Light as a feather...
If you weighed my heart how heavy would it be?
As heavy as all the cares that you piled upon me.
If you took my soul to reconcile the scale,
would it buck the balance
stiff as a board
or would it roll off the measure as it began to travail?
If my soul has been grown and harvested to refine,
Is it not meant to be devoured after being aged like wine?
Where was the feather plucked that you weighed against my heart?
Was it ripped from the wings of my dreams as my soul departs?
Is there a chance I can sway the measure for my weight?
Do I have an argument now, or am I too little, too late?
Is too heavy wrong or is it simply ripe?
If I'm light enough to balance do I actually get some respite?
Can I go back instead and unburden my heart?
Can I fix what's been broken until death do us part?
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There's an old saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Teeth were often used tell the age of a horse. Throughout the course of a horse's life it will wear down its teeth. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth is a gesture that doesn't insult the giver and simply accepts hospitality with gratitude because it's free. Gratitude itself a virtue being is the lesson of this proverb, but the analogy still lacks insight. While reality is most definitely full of ungrateful and selfish beings, that's also precisely why one might take a closer look at a something free. Once upon a time the unexamined horse was also how the city of Troy fell.
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The original seers would say their greatest magick was mathematics, that what we attribute as their foresight is really just their ability to transcribe the language by which the universe has already been underwritten. Destiny as a force, they would say, doesn't necessarily exist unless it's what one world use to describe the physics by which our interia is plotted out from the time and through space where we were flung in a massive explosion from compacted mass the size of a marble that began our universe. Mapping our futures, as they were, was merely the extrapolation of our trajectory figured from the stars that moved out of our way and the star dust that became us. Fate's web, neither personal nor metaphysical, but merely the descriptor of our quantum entanglement. That of course still really only begs the original question, which isn't how, it's why.
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Rituals are, by nature, sensitive things, some more sensitive than others. Like any extraction's quality depends on the method and technique as well as the ingredients, some more complex and careful, but all still requiring a degree of attention to detail relative to the task at hand. If your goal was to obtain something in a specific form that was itself a simple thing... such as getting a more bountiful harvest, the ritual was not too difficult, because it didn't require a particularly strong focus or countless ingredients.
If it was something intense and involved, like, say mild necromancy... well that you had to run like a science experiment, controlling for every possible variable, weeding out compounding factors, learning from the mistakes of others..
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Fairies wings are resplendent unique things both inherently magical and equally capricious. Their glow changes with their element and mood as well as their general disposition. Each feather is composed just as much of ethereal glory as it is magickal ether. The former being the expression of internal cultivation and the latter being genetic predisposition. In the same way that humans wear clothes to both conceal and accentuate their bodies, fairies had intense soul magick meant to both disguise and flaunt their wings. The Fae king was more the former than the latter. His wings in their undisguised state were so breathtakingly beautiful and radiant that those who had seen them in their unhidden form would often pass out. Moreover, there were those that if they knew the sheer magnificence would hunt him for them like a mythical creature.
As is the Fae were already hunted for their dust, some fairies kept alive in labs just to continuously harvest it, while still others were subjected to magical testing or chopped up and used for their magickal parts. This is why the Fae almost entirely disappeared from nearly everywhere. There's scarcely a being alive who has seen one.
Having been in hiding (himself and his kin) for generations, the Fae king searched for ways to protect and defend their realm. He found what he thought he was looking for in a being that would have never naturally occurred: a half fire sprite and half elf. While his persistence would pay off, it wasn't nearly enough to match the sum he had owed to the piper.
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Lucky became suddenly aware of missing time in her current form. She was aware that having a wereform could cause this issue because her other form may cause her current form amnesia when it took over. But something didn't seem right because Cerberus seemed to have lost time too. Realizing they both might be under enchantment she attempted to inform him through their familiar bond.
Cerberus, both being in the custody of other fairies and now face to face with both Zion and the Fae King felt a swell of unease. He didn't want to tip his hand just yet, because it seemed like Zion was forcing him to, but at the same time he also felt errily confident Zion had already divined the cards he was holding. He did his best to reassure Lucky through their bond and maintain his outward emotionless demeanor.
He watched silently as the Fae body he was certain Zion inhabited gave a detailed and false report to the Fae King. This report had its own enchantment that went unrecognized because it looked to everyone like normal fairy dust falling off fairy wings like pollen on the beating wings of a butterfly. Sparkling and beautiful magic trailed behind them and hung in the air in glorious and deep colors until everything was silent except the pleasant and lilting sound of the magick. It lulled him like a warm blanket and a lullaby until he noticed Zion turn to him, their burning eyes again apparent. The gaze drew him in like a wormhole and suddenly he was right in front of them incapable of looking away.
Without a word Zion produced a go piece. Zion showed him the light side and then the dark one before flipping it in the air, snatching it and calling out to him without breaking eye contact: "Choisissez une couleur, Oberon."