The Incredible Magicians of Eterna

[MessengerOfDreams]

"Perhaps the greatest illusion of all that a magician can pull is to fool people, including themselves, into thinking that magic doesn't exist."


Stella looked over the wonder of her namesake during a quiet midnight. The stars glistened back at her happily, merely dots in the sky from her view but still magnificent nonetheless. She shivered from the cold, wrapping her arms around her knees and huddling into herself. Despite the bracing cold, she still smiled, honored that even as dust in the wind she could share in the company of something far beyond her comprehension.

The emerald grass underneath her parted way as she relaxed, lying down on the ground beneath her. Her green irises matched the grass as she observed the millions of tiny blades of green just within her sight. Trillions more surely appeared around the world, taken for granted by the rest of the world but adored by someone like her. Oh, how incredible would it be to be a centimeter high, walking through a forest of grass that never ended!

The idea caused her to shiver. She already felt so tiny as it were. Any smaller and she feared she would disappear.

Chilled again, she stood up, moving her long raven black hair out of her face. She walked down to the creek at the bottom of the hill, lit up by the embers of light in the blue sky. She drew her sights downstream, where the body of water parted large pine trees between it some thousands of years ago, probably, when the ancestors of the very trees overshadowing the small but steady water were mere saplings in the dirt, waiting decades just to become prominent. Stella sighed, almost romantically, just to fancy what an incredible world she lived in.

She stared down into the creek, feeling incredibly unimpressive in comparison. Her green eyes stared down at themselves, self-critical in her reflection as in their true form. She certainly wasn't anything special, not compared to all this wonder. She was just a girl, a young woman in a world much too large for her. She didn't look very special, with her bony legs and her average physique and her none-too-special colorless hair and her pale, cracked lips, none too accustomed to talking. Her clothes were plain and flat, faded from many uses and outdoor explorations. There were probably millions of girls like her, and millions still better than her. She was just lucky to be alive and well, and sometimes she wondered if that was all she had going for in the grand scheme of things.

She sighed as the sparse clouds in the sky seemed to echo her spirits, beginning to rain down on her. She was reminded that just in the course of a few minutes enough raindrops would be shed to outnumber the amount of people in the world, and they would disappear in just a moment, just like all living things. She decided that she would just go home, and with a sigh, she huddled up in her coat and started the trek uphill and back inside to her small, lonely cottage.

When she arrived, she found that even though the clock struck one, she could hardly call herself tired. Instead, she reached into her jacket pocket to pull out a familiar friend- a small notepad, one that was barely larger than her hand. She took a seat on the couch in her living room, dug a dull-edged pencil out from between the cushions and decided that now would be an opportune time to write.

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As usual, and sometimes I think to my chagrin, when I hit the ground below the water tower, I don't feel anything more than a dull pain, and I'm easily able to pull myself to my feet. I sigh as I work out my achy muscles and realize that my escape was not to be today. At this rate, whatever power I have feels more like a weakness keeping me tied to an oppressive life.

"That was incredible."

I gasp, searching around me. Had one of the foremen discovered me? It would make sense considering I'm somewhat out in the open. I could only pray it was not; I couldn't stand to go another week without food, even if starvation wouldn't kill me. Especially because starvation wouldn't kill me for a few months. By the time I'm finished, I realize that I don't see anyone. That concerns me more than anything.

"Up here, goofball."

By instinct, I look up towards the water tower, wondering if whoever was speaking to me had seen me jump. No one's there, so I look around in the skies again. To my surprise, although not as much as one would expect, I see a clean shaven young man floating in the skies against a stack of boxcars, almost reclining against it despite sitting on nothing but air. He's dressed in the same gray jumpsuit I am, so I can easily determine that he's indentured to the same company I am. Yet, I don't think I've ever seen him before; surely I'd recognize his startlingly orange eyes and his cropped red haircut.

I decide not to portray too much shock. It'd be nearly hypocritical at this point considering I just got up from a hundred foot jump. "Well! You're pretty incredible yourself."

"Aw, this?" He gestures to the sky around him. "Pretty neat, I guess. It's nothing quite like you, though. You could take a bullet in the head and sneeze it out."

