The Burning Blue Mage

6

     Sage had avoided me for the rest of the day so I was surprised to see him sitting outside my door the next morning, book in hand and my breakfast beside him.
     Sage turned to look at me and smiled. "Either you've been waking up a lot earlier or I've been sleeping in a lot later cause I swear every morning I get to read less and less."
     Sage stood up and handed me my breakfast. I thought about saying something about yesterday but discarded the thought when I remembered what the waitress said about Sage not liking magic.
     I placed the plate of eggs on my desk. I noticed Sage was perfectly cheery. To be honest, he acted the same way as he has every day. It was hard to remember him avoiding me the day before.
     "You need me for something?" Sage asked.
     "No."
     Sage looked a bit disappointed. "Well, come find me if you need me. See yah."
     Sage left my room, pressing the door more closed than it was before but still creaked open a bit. I watched the door for a few seconds before changing into training clothes, eating my breakfast, and heading down to the training area closest to my room.
     The training area was nice because most people actually don't use it, even later in the day. I guess that I've used it so much that everyone just deems it as mine. Which was nice to not have to worry about people showing up and disturb my training.
As I started training, I tweaked my movements to the thought of an opponent using two weapons. It was something I never trained against because it had never occurred to me that someone would wield two weapons or use the sheath of their weapon. Not until Sage did it and won against me.
     I was annoyed that Sage won and even more worried about it. I've been training for 6 years and I was quite skilled with a sword, yet someone my same age who was working as a waiter was able to beat me in a match. It made me even more curious about Sage's past, though I doubted he'd tell me anything about it and no one seemed to know anything about him prior to 2 years ago.
     I found myself thinking back to yesterday. For a few seconds, Sage had looked distraught. He was just standing in the corner, looking at the floor. His hands were shaking. But as soon as I walked up to him, nothing was wrong. He was completely normal, no different than he was the first time I met him. If I hadn't seen him before I wouldn't have even thought that something was wrong.
     That worried me. The fact that he switched from his true feelings to how he always acts so quickly and precisely that I couldn't even tell that he wasn't normal. He was such a good actor, a good lier, that even I, someone who has to discern people's true feelings, couldn't read his emotions at all.
     Sage was a mystery to me, that's for sure. That just means I have to be more cautious. But it's hard to be cautious when the person you're weary of can see right through you.
     Yesterday, Sage had mentioned me being paranoid. I didn't think I was that paranoid and certainly not that see through. No one's ever called me paranoid before and I'm sure not many think I am. They think I look down on them, not that I evaluate how dangerous they could be.
     The paranoid survive, that's what Sage had said. It sounded like he was talking from experience. But why would Sage have to be paranoid? Who did he think was after him? Or what?
     Sage had dodged my question on what he thought about magic, just like the waitress said he would. I wonder what could have happened to make him so evasive of even talking about magic.
     I had only been sparring for a few minutes when a skittish servant came up to me. She was short a thin with her dirty blonde hair cut short and her brown eyes staring at the ground nervously.
     "Your highness, the king has requested your presence in the throne room," the servant said, stuttering over the words.
     I nodded to her politely. "Thank you for telling me."
     The servant bowed before scurrying off. When she left, I placed my sword in one of the weapon holders and started to head to the throne room in my training clothes. I had remembered to wear shoes today, thankfully, so I could head straight to the throne room.
     I got to the throne room quickly. My father was sitting in his throne, two guards standing against the wall behind him. No one else was in the room.
     My father was like me; paranoid. He never kept many people close to him, aside from events, and he surely didn't trust the ones he did have near him. He changed the guards out frequently so it was never the same people around him. It gives less opportunity for someone to strike.
     My father looked at me with his icy blue eyes. Our eyes were the closest thing we had in common and mine were far too silver compared to his shocking blue that grew darker near his pupil and lighter on the edges. His faded brownish hair was kept fairly long and was braided away from his face, giving him the look of a viking, I always thought.
     I walked into the middle of the throne room and kneeled. "You called for me, your highness."
     My father indicated I could rise with the jerk of his head. I rose. "There'll be a dinner tonight and I would like that servant of yours to wait it."
     I nodded. "Of course, your majesty."
     I was about to turn around when my father kept talking. "Remember, his actions are your responsibilities. Make sure he doesn't embarrass me."
     I hesitated for a second before finally nodding. Sage wasn't one who acted according to a person's ranking and that really wasn't good for me.
     My father dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I walked out of the throne room and started towards Sage's room.
     Even though it was still fairly early in the morning and there were hours before the dinner, I thought I'd tell Sage about it now so I could remind him to behave and so he could have however long he would need to prepare.
     I walked up to Sage's room and knocked on the door. There wasn't so much as a sound coming from the closed door. "Sage?" I called. No response.
