Mages and Magiavores

Bustling with students, the downtown area is alive with activity. People cluster in groups, talking and laughing in the autumn breeze. It smells pleasant, somewhat earthy with a tinge of cinnamon. I pass by a café, adding pumpkin spice to the mix.

“Hey, Maya.”

I stop, nearly having missed him.

“Hey, Vic.” He’s hunched over his laptop again, his glasses slipping down his nose. He takes a moment to fix his glasses, brushing aside strands of shoulder-length black hair, before shooting me a goofy smile.

“Heading to Jericho’s again?”

I shrug. He caught me. “He’s got new stock in. I thought I’d look for new trinkets, expand my collection, and whatnot.”

Vic snorts. “If you keep feeding your collection it’s going to need an apartment of its own.”

“Sure. Maybe it’ll rent one with your parts pile.”

“Yeah? Your collection would eat mine for breakfast and still be hungry.”

I roll my eyes. Mine might be larger, but at least it's organized. His is just a pile in the corner of his room.

He grins at me before going on. “Speaking of food, do you want to go out for dinner later? It’s karaoke night at the Dome and a couple of the guys and I plan on going.” My head floods with images of Vic belting out the lyrics to some sickly-sweet pop song and I suppress a laugh.

“I’ll see about that.”

I leave him to his current project and make my way down the street. Jericho’s pawn shop is located on the edge of the downtown area where it bleeds off into the residential district.

The bell chimes overhead, softly tingling as I enter the shop. I pause in the door frame, taking a moment to absorb the aroma. Usually, the shop smells slightly of must and other old scents, maybe the occasional perfume. On a good day, something else lurks beneath the mundane musk, hints of fragrances that only people like me can smell.

I let the door swing shut behind me and close my eyes, concentrating on the scent. My latest trinket had a sweet, but spicy smell that somewhat reassembled paprika. The one before that had been almost sickly-sweet like honeysuckle. I’m hoping for something more savory this time, but anything will do.

A slight buzzing sensation flows through my veins and my eyes begin to glow a pale amber color as a touch of magic works its way through my system. I grimace, wrinkling my nose at the smell. It’s pungent, like bleach or ammonia, and prickly, the smell squirming and riving about in my nose like a caterpillar on hot pavement.

I didn’t realize I was pinching my nose until I went to take a breath. Great. Just great. This is going to be absolutely vile.

I force myself to breathe, taking in the putrid scent again, but this time I catch a hint of something sour and sweet. I check again, and there it is: a distinctly separate smell. That’s good, not exactly what I was hoping for, but far better than whatever the pungent trinket is.

I’ll buy both, keep the sour-sweet one, and dispose of the other. Maybe I’ll bury it somewhere or find a ditch, but there is no way I’ll ever take that thing anywhere near my apartment.

I walk down the aisles made up of randomly assorted shelves with even more randomly assorted products. I barely restrain myself from pulling my sweater up over my nose as the putrid scent builds, growing more pungent as I approach the back of the store.

I can barely smell the sour-sweet trinket,  engulfed as it is by the potent chemical smell. I trudge through it, eventually making my way to the end of the mitch-matched aisle.

I jerk, stepping back.  Shoot, shoot, shoot, that was dumb.

Dang it.

I rub my eyes, willing the magic to recede. The buzzing fades and my eyes return to their typical hazel hue. Even without tapping into an enhanced state, I can still smell the odor wafting around the corner.

Taking a moment to steady myself, I take a breath and exhale before peering around the corner. Right in the midst of the aroma is a boy about my age. Standing there in an olive-green hunting jacket, he taps his foot against the floor as he examines a small, spherical object in his hand.

I squint, watching as he rolls it back and forth across his palm. I take a step only for the floor to betray me with a loud CREAK.

The boy tenses, whipping around while firmly gripping the sphere.

I step back, raising both hands as I lift my gaze from the sphere to his face. He has dark tan skin, curly, dark brown hair, and sharp eyes focused intently on me.

We remain frozen like that for several seconds before he begins to thaw. His face morphs from a look of focused rage to that of vague confusion. His stance relaxes, though his grip remains firm around the spherical item, as he squints at me.

