(The) Always of Adventuring

The air cracks with broken thunder. I pause outside the door to the hotel suite, drawing up wards made from the annoyance of guests and the simmering bitterness underneath some of the staff as I push the door open to find Jay sitting cross-legged in a chair, his eyes crossed as well. I watch as he twists his arm, his elbow impacting with his face.

I watch as his elbow and arm twist about and he pokes his nose with a frown. “Kidlet?” I say slowly.

Jay grins with the joy only a jaysome eleven year old who is from far Outside the universe can. “Hi, Honcho!”

“Hi. Is there any particular reason you are trying to break your elbow today?”

“I’m trying to break my nose,” he says proudly. “And @argumentsfromwithin says that elbows break noses really good!”

“Ah. And this would be an adventure?”

“Yup!”

The danger in Jay isn’t so much his power over bindings so much as an innocence devoid of limits. And part of being the wandering magician – and more being Honcho to Jay – is knowing how fragile that is and how much of it remains.

“Jay. Breaking bones isn’t an adventure you want. You are tough like a Jay, but that means that when you do get hurt –.” I pause. “May I?”

Jay nods, nothing but trust in him. He is bound to me on levels so deep I can’t sense all of them. His trust perhaps runs deeper still. I reach out. Find the nearest hospital. Find a troll trying to heal an ancient broken hand. Find a crack in the earth that never ceased to hurt. And I bind them into Jay.

A moment, and I release it. There is always pain, and then there is never pain.

Jay doesn’t move. For half a moment, there are shadows in his face that make it too near my own. “Honcho?” He rubs his arm slowly, waits.

“That kind of pain isn’t an adventure. Not all adventures need be sought, not even by a Jay. Some can only offer hurt.”

Jay blinks, once. There is a question in his eyes.

“I don’t seek them out. But a magician answers need.”

“I can do that too!”

And Jay vanishes a moment later. I feel the binding against pain he puts on the hospital, and then he’s visiting the troll to help them as well.

The troll tries to eat him, and while Jay is occupied with that adventure I gently undo most of the binding he put on the hospital. Because pain is important even if Jay doesn’t understand why in human terms. Some day he will, but not until I’ve done everything I can to stop that.

Unless my everything causes it.

“Magician?”

I turn. Charlie has come into the hotel room. The god within her hasn’t stirred, which is good. But Charlie knows me better than almost any other person in our five years of friendship.

“You okay?” she asks.

“No.”

“Is Jay okay?”

“Yes.”

“I can eat what you’re feeling,” she offers, god-eater to magician.

“You can’t.” The words slip out. I have a talent to speak truth that cannot he ignored.

Charlie winces. “His innocent is... important, magcian. We both know that.”

I nod. We’ve met Jay when he is older. Keeping him eleven as long as possible is important.”

“It’s always important, even if it never changes what will be.”

“That was almost a question,” Charlie says softly. “Are you sure you –.”

And Jay returns between moments, to tell us all about his adventures and boast about how not breaking his nose is an adventure and how he’s totally ready for an adventure having suppers now.

The moment passes between us, but I don’t think it will be wholly gone. And I don’t know what to think about that.