Darkness and light

... this being the story of a wizard, the second part ... it began in Return of the wizard.

He was dreaming for quite some time, but not long enough to die and come back again; for him that ancient and repeated cycle of slumber and awakening had occurred for many eons, but not just now again.

He was on his tower, literally, a winged dragon of black wings and dark ethereal body, not looking much like a wizard now, save for his ability to think and try and act as one.

What?!  Oh.  I must be dreaming.  And this strange one again.  Where I am the last One I sundered.  As if out of guilt, as if out of something I missed, this last dragon of mine becoming me, or I the dragon.

There was a primal force in his nature, as this creature, more feminine in the serpentine ways he felt ... the licking flame and tongue of fire wanting to come forth, the instant ability to spring himself up from Earth and take flight, the way he seemed to fade in and out, happening more in his body than his wings, a vaporous mist himself, black plumes of ...

A strange noise outside awakens him.

That and the memory of his quill.

All on his face now, the ink, as he awakes and catches sight of himself in the fragment of mirror hanging closest to his table.

Catching the light--that strange noise again.

It sounded like a thunderous rooster, yet not quite one, and almost mechanical.

He scrubs the ink from his face, not becoming too red from the process.

His face changing from light to shadow and back again as the curtained window reveals itself in brief gusts.

There, now.  If only I can discover the ink remaining on my manuscript.

He glances and sees it there, enough to fill in the missing lines and continue again.

At least, at some point.

He looks out the window, adjusting to the bright light finally, holding the curtain back as the wind slowly dies.

His spell of containment and self-illusion he intentionally fades for a moment from around the tower, surprised but not quite bewildered at what he sees on the ground, a somewhat smaller vision for his height in the tower--diminutive metal wagons or inventions of colors, of metal, with small wheels, one invention larger and longer than the others on the gray road, a thunderous HONK-ing from it as it seems impatient to move with the others, their prompt reply coming in their own diminished sounds.

He lets go the curtain, blinking his eyes momentarily, then closing them again, rendering the spell once more.

He has not survived eons in the tower without a few abilities to cast lasting spells, those which continue even when his cycles of death and birth repeat themselves.

Whatever and whenever might be outside, to him it appears as when he first took to the Other realms of death and rebirth.

That is, however long he keeps up the spell, it does.

Dropping the veil of illusion for these instances after awakening, this became an unnerving experience for him almost every time now, more so as the eons have passed.

Settling into himself once more, he sits down in the tower again.

Copyright © 2021, Mark Newlon

(Continued in Wizarding 101.)