     I opened the door. The room was dark, no candles or torches lit. Sage wasn't here, though I couldn't help but notice that his room had been cleaned recently.
     Seeing that Sage wasn't in his room, I closed the door. If Sage wasn't in his room then where would he be? I don't think he would have left the castle but he doesn't really know the castle well so it was hard to think of places he would go.
     Sage always brings me breakfast in the morning so I headed towards the kitchen.
     I opened the door to the kitchen. The two cooks turned and bowed in surprise when they saw me. "Your highness, what brings you here?" The female cook asked.
     "I'm looking for Sage," I replied simply.
     "He hasn't been in since this morning," the male cook said.
     I nodded. "If you see him, tell him I'm looking for him."
     "We will," they both said at the same time.
     I left the kitchen. Where else would Sage be?
     Sage must have trained a lot to be so good with a dagger so I headed towards the main training ground.
     I kept to the edges of the cemented training yard, trying to avoid the handful of knights who were here training.
     I scanned the open area with straw training dolls and wooden weapon holders like the ones near my room. I didn't spot Sage.
     I left the training area without saying a word to anyone. So he wasn't in the kitchen or the training area.
     I walked around the castle a bit and asked a few people if they saw a 16 year old boy with olive skin, brown hair, freckles, and green eyes. No one had seen him. So I started to just go into any room that wasn't restricted to him.
     I walked up to a door that led to the library. I tried to come here quite often but I haven't been in a while.
     I creaked open the door. "Sage? Are you-" My voice trailed off as I saw the room.
     The bookshelves that lined all of the walls were empty and the hundreds of books that usually occupied them were piled on top of tables and on the floor.
     Sage poked his head out from behind a huge stack of books that was a good foot taller than me. "Hi."
     "What happened in here?" I was too shocked to use proper etiquette or keep my guard up.
     Sage's ears turned red and he rubbed the back of his head with his hand as he talked. "Okay, so, looking back, I definitely should have done this on, like, a weekend or something when I had more time off but I just couldn't help myself."
     "Done what?" I shouted at him.
     "Okay, so I came in here to see if there were any books that might interest me, right? Well, I came in and I couldn't find a single thing cause the shelves were just randomly organized! So I decided that I would organize the books. I didn't take account of how many books there would be," Sage mumbled.
     I stared at him for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. I don't know what I could have possibly been expecting for an explanation but that wasn't it.
     "Sorry about the mess. I will clean it up, promise," Sage said cheerfully. "Though it might take a while to organize it all."
     I sighed. "I'll help you."
     Sage's face brightened in surprise. "Really? You'd help? That would make this go so much quicker. How about you start organizing the non fiction books based on their topics? I've been trying to separate non fiction and fiction though some are still mixed together. Non fiction is mainly on that side," Sage said, pointing to the other side of the room.
     I wasn't used to someone telling me what to do. And the most shocking thing was that Sage didn't even think twice about what he said, as he just went back to breaking the tall piles into smaller ones.
     I walked over to the side of the room with the non fiction piles and started to make piles based on topics.
     "And what will you be doing?" I asked.
     "Organizing the fiction. I was never really good with non fiction cause most of it just bores me so I thought I should start with fiction. I figured that you should know a lot about non fiction, though," Sage replied casually.
      "And why's that?" I asked curiously. I mean, I did know a lot about non fiction, looking at all the books and topics I recognized, but how did Sage guess?
     Sage shrugged. "I guess I just thought you would cause it seems like a prince would have to study that kind of thing and stuff."
     Fair point. "So how are you organizing the fiction?" I asked. Fiction wasn't as clean and cut as organizing non fiction. You couldn't say, "these are about history while these over here are about rulers". It gets more complicated than that.
     "First, I'm just separating things into series and authors. Then I think I'll organize it by genre. Romance, comedy, fantasy. That sort of thing," Sage said.
     We worked quietly for a few minutes. I looked over at Sage and noticed he had a book in his hand titled Shifters.
     "Hey, isn't that book about magic? So shouldn't it be in the non fiction?" I asked.
     "It's not about magic," Sage replied a bit cryptically.
     "It's about shape shifters isn't it?" I asked.
     "Yep. It's a book about these people that can shape shift into whatever animal they want, though they can't shape shift into a human with different looks beside their own," Sage said.
     I looked at him confused. "Wait, how isn't that magic?"
     "Well, I guess it's kinda magic, but in the general term of not being fabricated normally. But shape shifting isn't actually real, at least no one's discovered it or recorded it. Shape shifting seems like a common thought about magic but it's still impossible. A fragment of the imagination."
     I looked at Sage surprised. He suddenly looked embarrassed. "I read a book about it somewhere," he mumbled before I could ask how he knew that.
