Enkindled Unicorn

At a desk in a tower of the castly of Belfort, facing the window, a young woolyne was studying a voluminous book on water lyss at the light of a candle. He was sixteen years old, and had already grown into a slender and graceful youth with lustrous blue fur. He was most noticeable, however - and mostly noticed - for his single, unicorn-like horn on his head, which denoted divine intervention in his fate, and the bright, pupil-less eyes on his face, which spoke of a innate talent for lyss. Lyss, of course, like the one described in the book before him. 

This youth went by the name Ewen, and he was said to be a prodigy at magic and a herald of Amirlyn, goddess of winter and to whom all creation texts attributed the element of water. 

Only, there was a small problem with that… Ewen, despite what his entourage and his appearance said about him, had never been able to achieve a single water spell. No matter the years he had spent trying and the tricks he had employed, the only effect he had managed to achieve in all that time was a sense of wrongness in his stomach and anguish as he wondered if he was a failure. 

Ewen felt very alone in this struggle. His father had great expectations of him, but wasn’t exactly the friendliest or even the most understanding figure. His mother, while loving and caring enough, was often too occupied, both mentally and physically, with avoiding his father’s fury to get to the bottom of the problem with him or to even inquire about what was troubling her only child. And so, moments like those happened often, where Ewen was all alone in front a book in a cold, lonely tower of his home… crying. 

He sobbed quietly at the desk, faced not with a book but with a wall, a wall he couldn’t cross but that he had to cross. He was exhausted, mentally, when he was faced with yet another failure. And he couldn’t understand why! He knew the theory perfectly! Water forgers could control water, that much was obvious, but also fog and ice, making them some of the most creative and defensive forgers in combat. Which meant that they had a great deal of literature dedicated to them and that Ewen, as a amiynan noble, had an inherent access to them - even when they had to make them come all the way from Aldlight. And he had studied them carefully… but not one talked about how to combat that sense of wrongness that overtook Ewen when he attempted the magic he was meant to be good at. 

He was so tired of failing, but he had ran of solutions. So why he should keep trying? In fact, maybe he had been wasting time all that time! 

The idea that he might have sacrificed so much for so little angered him, a surged that broke clean through the tears like a molten pike piercing through ice. He got up and tossed the book off his desk and on the ground. 

It didn’t make him any better at lyss, but at least it made him feel better. Now, there was nothing a candle on his desk, and so it was the only thing for him to look at. Something about this made this much… cleaner. He could look at this for a while if he wanted.

So he did just that, sat down and looked at the candle until he had decided that he had pretended to study for long enough and went for dinner.