his hair smelled of salt and the misery of loss

They said they found him unconscious on the shore, right next to the boat docks, dressed in rags and covered in bruises and burns. He was soaked from sweat, not the ocean waves—no sign of drowning, nor drenched in the salty sea. Deposited, more like, some folks from the seaside village determined—he was dropped off, it seemed.

When he woke, it was weeks after he was discovered. He had opened his eyes to a quiet, empty home that smelled of soup and flowers. A clean set of clothes, purples and reds dazzling his eyes with star-shaped buttons decorating bits of it, sat neat and folded beside his bed. The boy clumsily exchanged his rags for the pretty clothes, or at least tried to—frustration bubbled in his throat when his arm and head got caught in the fabric. 

“Need some help there, child?” 

Eira was her name, another half-elf he learned later—she was the one who found him and carried him to her home. He learned he had a name—Mikumo, beautiful clouds. It was a bright and sunny day with puffy, soft-looking clouds the day he was found. An ironic start to the child’s life, yet full of hope in the long-run.

She helped him change his clothes with amusement on her lips, patience as he struggled with working his limbs that didn’t seem to agree with him. Holding something as simple as a spoon was a horrible experience for him, and that first night he cried into his soup when the spoon kept slipping through his fingers and clattering onto the floor. 

The days following his slow recovery, Mikumo was steadily introduced to the world outside, and he was drinking in every bit of knowledge Eira would patiently give him. The village, Izoold, was a very small fisherman’s town. Boats lined the water surrounding the west side of land, while docks stretched out past the reef for larger boats and casual fishing. Certain fish were the prized ones, captured for a particular oil they secreted and some of the villagers would take this and turn it into medicine to sell to different villages. Izoold may not have been a very big place by any means, but it was certainly bustling with business.

Well, at least that’s what Eira told him. Izoold seemed pretty big to him. Huge, if you asked him. The people were nice too, if not a little unnerving with how much they stared at him. Sometimes the looks weren’t all that nice either, however. Some were… weird. It made him feel out of place, and most of the time he’d choose to hide behind Eira instead of feeling like these strangers were trying to dissect him with just their eyes.

Eira taught him how to read, and how to clean dishes. His hands got better at holding the stupid spoon and fork, and eventually Eira trusted his hold to be good enough to teach him how to scale a fish (she gutted a fish in front of him once and it took her hours to take him out of his panic-run stupor). He said his first word to Eira at one point—he thought she would cry from how happy she seemed just by him asking her to fix a tear in his shirt. 

When he found some more words, he finally asked Eira about his eye.

With a sigh, she took him to sit by her and pulled his hair back gently. “When we found you,” she explained, “that stone was already implanted with some sort of device in your socket. Its power was so strong… the device was broken, and the sheer power from it was killing you. It took two of us to replace the device with the one that was in your pocket; the one you have now.”

Mikumo’s hand hovered over his right eye, fingers gently tracing over the smooth surface of the sphere. Just like the million other times before where he stared at himself in the mirror, hair pulled back, fingers pressed over the stone—he could feel the wild stir of energy just beneath his skin. At night, he could feel it crackling between his very bones, waiting for something. It was those moments of pure silence and peace that the stray thoughts of get it out crossed his mind. It was fear of pain that kept him from clawing the thing out himself.

“Oh,” he found himself replying before his hand fell to his lap. His brows furrowed as he processed her answer, then he glanced up. “How… do you know?”

Eira raised her hand to her neck, a red piece of jewelry attached to her chest right above her sternum. It wasn’t spherical like his, but Mikumo recognized it immediately. His eyes lit up and he leaned closer. 

“I grabbed this off one of em,” she said, as if that explained anything. “One of the same people who I assumed stuck that into you. That’s how I knew how to replace the crest around your exsphere.”

“Ex… sphere…” Mikumo cocked his head to the side.

Eira smiled. “Yes, exsphere. That’s what that is there. I can remove mine, but yours…” her smile faltered somewhat. “It’s why we had to replace the crest instead of removing it completely. It would have killed you. Don’t ever remove this, do you understand?”

He nodded dumbly. 

That night he saw a monster crawling outside his window. 

It was a few months after that night that he learned he could use magic, something that shocked even Eira as they stood in the water with their pants rolled up to their thighs. Eira held a spear in her hand, preparing to spear a fish she spotted when something brushed against Mikumo’s leg and panic shot through him. A screech left him, and the water around the small half-elf burst into the air with a bang of pressure. Two fish fell from the sky and flopped dead on the sandy beach.

Eira rushed to his side, pulling his drenched body to shore before she frantically searched him for wounds. “Mikumo?! Mikumo, are you alright?! What- What happened, what was that?”

