U ask if GG can help you plot ‘sus’ activity that might make big trouble and hang with the superbous sibs? My witchbitchsis. My sexy archnemesis from another life. U just say when/where and if I need to bring a party or a revolution.

–A message from GG to Raz.

 

Gobbogriffs cawed as they fought over a snackbar wrapper, waves crashed against a boulderous coast, and pebbles clinked off of rocks. A rocky wasteyard buried kilometers Castleyard’s northside coastline in a sharp scent of antigrav, half-floating ruins, and endlessly rotating rocks. While it wasn’t the prettiest place to start the sibs’ Oor tour (after a quick lunch at home and only slightly awkward greetings with Joram), it was the quintessential Castleyard experience.

And, like anyone with even a half a goof in their heart, the sibs loved it! Just exploring the place and hopping over the small sea-water chasms between enormous blocks of rock and ruin was an adventure. You could find all sorts of fun places, like an upside down wizard toilet that still flushed! And elsewhere, a building with intact stoneglass windows that’d fallen upside down and created some weird natural aquarium, filling a luxurious wizard’s office with thickets of frilly kelp, eight legged crustaceans, and a scarily big whiptail fish.

Best thing about the place was playing around with antigrav warped stuff though. Allie took the opportunity to try all sorts of cool exercises. It’s hard not to feel like a total blubber when your ripped ass sister starts doing sideways handstands on a floating rock. Allie’s entire body trembled, pale white arms bulging, abs and purple legs tightening. She swiveled her lower body from side to side. Simply watching made Raz’s stomach hurt where abs would’ve been if she had them!

Faham was tossing small rocks at a can that circled a floating wizard-pillar in a very uhhh outfit. He tried to knock it off orbit, but only ended up adding pebbles to a ring. GG had found the spot with his sorcery.

“Ahhh! Almost had it.” Faham searched for another good projectile. “So, GG, if altered can’t become sorcerers. Do you think it’s possible we could do some kind of sorcery-magic with our own bodies? If spirit implant is sorta similar?”

“Not an expert on this stuff, lil friendo. Just a victim of the system,” said GG. He’d come hang out right after work. Sleeves of gray work overalls were tied at his waist, revealing a faded print tee of a cute anime girl in a summer dress pining after something in the clouds. On top were pinned the ‘Earth Ally’, ‘Nativerights’, and ‘We’re All Humans’ badges. Progressive and anti-Magogracy memes decorated his slender, tanned arms.

“It would be neat if it was.” Faham took his time waiting for the can to circle around.

GG made a non-committal noise, while watching arctube over Raz’s shoulder on her now mostly unfudged phone. On the screen played a video titled: ‘10 Facts I Wished I Knew About Clairvoyants Before Dating One’.

“...don’t plan the dates. Be impulsive. Live with the moment,” said a dark and charmingly smiling Magogram man. “Your partner will appreciate the extra effort and the spirit of adventure. And if you do want to try set up interference, remember the two-I-rule: Your actions’ impact on fate can’t eclipse that of the interference’s…”

“Be impulsive. Easy. Never achieve anything big. Done,” said GG’s soft, sleepy voice. “Still no cutesome precogs in my bed.”

“But have you tried putting yourself out there, working on yourself, and being a high value partner?” asked Raz, mock seriously.

“Hmm. Maybe GG isn’t meant for clairvoyants.”

“What are you two watching?” Faham turned.

“A video, I’ll come join you in a sec. Gotta show this to GG first!”

The guy in the video was explaining how fate, future, and probability were all very unique aspects and how living with each required different considerations, and how no two precog mages were the same.

“She’s torturing me.” GG put a hand on his chest as if he’d been struck. “Raz, Raz… My friend. My soul. I thought I taught you better than to melt your brain to this kinda lazy low-effort hack.”

“Hey! It’s his style. He goes through stuff in kinda train of thought, but there is a structure.” Raz defended. “He’s not a hack.”

“He’s doing a top then. Is that Wonder merch he’s wearing?”

“Yeah, what about–”

“A hack. Sellout. Soulless golem.” GG spat with an exaggerated ptui, repeatedly. 

Raz fixed him a deadpan stare, lips pursed. “You’re wearing anime merch.”

“This? Hurtsome, my Raz. Hurtsome. This is a symbol of camaraderie, a sign of me honoring our brothers and sisters, wherever they be, lost, stray, or stranded. And it’s not just merch. This here shirt is from the annimay called Cottoung Can-deaah Cloudu-luuv–” Wow, he actually spoke in English accent ”–the last true love story ever animated on Earth. A historic classic. This shirt. This is an artifact. Irreplaceable. Symbolic and shit. Super meaningful. Wait a few more years and it’s gonna be top tier foci, gua-ran-teed.” 

“Shh! This is the part!”

Raz tilted the phone in GG’s direction. 

“If you’re planning on a big surprise to your clairvoyant lover, there’s two ways to go about this. Either you lay low. Don’t do anything worth foretelling and don’t disturb the plans of any big important fancyhats. Or, you piggyback off of someone else’s chaos. But Rjandva, I don’t have any clairvoyant friends to make chaos, you say.”

