Chapter 57: The First Snowflake
Aideen widened her eyes in astonishment – she could genuinely feel it; the strange, round, and pointy outlines of complicated shapes that felt warm to her touch. It was a bizarre sensation that made her heart race like a galloping horse while her lungs refused to accept the air she breathed in.
Never, even in her wildest dreams, had the princess thought that she could "see" the writing with her skin, and the opportunity to do that was already nothing short of real magic.
Ahspid curled his lips into a barely visible smile and asked again,
"Seeing the look on your face and that wide smile, I assume you are happy with my little trick. So, are the shapes clear enough for you to understand them?"
The lady turned her face to the mage and nodded her head rather enthusiastically.
"They are! I can feel everything, even the tiniest detail of each rune! This is truly incredible, Ahspid! How did you do it?"
"This barely requires any magic, Your Highness. In fact, this is something I borrowed from alchemy––well, someone taught me this... Anyway, I wrote these runes using my mana which I then infused into each rune to make the writing palpable. The spell has the color of my mana, which is purple, and is warm to the touch. Blowing air on them ignited a simple texture exchange between my mana and the air in my lungs. Sounds easy, right?"
Though his explanation indeed didn’t sound that complicated, Aideen couldn’t help but feel her entire body shrink in confusion. Attentive to her expression, Ahspid released a tired sigh and shook his head, his long silver earrings jiggling like tiny chains as he added,
"Forget it for now. Today, your task is to simply memorize each rune in this spell and then... attempt to use your own mana to make the spell work."
"This still seems so difficult right now..."
The princess offered the man a somewhat intimidated and shy look, to which the latter only replied with another long exhale, moving Aideen’s fingers back to the first rune in that magic writing.