Wide-eyed, Mikumo stared at the woman, his bottom lip trembling as he gently began to shake his head. “Mmmm… I-I… Th-the, there was—I got scared and I… the…”

“Mikumo—” Eira paused, scanning their surroundings. Some fishermen approached the two, though they stood a good distance away and appearing anxious, crossed between concern for the two half-elves and fearful that it might happen again—whatever it was. She glanced at the dead fish beside them, her brows furrowed as she tried to make sense of what—what happened? 

“Magic…” she muttered with an exhale of air, then turned back to the half-elf child sobbing in her arms, whispering words of apologies. She exhaled again before pulling him into her chest. She shushed him gently, “Shh, it’s okay, you’re fine, you’re fine…” She waved at the fishermen for them to leave, that they were okay.

It took a while before Mikumo had calmed himself enough that they could return home with their fish. Eira cleaned him in silence in her small house, mind reeling before she finished and had him changed into clean clothes. “Mikumo,” she quietly started. “Do… Do you know about magic?”

He blinked slowly at her in response, a touch of confusion in his eyes.

Eira sighed. “Right. Okay…” she resigned herself. “Well, Mikumo. How would you like to learn about magic tomorrow?”

His head tilted to the side before he nodded somewhat excitedly. “Yes please,” he rasped. “Is… Is it scary?”

“Not if you know how to use it,” Eira said, “which is what I’ll be teaching you.”

Controlling mana was… a struggle and a half. Each simple spell would explode in his face, and thankfully it was only scary the first couple of times and he only cried once! It got real frustrating real fast.

Eira soon realized the problem; there was too much mana and too little an output. 

“Alright, we’re going to try a bigger spell this time,” Eira started. “Don’t worry, it’s not too...dangerous.”

Mikumo grimaced at her. He didn’t… trust that, but he did trust her. Augh… With her instruction, they spent another while for him to learn the next spell. Deep inhale, then exhale…

The spell hit—the tree exploded.

Excitedly, Mikumo looked at Eira who whooped in delight and cheered for him. “You did it! See, I knew you could!”

A smile pulled at his cheeks.

He was fourteen now, staring out his window with his best friend Denki next to him.

“Can you see the monsters out there?”

“No,” Denki whispered, sounding somewhat star-struck. “Can you?”

“No, but I can feel them,” Mikumo replied. “They’re attracted to us.”

“Whoa, seriously?”

Mikumo nodded, then glanced over to his friend. His eye traveled down to the blond’s chest, where his own exsphere poked out from under his shirt. Denki was like him; dropped off in the middle of nowhere with an exsphere embedded into his chest. Sick as a dog and dying—until Eira helped him too. Denki couldn’t remember where he came from, much like Mikumo had. 

“Why do you think?” Denki asked.

“Ours are different,” Mikumo answered. “Eira’s is different. We were messed with, you know?”

“We’re dangerous,” Denki huffed, head falling onto the windowsill.

Mikumo only hummed in response to that. A seed was planted in his head. Dangerous—Izoold had never had a monster problem before. And now they…

“We should leave,” the raven muttered, mostly to himself but Denki caught his voice anyway.

“Hm? What do you mean?”

Mikumo inhaled deeply, a hesitancy in his behavior before he exhaled softly. “Us, we’re attracting them,” he replied dryly. “When will they stop staring and actually come in? We need to leave. Eira could get hurt.”

Denki furrowed his brows. “Eira’s a boss, though? She can handle it.”

“But what about everyone else?” Mikumo’s eye hardened. “They fish, Denki, what’re they gonna do, net the monsters?”

Denki’s expression lowered, a grimace forming on his lips in discomfort. He didn’t have anything to say to that. Mikumo stood up then and started moving about the room.

“Wh-what are you doing, Miku?” the blond half-elf questioned somewhat fearfully as his eyes followed his friend’s form around the room.

“Packing.”

“Wh— what? Why?!”

“We’re leaving, Denki! I’m not— Mmm— No, no, we’re not risking this, okay?”

Denki stood up then, nervously walking around to try and placate his friend. “But—what about Eira? She’s gonna totally freak out—she’s gonna look for us, you know she will! She’s gonna totally kill us!”

“Look,” Mikumo whipped around, seething. “We either leave and protect them, or we stay and kill them with our exspheres. Do—do you wanna see them die? What about Sasha? What about Mr. Stein at the pier? He has a daughter, Denki, do you wanna see her die?”

Denki stayed quiet. A moment passed with the two boys staring at each other, tears in both their eyes—then Denki let a shuddered breath in before he began to pack a bag for himself. 

They left together that night.