The arctube grinned. “That’s fine. I’ll let you viewers in on a little well known secret, so buckle up. Every Twinday, Magepot releases new coupons for a jackpot totaling over ten million val! A huge sum. Big enough to change almost anyone’s life. Big enough, in fact, to tempt thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of precogs and fateweavers and other future-meddlers to abandon their wizardly duties and instead try to predict the winning numbers. Yes, that’s right! Twinday madness can let you plan and execute big trips and incredible dinners like normal, without having to worry about your dear precog catching onto you.”

Raz looked at GG’s reaction.

He started nodding, shooting her a slowly smuggening grin. “Aight. Say no more.”

“I got it,” cheered Faham. He had shot the can out of orbit. “You guys done with the video yet?”

“I think so,” said Raz. She lowered her voice while leaning towards GG. “Can’t really speak the details, I think? Probably safer not to even plan.”

GG winked at her repeatedly while clicking his tongue and finger-pointing between them. Raz was pretty sure he was communicating understanding and excitement.

“C’mon gang, let’s move,” said GG. His jingle-bead dreadlocks and clothes floated up as he woke up his gravity sorcery to skip over a deep crack. “You visit to the wasteyard, you play with grav, tradition requires you visit the Gravrunner’s Cradle.”

 

***

 

The Cradle was a round upside down tower of seamless wizard-wrought stone embedded deep into the ground at an angle. In other words, a deep pit. A very special pit. One riddled with safe-ish gravity anomalies and little obstacles courses that gravrunners had set up. It was a gravrunning playground. The only one of its kind in all of Oor.

The place was popular as usual. A big gaggle of younger teenagers around Faham’s age and a castleworker girl who Raz remembered seeing in school were at it at one of the ‘wizziest’ runs. The spot they hung at was a seemingly deadly drop straight down into the bottom of the tower. Except, only a narrow invisible tube-shaped portion had normal gravity, and if you didn’t follow it perfectly, the anomalies spiraled you off course. Diving it to the bottom required tight control of your body, suicidal bravery, and the mystified quality these people called runner’s resonance – an eye for sussing out and bending with the flow of gravity. 

“Neat.” Allie leaned over the edge, watching a scrawny boy hurl past hoops and between tight pillars.

“Seems really dangerous, but it must be safe,” Faham reasoned while staying at a safe distance. “Are there some gravity cushions to soften impacts, if you bump?”

Raz snorted.

“Some other safety measures?”

“My lil friend, runners aren’t afraid of lil bumps. The saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you go faster.”

Faham gave him a mortified look. “I’m not going.”

“Yeah, not really my thing either,” said Raz.

“So what happens if I drop right here?” asked Allie. 

GG slid an arm around her shoulder. “Allie. My Ally, my wonderplant. Glorious things will happen. Adrenaline. Wind in your hair. Half-controlled freewall and a heartbeat that thunders like a hunted gobbogriff. An adventure. A rush. A work of art.”

“Aight.”

Allie stepped off. She tripped sideways into the wall, stumbled down along the wall, fell off into a pillar, and bumbled her way down one ungraceful stumble at a time. GG dropped off after her, hands in his pockets. He drifted along the unseen currents of gravity like a snow-flake on a gentle day, brushing off of surfaces and obstacles with pirouettes and spinning flips.

Some kids approached, waving casual greetings at Raz which she returned. Faham retreated a bit behind her. They were all mimicking GG’s gravrunner aesthetic of castleworker overalls and some Earth-positive clothes and badges. 

“Hey-o, friends, ask you a question?” asked a kid with a slumped posture and patchy beard.

“Hey! Of course.”

“Splendersome. That ain’t happen to be the legend, the myth, the GG you with?”

Raz looked at GG holding Allie’s hands and helping her do a flying flip through a hoop. “That’s GG.”

“Wow!”

“Wizshit.”

“No glam no glam.”

“Yo, dude, wizzy.”

The kids exchanged slaps and looks of disbelief. The patch-chinned one dipped his head from side to side. “Hey, friends. Don’t think we could check your squad here? Big fans.”

“Big fans,” added another.

“Would mean like, the awesomiously much to check some of the man’s runs here. That wiz with you?”

“Hey GG, you’ve got some fans here!” Raz hollered down the tower.

He gave Raz a thumbs up, gave Allie some advice on how to hold her body, and danced his way up. The kids on the edge wiggled in a bizarre attempt to strike cool poses before their idol.

GG gave them a finger-wiggling hello. “Sup runners. Lookin good. Great to see you all represent what it's all about.”

One of them nearly fainted from the sheer amount of starstruckness. The bravest one started chatting animatedly with so much gravrunner lingo that Raz bounced right off of the conversation. The only thing she caught was that they were asking advice on some specific moves. One of them also asked GG to draw a symbol on his shirt, which prompted the rest to request the same. GG drew a wonky replica of the anime girl on his shirt, which sparked immense joy in the kids.

“Allie is doing well,” said Faham.

Raz leaned over to watch. Their big sister was starting to get a hang of completing three movies in one flow. “I feel like such a lazy potato watching her.”

“Uh-uh… I know the feel.”

“Kept promising myself I’d start running, but then I somehow never have time.”

Faham nodded along. “I also was supposed to join Allie sometimes, but after one time everything hurt so much I couldn’t move for two days. Now I always pretend I’m super busy with schoolwork or moderating when she asks.”

“Mmh.”

