Aster awakens stiff and sore, curled around his still-open laptop on his bed. The chat window reveals that Stardash sent him a goodnight message before signing off, but Aster was already asleep by then.

His hand now feels more uncomfortable than painful, the egg mixture having hardened beneath the bandage. Removing it is a messy process, but to Aster's relief, he's scraping the paper-mache-like concoction off smooth, healed skin. When he's finally done, everything looks and feels normal, though he could swear the lines on his palm are different.

For breakfast, Aster mixes water with a couple scoops from a bag of stolen protein powder.  No matter how long he stirs it, the result remains slightly lumpy, but it serves its purpose of filling his stomach.

With a month of free board ahead of him, it’s tempting to just spend his day sitting and staring at the walls, but he isn’t really any better at doing nothing than he is at doing things. 

He dresses in jeans and a sweater, grabs his satchel, and slinks out of his room. As he passes Corrin's door, he shoots it a venomous glare. Sable had better actually make him move. While everyone in this place grates on Aster's nerves, Corrin makes it personal. His magical aptitude is nothing special, but he refuses to simply work with what he has. He’s always searching for some simple trick or pill that can make everything easy, and now apparently he’s moved on to cursed artefacts.

And that’s just one person in this fucking place. Just one of the many constant pains in Aster’s ass. If Corrin goes away for good, Aster’s life will only be marginally better. That really is the problem with hating everyone and everything. Happiness—or even just not being perpetually pissed off—is virtually unattainable.

Aster heads to the pier, driven more by habit than purpose. Claysey is a bit of a magical nexus, and during the warmer months, the pier is a good place to find tourists to grift with cheap tricks. The uninitiated are easily impressed by simple illusions, and their children even more so. And, well, if you’ve already gifted their child the wonder of watching a butterfly glide through the air on magical wings, they really should pay you for that, right? It’d be really awkward if they refused.

But early spring isn't prime tourist season. People don’t like to take beach vacations in weather they need to bundle up for.

The wind slices through Aster's sweater, whipping his hair across his face and plunging him into a sea of miserable discomfort. That was maybe the thing that hit him hardest coming off Quell, besides the heavy emotional debt he had to pay off. The everyday difficulties of simply existing.

On Quell, none of it had mattered. Sure, he’d still felt hot or cold and dressed accordingly, but he can't recall giving it much thought. And Thoma had been right there beside him, completely sober, seemingly unbothered by anything. He was just naturally like that. Maybe most people are. After all, no one else at his stupid pretentious boarding school had relied on dangerous drugs to function.

A few people are scattered along the pier and beach, but Aster doubts any are in the mood for his tricks. He settles on a bench at the pier's foot, his back to the beach, and closes his eyes. Counting his breaths, he centres himself, imagining a warm, still bubble enveloping his body. Slowly, he lets his magic seep into this imaginary sphere.

Aster’s magic has always been intuitive and versatile, if a little chaotic. He’s always been told what great potential he has and constantly reminded that if he wasn’t such a little bitch, maybe he could make something of himself. He spent his early childhood with his magic being bound on and off, and at one point, his parents even attempted to transfer some of his raw ability to his cousin. Fortunately for Aster, that spell requires consent, and while he lacks many things, stubbornness is not one of them.

At thirteen, Aster found himself shipped off to a prestigious boarding school for the magically gifted, where he continued to be a walking disaster. After a couple of years, the writing was on the wall: shape up or face expulsion, with the looming threat of whatever his parents might do with him afterwards. That was when he turned to Quell.

Quell tamed the beast and left him with easy power that bent to his every whim. Now, Aster is terrified of the stuff, but he isn’t sure he’ll ever shake the quiet itch for it that lives under his skin, prodding him all day, every day with reminders of how easy life was with it in his system.

Aster exhales slowly as the world around him sharpens back into focus. Now that the wind isn’t buffeting his ears, he can hear better. He turns to watch an elderly couple as they walk a slow line towards him along the beach, heads down as they carefully toe at the sand. The woman is dressed for the weather in a coat and long pants, but the man is wearing only board shorts below the waist. He’s wearing a jacket now, but it looks like at some point he was nuts enough to give swimming a go.

"Well, when did you last have it?" the woman asks, her voice tinged with exasperation.

"You keep asking that and I keep saying I don't know!" the man snaps back.

The woman responds with a quiet tut. "It would really help if you remembered. If you lost it in the water, how are we going to find it?"

“Lost something?” Aster interjects.

The couple's eyes snap to him, immediately clouding with wariness. Aster has been told many times that he looks dangerous. He was never told that when he was on Quell, but he’s heard it several times since, even when he wasn’t intentionally projecting a threatening aura. His entire aesthetic screams 'magic user,' even with his tattoos covered, but it's more than that. He seems to trigger some primal fear in people. He offers up his best attempt at a smile, but it doesn’t seem to help much.

