Of Strength and Calling

And then –again– the crunch of hurried steps in the snow. This time, slower.
“What happened?”

Buck and Jeana appeared from within, their faces clearly alarmed.

Buck’s eyes were green like Tavian’s, but Jeana’s… Jeana’s carried a blueish violet hue.

“Hello,” Fawks blurted, unable to help himself.

Their expressions softened a little as they greeted him back.

“This is Fawks, and this is Elias –” Bard began, but Cecile cut across him.

“It is ready!”

“Finally,” Bard exclaimed.

“How do you do?” Elias offered his own greeting.

They sat together. Cecile filled five wooden bowls, and hands passed them round until everyone held one. Steam curled up from the bowls, drifting into the night air, a fragile warmth against the bitter cold. The first mouthful nearly burned Elias’s lips, but the cold had numbed them so much he hardly felt it. The soup was rich, hearty – so good that every swallow warmed his insides. By the time he reached the bottom of the bowl, he felt he might not need his mantle anymore.

“More, please!” Fawks begged, already scraping clean his bowl – the first to finish.

Then it came again: a roar. Louder, deeper than before. It swept through them, and everyone felt the chill this time – and not from the weather.

Silence followed.

At length Elias asked, “So… how does one go from pale to yellow? Or green? Or blue?”

The fire hissed and spat as Bard leaned forward, his eyes catching the light. “By now you’ve surely noticed… in this world, imagination itself shapes what is real. Theoretically, there’s no limit– because there’s no limit to what can be imagined.

Elias tilted his head, frowning slightly. “But practically?”

Bard exhaled through his nose, slow, almost like he’d been waiting for that. “Practically… there are limits. Not everyone carries the same measure of imagination. Not everyone has the same capacity to shape.”

Fawks squinted into the fire, then blurted, “So – like talent, then?”

“Talent, calling – yes.” Bard nodded. “Tavian, for instance. His gift was music. He didn’t even know it. I always did.” A faint smile flickered over his lips. “That’s mine as well. So Tavian couldn’t paint something here the way Cecile can. Not something that matters, anyway. Not something that would move him forward.”

Cecile, sitting cross-legged with her bowl balanced carefully in her lap, gave a tiny shrug. “It isn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

Bard inclined his head in concession. “True. With her gift, Cecile can summon things so massive –like that rhino you saw earlier– that sometimes they’re… more than she can fully control.”

“It was much bigger than that,” Cecile muttered under her breath, stabbing at her food.

Fawks leaned forward, eyes wide. “Wait – how much bigger?!”

A ripple of laughter softened the edge of the moment, then Bard’s voice cut steady through it. “If, however, someone were to tame such a beast with music… well, then things become easier. Music gives order where raw creation spills over.”

The fire popped again, as though it agreed. Elias glanced at the shifting flames “I see!” His face lit with revelation.

“Careful, though,” Bard warned him. “If anyone overreaches – tries to make something beyond the capacity of their imagination, or beyond their calling – there’s a risk they’ll… fade away.”

“You mean… die?!” Fawks blurted.

“Yes. Die.” Bard said it flatly, with a careless shrug. But Elias caught a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth – a shadow that slipped through before the mask of indifference returned. Perhaps Bard had seen it happen once, and bravado was easier than sympathy.

“Now then.” He cleared his throat, and took a swig from his flask. “To answer your first question – when you use your imagination, when you create, when your works carry meaning, when you make dreams real – that’s when you grow stronger. Your imagination stretches. Your capacity deepens. And…”

“Your eyes change color!” Fawks broke in, catching on.

“Exactly,” Cecile corrected gently. “Your eyes reflect what’s within. And what changes is within. You come to understand who you are, your strength, your purpose… and that’s when the change shows.”

“So one mustn’t push right to the edge of their strength, their capacity…” Elias thought aloud.

“Actually,” Buck said in his deep voice, “pushing yourself to the edge –but not beyond it– may be the fastest way to grow. To find your limits… and to push them wider. But it’s dangerous.”

“Take Cecile, for example,” Bard said. “The first time she tried to summon something as big as the rhino–”

“It was much bigger!” Cecile interrupted.

“Yes. And she collapsed!” Bard finished. “We thought we’d lose her. But the next day she woke stronger than ever… as her eyes now show.”

“That’s when it works well…” Buck spoke again. He looked as though he’d say more, but instead he tipped his flask back and drank. The pause dragged longer than anyone expected.

“Well?” Fawks pressed, fighting sleep as the fire and voices lulled him.

“Yes, sorry…” Buck went on. “If she’d gone even a little further, she might have died of exhaustion. Or vanished outright. Or–” he hesitated, his gaze dropping. “Last time I saw a crater… not this one outside, but another – it was born from a giant sphere of energy, like lightning. At the center was a man who… pushed himself far past his limits. He couldn’t hold on.”

The words hung in the air, heavy as ash. For a moment, no one spoke.

“That is very rare,” Jeana broke the silence, cutting in quickly as she laid a hand on his arm.

Buck gave Elias and Fawks a look that said, Believe me. It happens.

“The more common danger,” Jeana went on, “is collapse from sheer exhaustion. Because it is exhausting…” Her voice faltered just on that word, and the weariness in it said more than her explanation.

Elias studied her eyes. “Can someone go from blue straight to red?”

“That is rarer still,” Jeana observed.

“Impossible,” Bard declared.

“Almost impossible,” Cecile added, stressing the almost.

A roar even louder than before tore through the night, followed by a violent shudder of the ground, as if something colossal had just leapt in their direction from far away.