They watched Allie do her first frontflip and land sideways on the wall. Lips pursed in focus, she made a very restrained fist-bump to celebrate.

“I’ll start exercising with her when we get you to Oor.”

“What? No, you can’t say that. You’ll jinx it!”

Raz laughed.

“Razmaster, your friend seeks an audition,” said GG. “Meet newest members of Goof Goon, a gravrunner squad made up of ten different flavors of adrenaline-addicted dumbass.”

“Dumbazz!”

“Yeaaa!”

“Wizz!”

GG exchanged fist bumps with them, saying something in gravrunner lingo. “So, anyways. These kids gonna spread the word about our big run.”

“How big?” asked a kid, eyes round.

GG did a lot of nudging and winking at Raz.

“Uuuh…” How much can I say? Why are we recruiting teenagers? “Big.. some?”

“Bigsome, yooo dude that’s wiz!”

“Wiz!”

“Wizzah my Goons. Wizzaaah!”

“Wizzaaah!” 

The entire gaggle dove off into the deep end and vaulted and flipped their way to Allie. 

“You’re up to something?” Faham gave Raz a suspicious glare.

“No?”

His suspicion intensified.

When GG came back and Raz expressed her worries, he wrapped a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “Be chillsome my friend. GG handles the actual terrorism. Goons will be a hapless distraction.”

Faham spun to stare at her in horror.

“There’s no terrorism! No terrorism! Clairvoyants watching us, I don’t intend on any terror!”

Faham let out a shuddering exhale. 

GG frowned. “Huh? Guessed wrong. Aighty-right then, what we gonna hafta do either way is get you some coaching.”

“Pardon?”

GG pointed at the tower with his thumb. “Never know where you might need to take your precog girlfriend on a date.”

“Raz has a girlfriend?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Raz groaned.

“Not yet she doesn’t, but if she’s impulsive enough and lives in the moment, anything’s possible!”

“Fine. Let’s do it.” Raz cast GG a withering stare. “Just in case I happen to run into a cute precog…”

She relived some traumas from when she was fourteen and tried gravrunning with GG for the first time. She also collected arms and legs full of bruises in the same spots. Except, it wasn’t so bad this time around.

Allie and GG were there to help and Faham provided constant moral support. And she did learn how to spot gravity shifts and grab onto something, which could come in handy, considering the ‘precog’ she intended to ‘date’.

 

***

 

Twinday madness could not be rushed and WACA entrance deadline was twenty two days off. So, instead of stressing herself silly, Raz let herself treat the week as quality sibling time. Without forgetting some low-key prep, of course.

And what better way to do both, and recover from bruises, than a low budget shopping tour through the Castleyard’s center. By far the oldest and fanciest neighborhood, the center was full of artistic stone facades nestled within the protective lip of the bulky stone roofs. There were four tiny wizard homes with cozy little towers. Some buildings even predated Magogram occupation. Very fancy.

And the shops. Oh, Raz just had to give the sibs a tour through all the big sights!

“It’s pretty. It has that rustic country town charm kinda,” Faham admitted. “But you do realize we live in New Europe, right?”

“What do you mean?” Raz asked. She was in the process of introducing sibs to the wide selection of imported treats, candies, and Oorian delicacies found in Castleyard’s biggest market, the MagoMart. The place has a total of three shelves just for treats alone!

Allie shook her head. “Country bumpkin.”

“What? What do you mean? Sure it’s not Magogram or New Europe sized, but Castleyard is a decent sized town. It’s got a tram, a school, a wonderchamber.”

“A,” said Allie.

“Your biggest market doubles as a hardware store,” Faham pointed out.

Raz couldn’t defend Castleyard but glared at Allie out of principle.

Into their aisle trundled a rolling platform with human sized barrels, rope, tape, paint, blades, sacks of explosive stone marbelizer powder, chain, and small mountain of highly suspicious purchases. GG’s head popped up from behind it.

“So, hypothetically, your precog date happens to be more dangerous than she’s sexy, and we end up having to.” He made several different gestures that amounted to offing someone, followed by profuse winking. “You know. Got the barrel and concrete ready to turn bodies into neatsome seafloor tiles.”

Raz held hand together and against her lips, contemplating intensely on how much she could think or talk. “Yeeemmmaybe?”

“I take that as a yes, that a yes?” GG asked Allie.

She gave a solemn nod.

“We keep the barrels then. Worst case I use them for a lil side project.”

“You sure you can afford all that?” Raz asked.

“Come now, my friend. What else is a dead-end destined wage slave chained to a grav spirit gonna spend his val on, but to fund a lil rebellion? And snacks for friends. Anything you want, it’s on me. Oh, but a favor? Possible for us four to split this up.” GG gestured at his cart. “Between us if I cover it? Just to throw the wizards off our hypothetical tail if Raz’s precog date’s wizard dad wants revenge after she gets self-defense murdered.”

Allie shrugged. “Sure.” 

“Fabulicious.”

Faham picked another bag of local sugary treats into his arms and fixed Raz with a grumpy look and shook his head disapprovingly. “I always thought you were the nice sis.”

“I am! GG is exaggerating. It’s not gonna be– Augh, I mean the precog is probably a very nice lady and most of this is unnecessary.”

