The Weight of Wanting

Chapter 6: Elira

Training with Eowlen was not easy.

She wasn’t cruel—but she was exacting. She expected things to be done the right way, not the easy way, and she never hesitated to tell me when I wasn’t living up to my potential. But she never gave up on me—not once. And in some quiet, steady way, that meant more than all the praise in the world.

Eowlen didn’t just drill me in technique. She taught me the why behind every word I spoke. The weight they carried. The history etched into each syllable like veins in stone.

I’d always thought Therak’sol marun’kai was just a word for fire. But Eowlen corrected me:

“Burn the path to reshape it.”

Not destruction for its own sake—but clearing the way. Making room for something new to grow.

And Veltharun dosh’el kai’mir?

“Let the sky weep and flood the path.”

Not a lazy spell to cool off after a day of fieldwork—though I’d used it that way once. I got a long lecture for that. And a punishment: copy the phrase “I will not bend reality to cool off” a thousand times. By hand. With a quill that blotted every fourth word.

She said magic like ours—raw, unfiltered—had to be treated with care. Not used like a hammer when a chisel would do. Not wielded lightly just because it came easily.

And I believed her. Because when Eowlen spoke, the world seemed to listen.

My time with her ended before I knew it. I had reached my twentieth year, nearing my twenty-first. I had changed.

I’m not the boy I was in the fields. Whatever sun I carried on my skin has long since faded—washed away by rain and time spent indoors. I’m pale now. Not sickly, just... soft around the edges. The muscle I built from chores and hauling water is mostly gone. I’m not weak, but my strength lives elsewhere now. In study. In hours spent bent over tomes, learning to shape the world with words instead of a shovel.

My hair’s still black, longer than it used to be. I let it grow—part forgetfulness, part comfort. Sometimes I tie it back. Sometimes I don’t. It hides me when I need hiding.

My eyes are brown—ordinary, I suppose. But people say there’s something watchful in them. Like I’m always listening. Even when I’m quiet.

I’ve always been slim, but now I look more like someone made of pages than bone. I don’t mind. I used to carry myself like I was trying to prove I belonged—chest high, shoulders squared, like someone who took up space on purpose. These days, I just try to move like myself—whoever that is.

I still don’t know what shape I’m supposed to be. But the feeling’s there, under the skin. Restless. Waiting.

The magic helps. Not just because it gives me purpose, but because when I use it—when I speak the words—I feel something shift. Something settle. Like the world remembers me better than I remember myself.

After my graduation—when I was officially named a Journeyman Hedge Mage—I was told I could chart my own path. Eowlen said I was free to study, to travel, to earn coin helping those who needed it. I could leave Bramblehold behind, if I wanted.

But I didn’t.

I told myself it was caution. That I needed more time. That I was being sensible. But the truth was simpler: I didn’t feel ready.

I had all the skill I was supposed to. The magic came easily—too easily, sometimes. Eowlen once called me an ever-flowing chalice, said I could speak more words of power than most dared dream. But that didn’t quiet the voice in me that kept asking: What now?

She told me confidence would come with practice. That time would do what teachers couldn’t.

But time passed. I practiced. I studied. And the feeling didn’t fade. If anything, it grew heavier.

I knew the spells. Their meanings, their shapes, their histories. But some part of me still felt unfinished. Like I’d built the scaffolding of a house without ever deciding what belonged inside.

That feeling... began to change when I met Elira.

It wasn’t some fated encounter—no celestial signs, no hidden prophecy. Just an accident. A stupid, frustrating, mildly humiliating accident.

I was on my way to the apothecary with a sealed satchel of powdered glowroot—freshly ground, volatile if mishandled, but mostly just messy. Eowlen had warned me not to carry it loose in my bag, but I’d been in a rush that morning and thought, What’s the worst that could happen?

The worst, as it turned out, was me tripping on a cobblestone outside the west gate and launching the entire satchel into the air. It burst open on impact, engulfing me in a fine, shimmering yellow cloud that clung to everything—my robes, my hair, even my teeth.

Glowroot dust glows. That’s the entire point. And I looked like I’d lost a duel with a candle.

I was still coughing and swearing when a voice behind me said, “You know, most people use vials for that.”

I turned, squinting through the haze—and there she was. Pale cloak. Sun-burnished skin. Copper braid pulled over one shoulder.

She had the kind of smile you couldn’t quite tell was kind or mocking until it was too late.

“Do you always make such an entrance?” she asked.

“No. No, normally there are doves too—but they had the day off,” I said, trying to feel even a little less embarrassed.

“You’re lucky I have a counteragent for glowroot,” she replied with a small laugh. “Though fair warning—considering what’s in it, it’ll taste awful.”

“Considering I’m meeting my old teacher later today, I’ll take ‘awful’ over the disapproving stares. Though, knowing her, she probably already knows.”

I brushed myself off and followed the stranger—who I’d soon learn was named Elira—toward her laboratory.

She specialized in botany magic, with an uncanny knowledge of which magical—or even mundane—plants could trigger, calm, or counteract an effect. The mixture she used on me combined Dewshade Fern, Emberleaf Mint, and Whisperbloom Petals.

Emberleaf on its own was fine—I’d had it in tea before. But combined with the other two, the result smelled somewhere between spoiled cabbage and cow pie.

She helped me wash off the glowroot, and then we sat and talked. And kept talking. We went on for hours, trading stories about our lives before Bramblehold—my memories of being feared by the villagers back home, her stories of the side-eyes and whispers she got after diagnosing and curing the local medicine woman of a magical affliction no one else had caught.

At some point during that first conversation, someone knocked at the door—an herbal salve request from a traveler passing through. He said little, just that he needed something for torn skin and bruised ribs. Said he’d gotten into “a scrape,” though Elira’s glance at the blade notched into his belt said otherwise.

I fetched tinctures and linen while she worked. I only saw him for a few minutes, but I remember the way he stood—tall, broad-shouldered, with a quiet patience that didn’t quite match the deep scabbed gash running up one arm. There was a scar under his right eye, pale against sun-warmed skin. Not fresh. Healed long ago.

Something about him made me pause.

Not attraction. Not then.

Just… a strange stillness. A thread of longing I couldn’t name.

He nodded to thank me before he left, eyes lingering a moment longer than they had to.

I never got his name.

I left soon after that in time to meet with my old teacher, but not before we made plans to see each other again.

As I walked away, I realized I felt better than I had in a long time. Lighter. Like I’d set something down without knowing I’d been carrying it.

Part of me wondered if this was what love felt like.

But I didn’t quite buy it.

For everything Elira was—and she was brilliant, kind, strange in a way I understood—I didn’t feel that familiar pull. Not the kind I’d felt before, when I’d been drawn to someone like a tide pulling toward shore.

No... this was different. Softer. Quieter. Something deeper, maybe. Or something else entirely.

Whatever it was, I knew I’d have to figure it out—one way or another.

—

We ended up living together. Neither of us could quite explain what drew us to the other—it wasn’t romantic, not exactly—but it felt right. Quietly, unmistakably right. So I moved in.

We slept in separate rooms, separate beds. For reasons neither of us ever said aloud, we didn’t push the bond beyond what it already was. And that worked—for a time. Hedge mages are, for the most part, seen as private and eccentric. No one questioned our sleeping arrangements. No one needed to.

Years passed. And through it all, Elira remained beside me—constant, grounding. A companion in the truest sense. She had her work, I had mine. We shared meals, silence, long talks over candlelight and kettle-warm tea.

I was already grateful for her.

But when the coughing started, I became something else. Dependent. Afraid.

And still—she stayed.