"Yeah, some blessing," I snort. "In this place death's the best escape you can get. Perhaps the only escape."

"Not quite true," he counters, descending from his perch until he's on his feet again across from me. "You see, you'd never guess what I'm in the middle of doing."

He's grinning ear to ear with pride, and I can't help but return it. "Now that," my voice becomes a whisper, "that is pretty incredible."

He nods, cheeks blushing to a color somewhere between his maroon hair and starlight orange eyes. "Utafna," he introduces himself.

What an unusual name, I think. "Eilifa," I reply.

He grins, holding out his hand. "So, Eilifa, are you willing to take a risk? You see, kids like us aren't the type that deserves to be cooped up here. Are you willing to finally take that risk of escaping?"

Before he's even finished, I've already taken his hand. "Without a doubt," I declare.

He winks and, before I'm quite certain of what's going on, he leaps and begins to ascend into the sky, away from the oppressive shipyards and into the stars.

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Stella woke up the next morning still sitting on the couch, face down in her small notebook. The pencil was lax between her fingers, near to falling on the ground. She groaned, feeling a ferocious ache in her back and felt several joints pop as she stood up and stretched lazily. When she was sure she wasn't going to snap in half, she mentally prepared herself to get ready to leave.

While she didn't find much of a drive to get out of her house, she was well aware that she was in need of milk and eggs, two foods that were regulars in her refrigerator. She adjusted the coat she had fallen asleep in (still soaked from the brief sprint back into her home during the midnight hour) and tried to straighten out her entangled hair that had fallen over her face during her unexpected slumber. It took her ten minutes of struggle to get her to give up and throw a gray hat on. After she was sure that she was at least decent, she casually threw her notebook and pencil in her jacket pocket and left her house, the light working to force her eyes fully awake.

It felt entirely odd to live in a rustic town that she was just in the outskirts of. Eterna was a town that would never age but at the same time would never grow up, becoming less and less mature from the current state of the world. Every time she rode her silver bicycle through the town, she felt like a time traveler out of a cinema production. She found some relief in her sanity that she was not the only person from the twenty-first century within city limits, with people driving cars, listening to music players and occasionally talking on cell phones. It was a simple reminder that time would move unrestricted, even if cities and people tried to defy it.

It took her twenty minutes to get to the town square, a wide circular fountain just in the center active nearly a half millennia after its inception. Within the stone-carved cream-colored buildings were various marketplaces, whether selling essentials such as food and household products or trivial entertainments like home-made trinket shops or games from either the 15th or 21st centuries. Four paths branched out, one from each side just like a compass, creating just a little bit more of the town before going their own ways, whether to another highway or another city or just to dissolve into grass a mile away. It was a simple, productive and welcome town whose charms were hard to resist.

Stella couldn't imagine living anywhere else. She knew most of the five hundred residents here by name or sight. Everyone was welcome and treated cordially, even the occasionally obnoxious tourist. The rest of the world was just outside, welcome to anyone who dared venture, but Eterna would always be a safe haven for anyone who needed it, just like Stella did.

She noticed that while the ever busy center was already bustling with at least fifty interactive people, the grocer had not opened shop yet, and wouldn't for another fifteen minutes. She sighed, but smiled wistfully as she decided to watch the people from her distant perch on the edge of the fountain, bicycle at her feet.

She could already see Mrs. Lane talking with dear old Jacob, reminiscing of events that took place in the city fifty years ago- most certainly dear but mundane events, as was most of the history within humble Eterna. She could see a group of children playing tag around the fountain, running around the ring but being graciously careful not to run into Stella's bicycle. Their giggles and playful shrieks echoed through the guarding walls. She could also see two teenagers engaged in active, flirtatious chatter of some sort coming in from South Road, clearly finding rare comfort in their company to counteract years that Stella, having barely escaped their throes, knew to be incredibly awkward. She smiled at the goings on in her city, and although she rarely engaged in conversation, she knew that she herself was a small constant in the Eterna town square as well, as the quiet girl with the raven hair who just liked to watch the clockwork-esque goings-on in the lovely place these five hundred people called home.