Allie hefted up a conveniently shaped tool and nodded, then inspected the rope and nodded, and then gave the tape her approval. “Ready for a precog date.”

Raz placed a bag of heart-shaped Earthlike chocolates on top. “There. Now I’m ready.”

They made it out of MagoMart with no trouble, though some old folks did give them stares. Though they were mostly aimed at Allie and Faham.

“You still wanna check out the wonderchamber?” Raz asked as they stepped out into a rare sunny day.

Faham nodded. “I would like to, if possible. Would be really interesting to see it, even if we can’t resonate. Can we touch the foci inside? And check your school afterwards?”

“Yeah? That’s kinda the point of a wonderchamber. You get to touch foci you might never find otherwise. And sure, though I gotta warn you, my school is probably the least cool thing in Castleyard.”

“I’m just wondering if there are additional restrictions. Especially since I don’t have a good reason to visit it.”

“Hey. GG gonna be rolling downhill from here. Take these over to.” He made unintelligible conspiratorial gestures at Raz. “You know.”

Raz banged him with a silent finger gun. “Exactly.”

“Tata!”

They waved bye-bye back at GG. Raz led them towards the wonderchamber.

“Shouldn’t be. There’s some altered in here who I’ve seen visit. Mostly old folk who got warped in construction work. Lots of them do it for spiritual reasons.” 

“Thought wizards killed all their gods,” said Allie, while staring at the ocean.

“Most of them, yeah. It’s more like Earth-religion I think. They want to find peace by ‘getting closer’ to various ‘aspects’ of existence. A random old grandpa explained it to me while waiting for my wonderchamber turn once. It sounded kinda nice. I think the wonderchamber has some pamphlets on it.”

Raz noticed a familiar tall silhouette seated at a crowded seafood lunchery. Fen met her eyes.

Smiling, Raz waved. “Hey hey!”

Fen’s gaze skipped from Faham to Allie and from the trio to his friend group of castleworkers. He said something to them and laughed at their response, never meeting Raz’s eyes again.

Raz pursed her lips in a resigned frown.

“Friend?” asked Allie.

“I guess not.” But at least she’d tried.

“So, what’s up with those?” Allie nudged Raz’s attention to the sky above the sea.

From the sea approached a mass of adorably spherical animal shaped clouds. Birds, frogs, rabbits, and plenty of Oor’s own little critters. All of them wore innocuous smiles and downright balloon-round bodies.

“Cute!” Faham started taking some pictures. “It’s the faunimbus, I’ve read about them. They come to Castleyard? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Oof.” Raz winced. “Forgot it’s the mating season.”

Allie gave her a perplexed look.

Raz hurried her steps. “Let’s check out the wonderchamber at least, though we might not have time for a full school tour.”

Half-way through the school tour, the faunimbus arrived. Big bumbly white clouds rubbed against each other, conjuring thunder and turning gray. Sibs got their first introduction of the classic Castleyard rainstorms.

The Castleyard weather app also flashed red with a high rubble warning. Debris and building material fell with the winds and rain, pattering the thick stone roof with occasional muffled thuds. 

Allie was eager to go stand in the rain for whatever reason, but Raz and Joram managed to keep her indoors. Red alarms were no joke. There was always a chance that small stuff fell through the holes in the protective webbing and healers who could stitch together a popped skull weren’t exactly commonplace.

So Faham’s ‘official’ Oorian calendar adapted birthday, was spent indoors. Thankfully, board games exist. 

Raz introduced them to the Warmage, a popular battle royale card duel. In it a large deck of various symbols matching common aspects was shuffled and distributed. You would then need to try to win individual stacks of cards, or ‘bouts’, by either matching or countering the aspects your opponents used. Speed, symbol lore, and an ability to predict your opponents’ aspects were as crucial to victory as shout-match inducing realpolitik diplomacy and backstabbery.

Allie loved it, Faham loved it, Raz loved it, and Joram participated begrudgingly, which made Allie love it even more. They got along surprisingly well, all things considered.

Although Raz did overhear a conversation by half-accident, while baking Faham a date and almond cake she read about in an arabic cook-book someone had posted on HWB forums. She had also prepared some honey-nut clusters, just in case the cake failed.

Joram began with his serious, ‘I have much to confess’ tone, “Miss Guillerme and young sir Ib Abdul, I must offer my apologies.”

“Yeah? What for?” asked Allie, a nasty edge in her tongue.

“Pardon, but I thought it obvious. My behavior, specifically the implied promises I’ve made and broken over the years, have not been befitting of a servsman. Leading you two on to believe I could obtain you permit into Oor, or that master Maroque would recover within a reasonable timeframe is something I regret greatly. I cannot truly express the gravity of that regret.”

Allie and Faham were quiet for a beat.

Then, Allie spoke, “Don’t think too highly of yourself. Maybe you guilted Raz into that shit, but we gave up on you long ago. Doesn’t take a genius to see some dude who keeps promising stuff he can’t deliver is fake or on some heavy copium. Prolly both in your case. Nowadays, I don’t really care. All you are to me is Raz’s weird butler uncle. Nothing more.”

“I don’t mind you,” Faham hurried to say. “But… it’s…”

“Some bitterness is to be expected,” said Joram, his voice soft.

“Sorry. I’m really thankful you’re letting us stay though.”