For a second, it seems like he will speak, maybe a frazzled apology. Then they flash. A flicker of green light passes over his eyes. The aroma slams into me like a brick wall. I nearly gag, clutching at my stomach before it fades.

His eyebrows knit together and he purses his lips. He holds that expression for what feels like a minute before his eyebrows shoot up and a grin crosses his face. It takes on a smug quality as he steps forward.

I step back, still reeling. He did that. The aura, it was him.

Something must have shown on my face because his grin widens just a touch and he chuckles.

I trip, having backed into something, a stand of sorts, causing it to clatter to the floor along with me. The boy, the mage - there’s nothing else he could be, looms over me, mouth open in a vague look of surprise before speaking.

“You’ve never met another one, have you?”

He thinks I’m one of them. Of course he does. I frown, shaking my head in a futile attempt to clear it. It seems that he took that as an affirmation.

He crouches down next to me and extends his arm. “I’m Darian. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

It’s most certainly not.

I shove aside whatever fell behind me and stand up on my own accord, before scanning the aisles. I have to leave. The sour-sweet trinket will have to wait for another day. I’m not meddling with mages.

The mage, Darian, frowns, placing one hand on his knee as he forces himself back up from his crouch. “Not one for introductions, are you?”

I scowl at him, channeling as much disdain as I can into it. “I don’t know you.”

He snorts, waving his free hand around in a meaningless gesture. “That’s kind of the whole point of introductions.”

I step back, foot kicking a toppled trinket. “I don’t want to know you.”

He shakes his head slightly. “You don’t want to meet someone like you?”

“Not particularly. I’m annoying.”

A grin pulls at his lips, but he shakes his head more solidly. “You know what I’m talking about. You can see.” He lifts his sphere-holding hand and extends it out towards me. “You can see this.”

The sphere in question turns out to be some sort of odd box made from two finely polished pieces of dark wood. A metal clasp keeps the two halves secured together while the four stubs protruding from the bottom provide the potential for purchase when placed on a flat surface.

A whiff of the sour-sweet smell brushes my nose and I swallow, a cold ball forming in my gut.

“A box?” The magic emanating from it. “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but it doesn’t take anything special to see a box.”

“The aura. You can see the aura surrounding the box.” He’s smiling, a genuine, wide grin splitting his face as he radiates enthusiasm.

“No I can’t.” I’m not lying. For all intents and purposes, the box looks like any other strange trinket in Jericho’s shop. It’s the odor that sets it apart. I take an extra sniff to be sure and, yep, beneath the chemical shroud, wisps of sour and sweet magic flutter around. He found my trinket.

Darian crosses his arms, slipping back into a smug stance. He’s going to say something stupid, because of course he is. Comparing mages to…my kind is like comparing apples to oranges. They’re both fruit, but you’d look really stupid if someone asked you for an apple and you handed them an orange.

“I can see your aura.”

“What?”

I hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but clearly, he heard it because Darian goes on. “The colors you see around me, they’re like the auras that surround enchanted items. They indicate the magic of the individual. Every mage has one, though sometimes it can be hard to see your own-”

I have an aura, a visible aura. We’re not supposed to be detectable. How many people have seen me? Smelled? I lift my hand and sniff, getting a weird look from Darian. I don’t care. If others passed through and know I’m here-

“You can’t smell an aura.” His tone was matter-of-fact, like a toddler declaring that Santa is real. I nearly laugh at the irony that, yes, I can in fact smell auras.

“Look,” Darian starts, staring down at his feet. “I know how stressful being introduced to magic can be. Sometimes it feels like an impossible game with unfathomable hurdles, but.” He looks at me, reaching forward.  “It gets better. Company lightens the burden. I can introduce you to others like us-”

He grabs my hand and freezes, having gone rigid at a touch. Something ripples across me, foreign and repulsive. Vile. Wrong.

I rip away from him, shoving over a shelf. Glass items shatter behind me as I bolt. I throw open the door, barely hearing Darian gasp over the drumming of my heart. Feet pounding against cobblestone, I race, shoving my way through crowds as I cut through downtown.

There’s a mage in town and it may very well kill me.