Light and Shadow✔️

One-night-stand

While in my room I started training, small things like weaving with the throw pillows. After two days all three of them were gone. One had turned to water, another into a gigantic tomato, which had amused Elain endlessly, the third almost burned my room down. But I was starting to understand the craft more and more. It wasn't really light weaving, more weaving the fabric of the world. Every strand was energy and in knotting them I could change it from one kind to another.

Most of my creations ended up with Elain, which is why we got to know each other very well, very fast. After being a bit skeptic and cold at the beginning she seemed to take a liking to me and started to share her gardening skills with me. 

I was starting to understand but still nowhere near mastering this art that was weaving. I fainted more than once, turning air into something else costing far less energy than manipulating things. I still had no idea how for instance, I had managed to make the appletree grow eight feet taller than it had been before or made air to solid iron. But at least I could now minimize the explosions, who were, surprisingly, the thing that cost the least energy. 

Every evening Mor dragged me out to go watch some stupid play in the theater, but sometimes, if I was lucky, we would just visit Luciana. One afternoon she even persuaded me to join one of Feyre's Art classes, where I discovered that I'm horrible at painting. Mor helped a bit, her stick figure army looking about as frightening as an ugly garden plant. 

I got to know Cassian better when he threw me out of bed one morning and forced me to spar with him because everyone else had gone to deal with some issue in the Court under the Mountain. 

Rhysand joined Feyre more often when we were giggling in the garden after dinner. Both of them turning out to be a lot less scary and goofier than I could've imagined. Cassian may have been a busybody as well as a cocky ass, but he seems to be the one to go to when wanting to laugh or drink, most of the time we ended doing both. Rhysand doted on Feyre as much as she did on him, both of them claiming the other to be an overbearing mother hen.

Azriel now almost always stayed with me when I trained, a silent presence, watching me or listing to something I didn't seem to hear. Sometimes we talked, or more I talked and if I was lucky he would give a comment, making me giggle most of the time. Even without the talking, I got to know him better, the way he cocked his head when something interested him, the silent smile every time I told him about my childhood. I could now even recognize the way his ears twitched for a moment when one of his shadows sang to him. 

While training I found all sorts of excuses to be near him. He knew very well, but for some reason, he went along with it. We started flying together. I explained every plant I knew while walking through the forest, he was always patient while listening to me. But after a time I felt as if he knew everything about me and I knew nothing about him. So I started to question him. To my surprise he didn't seem to mind, his answers were mostly short, but not irritated. Every so slowly I seemed to get to know the mystery that was Azriel.

Training seemed particularly glum when he couldn't be there. For some reason, the more we got to know each other, the less I seemed to see of him outside of training, he mostly resorted to either be gone entirely or locking himself in his room constantly. 

Every time I asked about it Rhysand smiled apologetically and told me the same bullshit story that Az was on a Mission that sent him far away most of the time. 

I felt myself reaching for that part inside of me that seemed to be filled with swirls of shadow more and more often, trying to listen to the sizzling of shadows around me, sometimes I found myself talking to one and it seemed to listen. But that could also only be my imagination.