She pulled out her familiar notebook and flipped to the nearest page with space below a constant stream of words. Smiling, she took out her simple yellow pencil and began to resume writing into it, assured that no one was quite watching.

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I shriek as he pulls me through the skies, feeling an indelible mix of terror and excitement as I finally truly understand the feeling of flight. I look up at the boy whose company I had become hopefully accustomed to, his smile beaming brighter than the sun and his eyes. I can't possibly understand how any of this was possible, but none of it quite mattered right now. For this moment, I am in a moment of endless youth, flying through the skies with my own Peter Pan in an escape from a world that simply wishes that I will become a hard working woman already. Up here, in the skies, with a boy with no wings teaching a girl who could never be killed how to fly, everything dissipates. We're escapists, blatantly ignoring the world's oppressive and cold industrialism, refusing to return to the factories and work stations we've been forced into, flying until we're so exhausted we can easily fall into the seas and be entirely happy with our conclusion. Utafna and Elifia, two supernatural teenagers finally discovering themselves, children who can someday repair the self-inflicted wounds of the world, but only if they can escape it first. But as I've come to learn, anything is possible.

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She came to a stop, letting the excitement of the moment waver off and return her to the ground as she checked to see if the store was open yet. It was not, and she sighed, stretching her arms and regaining steady breath. Her attempts to calm herself were cut short as she felt her hand hit someone who was apparently adjacent to her. She leapt into the air in surprise, only to trip over her neutralized bicycle and fall on her rear, still entangled with the bike.

She looked up to see a familiar yet unusual person, one she had never spoken to. Dressed in a black sports jacket and black fedora was Arthur, one of the more unusual people in town. He was not freakish or strange, just… unusual. He just an aura around him that was different from anyone else in town, a je ne sais quoi no other boy anyone knew had. Maybe it was just the constant formal attire, maybe it was the way he spoke, maybe it was the way his eyes would drift away from the rest of the town and how his mind would often drift with it. At the moment, Stella didn't care if it was young, unusual Art or the queen of England herself, she was humiliated by her reaction nonetheless. Courteously, Art didn't laugh, just smiled and asked, of all things "Quite a small notebook, wouldn't you say? I could barely read a word you were writing."

As if she wasn't already blushing before, Stella was nearly maroon by now, embarrassedly pleading "Oh my god, please tell me you weren't reading that."

Unfortunately for her, the notebook lay fallen on the granite bench attached to the fountain. Art had already picked it up during her protest and began to read. Panicked, she clambered over her bicycle and tried to grab the tablet out of his hand. He resisted, moving the book over to his right hand as he read to himself, quietly engrossed in the words scribbled on in various writing tools, between blue pen and thin pencil and black ink and the thick lead of the pencil she had already been using.

Furious, she demanded "Give that back to me!" as she lunged for his right arm.

He conceded with a pout as he handed it back to her. "I was just getting to the good part," he whined. "Where the two kids with the cool names were about to fly."

Still embarrassed, she weakly told him "Mind your own business, alright?"

"Whatever you say," he replied, cracking a tiny smile to replace his displeasure. "Do tell me when you get published, though. I love to see a good magician in action."

"A what?" She found herself more confused than embarrassed. "What… I'm not a magician. What are you talking about?"

"Of course you're a magician, just like me," he argued as if it was the simplest thing in the world and required no argument.

"You're a magician?" The argument was not given as Stella found that she was curious of his statement. She knew Art was unusual, and maybe the reason was that he was a wizard from a distant civilization. Maybe he was thousands of years old and maintained an appearance of a twenty year old man. She also had to wonder if this was how he seduced women like her, with outlandish compliments like that one. This was quite a predicament she had quite literally stumbled into.

"Just like you are, Stella," he confirmed coolly.

She raised her eyebrows, alarmed. "How do you know my name?"

"The same way you know mine," he explained. "Through the special unspoken bond us magicians have had throughout the standing throughout all time."

She felt her heart skip, finding this situation incredibly familiar. She couldn't quite believe it, so she argued with "Either that or just the fact that we all live in such a small town."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Art agreed.

She groaned, resting her palm on her forehead. This boy wasn't an enigma as much as he was just confusing. "Is this why everyone else in town thinks you're so unusual?"

