From Echino Mesa To Nuvola Rosa

Perched on the roof of his home, Maristela fixed his gaze on the flickering stars. It was the dead of night. Beneath him, the sea gently licked and lapped at the fine sand while fish and squids weaved through coral like needles creating a new dress shirt. Sea pickles formed a soft glow in the ocean and created a more welcoming ocean, one that was not a dark void whenever nighttime fell.

This would be his twentieth time practicing stellar transmission, a practically defunct form of communication with magic-users. He came across it while he was studying in Starfish Valley's library. The notion that he might be the only one who knows about this excited and motivated him to continue learning it.

This time he's more confident in his abilities. He stared at one of the stars in the sky in front of him, focusing it until it was one of the only things left in his vision, then tapped his knee to write his first word.

[Salve!]

It was something he wrote last month, the first time he actually got it to work. There was no response, which was to be expected. Maristela didn't expect to get another response with this one, either, but it was fun regardle-

[What?]

One of the stars adjacent to the one he was focusing on flashed and wrote back. Maristela jumped and lost sight of it for a brief second before he went back to concentrate, tapping rapidly,

[What do you mean? I'm saying hello.]

He waited...

[Oh! Well, hello there! I didn't know someone else used stellar transmission.]

Maristela's eyebrows furrowed and he huffed, slightly frustrated that he wasn't the only one who learned it. But hey, two is better than one! This other person seemed to be adept at communicating given the length of their response.

[I didn't know either! I shall introduce myself. My name is Maristela Aphros.]

There was a pause on the other side. He worried a little and tapped on his knee.

[Hello?]

[sorry did you write aphros]

[Yes, why?]

Another delay.

[Wow! Your clan is super famous!]

[Oh really?]

[Yeah! I read about it when I was young, and then my mentor explained to me that the Cataclysm was real... So many wizards have chalked it up to be myth over the years, but it's mostly just the older wizards. Now that I think about it, it's hard to really read up on it, at least with the truth and not the mythcised version....

OK sorry! My name is Polaris Tang!]

Ah, great. Of course history only remembers the Cataclysm and not the other (and arguably cooler) facts of the Aphros clan.

[Polaris? That's a really nice name!]

[Thank you!

So, you're in Echino Mesa?]

[You know it. What about you?]

[I'm in Nuvola Rosa! Not to brag or anything, but I'm the apprentice of the Head Wizard!]

... Huh. Well, that explains a lot of things now. Maristela sank a little where he sat and felt like a little specimen waiting to be studied by someone in one of the most prominent cities of modern wizard culture.

[Wow, that's quite the position!]

[IKR! I'm going to become Head Wizard in only a few decades, it's kind of scary but I think I'll be a great leader! At least that's what Antony says. So, what about you? Are you also an apprentice?]

Better to be honest than lie about it.

[No. I just study by myself. Echino Mesa isn't what it was in its past haha]

[Oh, silly me. I forgot about that haha]

[Haha]

[Well Maristela, I have to go to bed. But we can talk tomorrow night!]

The young wizard smiled. 

[Sure thing. Goodnight, Polaris.]

[Goodnight Maristela!]

And with that, Maristela unfocused on the field of stars and he fell onto his back. His head was spinning like a wooden top and his vision blurred for a moment. He closed his eyes and managed to catch up in just a few minutes. The side effects were something he disregarded while studying, so this was another lesson in disguise.

He laughed and sat up, knowing he had made a friend from far away. This was just their little thing, so he will cherish it until the very end of their existence.

Maristela blinked and looked at the sea of colours before climbing back down. His soles made contact with the sand that gave way and he shuffled to the porch, where he cleaned up before entering the house quietly. He wrote down in his diary before passing out, dreaming of a faraway island floating hundreds of meters above the ocean.