Sunrise: Prologue
#1 of Sunrise
In a dim corner of a mostly-deserted diner, a lynx sat alone, staring contemplatively at the candle on her table and sipping at the last of her spiced tomato juice. She carefully blew out the candle again, watching the vaporized wax stream up from it in a white plume. "Breath of the earth, warmth of the heart, tip of the knife," she murmured, her claws twitching on the last word of the mantra out of habit, and once again a flicker of flame raced down the stream of vapor and relit the candle.
"Interesting," said a voice beside her. She jumped, her fur bristling, and turned to see a tall, hooded figure standing beside her table. "Apologies," the stranger added. "I had no intention to startle you. May I have a moment of your time?"
The lynx hesitated, casting a wary eye over what was visible of the strange figure. A pair of golden eyes peered patiently back at her from the dark cover of the hood, almost seeming to glow with reflected candlelight. She could discern no other facial features, however, which was odd - the diner's lighting wasn't that dim. The stranger's disguise was clearly crafted of more than fabric, and that alone was enough to pique her interest. "I suppose. I'm not exactly doing anything important right now." And to be honest, she appreciated the company, but didn't feel totally comfortable saying so to an unknown person in a diner late at night.
The figure nodded and took a seat across from her. "You may call me Zuri. If pronouns are necessary, 'he' and 'him' will suffice."
The lynx nodded back, a bit bemused. "I'm Ryn. And, uh, 'she' and 'her'." Ryn shifted awkwardly in her seat. There was something distinctly disconcerting about this Zuri; she couldn't detect any particular accent to his gentle and sonorous voice, but the way he spoke sounded very different from most of the people she knew. "You're not from around here?" she hazarded.
A warm chuckle. "Indeed." And a pause. Zuri apparently had no intention of elaborating on the matter. "I've heard that they teach simple rote magic to all the students in the schools here. Was what you were doing with that candle earlier an example of such?"
"Yep. Learned that in ninth grade, elementary charms class. The words don't do anything, they're just a way of remembering how to... shape it. See, I can do it without saying it, too." She blew out the candle again, recalling the rhythm of the words in her mind, guiding herself through the shapes and motions of directing her inner energy, still absentmindedly flexing her claws on 'knife' as she focused her thoughts to a tiny point in the middle of the smoke. And as before, the candle relit.
Zuri's posture changed slightly, and she got the sense he was smiling. "It is good that here, they teach that all life is capable of doing such things. Not everywhere is so enlightened." He pulled out a pen from somewhere and started idly doodling on one of the napkins, an abstract pattern of crisscrossing curves and lines. "I would suspect that you still have dedicated practitioners, though, as with any discipline?"
"Oh, definitely," Ryn said. "My roommate Chiru is majoring in arcanics, in fact. She's super into the theory of it all, she's even doing an independent study on computational arcanics. I think she's trying to train a neural network to cast a spell or something, but the details are way over my head."
Zuri inclined his head, and stood up from his seat. "It does sound quite fascinating. In any case, I should take my leave, as I have other matters to attend to. I have heard rumors of a lynx named Ryn who has a... particular interest in dragons. I am to deliver the message that that interest may be reciprocated."
Ryn froze, nearly choking on her tomato juice as half a dozen thoughts collided in her head at once. Rumors? How much did Zuri know? Who had told him? Wait, reciprocated? Thoroughly flustered, she tried to stammer out a reply, but Zuri was already walking away. As she scrambled to her feet, something about the napkin that Zuri had been drawing on snagged her attention. Curves and lines, with a small portion of the pattern heavily circled.
It was a map.