Caster of Blue
16th of December, 2004
Idle Thoughts
After what felt like an eternity, and was no doubt many times closer to eternity in practice, the woman had answered a call for the first time. She could scarcely believe it. But it left her with a single lingering question in the back of her mind, the lowest priority of all the speeding, competing trains of thought she entertained at most times. Not forgotten, but hardly a priority, except in her most idle moments.
An exercise for the uncertain reader.
Q: What is she seeking, here?
Her dreams, perhaps.
The woman had quite a lot of dreams. From childhood until the day she breathed her last, she lived her life chasing one dream or another. It would have been little surprise had her wish been to see one or another to fruition. To pluck one from the multitude of pruned possibilities and lift it above all those unrealized.
But the woman had never prized one dream above the rest. Even the one she was best known for, the one that defined her as a Heroic Spirit, was no more precious to her than the ones she had been forced to set aside long before it.
It wasn't that she considered any of them unimportant. Quite the opposite, in fact.
But...
Q: What is she seeking, here?
To change her fate, certainly.
The woman's story had come to a conclusion that satisfied no one, least of all herself. She had left much unfinished, and even more in disarray. Given more time, she could have set things in order, achieved what she had set out to do, obtained and done so much more than she had...
But that was true of anyone, and while she wanted more, so much more, the woman didn't regret seeing her choices through to the end, no matter how messy it was. To the bitter end, they had been hers, and the outcome was the one her choices had affected.
From the start, it wasn't permitted for it to be any other way.
After all...
Q: What is she seeking, here?
The woman wasn't entirely convinced she had a wish to begin with. She had many desires, of course. Quite a lot of desires, in fact. More desires than she knew what to do with, really.
But all her life, those were all things the woman had endeavored to achieve with her own hands. That she had ended up holding onto none of them was of little import to the motivation behind her pursuit of the future, of her dreams, of what she wanted and why she wanted it.
No, she didn't believe she had any wishes. Hopes, perhaps. Desires, absolutely. But not wishes.
If she was forced to categorize anything as a wish, which she was reluctant to do in the first place, then perhaps...
No. There was never one.
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Caster of Blue
16th of December, 2004
The House in Misty Village
Morning (Phase 2-1)
Leylines are amazing.
Through their connection, Caster could feel the power and pressure Erika had tapped into, and the enthusiastic servant had stayed up half the night playing with it, delighting in how much raw material she had been able to churn out of her workshop in short order. Stuck in a flow of creative spirit, the girl had her clever little iron sand working overtime just to keep up with her until well past sunrise. The leyline was quite a nice complement to her work, compared to the paltry sum of prana in the air of the ritual room when she'd exhausted it the day before.
In truth, she was still surprised they pulled it off. She quite liked Erika's determination and daring, but the actual plan had left a bit to be desired in terms of not freezing to death afterwards. Thankfully it hadn't been all that difficult for the girl to adjust her output to a warming current, though she never imagined her magecraft would be used as a glorified space heater.
Now that had been an interesting new experience, suffice to say.
When the time came to unwind, she had thrown herself on the couch, set to building, and started enthusiastically flipping through the different channels with one hand while laying out materials with the other. A few transistors here, a conduit there, the reagent ready to be poured around that...
What Caster was building was familiar enough to her that she could do it unthinkingly, letting her immerse herself in modern media. She had enjoyed the local news, watched and loudly participated in a Quite Interesting gameshow where the answers kept surprising her, and even sung along quite well to a pop track of some quite handsome Irish boys scouting a fan to perform one of their band's new singles, until she was asked to stop so Miss Natsuki could sleep.
She had given a pouty moue, but did her best to sit still and stay quiet while she finished her creation, snapping the last piece into place.
Which is how she found herself wandering the hall while Erika cooked breakfast, looking for her master's bedroom with a surreptitiously cheerful hum.
Do you really not have any proper coats, Erika?
It was a bit invasive of her, admittedly, but she had already admitted that and didn't really have much shame about it in the first place, so there she was, peeking her head into her Master's bedroom and making a beeline for the closet with a determined gaze.
If she had to justify it later, most likely to Erika herself, the girl might have argued it was out of concern for Erika, or perhaps looking for a less conspicuous coat her own size that she could wear when she stepped out into London. She had left her lab coat on the sofa, leaving a clingy, sleeveless short black dress and her long gloves, all the better to try on anything fetching.
"Hm hm hm," she thought out loud as she rifled through the closet, scouting for something her size. Erika was several sizes smaller, certainly, but even then it was within acceptable variation if she found a long enough coat perhaps.
Too small, too tight, adorably tight, promising, much too big-- hm?
Caster paused, sliding her fingers back to the last hanger and pulling it out. A warm-looking, high-quality, almost certainly expensive black overcoat. It stood out quite a bit after the last few... well, comparably modest and budget options. More than that, it was much too big for Erika - too big even for Caster, and she was taller than most of the other women she had known in life. Not just that, but the cut...
With an interested noise in the back of her throat, one of the lenses on her visor rotated over the black lens, zooming in and skimming the coat rapidly, measuring and confirming the rather obvious conclusion she had initially come to.
Elegant but in a quiet, understated way, shoulders a bit on the broad side next to Erika, more slender than bulky, and ah, quite a sculpted waist, and... Ah, this is definitely a rather masculine--
Her lens paused, stopping on the collar. Two gloved fingers reached inside, gently stroking up the neckline, and retreated with a single hair held delicately between them. A pale, soft white fluffy hair.
The girl raised an eyebrow, holding it up in front of an increasingly bright, amused blue eye.
"Ahaha, Erika, I was starting to wonder..." Caster giggled to herself, glancing surreptitiously at the door. After a moment of listening for any movement in the hallway, she glanced back and pulled the coat close with both hands, reaching her head into the collar and taking a deep breath inside.
It was altogether quite interesting. Clean, soft, and warm. It smelled... like a young man, but a particular kind of young man, really. The kind who dressed extremely well, but without needing or wanting to advertise it. It reminded her of the better-bred London boys of her youth - ah, that warranted a second, deeper sniff. Definitely a young man's scent, still smooth without the rough edges of an older specimen.
She was still archiving the scent in her mental records when her fingers slipped into one of the tucked away interior pockets. "What do we have here?" the girl mused aloud, plucking out something else - a small white business card. She tilted her head to peruse it - it was fairly plain, with black type press, identifying its owner as a very particular sort of civil servant.
It so happened this one was familiar to even Caster, particularly the navy logo and scale, eliciting an impressed noise from the servant at her Master's taste and good fortune. "A crown prosecutor. Not bad, Erika!" she continued reading aloud. "Mister... hm... Ar...wyn... Penrith?"
Ah! The girl gave a start, then paused. She had surveyed Erika's home when she was summoned and she rather doubted anyone uninvited would find this place without a fair measure of difficulty. The knock was forceful, but not harried or aggressive, just decisive in a way that rather suited the kind of young man who would own this coat. Ah, what fortuitous timing...
Giving an impish grin, but still holding onto the coat, Caster practically hopped for the entrance to the bedroom, leaning halfway out.
"Oh, Erika! Do you have a gentleman caller?" She called out from the doorway, then paused. Right, no reason to bother herself with old engrained habits or decorum she had never cared to maintain. "Is that your prosecutor boyfriend, then~?"