Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: Went to the river with my best friend and my church this weekend. It was pretty awesome, especially since I haven't gone to the river for like three years. The water was freezing, but we still had fun.
Also went to go see Cowboys and Aliens. What an amazing movie, though it was probably less funny than we thought it was. Too many inside jokes.
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A friend accepts us as we are yet helps us to be what we should. ~Author Unknown
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"What is that?" Kratos asked as he closed the door to their room behind him. His legs felt like lead, but his arms no longer shook from so much training. He took it as a sign of his getting stronger, but that didn't mean he liked going to bed bone-tired every night.
Yuan looked up from the thick book on his lap that he had been studying with a single-minded kind of focus that only Yuan could achieve. It was the same focus that had allowed Yuan to learn to read and write so quickly. "The old man gave it to me. Said that magic is a lot of studying."
Kratos toed off his muddy boots before sitting beside him, reading curiously over his shoulder. The pages were yellowed, the ink fading. Intricate diagrams and worn sketches decorated the pages. "It's beautiful."
Yuan glanced up at him. "You don't even know what you're looking at."
"I don't have to know to think it's beautiful, do I? And besides, it's magic." Kratos said that like it explained everything.
Which, to Yuan, it did. "Yeah, yeah it is." Yuan paused, studying the pages more closely. They felt familiar under his fingertips, though he knew he had never seen such things before in his life. "…These circles, they feel almost alive. Does that make sense to you?"
Kratos shook his head. "No. But then, I can't use magic."
"I wish I could teach you. I think you'd like it."
"Watching you will just have to be enough. Is it easy to understand?"
"The theories are a bit hard, but nothing impossible. The old man said that most magicians never instinctively know magic."
"But…?"
Yuan shrugged a little. "Well, I only used it once by accident and it wasn't even very big magic. It was when the humans came to our village. They-they grabbed me and I…I panicked. I shocked the two that had grabbed me."
Kratos stared at him. "Shocked?"
"Yeah. Like with electricity? It wasn't anything too bad, but it made him let go for a few seconds." Yuan kept his gaze focused on the page before him. He had never told anyone that before.
But Kratos only smiled. "That just means you're a natural! I bet you're gonna be able to do amazing magic one day."
"If I do, you'll be the first to know." Yuan promised.