Batshit Mages - 5. Farewell Flower

"Can I talk to you?" Kjeld asked. He looked serious in a downcast way, standing in the laboratory's doorway like that. "In private." He peered around the room. A lot was moving and making noise in here, but none of it was caused by a living being. In fact, the quietest thing in here was probably Teague himself, who had only been watching three burners and taking notes on a rack of vials whose contents looked very much like blood. He only looked up once to acknowledge Kjeld's presence before refocusing his attention on his clipboard and the bubbling liquids in front of him. The voiced request made him look up again and nod after a few seconds.

Why would Kjeld even ask? They talked all the time. And it was usually in private anyway.

"It's alright, come in," he said when Kjeld seemed to hesitate. This laboratory was off limits for most students. Only those assisting a teacher or an archmage were allowed to enter and touch anything in here. "No one is coming down here tonight," he added to reassure him.

Careful not to brush against anything, Kjeld slid closer through the rows of tables and cabinets.

"What are you doing?" He nodded to the vials and the flasks on the burners.

"Just keeping the chart up to date." Teague showed his sheet with columns of runes scribbled on it. "On the variety of effects of the sieve spell on blood when it's cast in different -" He trailed off as he saw Kjeld nodding and absently stroking a stuffed rabbit. Why people pointlessly asked questions they didn't want an answer to was still an unsolved mystery to Teague. He took the rabbit away from under Kjeld's hand and placed it back into its cabinet with the other dead animals. When he turned back, Kjeld looked embarrassed. He scratched his cheek with a shy smile.

"You wanted to talk," Teague reminded him as he turned back to his vials.

"Yes..." Kjeld cleared his throat. Something started popping and sizzling softly, and Teague whipped around to turn down the flame under one of the flasks. "I'd like to ask..." Kjeld began, as Teague bent low over the table to squint at the small fire with a very focused frown to adjust it... just... so. Kjeld watched him uncertainly. "Can you please..." Teague prodded the tiny brazier with a taper. "Will you please look at me!"

The sharp bang that sounded just then made both of them jump.

"No! No no no, please, no..." Teague looked up over his flasks to another row of desks, where one of five creamcoloured balloons had apparently ceased to be. They were each fastened to a slender pipe sitting on top of a weirdly shaped tin can, one for each balloon. The destroyed balloon was now flopping down sadly, sticking to the metal container under it in wet shreds and oozing a thick, dirty-white substance onto the tabletop. Kjeld looked on as Teague rushed over to contain the stuff with a shield spell and push it back into the pipe. When it had crept back inside, Teague reached into a drawer, took out a fistsized block of something that looked like grey rubber, ripped some of it off and stuffed it into the pipe opening. The rest of the block went back into the drawer.

Teague's head followed suit. At least it looked like it, the way he bent over the table and banged his forehead on it.

Kjeld looked over and around the cabinet that separated them.

"... I'm sorry," he whispered, convinced that his slightly raised voice had been the cause of this mishap.

Teague let out a breath that sounded like a sigh before he lifted his head and straightened up again. He wiped his face with a sleeve and walked back around to the flasks and vials.

"That wasn't you," he said. After checking the heat under the flasks one more time, he pushed the rack of blood vials and the accompanying clipboard aside to make some room on the table. He pulled himself up to sit on it. "So what is it?" He wiped over his eyes again and looked at Kjeld.

Kjeld stayed visibly embarrassed and sort of chewed on his lips before he spoke.

"... Are you familiar with floral semantics?"

Teague blinked.

"... What? Floral semantics?" He had to force back a laugh and opted for squeezing his mouth shut instead. Kjeld sighed nervously and scratched his arm for no real reason.

"The meanings of flowers," he clarified in a mortified mumble.

"No, not really. Why?" How very peculiar. Teague's halfsmirk was still mirthful, but immensely curious as well.

"Because I got a flower as a message and don't know how to interpret it."

"Well, maybe it's not that subtle, maybe it's just that someone really likes you?" Teague guessed amusedly. Kjeld could not look at him directly and started occupying his hands with random tools in his reach. He rummaged in a drawer and examined the glass sticks and spoons in it with great interest. He cleared his throat.

"Well, but you see, I happen to know that already, that this person likes me. And I know that it is that subtle. I know it means something, but I don't know what. I just thought you could demystify me." He shrugged. Teague observed him curiously out of the corner of his eyes. His friend was usually around him in their spare time, whenever they studied, during mealtimes, virtually all the time that was not spent in courses, lectures, experiments and seminars. He seemed very sociable, he was congenial and friendly, intelligent, knowledgable, generous, helpful, funny, handsome... but Teague had never noticed him paying another person any sort of particular, intimate attention. Had he missed something important, something interpersonal between his friend – his first and only friend – and someone else?

