focused on getting another two down before it burnt. With four lines of poetry on the flames were a little higher, a little warmer, and lasted a little longer, but faded away after a couple of minutes. Biting hard on his lip, Harrison wrote six lines on a third piece of paper. Again the flames changed. The pain had almost faded to nothing, so he didn’t need to keep experimenting. He’d just wanted to, because being able to create flames from poetry was something he couldn’t even have imagined being his power.

Unfortunately his elemental power had been the easiest one to control, as well as the most fun. Harrison didn’t want to think about the effort he’d needed to put in to learning how to fly, but he’d promised Aurora he would write about all his powers for the next generation. They needed the understanding he’d gained, so they wouldn’t have to learn the way he had. Controlling the power of flight had meant lots of bruises that he hadn’t been able to explain to his family, Aurora, or anyone else. Of course there were powers he had that he still didn’t know about, because magic wasn’t simple.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>the effort he’d needed to put in to learning how to fly<<

That should say "into" above.

I love this story! It's such a wonderful bit of magic. I'm strongly reminded of the Celtic phrase "a fire in the head" which can mean poetry, inspiration, divine energy, all kinds of things.

[natalief.livejournal.com]

Harrison had always believed that he was the first son, so he’d never even thought about what having magic would be like.

I find this sentence the most intriguing part of this fascinating piece.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

If I remember right, in this setting, whether and what kind of magic a person gets is dependent on when they are born.