I'd been alone for a very long time when she arrived on Castanet, it seemed. It had been many years since I'd been on speaking terms with the Witch Princess and many years before that even that my Master had passed on to the next realm. The world had ceased to interest me and I was absorbed with worlds beyond ours, with the stars…
The sky was the object of my fascination during the hours of darkness and books and potions filled my mornings. Occasionally villagers came to see me, beseeching me for a remedy or to gaze into the heart of the one that they desired. I found this troublesome, that they would trouble a great wizard such as myself with trivial matters such as fortune telling. Did they think that was all I was capable of? In my younger years I would have perhaps been upset by the assumption that I was so weak at magic. I would have performed feats such as levitation, telekinesis, altering the weather, or starting fires with my bare hands. But I was an old man now – though I didn't look it, older than any other human in the region – and their underestimation of my power did nothing more than tire me. So I would fill my evenings, lock my doors through the mornings, and leave a few hours in the afternoon open to whoever might seek my help. I was, almost entirely, absorbed by my musings.
Some time after the new girl, Angela as I had gathered, moved into the area, she came to see me. For a reason that I cannot discern I felt a little irritated when it turned out that she had only come to ask me for help, just like all the others. Perhaps it was because in lazily viewing my crystal ball I had seen that she took time out of her day to meet and even visit every other villager. Yet again, I supposed that I wasn't quite a villager. Angela, as it were, needed my help in finding the Witch Princess. There was something about Castanet's bells mixed in to her pleading, the green one to be exact. I sighed and turned my head to gaze deeply into the text that I had been reading at the time while she continued rambling on.
"You went to the Witch's house… Was there… a frog?..." I said in a voice that was dusty with time unused. I had been with the With Princess at the time that it had happened. The Harvest Goddess was losing power, and quickly. The people of Castanet had forgotten about her it seemed, despite being the people closest to the Goddess Tree, and her waning power was only noticed by us magical being. The Goddess was too weak at this point to revive herself or even to talk to us and the Witch Princess thought that she could cast a spell to bolster the power of the Goddess. Naturally I warned her that such a maneuver was destined to fail or worse, backfire. But the Witch Princess, being the haughty little thing that she'd always been, denied that such a thing could happen. Lo and behold, she'd been transformed into a frog and hopped sullenly home before she even finished the incantation. I'd returned to my home, knowing full well that there was nothing I could do for the goddess and being just the slightest bit happy that the Witch would be trapped as a frog for a while.
"Oh, um, yes, there was a frog… A rather noisy one actually…" Angela said, slightly flustered now. She seemed to be wondering why I wasn't more concerned I assumed. My comment about the frog also seemed to have confused her slightly.
"Well… That would be the Witch Princess… I'll need to make a potion… if you want her to be restored to her human form…" I said tiredly, rubbing my eye with my free hand and looking down at her.
"How long will that take!?" Angela interjected, looking a little worried now. I sighed patiently and thought over my options. I didn't really want to bring the Witch back, she was such a pain, but Angela seemed desperate to get the bell. From what I had seen through my crystal ball Angela needed to ring the bells with the Harvest Sprites in order to return some of the Harvest Goddess's power. Reviving the Goddess was an honorable cause, one that perhaps only Angela could do. I had told the truth when I told Angela that this would require a potion. Using an incantation instead would be more dangerous, not to mention require magical drawings all over the Witch's floor, which she would no doubt not appreciate.
"The potion…" I said slowly, still thinking, "will require some rather rare ingredients… I don't have time to search for them myself… You'll have to get them for me… I'll need… Good Cornmeal… Perfect Butter… and a Hibiscus flower…" Angela seemed a little taken aback at this, so I looked into her eyes and continued. "Did you expect that I would simply whip up a potion for you?... I'm a busy man… Bring me the ingredients and I will make the potion… I have many things to do in the meantime… Stars to search… Books to read…" After that I started to pretend to ignore her, still standing in front of her but looking back down into my book, but she didn't move for a little while. Her aura felt somewhat irritated now.
