When Hepalonia wakes up on the final day of the caravan trek from South Tower to Weldyn, she is in a grumpy mood with a mild headache still lingering from the ambush. She wonders why she feels so off and whether there might actually be something wrong with her head. Maybe she has a concussion from getting hit in the face by the mud. Or maybe all that casting in the fight hurt her brain somehow… Even if it is just a bad mood, it occurs to her that magic might be able to help. Potions have improved Sir Marthynec’s trauma-induced mental state, and whatever Mother did to Daddy got rid of his severe depression.
Unable to resist a good experiment, particularly since it is putting no one else at risk, Heppa decides to try magically healing her ailment. She reaches out for fae energy, and it gets a little out of control as she funnels it through herself. Although her headache clears up and the general malaise fades, she feels a bit scorched internally from redirecting all the excess energy she drew in. This is not the first time she has hurt herself when trying to heal; on her day out with Alric, her attempt to magically sober up went similarly awry.
On the other side of Butterbell, Tric perks up and cranes his head around, trying to pinpoint what he just felt. It was not really a physical sensation, but whatever happened was centered on the other side of the pony, where his cousin is. Farther down the caravan, Tric sees Tomos also looking around curiously. In the other direction, young Ffion is doing likewise. She is several carts ahead, but he can hear her exclaiming, eyes wide, “I just felt something magical! And I didn’t even get to school yet!” Given all this, Tric is confronted with the fact that he himself must also be attuned to magic in some sense. I guess the gift of the gab really is magic. Hunh.
Tric ducks around Butterbell and assesses his cousin. She looks oblivious, rather than confused like he is. The caravan is moving along slowly enough that she is able to hold her map and scribble on it as they walk. Oh, maybe it was some sort of human-based magic, and Heppa didn’t sense it. “Heppa, did you feel that just now? Did you feel anything?”
“No. What was it? I was busy healing myself,” she tells him.
“I don’t know what it was. There was just…,” Tric stumbles over his words, trying to articulate the sensation. “Have you ever been hit by a wave of water, but there was no water there, just the mist, and it’s like FWOOOSH! And you look around…”
Heppa glances up at the relatively clear sky. “You think it’s going to rain?”
“No, no, there’s no water,” Tric clarifies. “Did you do anything else while you were healing? Could there be some sort of signaling component to druidic healing?” What he felt could have been a beacon.
“I just did a normal healing,” Heppa insists. “What did you sense?”
“It was like a wind, but you can’t feel it on your face,” he tries again. “But you can feel it.”
“I probably didn’t notice because I was weaving fae energy for the healing.” Heppa is a little disappointed that she missed something magically interesting. “Did I look really distracted? Did I lose time?”
Tric shrugs. “I wasn’t really paying attention until I felt it.” He sees Tomos headed their way, and another analogy occurs to him. “You know how with human magic, there’s always a bright flash of light? There wasn’t one here, but it was that kind of signal.”
“I didn’t observe anything,” Heppa tells her cousin. “I wasn’t paying attention to the material world; I did pull a bit too much energy. But also, it was a head wound, so I wasn’t able to fully pay attention. Do you think there’s a spellcaster around here somewhere? Is that what you’re saying? Like a mage?”
Tric gets a sinking feeling that Heppa herself created the magical effect he sensed. Glammur once warned him that their mutual gift of the gab has a tendency to draw negative attention sometimes. It is now looking like other types of magic can do that too. Magic is not merely an internal affair, he concludes. Whenever they do magic, regardless of the type, they are taking a chance of making their presence known on a broader scale. Heppa is, after all, pulling from some sort of pool of fae energy. Humans are doing something with some other energy reserve. Tric and Glammur, well, they are not just talking, they are talking up a storm of some sort. Magic is likely not always the best choice, and not just because of reliability.
“Maybe it is something that they would have covered in an advanced sorceress class,” Tric tells Heppa, “but it was very obvious that something was coming from you.”
“Oh, you think I did it?”
“It wasn’t negative vibes,” Tric rushes to reassure Heppa. “It was like a refreshing breeze for just a moment… Slightly minty…”
“I didn’t—Wait! You could sense magic?!” Heppa has long wondered what avenues of magic might be open to her half-human cousin.
“It must be my elvish heritage,” Tric insists.
“Maybe I pulled even more fae energy than I realized…” Heppa murmurs.