Venice Craven

I have been trying to keep out of trouble, but not doing a very good job of it. I have managed to secure myself some employment but it is for little more than the right to sleep in the stables at night. I swear, I am sick of the smell of hay. But at least it gives me a quiet place to read once the guests have gone home and I've managed to 'acquire' a candle from the bar-room. I had thought when I left home I'd grabbed one of my more favourite books of tales, only to find it was a reference book on runes and kha.

But it was one of the only things I had left from my Grandmother (asides from that bloodied dagger which lies heavy at the bottom of my pack), and so I read it. The first time I got to through to the second paragraph before falling asleep. So I started to use it as that ... a way to fall asleep in the stables even with the sound of the (frequent) drunken brawls occurring on the street and the shouts of livery in the bar.

Each night I got a little further and soon it was not putting me to sleep, but challenging me. Each rune had to be tried, new combinations tested. The examples in the text traced out in the air before me as I whispered the magical incantations. For many weeks nothing happened, my fingers too clumsy to find the dextrous patterns required to cast. It was not till the middle of winter, huddled before a candle stub in the dark which had long since gone out. But still I was curled up along side of it, remembering the brief warmth it had given me as I traced the three runes in the air before me. Perhaps it was the thoughts in my head, the image of the candle burning. Or perhaps it was simply luck. But what ever the reason, unlike the hundreds of other attempts this time something happened. A small speck of light at first, growing to form a fuzzy and glowing ball hovering in the air before me.

From that moment on I was hooked. I fell in love. It is hard to explain for one who does not know, but for me that little fuzzy ball of light was everything. I still actually have it, where other such balls have dimmed, this for some reason has not.