     "But I think it's interesting, with all the magical creatures and different types of magic that we can use, shape shifting isn't one of them, yet it's one of the most well known spells. It really makes you question why certain magic is real and yet some are still nothing but fiction. Why can people do certain magic but other magic doesn't exist? And how has no magical creature developed these skills over the years? With them being hunted left and right, wouldn't it be beneficial to them to learn how to shape shift?" Sage said.
     That certainly took me off guard. I never thought about what types of magic actually exist and why only those types. I never thought about magical creatures developing other magic, either. But now that Sage mentioned, it got me wondering about it too. Honestly, no one knows enough about magic to know the answers, even magic enthusiasts don't know everything about magic due to it being illegal.
     Then I remembered that Sage always shies away from talking about magic.
     "Does magic interest you?" I asked.
     A small smile slipped onto his lips, though it seemed distant. "Magic is magic. But it's not magic at the same time. Magic is constantly changing. Magic is never the same. Magic is terrifying. Magic is intriguing," Sage said cryptically.
     I thought that over for a few seconds. We always label something supernatural as magic, but magical creatures are naturally born and made so why are they considered magic? There's different forms of magic, yet it's still magic. So what's the actual definition of magic?
     "But there's no point asking stupid questions about it. I mean, magic is hardly anything but a fantasy anymore and you don't ask questions about fantasies," Sage said cheerfully and threw the book on top of a pile.
     After everything I've learned about Sage, this was the most insightful on what he actually felt about magic.
     "Well, now that I've bored you with my philosophy, do you have any quandaries about the world or hobbies?" Sage asked.
    "What? Me? Why?" I asked.
     Sage shrugged. "I hardly know anything about you, I guess. Just trying to make some small talk." Like he could talk, Mr. I don't exist before two years ago.
     Sage went back to work. I stared at him as he organized the books into small piles. "Death," I said suddenly.
     Sage looked at me confused. "What?"
     "Death never made sense to me. It seemed far more supernatural to me than magic." I don't know why I was telling Sage this but I couldn't stop myself. "My mother died soon after I was born so I never met her. I've always thought about that. People always tell me she died before her time but what does that even mean? What is the time to die? People die when they're 80. Some die when they're 5. Some die somewhere between those two. So when's our time? Who says we don't always die at our time? I mean, we all die at a certain time. Who says that's accidental?" I said.
     Sage was quiet for a few seconds and I started to regret saying anything. I should have just stayed quiet like I always do. Why would I even share this with Sage?
     "Death is interesting because it happens to everyone, yet it's never consistent. It's different every time. You die at different times, different places, different ways," Sage said.
     I didn't know what to say. No one's ever talked about death like this. No one's ever had the same questions I had on the life cycle.
     Sage suddenly smiled. "I think that's the first thing I really learned about who you are."
     "What do you mean?" I asked confused.
     "You always have your guard up so I only know the figment of a person you pretend you are not anything about you," Sage said.
     I felt my face turn red as I quickly turned away and went back to organizing the stack of books around me.
     We worked for a while in silence for a bit before I tried to approach magic again. "So what do you think about magic?"
     "Oh, I remember this book! I read it a couple of years ago. It's a pretty good read but it's pretty short," Sage said, completely ignoring my question.
     Sage had opened up to me about magic for a bit but he was back to being closed off on the topic of magic. At least I got some information on what he thought.
     "So why exactly did you start organizing all the books? I mean, no one asked you to," I said, abandoning the topic of magic.
     "I like organizing things when I got nothin better to do and it was hard to find what I was looking for so I thought I should tidy up," Sage said.
     "You like organizing?" I've never heard anyone say it, or at least mean it. Some will say it just because they want me to believe they love what they do but they never actually enjoy it.
     Sage shrugged. "I guess. I've just gotten used to it. I helped cleaned up at the Pub often and even before that I'd helped out around my village so much that it's just become second nature to me."
     "What kind of work did you do in your village?" I asked. If I couldn't find out about his thoughts on magic than I might as well find out about his past.
     "Anything I could, really. Cut wood, patch up roof's, carry heavy material. I did whatever," Sage said.
     We started to place some of our more complete stacks onto the bookshelves. Non fiction was sorted on the left of the room while fiction was on the right.
     Sage and I sorted through the stacks of books for hours, making idle chit chat every once in a while. We left the heavy philosophical questions and started just with simple things like hobbies. I surprisingly would answer his questions and my guard started to slip up. I felt comfortable around him, more comfortable than I'd been with anyone else.
     The sky was a faded orangish pink by the time we got the whole place organized.
     Sage sprawled across the floor. "Thank God you came to help. That took far too long, even with both of us. It would have taken days for me to do it myself. And we totally forgot about lunch too!"
     Shit. "We're supposed to be going to a dinner tonight!"