“If at any time in your lives you need a place to stay, you may come here. I am aware the value of my promises has seen some drastic deflation over the years, but this I will endeavor to keep. Not as servsman of master Maroque, but Joram Joneel. Whether he approves or not. Whether my aspect agrees or doesn’t.”

Another pause was followed by Joram crying out a startled ow.

“Good shit,” said Allie. “Now. Loser shuffles.”

Raz found herself wiggling a happy little dance while making the cake. Her own tensions with Joram were unworded but slowly untangling. She might never be able to let go of all the emotions there, but if sibs didn’t hate the man that made it easier for her to try her best too. For all his faults, she didn’t think Joram had bad intentions. He was just a little too zealously devoted to his loved ones.

The date and almond cake made without dates or almonds had Faham bawling from joy and giving Raz extra hugs for the rest of the day. Its taste had been a little off, but the texture had been close to grandma’s according to him. Raz counted that as a big success.

Allie also surprised him with a big hoodie featuring a dreamy eyed pearly-skinned Magogram girl in a cute white outfit. The text above and under her read ‘Alleye’ and ‘Spirit Spotter’. Advlogger merch. Except someone had modified this one with furry padding for added warmth. Based on how Faham hugged Allie for giving him the hoodie, he was a big fan. 

Stormy days passed in board games, quiet moments watching the rain, radio tunes, good food, and occasional arcnet scrolling. They weren’t super actiony, but perhaps better for it.

Being able to just sit in blankets at the sofa with sibs in perfect comfort, without fears or worries, was a step beyond relaxing. On a level, Raz found it cathartic. It was so like the happy mirror to their time on the isola. A proof that they had found a way out.

Of course, quiet days also meant that Raz had plenty of time to fiddle around with phone resonance. Since she wasn’t gonna stick with it, though she might keep it as a secondary aspect, she was mostly interested in stuff that would translate over to the connection aspect. Stuff like dealing with the post-resonance confusion and exercises for lengthening her alignment period.

Surprisingly, Joram’s advice ended up helping her ‘get it’ more than arctube tutorials.

“When you are about to unalign from resonance, do not allow the foci to initiate it. You must be the one to unalign through an act of dominating self-consciousness. Focus on yourself. Differentiate your existence from that of the merged being of aspect and you, and the mental effects of reality withdrawal will be much less disruptive.”

It worked! Not perfectly, mind you. A dominating sense of self wasn’t something Raz had ever had a reason to practice, but it helped.

Trying to do it while playing Warmage probably wasn’t an optimal next step of practice, but Faham insisted on ‘helping’ and gave Raz big black bee eyes, so it was how she practiced.

 

***

 

The faunimbus mating dance didn’t end until the night before the weekend. Some plans had to be scrapped. They had no time to visit Capi in Magogram. Instead, Capi came to Castleyard to join them on the island tour.

The morning was wet, gray, and cold at the bottom of  the Castleyard cliffs, where ships of floating rock swayed on piers of stone. Gobbogriffs were making a racket on the cliffs. One was trying to murder an empty can of wonder on the pier near Raz.

You could tell it was female, because it looked more like an ugly miniature griffin than a tiny avian disco-clown. Supposedly a product of mostly natural evolution. Raz called bs on that. Then again, most Oorians believed that most Earth’s critters were alchemically bred, so might just be a matter of what you’re used to.

Faham was wearing his new hoodie, mittens, and extra rain gear. Allie looked ready for the gym.

“Dunno. Guess I’m not a tropical plant,” had been her reply when Raz asked. She was glad for her. Allie seemed to have flourished more than any of them. Her hair leaves were absolutely gorgeous and she’d grown strong, beautiful, and confident. The only crack in perfect big sis she’d noticed was that sometimes when they had to wait, like right now, Allie seemed to get really restless.

Currently, she was pacing back and forth the shore, kicking rocks, picking them up, throwing them, and wandering as if she was on a prowl. 

“Heyyyy!” Capi’s ever chipper voice called from the coastal tram stop. 

A short Castleyard girl with thick square glasses and a dark bun of hair drooping beneath her terracotta-red wizard hat ran towards them. Capi wore a colorful weatherproofed coat and trendy advlogger-style explorer outfit beneath her leather apron. Sculptor’s tools, clay discs, and tiny sculptures decorated her hat and outfit. She also carried several bags and a big backpack.

“Capi!” Raz hurried to meet her.

Capi ran up to her and embraced. She was a tiny bit shorter than Raz and smelled of clay and summer. 

“Aaaa! Raz, so good to see you! You glow! Show me the eyes. Show me the eyes!”

Raz resonated.

Capi started bouncing and screaming. “Yaaaasss! Raz is gonna be a wizard! O my gosh wow it’s real.” She hugged Raz again, then noticed the sibs. “Sibs!”

“Hello. My name is Faham. We messaged a bit.” Faham extended a hand.

Capi shook it. Raz could see she was doing her best to resist squishing Faham in a hug. To be fair, he was the cutest ever, so that was downright a wizard-like demonstration of self control.

She then offered a hand to Allie.

Allie bumped it. “Wadup my warp.”

“Ahahaha… Hehee, right on my ODI.”

“The fuck-d?”

“A politer way to say altered. We don’t say the w-word in civilized circles. It has nasty symbolism.”

“Riiiight.”

