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"I had an idea..."
The Tale of the Mad Wizard of Imbroglio
By Pukaq
Chapter 4
When I awoke, my parents were in my room, talking quietly. I felt ravenous. The ringing in my ears had stopped but my head still felt a little odd. My parents told me I had slept for 2 days. When I mentioned I was hungry, my mother seemed relieved and rushed off to fix me something.
While she was out of hearing, my dad confronted me asking first how I felt. Then he began to question where I had been and what I had been doing. I did not want to deceive him, but I also did not want to reveal the exact actions that had precipitated my unconsciousness. I told him that I had snuck out of the house to meet Anniu for a night-time adventure. I assured him, when he asked, that neither of us had ingested any strange plants. He told me how worried they had both been when I would not wake up and that the doctor had been in to see me the day before, but he had assured my parents I was completely healthy and that there was nothing he could do at that time.
Over the next few days, other daily matters took higher priority than thoughts of what had happened to me and the incident was quickly forgotten as life returned to normal, but for one personal exception. Whenever I thought about Anniu, I had the feeling that I could point straight to him, even though I could not see him.
We tested it later that evening. Anniu blindfolded me and then while I spun myself around in circles, he changed locations. When I stopped spinning, I raised my arm and pointed to him 10 out of 10 times. He too could find me 10 out of 10 times. Besides this exciting new ability, Anniu too described his head feeling differently inside, but unable to do more about it, we returned to our respective routines vowing to study and consider other possibilities.
* * *
Our studies at this time became much more individualized: Anniu spent most of his time learning as much as possible about magic and alchemy. I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time he made telepathic contact with me. I could hear him talking to me inside my head but I hadn't heard him walk up. I spun around disoriented because while I could sense he was straight ahead of me, he was nowhere to be seen and yet I could hear him. Thinking he was playing a trick on me, I yelled for him to come out from hiding, but he wasn't hiding. When he explained what he'd done, I tried to do the same back to him, but I couldn't. He had discovered a new ability our bond had created.
Things changed for Itilli too. I caught her and Anniu sitting atop The Hill at dusk one evening. Anniu had put his arm around her shoulders and she was resting her head against him. I teased them about it, but when they seemed not to care, it wasn't fun any more.
It was a time of increasing loneliness for me. Even though I had my studies to pursue, reading everything I could get my hands on, more and more Anniu was wandering around looking for things to harvest to use either in his alchemy or magic studies. He could be gone for days at a time - sometimes even as long as a week. Those times were the worst. Sometimes, Anniu would start up a conversation telepathically, but I was continually frustrated by my inability to initiate one with him.
But it didn't really matter all that much anyway. What could I tell him? Nothing much ever seemed to happen to us in Daa Gri. The day-to-day activities seldom altered much. Everyone always went about their business. Big events like births and weddings or the occasional visit of wandering gypsies or peddlers were about all that fell outside the norm. We all had no idea how much our lives were about to change.
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