strangetrip | [For Hurley] Big Damn Magic

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[For Hurley] Big Damn Magic

Mildmay would have come with her if she'd asked. Which was why Corbie didn't ask. Of course she wasn't already tired of his company or anything, but for the first couple of weeks since he'd showed up they'd barely spent any time apart. While there were some ways Corbie very much wanted to emulate Felix, getting into the habit of treating Mildmay as her guard dog was not on that list.

And she had an idea.

When she had been traveling to Esmer with Felix and Mildmay they'd had something of an adventure in the Forest of Nauleverer with the Automaton of Corybant. She'd never forget that bolt of green lightning. And she thought that now, she knew how she could replicate it.

She'd found a bare patch of earth far enough from the hotel where she wouldn't accidentally wreck anything, but close enough that she could easily see which way home--oh, that was a dangerous word, when did she start thinking that?--was. She took up a stick and started drawing in the dirt, various sigils and signs that would contain the damage to this spot in case things got messy.

As she thought about it, though, she began to lose her nerve. Maybe she should get Mildmay. Or perhaps another wizard. Maybe this wasn't something she should do unsupervised by one of her teachers. Then again, she didn't want to be a baby forever, and she'd been building toward this for the better part of a year, if she couldn't do it now, how would she ever feel worthy of those rings?

She ran her hands back through her curls, a very Felix-like gesture if were paying attention. Though the "Fuck" that followed was not.

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"Cool drawing," Hurley says.

He's not really sure why he wandered out here. It's probably because he's so used to wandering the beach and stuff from back when he was on the island. Sure, that was mostly out of necessity and boredom, but he'd gotten so used to it that his restlessness sometimes carried him all over the inn and sometimes -- times like these -- away from it.

"It kinda looks like something from one of my comic books."

Hurley looks up from the drawing in the sand up to Corbie and smiles. "I'm Hurley."

"It's a ward, actually," she explained automatically before she entirely registered that that meant someone was talking to her. And then she blushed. She'd been too embroiled in what she was doing. She'd have to do better about that.

For now, though, she smiled shyly. "I'm Corbie."

Edited 2018-04-22 05:28 (UTC)

He smiles at the introduction, then turns his eyes back towards the drawing/ward on the ground. "Yeah?" He could buy that the drawing was a ward. It definitely looked like what he thought a ward would look like.

"You warding off evil spirits or something?"

"Ah, no," Corbie began, torn between wanting to be proud of what she knew and not wanting to pass herself off as any kind of expert. She could not quite lift her eyes, though she stood as straight as she could manage. "Though I can do that. It's... a containment circle. I was gonna try something messy and probably a little dangerous and I thought if I was gonna try it this seemed like a good precaution only now I'm not sure it's a good idea and..." she laughed softly. "I'm sorry. Ain't important."

Everything she's saying sounds cool. There's a lot of things he's discovered since arriving at the inn. And maybe, if he never ended up on the island, he would be struck in a state of panic or disbelief. But strange kinda magical stuff happened all the time.

Not stuff like this, though. And Hurley's interest is piqued.

"Why do you say it's not important?"

Hurley looks at her, his thick brows furrowed slightly. Why's she apologizing?

"I think it's important," he says. "If you're gonna try something dangerous, it's a smart move."

He thinks back to Black Rock. Kinda like that.

"And if you're talking about the messy thing--" Because it's possible she might be. "--sometimes it's good to try things. Even if they're, you know--" Hurley gestures vaguely. "--messy."

"Um." Corbie's blush deepened as she realized she'd started apologizing where it wasn't needed. It wasn't the first time she'd done that, and she knew it was going to be some time yet before she learned to stop doing that. "I just thought maybe it probably wasn't that interesting..."

"I find it interesting. So what's the messy thing you're gonna do?"

"Lightning." Corbie pressed her lips together in thought. "Or at least, close enough to lightning that it don't much matter, but actual electricity's pretty awful to control." She summoned a single witchlight, the little glowing chrysanthemum floating in her palm. "I been working on the theory and the steps to do this for months and I think I got it."

"Huh," Hurley says to that, and he watches as she easily summons what looks like some sort of glowing flower thing. Hurley really doesn't know anything about flowers. His experience with them is limited to ordering them for his Ma, and he always just ordered roses.

After a moment of appreciating the light-magic thing, Hurley redirects his attention back to Corbie.

"You mind if you have a spectator? Magic's not really a thing where I come from."

"Not at all," Corbie said quickly, finally raising her eyes. "Actually I was just thinking it might be a bad idea to be by myself 'cause I don't know how much this is gonna take out of me and... well. Wizards are kinda known not to have much sense where I'm from, but I ain't that stupid." She was sure she'd made this as safe as she could realistically do, but if it too enough out of her that she passed out out here, well.

