Bit of writing

[altogetherisi]

 Here is another little bit of creative writing. I'd love it if you'd read it and tell me what you think!

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Mert’s eyes snapped open suddenly, and he stumbled backwards and fell over.

Hours before, he had gone to sleep in the four poster bed across the room, but now for the second time this week he found himself abruptly awake in a different part of his bedroom.

Three days ago, he had come awake to find his wardrobe destroyed – the pale wood blackened and charred, and in places reduced entirely to ash. Then, the clothes that had been inside it were damaged only in that now some had a fine coating of ash, but otherwise, they remained pristine and untouched, completely oblivious to their home being annihilated.

This time, Mert was at the window, and all the glass was gone. A breeze came in now, as well as the grey light that was the advance guard of the sunrise, and that had been the first thing Mert was aware of upon waking up. The breeze, followed by the half step back that had him trip and on his backside staring stupidly at the empty space where the glass had been the night before, and all the days preceding then that he could remember.

At least there were no glass shards on the floor. Mert was only wearing pyjama bottoms, so glass shards could be of serious concern, but either the glass had broken outwards or it had disappeared entirely.

Mert bent his head forward so that his chin almost touched his collar bone, closed his eyes, and breathed out slowly. Opening his eyes, he ran a hand through his blonde hair, and looked for the dark stars he knew would be floating nearby.

They had been hovering in a cloud behind him mostly, carefully not blocking Mert’s view of the gaping window, but now he acknowledged them the little things swarmed forward to float mainly in the space immediately in front of Mert’s body. A few meandered up to the window frame, and out of it, and a couple landed on Mert’s hand and slipped into him, fading away with little fuss.

They weren’t really dark stars of course – when Mert’s magic manifested like this it mostly looked like dots of dark oil refusing to merge with water, or with paler oil, or in this case with the air they were floating in. But when he was younger Mert had associated flecks of darkness in an otherwise light room with the flecks of light in an otherwise dark sky, and the name had stuck. Now, he sighed impatiently as most of them hovered like a cloud of shadow awaiting instruction instead of fading away back into his skin. Instruction was the last thing he would be giving them. Instead, he gave a slightly impatient mental tug and they settled down, the dark shading disappearing into Mert’s fair skin.

Only when he was sure all the dark stars had gone did Mert get to his feet and inspect the now bare window frame. Nothing seemed broken, and squinting down at the courtyard three stories beneath he couldn’t spot the twinkle of any glass shards. If the window had been broken into pieces that had then floated upwards it wasn’t Mert’s problem. He only had to be concerned about inanimate consequences. Any animate ones were their own problem now.

The next problem however was that Mert really didn’t want to attempt to fix the window, but it would certainly be expected of him. He couldn’t go to Orpa straight away and ask her to do it without at least pretending to have tried using his own magic first, as much as Mert really didn’t want to. At the thought of this, the magic in the base of his skull throbbed greedily and his arms trembled. Mert himself felt sick.

Three days before, he had attempted to repair the wardrobe. His magic had, instead, gleefully turned five of the formerly pristine shirts to ash before he could prevent it, despite leaving them untouched during the primary assault on the wardrobe.

This time, Mert gingerly placed one hand on the remaining wooden window frame and held the other in the space where the glass should have been. He breathed evenly and tried to keep his heartbeat steady even as within him his magic strummed and vibrated with excitement within him. Mert thought about how the window should have looked, and let a small amount of his magic rush to the surface of his hands and out into the air of the window.

This magic wasn’t as dark as the dark stars had been, so the cloud they formed in the window space looked more like a very localised thick grey fog than a shadow. Perhaps if Mert had been trying to make a curtain rather than a pane it would have worked.

The magic hung there, in the space where the glass wasn’t, faking docility, for a moment of calm.

Mert breathed.

The fog of magic rushed outwards like an iris expanding and sank into the wood of the window frame. Where Mert’s hand was touching the frame, darts of magic forced their way through his flesh and out of the other side. It did not sink obediently back into him. It stung through his left hand, and regardless of Mert’s mental tugging at it would not be reeled back in.

Mert could only watch as the window frame was destroyed. First the paint chipped and flaked away, and then faster, the wood blackened and curled in on itself. There was no fire, and no smoke, but Mert watched as the window frame seemed to become burnt in front of him, and crumble to ash beneath his fingers. With nothing remain holding them up, the curtains fell and puddled in a heap of cloth at his feet.

This was one of the reasons Mert generally avoided performing magic.

Mert sighed, and turned away for the bloody thing. He didn’t need this – not on today of all days.

Perhaps, Mert hoped half heartedly as he dressed, that was the quota of bad things out of the way for now, and the rest of the day would now go perfectly. But he doubted it. The light coming through the hole in the wall was beginning to become a bit brighter now, but the day it belonged to showed no signs of becoming any less uninspiring.