"You have a secret admirer?" he guessed.

"No." Kjeld twirled a twopronged glass fork between his fingers so that it glinted lazily in the yellow light. "It's not really secret. And I wouldn't call her an admirer." He angled the fork to throw two tiny rainbow patches onto the tabletop.

"That's not much of an explanation."

"It's a long story."

Teague was not sure if he wanted to hear a long story about a mystery woman who gave his friend subtle messages in the shape of flowers. He shrugged.

"What flower is it?" he offered, with nothing better to say or ask.

"A yellow rose."

A rose. Teague resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but barely. A mystery woman who gave his friend subtle messages in the shape of a single rose. Splendid.

"Roses usually mean affection," he said with a shrug. "Red means passionate love, white something with innocence, I think, pink love or something, and yellow is probably friendship. I'm not sure." He shrugged again, mostly out of embarrassment. "There might be a book about bad juvenile poetry where you can look it up," he added for good measure, not really knowing why, and regretting it instantly. Kjeld's serious and somehow very grown up, calm look as he looked at him made him avert his gaze in shame.

When he dared to look back again, he noticed that Kjeld's eyes seemed thoughtful rather than accusing. They looked as if they were contemplating Teague's face and staring through it at the same time.

"Then I'm right," he murmured after a while. "She's saying farewell."

Teague was not sure whether he should say anything. He was not sure whether what he was being presented with made much sense at all. Kjeld's not-secret non-admirer with the long story had decided to be his friend and that meant farewell? Teague was well aware that he was no expert on relationship matters, but he highly doubted that a more socialised person could make more sense of this than he did.

Kjeld put the glass fork back into the drawer and pushed himself off of the edge of the table. "Thank you. That was actually helpful." He smiled warmly, but in a serious way, and started moving back to the door.

I should ask for the long story. That seemed like the right thing to do, the thing that was expected and maybe correct, something that would nurture their friendship and make Kjeld feel closer to him eventually, which Teague wanted, but on the other hand he really did not want to hear the story. He wanted to know it, but not listen to it. The thought of it alone made him queasy somehow, it made his stomach feel light and unhinged and his head float and swim in an unpleasant way that was unfamiliar to him. He also knew that it would pester his mind from now on and distract him and that he would eventually ask for it anyway, but he really did not want to.

By the time he was about halfway through this almost conscious contemplation of his confused state of mind – that in itself was irritating and confusing on its own, because not understanding was something he was not used to – Kjeld had already left the room.

It was very late when Teague finally knocked on Kjeld's door.

Hesitantly and timidly.

The late hour was owed to an unsuccessful attempt at not caring about the long story while lying in bed and expecting sleep. He had to know. To give himself peace, to take away the distraction of the mystery and the nagging supposition that not asking would offend Kjeld or hurt him and ultimately their friendship, the guilt of not asking and trying not to care, the irritating confusion of not understanding something which Teague suspected to be his own feelings, the vague guilt from brushing off Kjeld's earnest request in that awkwardly derisive manner that afternoon, and...

When no answer came, he knocked again, just a wee bit more resolutely.

The door opened slowly and a sleepy-eyed Kjeld with an uncustomary ponytail blinked at him out of the near-dark. He smiled slowly.

"Hello," he said softly. "What is it?"

"You sleep in your dayrobes?" Oh, his uncanny knack for pointing out the most irrelevant – Teague frowned at himself.

Kjeld looked down himself. "I just threw this on."

"Why? Are your nightclothes -" Just shove it, idiot, you're supposed to apologise and say your greeting and then apologise again, and then maybe ask for the bloody story so you can get back to bed and maybe sleep.

"... My nightclothes are nonexistent," Kjeld explained with a placid smile when Teague failed to finish his remarkably pointless inquiry.

"Uh." Yes, very intelligent. Now apologise and ask already!

"What's wrong?" Kjeld asked again, slightly more awake now.

"... I can't sleep." Obviously. You used to pride yourself in one thing. It's called intelligence.

"I can see that." Kjeld smiled amiably. He stepped aside and nodded into the room. It looked like an invitation.

"I'm sorry for waking you up." Teague stopped walking when he reached the foot of Kjeld's bed, where he slowly turned around to face him. Kjeld himself closed the door and shuffled back to the bed to sit on it. He smiled at Teague in a sort of comfortable way and nodded sideways. He rested his chin on a hand and looked at him.