"What a hassle…" She muttered under her breath, but I heard her clearly. I peered at her from the corner of my eye; she furrowed her brows then put her hand on her hip while she surveyed my home quickly. The edge of her mouth twitched as she took note of each of my eccentricities, such as the giant telescope on the upper level of my home, the dusty shelves of books, various lists and diagrams tacked to my walls, and the stack of dirty coffee cups that had been pushed onto the corner of my desk. Eventually her eyes landed back on me, looking my choice in appearance up and down. Amusement lit her eyes as she took in my pointed boots, purple robe, and the single braid in my gray hair.
The way she had looked about my room had not bothered me but this dismissal of my attire and hair frustrated me like nothing else. Here was this girl with almost boyishly short hair, light skin which she had allowed to become burnt around the edges, and dirty patched clothes and she dared to look down upon the face of a wizard? Just to see what she would do I turned my head more towards her and put my right hand up to casually brush the hair of my face. Suddenly she couldn't stop staring, a look of intrigue delicately taking up its place on her face as she took in my appearance. My right eye was different than my left, the color of candle light rather than that of green moss. A magical tattoo, given to me by my Master, also held a proud place on the right side of my face. Gracing my high cheekbone and standing out against my dark tan skin was the white marking, a single stripe with three triangles tucked beneath it.
"I don't normally have visitors for the sake of having visitors…" I said softly, the corner of my mouth turning down as my eyes connected with Angela's more strongly. She blushed a little bit at having been called out on still being in my house. "Do you… need something else?" I offered.
"Oh! No! I couldn't possibly ask for anything else. Especially since you just said you'd help me with Witch and everything!" She rushed to say, taking half a step back with one foot.
"Are you sure?..." I continued, shaking my hair back into my face little more. "Most people ask me to look into the hearts of someone that they like… Or perhaps mix up a simple remedy for one thing or another… Just easy things…" At this point I just sincerely wanted to know why it was that she continued to linger rather than choosing to dismiss herself from my presence.
"No… I have no hearts to look into just yet and you certainly couldn't make a remedy for the list of rare ingredients you just gave me to find…" Angela replied in an exhausted voice.
"I see… Well… Good luck with the rest of your day then." I said calmly, though in reality I was irate to have learned nothing more. I nodded my head at Angela and snapped my book closed, moving to set it on my desk and pick up another. In my preoccupied state the book pushed one of the coffee mugs off of my desk and Angela let out a little bit of a squeak just as I threw out my hand and muttered a spell, barely catching the mug in a greenish glow, saving it from shattering on the floor.
"So you can do magic!" She exclaimed in the most surprised voice I'd heard from anyone in a while.
I waved my hand to coax the mug back onto the desk and turned around to look at Angela sternly. "Of course I can do magic you idiot… Why in hell else would I waste my time learning all of the things I do? Not to mention there isn't really any other good explanation for being able to spy on the hearts of others or looking hundreds of years younger than I am…" I said, almost angry at this point. It was a bit unbelievable to me that she would doubt that I could do magic, that doubt was why she had lingered. Not many things caused an emotional response with me anyone, years of being alone had cured me of that, but underestimation of my magical prowess really irritated me. I had grown numb to the people of Castanet treating me as a common fortune teller, but the new girl doubting that I could even do magic at all was a different offence altogether.
"I… I'm sorry… I'll just go now…" Angela said timidly, almost sadly, inching towards the door.
"If that was really what you'd wanted to know. You could have asked." I said, my first truly firm statement of her visit. As she left I threw another phrase towards her, this one dripping with sarcasm in a way I'd almost forgotten I could manage "Please come again." Once the door had shut and her steps had faded away I huffed out a sigh and fell back onto my bed, my hands clutching the sides of my head as I stared up at my ceiling.
No one ever really noticed it, but I had mapped out the stars on ceiling using a gentle sort of magic. The paintings weren't in extreme depth, but they did to a degree show truthfully show the night sky, complete with shifting markings showing many of the constellations. I stared up into them, allowing my thoughts to drift away from the girl who had so stirred up my emotions in a single visit. Solitude was not always as rewarding as interaction, but it was certainly easier… I traced the littler dipper and big dipper with my eyes, and then moved over to Orion's belt…