Enchanted [Final Fantasy XV]

❥ chapter II

Needless to say, despite your lack of belief in magic, the first thing you did once you were back home and seated comfortably on your sofa bed was to skim through the thick spell book. The spells it contained ranged from simple incantations to complicated rituals. The majority was for mundane purposes, like deflecting bad luck, finding a lost object, or ensuring a good night's sleep, whereas a handful of them was designed to inflict some kind of curse upon someone else.

To your own surprise, only one of the numerous magic spells caught your eye. While leafing through the yellowed pages, you came across a true love's spell that piqued the interest of your very, very single self. The instructions only took up about half the page, which meant that it wasn't as elaborate as most of the other spells you had seen. Out of curiosity, you scanned the handwritten page.

A sheet of paper? Honestly, who didn't have that somewhere in their home? Check.

A pen? Likewise. Check.

Rose petals? Only yesterday, you had bought a small, decorative bouquet of roses among other flowers, so ... Check.

Jasmine incense? It just so happened that you had received a set of incense sticks—jasmine being one of them—as a free sample during your shopping tour the other day. Check.

A pink or red candle? You had both, in fact. Check.

A rose quartz, a ruby, or a garnet? No to the last two, but yes to the first one. Check.

Well, it looked like you had everything needed to perform the spell at home, so that was already pretty much half of the spell done. For some reason, you found yourself hoping that the rest of the spell—the part telling you what you had to do in order to cast it—would be just as straightforward and effortless.

"Light the candle and incense and relax," you mumbled to yourself, reading bits and pieces of the instructions aloud. "Think of all the qualities you desire in a lover ... write them down ... go outside ... look up at the sky and concentrate on a star ... say this ... go back inside ... sprinkle the rose petals ... place the gemstone ... say that ... and ... that was it. Done. Huh."

You didn't know much about magic spells (obviously) nor magic in general, but performing this spell sounded like child's play; it would probably take you only about ten minutes to carry out its instructions, maybe fifteen minutes tops. Easy enough, right? And so, you decided on a whim to give it a go, simply because you felt like it.

Seriously, the worst thing that could happen was that nothing happened, and you had wasted ten minutes or so of your time on Earth, a sheet of paper, some ink from a pen, a rose, an incense stick, and a candle. No biggie. That wouldn't be the end of the world, really.

Alternatively, the best thing that could happen was that you actually found true love. But you highly doubted that. Oh well, you were doing this just for shits and giggles anyway. You didn't expect it to work in the least. (Though to be perfectly honest, a teeny tiny part of you secretly hoped against hope that the spell would indeed somehow work, and you would finally meet your significant other.)

"Well then, here goes nothing," you said to no one in particular and got to work.

After gathering all of the things you needed from around your studio apartment, you began to prepare the spell. Sitting down at the small dining table near your equally small kitchenette, you placed the pink candle in a gold candlestick, the jasmine incense stick in a tiny white vase as a makeshift incense burner, and the sheet of paper in front of you on the table.

Using your trusty old candle lighter, you lit the candle and the incense. While the rich and sweet aroma of jasmine engulfed you, you took some deliberate moments to relax, closing your eyes and inhaling deeply. Then, you turned your attention to the blank lines on the paper.