Page 8 of To Free a Soul
“Of course, Lindiwe. I trust your judgement.”
She smiled. His trust was not unfounded, and she’d long ago begun to tentatively trust him in return.
Even after all this time, astonishment always filled Lindiwe when she materialised in Weldir’s realm. It wasn’t Tenebris, as she’d never been fully eaten by him, but it was his world, his place, his empty darkness.
For over a hundred and fifty years, it remained unchanged.
As did its owner – mostly.
He was still just swirling fragments, as if all the souls he consumed never truly added to his lacking solidness.
His growing mist stops him from obtaining any semblance of a real form.Over the decades, she’d seen those tiny black granules reach further and further, swiping through forests, mountains, and meadows.Sometimes it feels like a waste to give him souls when it does little to grow him.
For once, just once, she’d like to see him in completion, rather than as ribbons of chalky, globby outlines, or like layers of black see-through frayed cloth – like now. It depended on how his tangible parts were made up that day.
“Hello, little raven,” he greeted, his voice louder and no longer echoing now that he was before her.
The urge to needle him and call him spirit of the void pestered her, but she kept that to herself.
“Hello, Weldir.” Lindiwe shifted into her Phantom form, the one that was tangible to a deity of spirit, and dug into one of her side satchels. “I have much to give you today.”
“I can sense that.”
Tiny flames hovering and twirling inside a vial began to empty before she’d even retrieved it. As if the glass itself was meaningless, the white flames exited through the very sides. What were barely the size of her thumb now sparked to life and grew to the size of her palm as they floated towards his outreaching hand.
Multiple souls rotated around his upward-pointing claws, and enough of his face coalesced to reveal a proud smile.
“You’ve brought me eleven this time.”
Lindiwe rolled her eyes as she pushed the magically re-enforced vial to the side to obtain other items.Of course that’s all he truly cares about.
Yet, the moment she pulled out one of her many journals, the blunt end of a black glittering tendril tipped back the spine like how one might pull it from a shelf. It brought it to him, and he folded his legs as the pages quickly flickered open.
He was reading them, committing them to memory, even as the pages turned so quickly it was nearly indiscernible to the human eye. A pattern followed with the seven others he took, and each one furrowed his brows, until his head completely disappeared to reveal his thinly muscled shoulders and chest.
“So many spells. Most of these look unhelpful,” he muttered. “How does magic detection assist you? Or changing your eye colour?”
Lindiwe shrugged as she pulled out her final journal. “I thought they were good to memorise at the time. I may need to detect magic in the future, and learning how to change my eye colour is the first lesson they teach children to produce a glamour.”
“Why would you want to produce a glamour?” His headless torso moved as if he looked up at her pointedly, not that she could bloody well see his expression. “You’re lovely as you are.”
Her cheeks warmed due to the unprovoked compliment, and her eyes shied away. He didn’t often offer them, as he could be rather rough around the edges.
She took them at face value, rather than assuming anything substantial. Weldir probably found beauty in her, in the same way he’d see it in a tree or a precious rock. Just something thatwas pleasing to his eye, but in the grand scheme of his heart – nothing.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Your magic doesn’t allow me to glamour myself, so some of the spells I’ve written down are a tad pointless.”
She pulled pouches of seeds from her bag, some crystals, and then a bag with a grainy powder. Tendrils collected all of them and dragged them through the ether. He opened each item, noting the contents with curiosity, only to pause at the final one.
“Why do you have a bag of salt?” he asked, pinching a few pieces.
“Hey! Be careful with that.”
Swaying her hands to push herself forward, she closed the distance between them as though they were floating on the surface of water. She cupped what solid parts of his hand she could, making him drop what he’d pinched back into the small satin bag.
“That salt is blessed,” she stated, pulling the drawstrings shut. “Just a pinch is enough to bless a five-kilo bag. I can’t replicate the protection spell, so I’d rather not waste a single bit of it.”
He absentmindedly tossed it behind him into the ether of his world using a tiny tendril wrapped around the neck of the pink bag.