"I couldn't sleep," Teague began awkwardly – yes, we've settled that – "because I don't understand the flower message thing." He had no idea what to do with his hands, which were starting to itch in a nonphysical, fizzy way, and ended up shoving them into his wide sleeves like an old acolyte to have them out of sight, at least. "What's the story?" he demanded.

Kjeld smirked. "Why are you so nervous? I won't bite your head off for waking me up." His voice was still raspy.

"But it's impolite of me. And that's not the – I think I should ask – maybe tomorrow –"

"Sit down." Kjeld patted the bedcover he was sitting on. "I'll tell you about the flower message thing."

Teague rounded the bedpost, kicked off his slippers and climbed onto the warm bed in the night gloom, at a safe arm's length from calmly smiling Kjeld with the raspy voice, sleepy eyes and nothing under that single layer of robe. He kept his hands clasped around his forearms in his sleeves.

Kjeld took a little while to stare at Teague's robecovered knee absently before he began.

"You know I'm already a warmage. A veteran. So... I shouldn't need to come here to study."

Teague nodded.

"The main reason for coming here is that I've been exiled. I'm exiled from Ordara for practicing spirit magic. I know you don't believe in it, so this will sound ridiculous to you." Kjeld's gaze wandered from Teague's knee to his face and stayed there, calmly. "I started dabbling in it after I came back from the war, for the same reason that everyone has – to contact the dead. One person in particular. I was pulled when – well, maybe I should have said this first... I was married. My wife was an infantry captain in a stupid, pointless prestige campaign to win back Ardenshin. It's a ruin of an ancient city, basically a pile of rubble with some old temple pillars covered by forest. It has no... it's not defensible, and it has no strategic value, it's literally just a ruin with a legendary name, and it was utterly pointless. The whole mission." He paused. "Everyone knew that it was a suicide mission. So... as ordered... she led her sword dancers into certain death..." He rubbed his chin as his gaze dropped to Teague's knee again. "... After that, I was pulled for home leave and offered a discharge, which is normal procedure, and during that time, I started... trying out spirit magic. It worked. And I've stayed in contact with her until... now. Of course I was found out and thrown out of Ordara... Well, uhm..."

"You stayed in contact with your wife?" Teague frowned. During this telling he had leaned forward slightly. This situation had taken on a dreamlike atmosphere to him. The dusty moonlight from the small windows, the general hush of the night surrounding them and the unexpected and to him, unreal, content of this tale made him wonder vaguely whether he had not managed to fall asleep after all. "How?"

"What do you mean? There are no manuals. Spirit magic is –"

"I mean, did you talk to her? Is she a ghost? Do you have visions of her?"

"Hm, we leave each other messages..." Kjeld looked at Teague pensively. "It is... ghostlike, yes. I think, yes. She's a ghost... But she's different. Distracted, somehow. Distant... We've been something like pen pals the whole time." At Teague's quizzical frown he took on one of concentration to explain. "I set up a kind of summoning ritual. Only instead of a demon I get a foggy picture or shredded sounds. Sometimes random objects. If you get it right you can have proper conversations with spirits. For example, I've been telling her about my life, about you. And –" He rubbed his chin again. "Yeah..."

Teague waited, but he did not continue. Kjeld just sort of stared at him like he had in the laboratory, looking through and at him at the same time.

"What about the yellow rose?" Teague tried after a long moment of enduring that vague stare.

"She sent me the rose. I had no idea what it could mean."

"Now you do? She was your wife and now she wants to be friends with you?" Teague was no less confused than before. Kjeld, however, smiled quietly.

"No. She's said goodbye. The flower was her final reply." He looked and sounded utterly peaceful.

"How do you know? If I'm right it stands for friendship."

"Exactly. Not love, but friendship."

"... I still don't..." Teague bit his lip. He could not make sense of this but dared not ask again. By now he seemed to be interrogating Kjeld, and that was not something he cared to do.

"When I managed to contact her the first few times, she agreed to be there whenever I called her, for as long as I needed her," Kjeld explained. "That made the summonings easier, and the communication. That she was willing to be called. But her willingness is bound to my – the willingness of a spirit to appear, the success of a spirit summoning, depends on how forceful and focused your intent as the summoner is. You know how it works. With spirit magic, it has less to do with mana than with willforce and emotion. Theoretically, you don't need to be a mage at all to summon a spirit. Though it makes it easier."

Teague nodded. "Why the farewell then? Is her willingness gone because you're not focused enough anymore?"

"You could say that." Kjeld's smile turned a tiny bit mischievous. Or it just looked like that to Teague in this obscure light.