She knew Mildmay would start searching for her if she didn't come back, but she couldn't do that to him.

"Uh," Hurley says, hesitantly, looking over his shoulder at the Madonna Inn. It's pretty far away and he knows already that despite all the runs he had to make in the jungle he's not gonna be able to get there at Jack or Sawyer speed.

He redirects his attention back to Corbie.

"Wouldn't it be a good idea to bring out a medic?"

A beat.

"Just in case?"

"Not like that," Corbie said hurriedly, if for no other reason than she didn't want to lose her nerve. "I just... I mean you don't gotta, I can find somebody else," she knew Mildmay would do it in a heartbeat, and Jackson would just for something different to do. "I just don't wanna be by myself when I do this."

"No," Hurley insists, shaking his head, his curly hair bobbing from side-to-side. "I want to watch it."

That's true. He's just worried about Corbie's well-being.

He takes a few steps back away from the ward.

Then another few steps.

"Is it safe over here?"

Something about the movement of that curly hair, not unlike her own not-quite-tameable locks, made Corbie smile. She nodded.

And then she turned her attention to the magic.

For a long moment, nothing happened, the girl standing there with one hand held out toward the spot she was striking. The air grew heavy and close in a way that the dryness of the desert didn't allow.

And then there was a great flash of purple light above that came crashing down into the ground. Being the tallest things in range, were it any natural lightning it would have gone straight for her or for Hurley, but it went exactly where she wanted it to go.

Dirt exploded upward and outward, hitting the invisible wall of her containment circle.

Corbie stared in stunned silence. And then she started to laugh. Her knees wobbled and down she went, but she laughed, delighted and almost dazed.

Hurley watches this all as it happens, his eyes following the purple light. He's still gaping even after the dirt settles.

"Whoa," he manages, a millisecond before Corbie starts laughing. Then he redirects his attention towards her.

And as soon as she falls down to her knees, he jogs over towards her.

"Hey," he says leaning down. She might be laughing, but he's still concerned -- and it shows in the furrow of his thick brows. "You okay?" he asks first. And then, once he feels like she's fine, he adds:

"Your purple light thing -- it was pretty cool."

As expected.

"I'm okay," Corbie assured him, grinning bright as sunshine. "Just..." and she laughed again, her hand running back through her hair. "I almost didn't think that was going to work."

"Well it did," Hurley says, returning the smile. He offers her a hand up. "So what do you plan on learning next? Or is this it for awhile?"

He wouldn't blame her for wanting to take a break.

Corbie considered that hand for a second, not because she didn't want any help up, but because she probably did need it and she was gauging just how steady she felt. Then she nodded and took the help up.

She closed her eyes for a second when she was on her feet--for just a moment there there were too many colors, too many shades of brown in the ground and blue in the sky--but otherwise she thought she was probably okay.

A nap wouldn't hurt, though.

"Well. That ain't something I can practice daily or anything, but Illyana would tell me I need to be faster, and Dorian would tell me I need to work on my concentration so it ain't so much work to do one thing. For today, though? I think I'm good."

Hurley heaves her up, then relinquishes his hold on his hand. His eyes are set on her face -- just making sure she's okay, and once he's satisfied, he looks over at the drawn remains of the ward that Corbie had created.

It seems kinda weird though, that people would tell her it wasn't fast enough or that she worked too hard at it.

"I don't know," Hurley says. "What you did seems pretty impressive to me."

Corbie shrugged, not bothered by it. She was pretty damn pleased with what she's done anyway. "They're trained to use magic in combat. In a fight if I took that long, or lost track of my surroundings, I'd be dead. Not that that's a goal of mine, but it bears remembering anyway."

Though she can see the Automaton swinging at her head. She knows even now she probably couldn't have killed it, but at least now she knew how.

"Are you fighting anyone back home?"

Hurley's pretty sure Corbie isn't fighting anyone here. Everyone seemed to be pretty chill. Definitely chiller than the island, anyway.

Corbie shook her head. "No. Just... that's what most of the people teaching me here know."

"Does that mean you knew other magic before you got here?" he asks. This whole magic thing is still new to him. Yeah, he saw that kinda stuff in Harry Potter, but a lot of this stuff was really on a whole different level.

"I'd probably just use magic to fly around and stuff."

Edited 2018-04-24 17:18 (UTC)

Corbie's face fell a little as she considered that question. "I was learning how to build engines," she said "And maybe I'd've learned some healing, if I'd been in school long enough." That was considered a 'womanly' enough thing to do that the Institution didn't balk at girls learning healing magic, even if boys generally learned more and better.

She cast a glance at her containment circle and, with a scuff of her foot through one of the lines and a whispered word, she erased it back into the dirt.

"You build engines?" he asks. Sure, that's not magic, but Hurley's interest is piqued.