“I’m not saying you can’t say it, that would be kinda oppressive of me, but anyhow let’s move on!” Capi started taking stuff out of her bags. “Okay, I brought gifts. I hope you like them. You will love them, I bet. I made these for a class project. Here, for the birthday boy, and for Allie, and one for Raz.”

Capi handed each of them a garden-gnome sized clay doll. They had jovial rounded features and gentle cartoony proportions. Raz’s had a similar messy short-ish hair as her, somewhat hip-centric body, and a cheery face with big perma-scowling eyebrows. Allie’s was a pouty muscular miniature Allie and Faham’s a determined looking mini bumblebee boy. 

“I asked Raz for reference pictures. Didn’t they come out great?!”

“So that’s what it was. These are fantastic Capi! I love it.”

“I had a friend help paint them. But okay, can I hold yours a sec? Thank you.” She gave Raz’s doll one val coin and dropped another on the ground, then placed the doll down too. “Watch it go!”

Tiny-Raz stirred to life in stiff jerks and dropped her coin. A pleasant scent of clay and summer existed for a breath before the sea blew it away. The doll turned slowly, gazing at her surroundings with dumb beady eyes until spotting a coin. 

“It’s moving!”

“Wow, they’re golems?”

“Yup! Very first golems of the great Capi! Now behold its power.”

Tiny-Raz waddled over to the other coin, picked it up, and returned to the starting spot where she’d dropped the first coin. She then started turning again, but Capi picked her up before it could run off.

“So, word of warning, don’t let them go in an open space like this. It’s gonna get lost and break. The idea was to try to make better tamed dust pixies. Basically, you give it something and put it down in a spot and it’ll gather everything of that stuff it finds in the room to the spot. Doesn’t work great with liquids, but it can gather dust and sand and so on. If they get tired, you just let them rest for a day or so.”

“Neat.”

“Yeah, this is awesome,” said Raz, accepting her doll. 

“But no using them for crimes!” Capi gave Raz an accusing finger. “Not even small ones.”

“I’m not gonna do crimes, plural. I don’t think I’m planning on any crimes.”

“Mm-hm?! My brother is preparing to help you with dating a precog. Right. Because that’s toootally not code for criminal activity.”

“It’s… uhh. I’ll promise not to use tiny-Raz for crimes.”

“That’s all I need. Oh hey! Here comes my brother and his ‘failed project’.” Capi started waving.

A small tower of natural rock sailed around the cliff-face. On stood a few stunted wind-bent trees and one GG.

“He made that?” asked Faham, impressed.

“He made a bunch of stuff back in his ‘I’m gonna run away from civilization because Magogram is evil and sucks’ phase, like one week after starting work,” said Capi.

Raz shook her head. “I don’t think that was a phase. He’s just biding his time.”

“Let me hope, okay?”

“He’s for sure over it.”

“Thank you.”

GG’s eyes glowed purple and a penetrating stench of antigrav burned Raz’s nose hairs as he brought the tiny island to a halt at the pier’s end. The four gathered their bags and headed over.

GG lowered a sketchy looking plank. “Welcome! Welcome friends, aboard the ‘Subtle Exit Prototype One’. The most splenderious cruise-rock in all of Castleyard. Come, a weekend adventure in the isles awaits! Ah, hello sister.”

“Good morning, brother. You moved out of mom’s?” Capi gave GG her bags.

He took them, piling them at the island’s center. “Why do I hear accusation?”

“Well. You live here. Obviously, you should be keeping her company, don’t you think?”

“If her opinions weren’t so irksomely unredeemable, but alas. They are.”

“Sure. Totally with you there, but she’s old. You can’t expect her to be perfect.”

“You do you, sister. GG does GG. And in GG’s world, age no longer excuses ignorance.”

They continued bickering, while Raz and sibs hauled their stuff up and started exploring the tiny island. It had a big natural stone ‘lean-to’ shelter on one side and a hedge of shrubbery and stone on the other, making the center area nicely protected from the winds.

“This is so cool. He really made this?” asked Faham.

“He’s up there building flying castles for work, so yeah. It’s really neat tho, I agree.”

Allie climbed up on the tallest spot and stood with her arms wide, embracing nature with eyes closed.

“Raz, I found a cellar.” Faham tugged her towards a trapdoor hidden at an elevated spot of the ground. “Wow, it’s like a secret bunker.”

“That there, my friend, is the rain-closet,” said GG as he and Capi joined them. “Bags and dry-stuff that doesn’t fit in the sleep area goes in there. Also happens to be a neatsome spot to smuggle kidnapped precogs in!”

Capi rolled her eyes aggressively. “I’ve been here a day and it’s already old.”

“You don’t approve of me potentially courting precogs?”

“Girl, you can do whatever resonates,” said Capi, sounding a bit bitter.

“Ladies and gentleman. Friends and my evil sister. We launch towards the treacherous seas!”

Antigrav scent intensified. The island nudged into motion.

Raz scooted to watch the waves lap past them beside Capi. “Hey, sorry I’m not coming to Magogram with you.”

“What? Did I say I minded? Raz, I understand. You’ve spent so long at Castleyard, you need to party. To live. And WACA can be that place for you, I think you’ll do totally great, but it’s not the only place. It’s just not the best place if you want to do anything else, right? Most people go there and become terrible wizards. Barely qualified!”

