Mana

The waters are… fickle.

Wild magic is inherently unstable, of course; this is no surprise. The waters are barely stable, themselves. Sometimes, you can watch the mood shift.

One night, I was sitting in the trees above the springs, watching the summer stars. I’d never seen the galaxy like I saw it that night. Then, though, just as I looked down, I saw the faintest, strangest ripple of color course through the prismatic surface of one of the pools in just the wrong way, like a little pebble had been dropped in the mana. A spike of blood red struck through it, and then, as if by the landing of but a single feather on the scale, the mana took to boiling! Cool, idle blues erupted into furious reds and oranges, like the water to which the magic was bound had simply become fire.

I… uh, steadied myself on the branch, perhaps scooted a bit lower, so that I wouldn’t plunge into the boiling water below. Sure, I trusted the bowers of those ancient willows, but, you know. Still.

And I just watched, curious. I was young, then. Didn’t know quite what to do. There was no way I could calm those waters, and if I tried I’d definitely have gotten in trouble (and also, you know, maybe I’d have burned to death). Some of the magic broke free of the pool, made the air around it so hot that I almost worried the tree I was in would catch fire.

Those old men came rushing out, and they didn’t even see me, all tangled in the branches of the willows. I wasn’t even supposed to be out there, y’know. They gathered around the pool (at a safe distance of course) and quietly chanted among themselves. They sang to the water,  took magical hold over it and rocked it to and fro like a howling child. When, finally, the water began to calm, it turned from wildfire shades to a dark, murky red, little cracks of glowing orange threatening to surface again.

And one of the old men, my mentor Azera, waded out into the mana, as he’d surely done so many times before and as I’ve surely done so many times since, trusting the wild magic within not to burn him alive. His calm bled into the waters, smothering the flames for good. He stood in the center, and took deep breaths. Each breath in drew ripples through the water towards him, and each breath out sent ripples across the water away from him, each time washing out more and more of that red.

Finally, to my curious eyes, that opal shimmer returned. The insects and frogs that had scattered from the raging inferno came carefully back, peeking into the steadied waters. Ignoring the handlers, of course, as they usually do.

As I’d come to learn, these pools can stabilize themselves. Mostly. The fire would have passed, handlers or not. But… you gain a sort of skill, and you keep that skill sharp, in caring for the waters like this.

When I was really young, I thought it was just random. Some days, the mana pools would suddenly freeze over, having to be brought back through empassioned prayer, howling and frenzied dancing. Others, they’d suddenly start to crystallize in a different way, forming jagged spikes that would simply ease back into place over time. Or perhaps they’d whip themselves into a whirlpool, and the handlers would sit criss-cross by them, press their palms together and bow their heads, and root themselves to that moment until the water, too, could bring itself to stillness.

As I would come to learn, though, as I got to know my brothers and sisters better, the pools have their reasons. On the night that Mount Serrat erupted, all at once the pools around me burst into the tallest flames I’d ever seen. Sometimes, it’s the shifting of the wilderness; an especially cold night in winter brings the pools to freeze, and they’ll thaw when the time is right.

A lot of the times, I’d come to find, it’s us.

I’d hear my mentor and his students having a fiery argument, and the moment it would cross a line, the pools around them would spark into flame. Whenever our lives became too quick and too anxious, the pools would adopt a steady churning until they had such force that we would have to simply meditate by them so that they might calm. Whenever things would get too boring, whenever we would get too lonely, the pools would draw us together for a night of song and furor by freezing over.

Now, I’ve learned to know which is which. The mana can tell you important things, if only you’ve the mind to listen.

I started writing this because the waters just wouldn’t stop turning, because I couldn’t stop aching for the light of the Sun, couldn’t stop worrying about everything else that must be missing its glow. So I had to sit down, by the light of the pool, and reflect.

And as I finish writing this, the pool has settled back into its beautiful shimmer.