Fairy Tail: Swallow the Fire

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Memories are a funny thing aren't they?

You can ask a group of ten people when their earliest memory was and they might all give different answers. The strength of a person's memory differs, and some probably don't have any significant memory if they lived a boring childhood.

My earliest memory was a hum, a low 'dun dudunduh duh duh'. The face that I picture when I think of that hum belongs to a woman with shoulder length black hair that was placing me in front of a door, knocking on it, and running off. I can't even assume she was my mother. She looked too young, but that may have been why she left me there, at that orphanage.

A woman opened the door to the stone building's doors. She was in her early fifties at the time, her hair a mix of grey and brown, her pink eyes were the first show of colour and vibrance that I remembered. Her touch was warm as she picked me up, easily carrying my small frame in her large hands.

That day, July 22nd, X765, I was taken into the Rose-Smith Orphanage located in the heart of Rosemary village.

I wasn't even a month old, meaning the elderly woman ended up keeping me near her as much as she could. Her name was Clarise Smith and she ran the orphanage. The other kids welcomed me quit easily, since babies are cute, and all. They would all scramble at the chance to play with me whenever they could, often crowding around whatever table I was at when the matron fed me.

But as you can expect, being an infant was boring.

There wasn't anything I could do, but my baby brain enjoyed the goofy faces and tickling they'd do. When I turned three years old, I became much more curious. One boy in particular always drew my attention.

His name was William, and had a pension for magic card tricks. The pre-teen made it a competition, always trying to find a new and more elaborate trick since my better memory enabled me to figure out how he did things. He was always the crafty one, but his "magic" always made me so curious as to how it worked that just had to figure it out how it worked.

His tricks slowly became more and more complicated and inevitably I couldn't figure out how they worked. William always practised the tricks in the woods behind the village, only a short distance away from the orphanage. This fixation I had to know how it worked made me follow him, and I was blown away by what I saw.

The cards were glowing in a myriad of colours as the danced through his fingers. The strange aura flicking on and off before going away fully, and once they looked like normal playing cards again, he performed the trick he's been stumping me with for the last few days. The faces of the cards swapped houses.

"Hey! You cheated!"

"L-Lyssa!?"

My abrupt outburst scared him, the jump from fright causing his brown pony-tail to twist around his head and hit him in the face. A rightfully deserved punishment.

"I don't know what you're doing with those cards, but I know you cheated! Tell me what you did!"

"I...argh, okay. But you can't tell anyone about this! Pinky promise?"

I agreed, wanting to know what that warm glow was and how he managed to stump me. He sat me down beside him, and performed the glowing thing again. This time however, I was closer to the glow and could feel it myself much more clearly.

"Its card magic. Not a trick, real magic."

"What...do you mean by real magic?", I asked. In response he patted me on the head.

"Abilities and spells made using the ethernano in your body or air. I don't know how it fully works, but some guy who called himself Boss came through town and taught me a little. Having a strong sense of will and desire to do something is needed to access it, though. You have to fully believe in your ability to use magic. Here, try it for yourself. These cards are already magic, all you have to do is choose which two cards you want to swap appearances. If you try hard enough, you might be able to do it."

He handed me the cards, and I drew the top two cards, a 5 of Hearts and a Jack of Spades. He guided me through what I should try to do, searching for either a warm core inside myself or a heat in the air. When I did, I focused on the cards, imagining them changing to the other one. Slowly, the cards began to glow an orange. Just as they began to change, though, the aura grew out of control and they blew up. The force pushed me and William to the ground.

I sat there in shock, and William groaned as he stood up rubbing the back of his head.

"Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. They were cheap, so there were too many details on the face cards to swap them with a number. And by cheap, I mean free. Sorry about that, you okay?"

"Y-Yeah..."

He picked me up on his back and carried me to the orphanage, muttering a silent curse about now having lost two cards.

A few days had passed and William and I were called into the matron's office. Both of us were nervous, as most of the time kids who go to her office are getting adopted. Hope and fear filled us both, but we both made our way into the office.

The office was well kept, and she was shuffling papers atop a large wooden desk that sat in the centre of the room. When we entered, she looked at us with a smile before putting the work aside and greeting us.

"Just the two I was hoping to see. Please, sit."

She gestured to the couch on the side of the room, and the two of us went and sat on it. She took her spot on the chair across from us and addressed me first.

"Are you okay, Lyssa?"

"Huh? Y-Yes."

"Good. After William told me about the little card accident that happened in the woods I was worried you had hurt yourself."

I was shocked about the fact she knew about the cards, even more so since William was the one who told her.

"You told me not to say anything. Why did you!?"

"She is very scary when she's mad, okay!"

"Ehehe! Anyway, kiddos, do either of you have an interest in learning more about magic?"

The question took us off guard, William more so. I had only found out about magic, afterall. There aren't really wizards living in a village like ours with only a hundred or so people in it. But William has a much more in depth knowledge, at the very least. His goal was to use his tricks with cards to make a living outside of the village, and magic can definitely help with that.

My own desires were simple, I was curious about it. Magic was a new thing for me to learn, and my desire to learn as a child was still big. As I said, this is a really small village, with most families dedicated to farming. Even the education within the orphanage was minimal as most kids simply helped out in the few shops or farms when they're older.

Both of us had our answers for our own reasons, and nodded. The matron, being the closest thing most of us had to a mother, gave us a kind and proud smile before standing up and grabbing a book from the shelf.

The Basics of Magic Practise.

"Its been years since I practised myself, but this should help you two as you start. Helped me learn what little I know, at least."

She left the book on the table and sat down. What followed was a small impromptu lecture about magic that I absorbed as best I could. Some things flew over my head, but that didn't change my absent minded fascination.

My body was still too small and too weak to use magic on the level to cast spells, though. Low-level magic tools like those cards were something I could use, as all I had to do was give it a miniscule amount of fuel, but I ended up dedicating my time instead to memorising the book given to us. It wasn't big, but heavily detailed.

Apparently Miss Clarice started learning when she was young, too. Not as young as I was, but younger than William. She had even been part of a wizard's guild, a group of mages who took contracts to solve issues or do whatever they were hired for. It was something she talked to William about extensively, but he kept saying he decided to just wander, being an entertainer with illusions and flare to impress people. And he had a passion for it, too.

As time went by, he grew more and more skilled with illusions, too. He was no master, but he was talented with his use of smaller cantrips. Fake fireworks, making it look like he could stretch his face, scaring everyone by making it look like he actually pulled his thumb from his finger, and then apologising by making fake flowers that glowed a beautiful iridescent colour. Unfortunately, he couldn't make them smell like anything yet, but he was determined to figure out how.

But none were as entertaining as his card tricks. He would add little things to his already hard-to-figure-out tricks, but keep them relatively the same. When some draw a heart card, little bubble hearts would fly up, and the face cards would make gestures based on their suite, such as winking or scoffing at the person who drew them. While life in the village was okay, he could add just that little bit of extra colour to everyone's lives. He never used the tricks to their extreme and only added just enough substance to the lives he tried to brighten up oh so slightly.

His kind but weird personality made everyone treat him as a big brother. William was there for us, everyone, when we were down. He would lend an ear to someone when it was needed, and make sure the farmers that were up in age didn't have to stress their backs too much. He learned to be great with numbers and would try to help with the book management of the few stores we had in town.

The days of learning turned to months, and the months turned to years, until ultimately we reached the year X770, when I turned five. It was the year I met her, but I only wished for it to be through better means.

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