He laughed. "Probably!"

She rolled her eyes as she took her seat back on the bench, not amused. She looked at Art, her glare daring him to speak further. He raised his eyebrow, as if prepared for trouble, but seemed to carefully think it over before saying "Utafna. I really do love that name. Out of reach, right?"

She couldn't help but crack a smile. "You speak some Icelandic?"

"A bit. Just what I can pick up on."

She nodded. "A beautiful language, I think. In fact I think Iceland as a whole is quite stunning."

"Oh? You'll have to tell me sometime," he told her with a smile she could almost construe as eager. She found his offer quite unexpected, but she supposed that was something that one learned to get used to with Arthur. She simply nodded and fell into silence, drifting away once more into her own thoughts.

"Do you think God was a writer?"

The question snapped her out of her formless daydream as she realized that Art was still there. She yawned, stretching her arms and mumbled "Oh, sorry. Kind of…" she yawned again, surprised she was so tired, "long night. Little sleep, you know how it is."

"Of course. I've had my own sleepless nights, so sucked into pulling off magical feats that I fall asleep on my notebook, as I can't help but think you did."

Oh brother. They were back into the magic discussion. "You have the notebook part right," she measured her words carefully.

He smirked slyly. "But not the magic part. For a magician, you're very hard to convince about magic."

"Look, can we just get back to the part about God?" she snapped.

"You asked for it," his smirk shifted to a more genuine smile. He stretched his arms out around him, placing one just behind Stella. She glanced over at him, asking flatly "What do you think you're doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" he countered. "Loosen up, Stella. How on earth do you walk around on pins and needles all the time? Sounds like it hurts after a while."

"Okay," Stella leapt up, giving him a look that could kill. "You know what, wizard, we're done here."

He didn't budge or shift his innocent, did-I-do-that smile into something less appealing. He just raised an eyebrow and waved politely. Not even bothering to pick up her bike, she stomped over it and walked towards the grocer's store as it finally opened.

"You might want to snag your bike here." The girl in question cringed as she heard Art's voice from across the fountain next to her bicycle. She looked across from the man who apparently couldn't take a hint and was still sitting on the granite bench she left him at. Trying not to show any frustration, she carefully slung the paper bag over her arm and began to lift her bike off of the cobblestone path.

"Your writing is magnificent," he stated plainly, stopping her in her tracks. The way he said things like that, such outlandish or incredible statements as if they were nothing more than fundamental facts of the way the world turns. That was perhaps the most jarring part about him, how he said anything he thought as if it was gospel. She dropped her bike in surprise, causing him to flinch. Any satisfaction she would have gotten startling him like that seemed to disappear as she pondered over his statement.

"I think…" she wasn't sure what she thought, so she fished around for words again. "I think magnificent is a little bit too over-the-top, right? I mean, my writing work isn't-"

"Anything to miss for the world," he interrupted. "I'm not much for over exaggerating things, but your work is literally among the most gorgeous things I've read in a long time."

"Honestly?" Her reply was incredulous instead of honored, but she was already blushing. Damn this annoyingly charming unusual man. "It isn't that great, really."

He raised an eyebrow, seeming almost hurt by her statement. "You're not just in denial, are you Stella? You really don't have a clue."

She was blindsided by that statement, and the way that it was mumbled with shock, with none of the certainty or confidence many of his other words had. She could barely bring herself to glance at him out of the corner of her eye, but was able to make out him patting the spot on the bench next to him. Not sure what else to do, she decided to take him up on his offer.

When she was seated, he spoke again. "You know how everyone looks up to God as if he's a one-in-a-million being unheard of before? I always thought, what if God was a writer just like us in his own world, an underrated, unpublished author, and we're the words on his paper? What if him breathing life into the dust of the earth to create man was really him developing the world of his story? What if we're his characters and we're heading in the way he's sending us?"

She found his analogy quite interesting. "So, if he's the god of everything, and he's a simple author within his own world, what does that make us?"

He grinned widely. "That, Stella, is exactly the right question." He gently placed his hand on her shoulder, causing a chill to shock her spine. "Do you quite understand now?"

"If anything," she admitted, "I think I'm a little more confused than before."

