Winding Roads {A Creative Writing Journal}

Sensing Ice (A2E22 lowfantasy winner)

  "The night is deep and so is magic."

  My grandmother used to say that all the time. She had always been sensitive to the flows of magic, a trait that was passed down from her grandmother all the way to me, Kate Sylvare.

    The magic usually felt warm and welcoming, like a breeze during a hot summer's day even in the middle of winter. I came to see it a friend and a source of safety. As long as I could feel the magic wafting through the air, nothing could harm me.

    Today, it felt different.

  Magic had a habit of following me everywhere, including school, and normally, it would curl around me like a pet cat. But today, something felt off. I tapped my fingers on my desk anxiously as I tried to sit still in AP chemistry, doing my best to focus and yet hopelessly failing. Something was different about the magic today, and I needed to figure out what it was.

     The classroom door opened, and a chill flooded the room and made the hair on my arms stand on end. I looked up and locked eyes with the one I knew was messing with the magic.

   He was a stranger. Dirty blond, almost brown hair, tan skin, and eyes that held a spark of mischief—he looked like he belonged on a surfboard somewhere in the Florida Keys where he would never know what cold was. And yet, as he casually scanned the room, a frigid draft snaked through the air, causing the warm, gentle magic I'd known my whole life to jerk and spazz sharply.

    This boy couldn't just sense magic, he could use it.

    "Class, this is Darren Lock, and he will be joining us for the rest of the semester," our teacher, a birdlike woman named Mrs. Iliad, announced primly. "Darren, there is an empty seat over there by Kate. You may sit there."

"Thank you," he replied and nodded to her before siding down the aisle of desks. He practically fell into his seat beside me with a loud huff. He turned his head slightly to face me, offering what to a normal person would have been a pleasant smile. But to me, when his gaze locked on mine, I felt myself get even colder inside.

"Kate, right?" he asked, and I nodded mutely. This intruder's smile widened even further, and I saw the spark of a predator in his glacial blue eyes.

"I think we're going to become good friends."

I frowned sharply and allowed the magic I was so familiar with to cool around me, protecting me from his cold. We were not friends, and we never would be.

Not if I could help it.

"Don't be so sure of yourself. It takes a lot more than a smile to make me call you a friend."

Darren shook his head with a light chuckle.

"We'll see about that."