[Srennia Te'yessi]

”I suppose,” Srennia grumbled, forgetting herself for an instant in the increasingly obnoxious pounding of her head. ”Beg pardon,” she amended, wincing, ”I fear my head is somewhat...”

”Achy? Yes, that does tend to happen. However, you’ll be happy to know that it means your unbinding was successful!” Tarissa said, clapping her hands together and smiling. ”Can’t you feel it? The beauty of the world around you? The undeniable influence of Carmelya in all things?”

Srennia rubbed her temples, searching for this apparent influence. She didn’t feel it, she didn’t see it – perhaps the Mage was wrong, and she had not been unbound at all. ”I feel nothing but a ringing in my ears,” she admitted, looking to her instructor for some sign of hope that she was wrong, that perhaps she had been unbound.

Tarissa frowned, then her eyes widened. ”Oh!” she said, raising a dark hand to her mouth. ”Oh you poor thing! You’re one of those!” Those what, Srennia was about to ask, but Tarissa anticipated and answered. ”An Auditory! You don’t feel it, like I do – you hear it! Oh, that must be terribly annoying.”

”Hear it? You mean that buzzing-“

Is the ara and vis around you,” Tarissa confirmed. ”Oh dear, I’ve never taught an Auditory before. Rare enough that someone’s not a Visual, and hard enough to relate to, but an Auditory? Oh my.”

Srennia inhaled deeply. The pounding in her skull was dissipating somewhat, though the buzzing did not seem to be following. She was skeptical about this whole “Auditory” thing that seemed to be throwing her teacher into hysterics, but she was, theoretically, an expert. The elf closed her eyes, deepening her breaths, and listened.

It wasn’t a buzzing, really. More a low-level hum, and if Srennia paid close enough attention she could tell it was two-tone, and so full that it seemed to be both close and from a distance. If she moved her head just so, ducking her chin towards her chest, the lower pitch increased in volume. If she cupped her ears the higher pitch seemed stronger. ”Odd,” she said, and the far louder sound of her voice knocked her concentration. She opened her eyes. ”It sounds like humming.”

”To me, it feels like wind on my skin,” Tarissa confided. ”You’ll grow used to it eventually, but when you go into Clara, you will feel it again, and in 10 fold. I feel like I’m standing in a tornado when I meditate,” she said with a fond smile.

”What is Clara?”

”Well, if you’re no longer wincing against the pain in your head, it’s likely time for you to find out!” Tarissa pulled herself from her chair and sat crosslegged on the rug. ”Clara is a meditative state. In order to cast spells, you must be able to truly feel – or hear, I suppose – the magic, and in order to do that you must be in Clara! Have you ever meditated before?”

Srennia shook her head. She’d heard of meditation, of course, as an abstract notion practiced by distant liberals whose commune with nature and the world around them was considered perhaps a bit too close.

”It is rather difficult for the beginner,” Tarissa admitted, ”as it requires clearing your mind of all thought. Non magical meditation involves transporting one’s mental self to another place, a beach or a forest perhaps, like what I tried with you during your unbinding. If you can achieve it, the pain of the experience is lessened. But now that you are unbound, you will not focus on the seashore, but rather on the very world around you. Focus only on the wind – or in your case, the hum – and increase it, excluding all outside information until your very world is magic.” Tarissa straightened her back and closed her eyes. ”You will know once you have reached it. It is... unmistakable.”

Srennia quirked an eyebrow, but folded her legs up and closed her eyes. Exhaling, she sought out the noise, searching for the tones. They were there, as their presence had never truly faded. Stop thinking about other things, she thought, struggling to focus on the noise. Just the sound, just the sound. No other thoughts. Including this one. Stop thinking, Srennia! She pressed her lips together and tried again. The muscles in her back ached a little from keeping her rigidly upright.

”Perhaps if you lay down,” Tarissa suggested lightly. ”Some people find it easier to start with easing their breaths in and out, filling their lungs to capacity and then emptying them slowly, pausing at the moment of true emptiness, then searching out the magic. It tends to ease the connection between mind and body, allow yourself to truly separate.”

That sounds unpleasant, Srennia thought, but lay down. Breathe in, breathe out, slowly slowly slower. Breathe in, breathe out. In, Out, In, Out... soon, Srennia was feeling a little lightheaded, but also calmer, more focused. This time, when she reached out to the buzzing, it popped into focus, like one’s ears when descending great heights. Everything else faded to background noise, and then the two tones she had heard before seemed to split, the differences she never could have heard before seeming so incredibly different it was a wonder she hadn’t heard them before. They resonated through her mind, distant and far, above below and through her, dancing from the low note that seemed to be coming from her to the high pitch that seemed to surround her.

”Have you reached it?” Oddly, the voice of her teacher did not seem to disturb her, or overwhelm the noise of the world around her. It seemed distant and muted, audible yet ignorable if she chose.

”Yes,” Srennia murmured, and her own voice was distant too, lost among the rising and falling tones.

”Tell me what you fee- hear.”

”I hear many things,” she mumbled. How could she possibly describe it? It was constantly in motion, volume and pitch rising and falling in rythmns, sometimes clashing, sometimes melding, but always there. ”It’s beautiful,” she said finally. ”I – it’s like a symphony.”

”What do you sound like?”

”Low, loud, one note only – it’s pulsing, I think with my heart.”

”And me?”

It was strange, to stretch her hearing, to focus not on the wide varieties of noises around her but rather on just Tarissa, on the song that emanated from her. ”You’re... higher, slightly. Different sound. Like a flute, maybe, a low note on a flute. Not constant, but – do you have, like, a heart murmur, or something? What is that?”

Tarissa chuckled. ”And now? What do I sound like now?”

Something shifted and suddenly Tarissa was not a flute but a symphony, her noise mingling with the soprano strong instrument that seemed to exist in most of the room around her. The two noises mingled together, not playing the same note but two different melodies strung together. ”There’s – you’re pulling it in, molding them together.” The notes changed, then, and what was once two melodies became one, a collaboration that drew from both tunes to make a new one. Srennia was so startled by the shift that it knocked her concentration like nothing else had, and she refocused with a gasp, her eyes flying open, the ceiling spinning with the switch.

”The flute noise, that would be my vis, just as the resonant noise you hear yourself would be your own. Everyone and everything has their own vis, their own set of magic. The other noise you hear is likely a mix of the vis of the plants and things around us, and also ara. Ara is the magic of the world, in and around everything. Did you hear when I combined them?”

”Yes,” Srennia said. She was panting, and exhausted, and had no idea why. ”It was, it was so strange, I couldn’t concentrate on it anymore.”

”It’s difficult to maintain Clara for a long time, especially as an initiate. I am not surprised that it loosened your concentration,” Tarissa said. ”To cast a spell, you must combine the ara and the vis, and then shape it into a spell. Here,” she said, reaching for her bag and pulling out a small, worn brown book. ”Take this, read the first and second chapters this darkening. Unbinding is a tiring process, and it will be best, I feel, if we continue next brightening.”

Srennia took the book. Her hands were shaking, so she nodded. ”I feel like I could eat a herd of cabbits and sleep for three eras,” she admitted.

Tarissa grinned. ”Don’t eat too much, you’ll vomit,” she advised. ”And I will see you in the early brightening.”