"My dad and I were working on fixing an old Camaro back when I was a kid." Before his dad left the family. "Back on the island I found this old Volkswagen Van -- you know, the ones that are basically like, rounded rectangles."

Hurley gestures, forming the shape of the car for Corbie to see.

"We managed to get it running, too, even though it was probably sitting there for like 30 years."

The girl looked a little sheepish at that. "I dunno what those are, actually. I was learning to build thaumaturgical engines. Machines that run on magic."

"Dude." The awe is clearly present in Hurley's voice.

Maybe it's not car engines, but a machine running on magic is way cooler than that.

"What did you use the machines for?"

Sure that she was steady enough on her feet to walk, Corbie jerked her head and started back for the hotel. "Could be used for anything where you need to generate power, really. Though most common thing is train engines."

Hurley follows her back to the hotel, trying to match his pace to hers.

Train engines sound a lot more complicated than car engines. But Hurley doesn't exactly know enough about train engines to know either way. Magic engines were probably more complicated than either one of them, Hurley decides.

"Was that like, what you did for a living? Or was that just like, a for-fun thing?"

Corbie shook her head. "It's what I was learning about in school. Hutch--Virtuer Hutchence--specializes in engines. He took me under his wing when my mentor had to leave. Was a hooker before that." A bit of information she'd tried to keep buried at home, but most people here seemed not to care. Either that or their reaction told her something about them.

"I worked at a Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack," Hurley offers, apparently undisturbed by Corbie's previous occupation. "Sounds like you learned a lot more useful stuff in school than I did."

Hurley continues forward, closing the distance between them and the Inn entrance.

"I never made grades good enough to do anything. Just barely graduated high school. My Ma never let me hear the end of it."

"Gran didn't let me go to school at all," Corbie answered with a shrugged shoulder. "She pulled me out when I was eight. Said it wasn't right for girls. Wasn't 'til I met Felix that going to school at all seemed possible, let alone a thing I'd actually do."

Hurley's thick brows furrow for not the first time today -- and probably not the last.

"That... seems... weird," he says slowly. "Was your gran old-fashioned or something?"

"Kinda?" Corbie said with a shrug. "It was a practical thing, too. It was just us. If we were gonna stay fed and clothed and keep a roof over our heads, I couldn't be at school all day."

"Huh," Hurley says. "So your family wasn't well off."

For once, it's not a question.

"Was there just like, your gran? No ma, dad, gramps?"

"Just me and Gran," Corbie confirmed with a nod. "We dunno who my daddy was. And my momma... Gran said she took off when I was little. I don't remember her." None of this bothered her. Her parents may as well never have existed as far as she was concerned. Gran had been the only mother she'd ever known, and the only mother she'd needed.

"I know it's not really the same, but my dad ran off on us when I was like, eight."

Definitely not the same.

"My ma was around though, and my grandpa for awhile."

Hurley shrugs. "So what do you do around here, anyway? Other than make magic happen and stuff?"

No. It wasn't the same, when you remembered. But as Hurley didn't seem to be inviting questions about that, Corbie didn't ask any.

"Learn magic from other wizards around here. Do what Illyana needs me to do in the library. Sew. Repairs and alterations, mostly." She was best at those; it was a requirement when you had to make one dress last as long as humanly possible. "You found a thing to do 'round here yet?"

"Nah, not really," he says. "Like I said, I used to work at a Mr. Cluck's Chicken Shack. I could fry chicken, but I get the feeling everyone's tired of that now."

A beat and then:

"What, you have any ideas?"

"Nah, sorry, just asking," Corbie admitted with a shake of her head. "I mean maybe if I let it stew some? After a while you just gotta get creative."

"Yeah, I sure I am," Hurley says. "I mean, I kinda helped with the whole gathering food thing until I ended up being in charge of rationing. None of those are really problems here."

Thankfully. Hurley wasn't good at the former, and he didn't like the latter. It caused a lot of problems, and he was thankful to be out of it. Even if it meant that they were back to doing stuff like gathering fruit or hunting boar or whatever.

"I kinda was the unofficial morale officer. Made a golf course and dragged a bunch of people into fixing that van I was talking about. But you guys have a lot more entertainment than we did there."

They start to close in on the main entrance of the Inn.

"If you think of anything, let me know. I'm over in Room 111."

"Distractions from the fact that there ain't anywhere to go and no people but us still ain't unwelcome," Corbie pointed out.

"I'll do that. For now, I think I need to go lie down a while."

"Thanks," Hurley says, smiling. "Hope you feel better. And you're doing good with the whole magic thing. Don't get yourself down on it."

At least Hurley thought so.

And with a wave, Hurley departs, letting Corbie get back to her room, and hopefully, back to some much-needed rest.

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[For Hurley] Big Damn Magic

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