The Frozen Moon - By J.D. Swinn Page 0,5
ready to fight beside us again.” She shut her eyes in closure of her encounter with them, looking deceitfully calm and innocent. She couldn’t help but imagine that beneath her papery eyelids, the placid and calm ocean waters could soon give way to a violent storm.
On her throne, she looked like a delicate silver flower, frail yet beautiful; a sort of art that one locks behind glass and protects from the slightest of wind. She wondered if the Moon faeries were so apt at war for the defense of their fragile queen. As they turned to exit the clearing, she could feel the stares of the guards boring into her back. They crossed the entranceway of the throne room, and night once again fell on them; severing the bond they had shared for a moment with the faerie kind. The night air felt surprisingly cool around them, as she hadn’t realized that it had grown so cold. The clearing had been a sort of bubble outside of reality where time and conditions of the mortal world had no bearing.
“See, I told you they were kind of intense,” laughed Max.
“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me anything about their traditions. I’m not entirely sure what just happened.”
“To put it bluntly, you just got knighted,” he said. “They gave both of us a mark of the tah, which I don’t think has ever been done before – given to a human, I mean. We can’t actually bear the mark, because you can’t bear any other mark along with the Shask, so she gave us…whatever she gave us.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the token.
It was a pendant of sorts, crafted from the finest white-silver she had ever seen. All at once, the symbol was delicate and powerful: made of sweeping lines and sharp corners blended together. When she saw it, she couldn’t read it the way she could read the Warlock’s book; it was an ancient faerie language, she guessed.
She pulled her own token from the pocket of her belt. It was cool, as if it had been left in the snow and had only just been picked up again, though it had rested close to her skin for some time. The similarities between the two symbols was clear; they were both made of the same sweeping lines and corners, but hers seemed familiar, as though she had created the symbol herself or seen it in a dream. It seemed to call to her, as if it desperately wanted to tell her the message it cocooned within the metal, but she could not quite understand. She strung her talisman around her neck, instantly feeling that it had become a part of her. She watched Max do the same, fumbling with the intricate fastener. He looked up to see her watching him with an amused smile. He returned her smile embarrassedly, and for just a moment, she saw a glimmer of the Max she had seen earlier that night.
“So, what are you?” she asked as a sudden thought.
“What am I? Well, that’s kind of broad. Let’s see, 5”11’, blond hair, blue eyes, Protestant…shall I continue?”
“Hmm, Protestant; didn’t see that coming. I meant, what’s your talent? You said I was a Listener, what are you?”
“See, that’s more specific. I’m what they call a Senser, that basically means I can feel magic more exactly than other Markbearers. I can sense exactly how many Children of the Spark are in Central Park right now, for instance, or how many humans will be waiting for us when we return to the Academy. I can also sense how much magic is in the marks the Queen gave us: a hell of a lot if you were wondering. It’s hidden magic, though, most people won’t be able to sense it. Unfortunately, we can’t use it until we figure out what they mean; or, that’s how normal marks of the tah work.”
“Apparently, you’re not a very good Senser,” she said playfully.
“Why do you say that?” he asked almost defensively.
“Because, I tailed you for over a half an hour, and you couldn’t shake me, or determine who or what I was.”
“Sensing is not that exact.” He looked at her with a convincing glance.
“Why didn’t I know immediately that I was a Listener?”
“Most people take a while to figure out what they are; it usually presents itself in some situation of need. For example, Talar and I found out we were Sensers when we were on a training run. We