I still remember my first application of magic—the first spell, the trembling in my fingers, the way the world held its breath with me. Flower Bed—that was its name. A simple spell, not even worth learning by academic standard. But to me, it was everything.
It wasn't an illusion of color and life. It was the first time I created something beautiful out of nothing but will and wonder. The first time something grew out of me and into the world.
I remember the warmth it brought through my chest, the lightness in my limbs, the sense that I had finally become something more than curious—I had become able.
And I recall why I did it. I recall whom I did it for. Or at least, I recall that I did it for someone.
That's the bit that bothers me.
Her name slips just beyond recall, like a word you almost know in a dream. Her face is a blur now, like a person behind a window covered in frost. I can no longer recall the curve of her smile, or the glint in her eyes when the flowers burst open in the air between us. Her laughter—once the loveliest sound I'd ever heard—is muffled in my mind. Her scent, her presence the way she stood so still when she watched me. all of it is gone.
How can that be?
How could something so real, so living, just vanish? I wrote that spell for her. I practiced it for her. Every motion of my fingers, every phrase, every sleepless night spent attempting and doing it incorrectly, over and over, until at last something was correct—it was all because of her.
And I don't even recall her.
The charm still lingers in me. I can cast it again, if I so desired. But I never did. Not since then. Not ever.
For it would not be for her anymore.
It would be hollow. A gesture without meaning. A garden of flowers with no one to walk among the flowers.
Sometimes, I wonder whether it was magic that stole her away from me. Or whether the price of that first success was forgetting why I had wanted it in the first place.
Maybe that is what magic does—it gives and takes too. It reveals secrets and then snatches away memories. It gives power, and leaves you wondering what it had cost.