Wren Bonus Story: Wind and Magic (nonbinary Wren)

"I think we're good to go," I call out, walking out to the front of my family's house. Wren and I stopped by to check on the wards this evening, and now the sun is well under the horizon. It gets cold around this time now that we're in Night season, and I shove my hands into my pockets as I go, wishing I'd brought a pair of gloves as my breath makes the faintest little cloud on the air, quickly snatched away on the wind.

I see Wren waiting near the big tree in the front yard, but they don't seem to have heard me. Their hand is raised, moving very slowly as their fingers cycle through a more complex, rapid pattern.

"What are you doing?" I ask when I'm beside them.

They look at me in surprise, like I've pulled them from something I can't see. "Are you done already?"

"Just finished up," I nod, then gesture at their hand frozen in the air. "Did you find a problem?"

"Oh, no," they drop it. "Just passing time with an old hobby. There's a nice breeze tonight, good for alivet... which I admit, I don't know the word for in Common."

"What is it?" I ask interestedly.

"It's from Nosret," they explain. "I don't know how interesting anyone else would find it. It's - well, I suppose you could call it a magical art form."

"Can you show me?"

"Not in its purest form. But for you, I can find a way," they smile, touching my cheek with an affectionate look that makes it hard not to lean in and kiss them right then. "Do you think the neighbors will mind a little light show?"

"I think it'll be fine," I say, a little distracted from the question itself as their hand drifts down to the side of my neck, and a shiver that has nothing to do with the cold comes over me.

"Alright," they turn back to the tree, muttering an incantation under their breath. And then I can see the air. Each current that whips through the trees, broken and reformed by its branches and lifting its leaves in tiny surges. I watch as Wren's hand guides them all, fingers moving in complex motions I now realize are tied to each vein of wind. They lace them together, pull them apart, and channel them into shape after shape, each a more beautiful design than the last. Some loop and tumble like vines, others climb in unison like an intricate tower, and others are fractals that go on and on until they're too small to see.

When they're finished the light dims, but not before they send a final channel of it playfully through my hair. I laugh in delight, and I can tell by their answering smile it's all the reaction they were hoping for.

"It's like a wind-and-magic version of fire spinners," I say, thinking of the Lasan festival. "That was incredible."

"I learned it as a teenager, when I was bored in my lessons," they say, giving the tree a final glance as we head down the walkway to the road. "Had I known I'd be entertaining you with it years later, I might've skipped class altogether."

"Don't worry," I grin, "I'm plenty impressed, no need to time travel on my account... again."

"You say that as though we had much of a choice, last time, with the city crumbling around us."

"When you put it like that, it makes me think I should keep a tether on me just in case," I say, brushing my hand against the barren twigs of a bush that will be covered in yellow flowers two seasons from now. I wince a little as their sharpness pricks at my near-freezing fingers. "Gods, I really should've brought gloves."

"It might take awhile to find spare temporal artifacts," they say, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. "But I can warm you up in the meantime, at least."

"I'd rather have that, anyway," I smile back, sinking into the warmth of their hand with a content sigh and dreaming of the hot spiced drinks waiting for us back at the Archives.