Phoebe's Childhood

Phoebe grew up in a small village caught between two worlds. His parents left him when he was young - five years old, in fact. His aunt looks over him now, kind but always busy. She’s forever working towards one goal or the other, making sure the technology in the house worked fine, the fridge was stocked, and the garden was pruned. If she wasn’t up to something in the house, she’d often be out, working with the citizens of their small town, negotiating with Qocuria and Sloniris.

Phoebe’s parents were not gone, either. They lived in at the capital of Sloniris, left as they had fulfilled their job as researchers - Phoebe hadn’t wanted to leave the small town. If Phoebe had known his parents would have left him there with his aunt, he may have said differently.
Phoebe sent letters to them from the moment they left, but at such a young age he couldn’t write that well - his messages full of childish words that could not properly hold the link between parent and son. The older he became, the more distant they too, became. For so many days, and for so many years of his early life, Phoebe was left alone to wander and wonder.

And Phoebe was not one to sit, to stare at the plain white walls and sleep on the scratchy, forever stained brown carpet. No - Phoebe was a kalon with endless curiosity for the many facets of life. He’d examine his aunts collections of ritual items kept for the holidays (The Day of the Six Kingdoms, Celebration of the Sun/Night, and the Peace of Uya - all days Phoebe loved for the variability and magic they held). Miscellaneous yet magical items like dreamcatchers, feathered staffs, trinkets, pebbles and papers written in other languages caught his attention day to day. Those were the kind of things the Qocuria Kingdom, a land of ancient magic and even older traditions, kept. Sloniris, on the other hand, was home to “modern” technology and belief, and since Phoebe technically did live in Sloniris , he had access to those assets. Yet, they did not interest him nearly as much as the simple item of feather, a circle in the sand, drawn by a paw or a staff, and the ancient traditions that often seemed bigger than himself.

Phoebe did not truly embrace the democratic ideal of Sloniris: free speech, technology, the belief that you can be anything you want to be. He believed more in fate, and the turning wheel of chance and coincidence. In many ways, he must be religious, yet he did not believe in any explicit god - at very least, not dependent on them. The Earth, Sun, and Night ‘gods’ were as true and real as the magic beneath his feet, tangible enough to touch in the magical walls that isolated the Kingdom of Aegnis, and the magic that ran the entirety of their world, Hasnetania. Phoebe looked up to those ‘gods’ with wonder, wished to one day use magic like them and the people who believed and practiced so strongly after them.

He had asked once, young and yearning for a future, and his aunt had once said that it was surely a dream he could achieve, “Look at you, already with a manifestation so young! Your horn and paw glows white: a sign of your purity, curiosity, and potential.”

Partially, it was this that gave the final push for Phoebe to really start researching magic. (Of course, he had always been interested in it. But the potential for a future there, now that was something). He’d gather books from the library, which led him to collect strange items of inherent potential earth magic, like plants grown up from the forest, and seemingly disregarded artifacts that still lay undiscovered.

Phoebe would ask any tribal emissaries from Qocuria, and even some researchers from Sloniris (Phoebe was reminded of his parents, but ever since he was five, his parents never visited - now, he barely remembers their faces). However, they often brushed him off, a child, with either bemusement or annoyance.

He seemed to believe, with his manifestation and the inspiration of his aunt’s words, that this was his destiny. I’ll become a magician, Phoebe thought, a crude, slang word for the profession, but young and ambitious, he didn’t know what else to hope for.

Things didn’t always work out the way he thought fate might deem, however. Phoebe would hold out a magic book, draw a sloppy, childish ‘magic’ circle in the coarse dirt around a yellowed cow skull. Skulls and other bones are said to sometimes retain a soul or soul shard of the previous occupant, or sometimes just a wandering soul.

A foot scuffed the circle, kicking dust in Phoebe’s dark face, leaving a stark, fine dusting. “What are you doing, Phoebe? Where did you get this creepy skull, Phoebe?”

The other children didn’t like him, thought him strange, weird, and different. In their eyes, he was too close to the beliefs held deep within Qocuria, when they still lived in Sloniris.

“Umm.. I’m s-sorry, Jake. I found it in the forest. I-you know, when you find something, it’s yours, so-”

Jake picked up the skull and threw it, far, far into the sparkling pond, twenty feet away. It seemed too clear, too beautiful to have been the recipient of Jake’s spite. “Don’t get smart on me,” Jake spat, “you better not mess with magic anymore, you hear me? It’s creepy as hell. Go aspire to be something less weird. If that’s possible for you, weirdo.”

Phoebe bit his lip. “But it’s pretty normal, isn’t it? Or that’s how it should be. The Qocuria Kingdom is not five miles away -”

“Thought I said to not be a smartass,” Jake muttered, and he was gone.

Phoebe was never really agitated by those kind of people; they never did anything to him beyond saying cruel words and interrupting his rituals that might have failed anyway.

Phoebe didn’t mind. He really didn’t. He told himself that every day, stubborn and unyielding and throwing blankets over his head to try to hide away from the swelling rock in his throat, and the pulse in his heart - wishing, wanting to succeed and be accepted. But maybe this was just fate.

It’s those moments that fate doesn’t seem blessed and full of opportunity, but heavy and a weight on Phoebe’s shoulders. It’s a responsibility worth dirt and made of steel, never made to change, it seems.