It took me two bouts of reading to finish the Basics of Magic…but there was something in it that I did pause at. It said that, of all things, meditation was one of the best ways for someone to figure out exactly what kind of magic they have and to further understand what they can do…something about how meditation makes one look within and by looking within, you allow yourself to ignore the world around you as you look inwards and that action alone is enough for the weave to show itself to you.

“NO! NO! NO!” a voice screamed making me rub my head with the heel of my hand

I had tried mediation before when I was a kid, I’m Asian, my grandparents often would drag me and me alone to a temple for mediation and to see if they could do something for me or to me that would stop the visions…and never did anything happen while meditating, if that alone was enough for the weave to show it to someone, why had it never shown itself to me when I was younger? Was it simply because I was not aware as to what I have been given and the cause of my nightmares? Or something about my conviction of them being something that was physical and not something supernatural?

I sighed softly as I sat on the floor, facing the large window at the back of my flat, no wider than a hand’s span past my shoulders, fairly tall though and of course, no balcony or anything. The heavy sheen of rain covered the glass and made the world outside a dimmed, dampened, slightly dour expanse of grays, any lights turned into blurry smears of various colors and the din of the city muffled by the perpetually pounding rain against the window panes and or the sporadic crack of distant thunder. I folded my legs under me as I rested my hands on my legs before I glanced over at the singing bowl beside the TV, so I paused to stand and collect it before returning to the floor, the bowl in front of me as I held the small post you use to ring the softly hammered brass. The sound…clear and calm washed over me as I breathed deeply, tapping the ringer against the edge with every inhale as I closed my eyes, focusing on the sound as I did what the book instructed someone to do: focus inwards on yourself. I let my senses dim and the more peripheral sounds I could pick up of the city fading away as I let the sound of the singing bowl overtake those sounds…ripples of the sound sprawling across my darkened vision as I listened to the sound. As the ripples spread…they seemed to fray before the ripples shifted and warbled as the white lines of the ripples shifted on themselves and formed…a gridwork pattern that grew thicker and brighter as they expanded further and further outwards.

I focused further as I listened to the sound of the bowl, the grid pulsed with each ring of the bowl, an opalescent sheen across the thick cords of the gridwork as this large bright mote of light formed in the center of my vision, it sprawled out further and further as it overtook my vision as I felt this…static-y feeling wash over across my skin, softly against me…not painful or uncomfortable, but energizing and almost lightening.

“Edward?” a voice asked making me jump because of how clear and how close it sounded, because of how I was sitting on the floor, I obviously didn’t get to my feet or really off the ground so I ended up throwing myself to the side on my ass as I looked to my right where…a figure floated. At least…vaguely figure-like, they were hazy and almost no definitive shape to them, glowing a soft pale minty tone with stronger green tinted glowing eyes in their slightly amorphous head.

“W…what…” I somehow got out

A hazy arm like projection of the figure reached out, no hand, just ending in a thick wisp of the softly glowing mist they were formed of, their voice was not as clear as I thought at first: it was echoing, soft and seemed more like someone at the back of a cave speaking to me as I stood at the mouth of it, neither masculine or feminine by the tone as they gestured towards me with their amorphous wispy hand again.

I glanced at their “hand” before back towards those glowing two eyes; there was no…malice I felt off this figure, no ill-will, no…bad emotions really at all, almost a sheer lack of emotion I could feel except one…trust. There was a weird sense of almost familiarity when I looked at the figure and despite every aspect of my mind telling me to scream or run or call Ander, the foremost of my mind was telling me to take that hand.

“Please” the hazy figure said, the way they said it was as if they had shouted, but the only volume that hit my ears was that distant cave-mouth whisper. I hesitated more than once as I looked at the figure before I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly having gone far too dry for comfort and…took the hand.

White lines spiraled out from where the mist wrapped around my hand like someone taking it would had, not painful or uncomfortable…almost cold and crisp, like stepping outside right after a freshly ended autumn rain. The glowing white lines sprawled around/across my forearm and up their own before they softly…faded, but as the white lines faded…the misty hand seemed a bit more solid as I looked back to my hand from focused on the white lines on my arm…there was actually a hand holding mine; not a humanoid skin-tone, but a softy glowing mint, their arm had a luminescence to it and a clarity to it that was akin to minty toned glass backlit by a bright spotlight. The arm solidified further up the forearm then the elbow before in a matter or a second or two…a figure floated there. They were without a doubt at least a foot taller than me, but barely any weight on them, their entire form was extremely spindly, narrow and elongated to a spindly manner that made them have that uncanny valley style of body that aliens are often depicted with. They tilted their head back as it solidified before they lowered it back forward, no hair or anything solidified as this endlessly swirling miasma of minty-white swirling mist and clouds settled around their shoulders and head, their face was…featureless; no nose or mouth nor eyebrows at all, sharp chin and large doe-like eyes without features, just that solid slightly more greenish color, high cheekbones and extremely pointed ears with gold rings along the bottom edge with long gold tags hanging off them. Their body had no definitive characteristics; extremely narrow shoulders, long, thin and spindly legs and no clothing, just wrapped in a swirl of sheer minty mist that was draped around them as if a falling off toga. These heavy gold bands were wrapped around their wrists and ankles, matching gold adorned up their legs and body, a heavy dark green graphic almost mandala shapes adorned their forehead and down their cheekbones and across their shoulders and collar, hands adorned with short, dark green claw like nails, more gold jewelry across their collar and body. They seemed to float there without movement or anything, just that swirling miasma of mist. Their hands were slightly too thin and too long and their feet were featureless, just being vaguely foot like points at their end of their legs as they appeared to have no need to walk.