barometric pressure

[cumulonimbus]

Her name's Isabella, and she prefers Bella, and she's called Stormy.

She has never slept through a stormy night since she was a baby. Till she was seven her mother thought she was scared; her mother reassured her that the thunder couldn't get her, her mother told her over and over that it was just a sound and she should try to sleep. Bella told her she was wrong, but Ranae thought she was just putting on a brave face, denying fear so she wouldn't look babyish.

When she is seven she drags her mattress out the back door in the middle of a stormy night, flops onto it in the rain, and sleeps like a log in the pouring storm, and after that her mother realizes what is really going on in her head when she tells them storms don't scare her.

The mattress is ruined. Ranae replaces it. That one is destroyed the next time Bella is left unsupervised during rough nighttime weather.

Ranae gets her a hammock.

When Bella is eight she learns to really touch the weather, not just with her skin but with her self. It's delicious. She can't do it all day, so she still plays and goes to school and sleeps and eats and writes and reads books - but she does it a lot. Stolen moments, here and there, where she can feel the raindrops and the air - she can reach farther and touch the clouds - she can skim the tops of the clouds and the dry rarefied winds above them - she can reach farther and farther, grab shards of sunlight -

Sometimes it is a little hard to come back, but she gets tired if she stays out too long.

She can change stuff she touches. She can "breathe", and the wind will swirl this way or that. She feels like she is the sky, sometimes, when she's in deep, and the sky-self is even clumsier and harder to control than her regular body, but she can move it if she tries. (This is also tiring, but she gets better and better with practice.)

By the time she is nine, weather happens around her all the time. It's mostly humidity, and temperature - the air is dry when she's happy, wet when she's sad, hot when she's angry, cold when she's calm. But sometimes rain comes to comfort her - even indoors - sometimes winds kick up and break Ranae's good china, sometimes there are tiny playful bolts of lightning, and they seem to like Bella, but just as though they were badly trained puppies that doesn't mean they won't bite other people.

Of course Ranae takes her to a magic-checker. But the magic-checker insists on doing his tests indoors, in a nasty stuffy room, and no weather to touch at all (there's barely oxygen), and Bella is unhappy and nothing happens because the air is behaving in a very unskylike way. The tests all turn up negative. Bella goes home. Ranae writes it off as "just one of those things", though when prompted for a list of those things, she cannot produce one.

Bella plays with the sky. Work small, be big. Feel small, think big. She makes tiny little breaths, because they're easier to control; but she inhabits the biggest storms that she can, stretching miles across and miles high, a billion drops of rain. She sinks deep into the tiniest snowflake crystals and puffs of air and beams of sun to feel how they work; but she imagines being the whole sky, over the whole world, and dancing.

By the time Bella is ten, she no longer makes indoor weather unless she chooses to. (It is always very dry where she keeps her notebooks.) It rains in the vicinity of Firebird City exactly twice weekly, as more would harm local flora, but when it does rain it's usually a doozy, intense thunder that shakes the windows, lightning that crackles between the clouds. Sometimes she calls down just a little bit of lightning, when Ranae's not looking, and it touches her outstretched hand, and she feels all aglow and invigorated, like instead of being the sky the sky is being her.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"I... this is very sudden," says Ranae. "And - you are a complete stranger and, forgive me, but you look very young. And Winding Circle is not nearby. And I would need to consult with her father. And I don't think I can pay any significant tuition."

[iwillgetyou]

"You wouldn't need to pay tuition," she says. "Do you want to see my mage credentials?"

[alicornucopia]

"It would help. I'd still need to talk to Charlie - and the distance! She's only ten."

[iwillgetyou]

Mathilde produces and displays a medallion of the kind issued by Lightsbridge Academy, proclaiming the wearer a fully accredited mage.

"As the discovering mage, it's my responsibility to find her a teacher," she says. "And as far as I know, there aren't any other weather mages in Emelan to take her on. Winding Circle is the closest place she could get a better education than I could give her by myself. The next best option is that I stay long enough to teach her the very basics, and then leave you both alone - but that's not a real magical education, just a stopgap to make sure she doesn't misplace her mind on the winds."

[alicornucopia]

"Misplace her - what?"

[iwillgetyou]

"One of the commonest dangers to an untrained ambient mage is that they'll start exploring their magic and not know how to stop. People have died or become very sick that way, when their attention is drawn out of their body and into the magic for too long."

[alicornucopia]

Ranae puts her hand on Stormy's shoulder and pulls her in for a worried hug.

[cumulonimbus]

Stormy shifts from foot to foot but allows this.

[iwillgetyou]

"Which is why it's important to teach young mages," she adds.

[alicornucopia]

"Does it have to be Winding Circle? Isn't there anywhere closer? She's only ten."

[iwillgetyou]

"I was eight when I went to Lightsbridge," says Mathilde, putting her medallion away. "She'll be fine. Winding Circle is her best chance."

[alicornucopia]

"How often will we be able to visit? Do you need to take her soon - I should write to her father, he's upcountry -"

[iwillgetyou]

"You have time to write to her father. I can communicate magically with Winding Circle if you want to talk to someone there. As for visits, that depends on how often you can travel."

[alicornucopia]

"I teach school - I can travel on school breaks. Charlie usually takes her when he has vacation... Oh, Bella."

[cumulonimbus]

"I almost followed a cloud too far," Bella says solemnly. "I should learn how to do it safely."

[iwillgetyou]

"Yes, you should," Mathilde agrees.

[cumulonimbus]

"What's Winding Circle like?" Stormy asks while Ranae is processing this upheaval.

[iwillgetyou]

"Well, I happen to know the woman who runs the girls' dormitories, so you won't have anything to complain about there," she says. "The whole temple is laid out like a spiral, with one winding road that circles in from the main gate, hence the name. Most of the adults there are temple dedicates, so you'll see them in blue or red or green or yellow robes, and the novices in white. But you don't need to dedicate yourself to the temple, or even plan to, in order to learn there. Some very famous mages have gotten their educations at Winding Circle and gone on to have their careers elsewhere."

[cumulonimbus]

"Like who?"

[iwillgetyou]

"Do you know any famous mages?"

[cumulonimbus]

"...I have some written down. I can't remember without going and looking."

[iwillgetyou]

"If you go and look, I'll tell you if they were educated at Winding Circle," she says.

[cumulonimbus]

Bella goes up the stairs, carefully taking each step, and comes back down with a notebook after a minute. "We did a unit on magic in history," she tells Mathilde. "I wrote down all the great mages the teacher talked about." She hands over the notebook, opened to the correct page; in neat but childlike handwriting it lists a large number of great mages, ranging from "Crane" to "Sandrilene fa Toren".

[iwillgetyou]

Mathilde dutifully goes over the list and names all the Winding Circle mages she knows about.

It's about a third of them, including the first and last.

[cumulonimbus]

"Cool," says Bella. She takes the notebook back, closes it, and goes to put it away again.