“Capi…” Raz smiled weary and gave her a sideways hug. “I would’ve loved to attend an academy with you, but…” Faham told me about a conspiracy from his weird forum and that’s why I need to go to WACA. Okay, logical scrutiny could put a few holes in her reasoning, but the proof was there. 

A lot of important wizards had attended the Wandering Academy. So many of them, that Raz couldn’t dismiss Faham’s findings as tinfoil theories.

“...reasons. Faham can show you later. It’s gonna sound silly, but there’s something to it. And.” 

Raz’s eyes followed the meandering path of the same old isletroll she’d seen when first entering Castleyard. It always liked to swim next to departing vessels and greet them, supposedly to check if they were its people or not. She and Capi waved at it.

“And I don’t think I’ll become what I want to be in any other academy. Except maybe Tower Magogram. I guess I’ll buy one lottery ticket and give it a fair shot. Still no guarantee I’ll be successful, but I’ve got to give it a shot or I’ll regret it.”

Capi made an understanding sound. Though she still had a miffed pout, there was understanding in her gaze. “I’ll get over it. Guess I got a lit-tle bit too excited about going to the same school together again?”

“Hey, school won’t be forever. We’ll be awesome wizards together later.”

Capi smiled. “Damn right! The Great Sculptress and what was your core again? Phone?”

“I’ll try to find a place with a connection foci.”

“A high abstract? Old school. Where are you at, currently? We need to totally do a little magic sesh. Get me up to date. Show me your everything. Let the Great Sculptress guide you on this mystical journey to self discovery and empowerment.”

Raz started showing Capi her improvements to dealing with unalignment and explained her magesight.

Being able to play the teacher role seemed to spark immense joy in Capi. She found a stick and wagged it as if she had a chalkboard. “Okay, that’s a great start, Raz. Now, something you gotta remember is that without a wonderfield, you can’t create new magic. Magesight only lets you see and touch.That’s why you should engrave as soon as possible and start deepening your resonance to conjure a wonderfield. But there are some neat things you could try!”

Raz nodded along like a good student, though most of this was known to her. She knew Capi would have some good tips.

“Okay, so this is a neat exercise that you can try to deepen your magesight. It’s really helpful when I need a little extra accuracy when trying to imbue stuff. So, before resonating, you do a bit of basic meditation. Clear your head. Calm yourself. Try not to think. Try not to be aware of yourself. Basically the opposite of self-awareness. The idea is to unstiffen the metaphysical weight of your selfhood. To loosen up. Relax it. So that you can lean more of your selfhood to lean into the resonant aspect. To kind of let your weight bear more of the burden.”

“Views,” shouted Faham from the top of the island.

Capi and Raz paused the lesson to join the others and forgot it for hours. Archipelago Rudina surrounded them in tall rocky cliffs topped by overflowing tufts of untouched green. Some were low enough to potentially climb on. Others towered overhead like forbidden lands. And between the isles lay the half-sunken ruins of castles. 

Matts of fuzzy algae and kelp blanketed their sunken roofs and walls. Enormous oval shadows and schools of fish slid between them. Rust, lonely tufts of hay, and tiny trees crawled over the towers above the surface. Large seabirds roosted on their battlements. They were of the same pale-gray rock as the rest of Catleyard and its castles, but softer and smoother in shape than the ones currently flying above it. Their circular windows reminded Raz of the oldest homes in Castleyard center.

They took it slow, visiting all and any cool places they could spot. Though they did steer clear of everglider nests, after a big one tried to swoop in and fly off with Faham. Faham wasn’t traumatized, perhaps because he had only become aware of it when Allie punched the bird. His suggestion led them to explore and have breakfast at a ruined fort. 

“Who’s that?” Allie asked as they were climbing back down to GG’s island.

“Hm?” Raz peered at the distance and saw water splash.

“Saw someone in the sea.”

“Deepfolk most likely. Sometimes you see curious ones around here,” said GG.

“Sea people? Have you ever met one? What are they like?”

“Never.”

“Grandma did,” said Capi. “Once. Though I’m not too sure how much of that is story.”

“She might’ve. GG believes they weren’t strangers before Magogram came around spreading good old wizard oppression.”

“Enlightenment. Okay, sure. Slightly heavy-handed, but still. Some of them did have good intentions.”

“And that little island over there on our left, my friends, is a good spot to tie up and leave your oppressor-aligned sisters.”

“Har har. Just ‘cos the wizards at the top are rotten doesn’t mean everyone is. Sorry, guys. I’ll shut up. I’ve a bad habit of arguing wizard politics sometimes. We should focus on living in the moment here!”

“Magnifious idea sister! Where shall we sail?”

Raz, Allie, and Faham exchanged chuckles. 

They drifted on through the early day. At a rocky beach, they stopped to pet sunbathing sorrowseals (adorable creatures with wispy whispers and beady eyes set in heavily wrinkled faces). Despite their name, they were jovial and friendly creatures. At a pretty secluded forest of colorful kelp, they let Allie dive in and walk underwater. With a rope attached for safety. She came up with several coconut sized shellfish glued to her, which she intended on eating later. And a bad rash on her leaves. Apparently, Allie wasn’t the kind of plant that liked being submerged in seawater, even if she didn’t need to breathe as much. On an island near the Castleyard lighthouse built into the tallest above-sea tower of a sunken castle, they paused to gather beautifully striped smooth stones, amberized kelp, wacky shells, and other sea-treasures. 