"Just a ring," the man replies cautiously. "Have you seen one?"

Aster raises his hands, displaying his own array of rings. “Only my own.”

“It’s a wedding band,” the woman offers, lifting her hand to show a gold ring. “Like this one.”

Aster shakes his head. “Haven’t seen it. But I could find it… for a price.”

The man eyes Aster warily, clearly debating whether he’s something they want to involve themselves with at all. “How much?”

Aster twists his lips together as he sizes them up. They clearly aren’t rich, but they look comfortable enough, and most people would end up replacing a lost wedding ring. Even if they cheaped out on it, that would probably run them at least a couple hundred dollars.

“Fifty bucks?” Aster offers.

The man hesitates. “If you find it, yes. Fifty dollars.”

"Great!" Aster hops off the pier onto the sand, already digging through his satchel. "I'll need a hair from each of you."

The couple exchange an alarmed look, and Aster is sure they’re about to back out, so he cuts in before they can speak. “It works with smoke,” Aster explains, punctuating with a flick of the lighter he retrieved from his bag. “I need something flammable that connects the item to the two of you. I could do it another way using the other ring to find its twin, but that’s harder, so I’d have to charge more.”

Fortunately, the explanation seems to mollify them. There are some fucked up things you can do with hair, so their worry isn’t completely unreasonable, but most of what keeps you safe from that sort of thing is simply your own grand insignificance. There just isn’t a whole lot to be gained from pulling out the darkest of magics on some random elderly couple. They have more to fear from mundane, human scammers.

Aster finds a stick of palo santo in the bottom of his satchel, lighting it as the couple plucks their hairs. Fragrant smoke billows from the wood. He takes the hairs, tossing each into the flame with a muttered intention, then waits for the fire to sink deeper into the wood before extinguishing it with a gentle breath.

As Aster stands with his smoking stick, the whole of him undisturbed by the wind that ruffles through the couple’s clothing and stirs their hair, he understands a little why people might find him disconcerting. He’s ethereal, like a spirit haunting the pier, as if he's not quite there. Of course, that’s only because he doesn’t like his hair blowing in his face, but they don’t know that.

Smoke streams towards the couple, confused by the intention he put behind the spell. He exhales softly, dispersing the smoke and resetting the spell. He's not trying to find them, but their lost possession—a ring, but not the one on the woman's finger. Again, the smoke pulls towards the couple, and again, Aster scatters it.

A frustrated sigh escapes him. Usually, directing his intention into the magic isn't this difficult. He once used the same spell to find a missing child, though he didn’t stick around long after the smoke pulled out towards the water. He can’t afford to end up on the news, even if he's done nothing wrong. He helped, technically, even if the answer wasn't what anyone hoped for.

Once more, the smoke gravitates towards the couple. This time, Aster follows its lead, trailing the thin wisp. Maybe the ring is further up the beach, behind them. The smoke streams towards the woman, and Aster drops to his knees in the sand as it dips downward. Smoke billows against her coat pocket. Aster reaches in, his fingers closing around cool metal. He pulls out a ring.

The couple's mouths form perfect O's as they exchange glances, realisation dawning simultaneously.

The man is the first to speak. “I gave it to you while I went for a swim!”

The woman nods, a hand pressed over her face to cover her embarrassment.

Aster sees it in the man’s eyes as he turns back to him. The sudden hesitance.

"Well," the man says uncomfortably, "we would have found it on our own, eventually..."

The only response Aster offers is a lift of his eyebrows.

“How about we pay you half?”

Back at the boarding house, where Aster isn’t afraid to make a scene, he would not let that shit fly. It would take only the tiniest push of fear to make this man reconsider, but Aster holds himself back. It isn’t worth it.

“Thirty?” Aster counters, and he gets a nod in response.

Aster wanders back over to the pier as he shoves the money into his bag. Even with a month of free board ahead of him, making enough money to survive is a never ending, miserable trudge.

Maybe he should have pushed that man to pay up in full. That twenty dollars could have fed him for days. But if he draws too much attention to himself, if his parents find out where he is, it’s over. He’s over. When they found out Quell was what had been buoying his success, they chose the drug over him. When you’re rich and powerful, it’s not hard to convince a doctor that your seventeen-year-old son is beyond help. That he needs a maintenance prescription for Quell because he’s past the point where it’s safe for him to withdraw.

Well, fuck that and fuck them. He’s an adult now, and he isn’t giving them the opportunity to get their claws into him again. He'd rather live as a walking disaster than be trapped in the recesses of his own mind.

Turning away from the beach, Aster heads back towards the boarding house. He's had enough of this bullshit for one day.