He gave a slight smile. "Think of it this way. Do you realize that you are the only person in the world who created Eilifa and Utafna?"

"Surely there are other characters and people quite like them somewhere," she argued.

"Sure, there may be others similar," Art countered. "But think about it. You created these characters, with their own names and their own world and their own obstacles and their own power from the dust of your pencil shavings, with the very power of the words you wrote down. I'd like to think that is pretty magical."

Things started to make a bit more sense to her. "So, I'm not really a magician, just a writer?"

"You're going the wrong way with this!" he snapped, surprising Stella with his frustration. "You're a magician because you're a writer. Writers are the modern day magicians and gods, you see. Do you have any idea of the power you have and the incredible results you've used it for?"

"I'm certainly not that incredible, really," her voice came out quiet and meek, like a mouse trying to find its way through an expansive, endless field alone. That really was what she was, in the grand scheme of things.

He shook his head. "If you decide not to believe any of what I'm saying about magic, then just believe me on this. You, Stella, are incredible. Your writing is incredible, your power is incredible, your attention to detail and the way you can observe the town so knowingly is incredible, and honestly you're not half bad looking either." He gave a short grin when that last comment caused her to blush furiously before he finished. "The sooner you realize that, the better. The greatest deception you could ever pull is to convince yourself that you have no power."

Of all things, she laughed, entirely nervous and jittery, set on edge by his words. "Wow, is this… is this how you charm the locals so much?"

"Not all the locals," he closed his eyes and smiled with that immediately familiar warmth, that deadly honest tone returning to his voice. "Just you."

At this point, Stella could hardly stand still as fast as her heart was beating. He noticed her shaking under his touch and opened his eyes. "Hey, don't get so worked up, starlight. Why don't you go home, maybe write some more- definitely write some more, and come back and find me when you have more. I'll be here, ever the same."

She thought it over, already feeling things change. "Promise?" she asked.

"Promise." A simple truth again, and for that she was grateful. She couldn't stop smiling (or blushing) as she nodded shyly, picked up her bike and began to head home.

"You forgot your bag!" he called, gesturing to the paper bag sitting next to him that Stella had forgotten she had taken off. She pivoted around, embarrassed as she grabbed it from the seat and began to depart once more.

"Stella!" he called once more. Screeching her bike to a brake, she turned around to see him, calling "What?"

He seemed to be at a loss for words for a moment but covered any absence of mind with "Don't give up!"

"I won't."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

She realized that as she biked away, she intended to live up to that promise.

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Eventually, we land on the shores of an empty beach, the water lapping up at us a distance away as we descended to the ground calmly, allowing me to fight for my breath again.

"That," I choke out between gasping in copious amounts of air, "that was incredible."

He fell against the sand, just as tired as I. "We're incredible. Can't you already tell?"

As I fall next to him, I think it over. I've always seen my power as unimpressive, unlucky even. It was what kept me tethered into servitude, the bitterly mundane and inescapable. That seems to be the key word though, escape. And it's because of our very same powers that we were able to escape.

I guess we are pretty incredible.

He places his arm underneath my neck. "Think of this, Eilifa," he tells me. "There are no two people in the world that are quite like us in the slightest. You're one of a kind, and you're incredible. Think of that."

I let him support me, gathering myself as close as I can to this incredible, unusual young man with the maroon hair and the glowing orange eyes.

"You're right," my reply is confident at long last. The words between us were simple truth, inarguable because to us, they were gospel. "You and I are nothing near ordinary."

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Stella smiled as she pondered over her recently written words. She admitted to herself that maybe they weren't half bad after all. Her tenderly maintained vocabulary shone brightly, and she could feel the thoughts and the life of her characters as she wrote as if they truly were real. Perhaps in some universe, they were.

She wondered what Art would think of this segment. She imagined he'd like it, just like he said. She found that she couldn't quite wait to see his reaction. There really was something magical about that boy after all.

Nevertheless, she would. For now. After all, she was tired. She set her notebook down and decided just to flop asleep on the couch, as she often did. Fumbling for a blanket, she barely finished covering herself before she was asleep, in her own world, a world that despite how expansive and magical it was, still accepted and appreciated her as something incredible.