Once, GG told them to hide quickly. Afterwards, they spotted a small formation of warwizard soaring through clouds on their gunbrooms. He cackled at that.

“Sleep restfully tonight, my friend,” he said to Raz. “Camouflage works. Getway from the troublesome precog in case of date disaster is guaranteed.”

He was having an absolute blast scheming trouble. 

For Raz, the weekend cruise was some of her favorite days too.

At night, they docked in against a larger island and enjoyed some trendy suscube instant meals Capi had brought from Magogram. Together with giant shellfish, because Allie insisted.

They lit a fire, chatted about dumb stuff like arctubers and famous wizards’ shenanigans, and played some games. Capi and Raz performed a dance-song duet of ‘Scry Me Maybe’ they had rehearsed in Fundamental School ages ago, eliciting many cheers and claps.

And before snuggling up into sleeping bags, they watched the stars above the archipelago and Castleyard. The town didn’t truly have a skyline, not really in the sense big cities had. But at night, the sparsely lit floating silhouettes above it made it look bigger and more important than a city ten times its size.

Despite the activity-filled days, Raz did have some time to practice magic with Capi, who also had some homework she had to finish. And, on the final day, she did make a small breakthrough with her magesight.

She sat atop the island. The sky was half-clouded and the wind cold. Waves crashed against the rocks. Distant birds cried. For a moment, Raz forgot she was supposed to resonate.

But when she did, her magesight painted all the senses over again. Flakes of arcnet filled the world like stars on a clear sky, migrating across heaven like great schools of fish. Layers upon layers of programs, apps, and data crowded her phone and those near her in layers of ethereal screens. She watched an individual flake take off of Faham’s phone forum post and drift up to find its place, saw a stream of flakes descend upon GG’s arctube account, and recognized Joram’s message before it touched her phone.

Mesmerized, Raz forgot to do the unaligning trick. When the resonance wore off, she felt like she was woken by an alarm clock after two hours of sleep.

“All good up there?” Faham asked.

Raz slurred a nonsense response, wobbling.

“She’s good.”

“Capi! I got it.”

“You did?!”

“It’s so much more detailed, like…”

“Like getting glasses for the first time, right?”

“Well, I don’t have glasses, but maybe? Like I somehow stopped being cross-eyed.”

Capi clapped excitedly. “Good! Now try again. Try catching some of those ‘flakes’.”

“Yes. Good! Try interrupt the communications of the cutesome precog date. This way we can prevent her from calling in a teleporting squad of blackhats.”

Would they call actual wizard spec ops on them? Raz hoped not, but Castleyard was technically a military base, albeit one focused entirely on castle production. Not that she was thinking of doing anything untoward in Castleyard of course (that was a message to any precogs checking up on her mind).

“You’ll tell me if you spot something fun? I don’t wanna miss anything.”

“We will.”

“Relax.”

Raz returned to calm breathing and nature vibing, letting herself get lost in the sea. She fumbled a couple of times, but did find that heightened resonance again. And when she did, she did a small experiment.

While cupping her hand over the messaging screen, she sent GG a picture of himself. Except, the moment she pressed send, she clenched her fist.

Cool tingles burned her palm.

Gingerly, Raz turned it up and opened her fingers, while keeping the flake trapped. It vibrated softly.

“I caught a message!”

Capi and Faham cheered for her.

Before her resonance ended, Raz tried an on the spot idea to flick the flake at Capi’s phone. It shot out of her hand and missed by several meters.

But it did fly. 

“It worked! I can shoot messagghhhrrrwhoah…” Unalignment’s gentle sledgehammer hit her with a big whop of dissonance. 

Raz gave the message flicking a couple more tries. It might not be the absolute most useful resonance cantrip. Like, realistically, how often did you need to suddenly catch your message and send it to another person instead? Maybe a few times after break-up. 

But if she could figure out how to catch other people’s messages or see what the flakes in the air were, it could be useful. Especially in case she needed to stop a cute precog from calling in a tactical blackhat squad.

A couple hours later, she had a moment where she regretted spending so much time on practicing it. Capi had to leave back to Magogram, which was an emotional goodbye by itself. But to make it worse, Allie’s and Faham’s visit visa was also ticking to an end and they had to leave.

Raz had never gotten used to saying goodbye to sibs. She suspected she never would. Much of that day she spent with her eyes swollen, procrastinating on Firstday’s homework and practicing resonance.

Then came Twinday, and anticipation began drumming in her stomach. The day had a heavy overcast and some wind with light yellow rubble warning. Raz had likely received failing marks for the ‘Analysis of Earth’s Symbolism’s Potential in Construction Work’ essay. Not that it mattered much. She wouldn’t be going back to that school, except for a few goodbyes.

At midday, Raz and GG met up near the community center’s kiosk, where elderly folks queued up anxiously for Leastday Magepot tickets. 

“Ready for anything except unfaring,” announced GG. He was kitted out and dressed to impress with that very specific GG drip. His face was a fiesta of rainbow warpaint.

Clock hit twelve. Raz told GG her plan.