An Unvalentine's Day Flower
Romance between wizards has an extra spice to it when one of them is an insufferable mischief maker.
Olena and Cassius lounged on a plush two seated couch. His left arm wrapped around Olena’s waist, while her legs were stretched out over Cassius’ lap. The two lovers were rolling an invisible ball between them, hands dancing in the air as the energy flowed back and forth. They looked wildly content as they lay in each other’s arms.
A spark of blue lightning manifested from Cassius’ fingers to Olena’s, and she giggled as she caught it. She whispered mystical words [1] to the energetic manifestation, while rolling it around in her hand. Through her words and intent, she shaped it into a loose ball of electrical yarn, and then pushed it back towards Cassius’s hand.
[1] Or as we might describe it, “Incomprehensible Bullshit.”
Cassius plucked it out of the air like a softball, and rolled it around his palm, onto the back of his hand, and then pushed it up onto his index finger. He spoke his magical words to it [1], and blew on it gently like it was a cup of hot tea. He looked very satisfied with himself as it spun, like an electric globe on a stand - tiny sparks leaping from its centre, forming a miniature spiralling d
isc.
When he had finished showing off, he allowed the ball to slide back into his hand. He pressed the ball of energy into her waiting palm, and the two of them held the magical manifestation. Blue energy escaped from the cracks between their hands.
Cassius leaned in and kissed Olena who, not expecting it - she was busy concentrating on the ball, gasped and let go of her control of the magic. [2]
[2] Olena is the kind of woman who is highly competent, keeps her eye on the ball, and hates being interrupted. Unless Cassius is doing the interrupting. With kisses.
Cassius shuddered as the energetic wisp broke apart, shocking him in the process. But like a champ, he stayed utterly committed to the kiss. [3]
[3] In this context, he did act like a champ, taking the punishment for breaking her concentration without complaint. Cassius is the kind of man who would suffer for love. And be insufferable about it.
Olena leaned into it, forgetting about the game they’d been playing, and wrapped her arms around Cassius head, pulling him in. They broke apart some time later, after having taken their fill of each other’s lips and attention. Olena burrowed herself into Cassius’s arm and shoulder, letting out a contented sigh.
With an air of smug self-satisfaction, Cassius traced his right finger in the air while uttering different words of power. [1]
Glowing red and green runes sparked in the wake of his finger’s path. When four runes were completed and sitting in the air in front of them, he stopped and held his hand up like a cup. The runes faded, and a glowing flower erupted from where the runes disappeared, in the centre of his palm.
The flower was a bright silvery white with a dark green stem, its vascular bundles the faintest shade of pink, ending in with a bright red star in the centre of the flower. It glowed with unearthly light, illuminating the space around the couch with its radiance.
He took the flower by its stem and handed it to Olena. She smiled with lazy satisfaction as she took it. Her eyes fixed on the flower with the intent of a craftsman, inspecting the mystical art for signs of imperfection. No sign of disapproval crossed her face.
“It’s beautiful. How long did you work on the spell?” She asked, rolling it around in her hand to examine it from all sides.
“I’d been working on that spell for the last week. It took some finessing to get the colours right - but it was the aromatics that took the real work. Smell it,” he said, a grin on his face, winking at her.
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. She knew that grin, and knew not to trust it.
And yet, she leaned in to the flower as instructed.
The flower responded to her as she leaned in, as if sensing her nose was drawing near. It pulled into itself as if taking a breath, and then released. Small glowing balls of light lifted from the flower rising to meet her face. She gazed with wonder at the balls of light, and sniffed.
And gagged.
The smell of ancient socks, full of the sweat of a thousand unwashed warriors assaulted her nose like an invading army of stink.
She doubled over, and began to cough and retch. Her nose burned and her eyes watered from the violation. Cassius burst out laughing and fell off the couch.
She coughed out a handful of magical words and waved a hand at the door frantically drawing shapes in the air. A burst of bright silvery white runes erupted from her hand, and a gust of wind rushed from behind her and towards the door. The aroma of stink dissipated to only one hundred unwashed warriors. And then ten.
“You bastard!!!” She yelled at him when she’d finally recovered, wiping the tears from her face. The gust of wind quieted as she focused her attention back upon Cassius - her eyes full of fury at his entirely predicable and foreseeable betrayal.
But she laughed as she grabbed a pillow from the couch, and leapt upon him like an avenging lioness. Too busy laughing, he wasn’t prepared when she hit him full in the face with the pillow. His head bounced off the rug from the force of the blow, and he feebly tried to swat away her attacks while still being in the grips of his own maniacal laughter.
She sat on his chest, hitting him many times with the pillow, the room filled with her own laughter.
A young man poked his head through the open doorway, saw the assault in progress and hit his fist on the doorway to get their attention.
“Hey! Get a room, you two!” Blaine yelled, deeply irritated.
The two lovers looked at him, then at each other, then back at him.
“This is my room, Blaine.” Cassius said with a tone of infuriating reasonableness, “We have a room.”
Blaine scoffed, “Then get a room with a door! [4] We can smell that garbage all the way down the hallway and into the dorm’s study. And we could hear you two idiots laughing. Some of us are trying to do actual work here you entitled brats!”
[4] Cassius’ room’s lack of a door is its own story. One involving incomprehensible magical bullshit and improper safety procedures when testing new forms of magical fire suppression. Anti-oxygen SEEMs like a good idea if you don’t think about it very hard.
Blaine left the two of them, who broke out into laughter shortly after he’d left.
Olena, still sitting on Cassius, looked down and smirked. She leaned down and kissed him. When she finally broke away, she said, “I blame you,” crossing her arms and frowning at him with fierce disapproval.
He grinned back with delight. “You usually do,” he said. [5]
[5] He loved her angry face, and was more of an aphrodisiac to him than oysters.
She was fully aware of her impact on him.
“That’s because it’s usually your fault.” She said, smirking at him
“It usually is,” he said, his smile channelling all the repentance of a cat.
They didn’t get much studying done that night.
Editorial;
This story may be late for valentine’s day, but not for valentine’s weekend!
And because of my own poor scheduling habits, Im late for something as we speak! Oh the tragedy of consistent habits.