F Trope: “When wizards are immortal, they don’t need to train successors, and may not be able to…”
Current Event: http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/07/pipeline-knowledge-lost-time-gained
Sidaji the Immortal pursed his lips, glaring down at the bucket of swamp water, tapping the edge. His fingers strayed to the runic marks inscribed on the sides. He stared for some time before looking up and saying, “You are Luca Růžička.”
Luca sighed and tugged on his soaking wet jeans. His black Converses squelched on his feet and he scratched at a mosquito bite on his forehead.
Ranghild Peeters, the beautiful and incredibly annoying second apprentice said, “You’re not supposed to pick at pimples. I’ve got a skin cleanser...” She stepped a bit away from him as the smell of Okefenokee swamp drifted up from the water leaking from Luca’s tennis shoes and dribbling on the Persian rug.
Luca snapped, “It’s a mosquito bite.”
“Yeah, right,” said Ranghild.
“You try sloshing around in a swamp to get a bucket of ‘water clear of duckweed, water clear of waste’ and see how long you can keep the mosquitoes from eating you alive!”
Sidaji looked at her and said, “You are Ranghild Peeters.”
She blew her startlingly raven black bangs up her forehead and said, “Yes, Immortal One. Now, can we get on with the transformation. I’ve got things I have to do today.”
Luca muttered, “Like flirt with every guy in Minneapolis?”
Ranghild shook her head, “We’re broken up. Get over it.”
“I didn’t break anything up. You dumped me.”
“Only because you’re being such a...”
Sidaji the Immortal straightened up, lifted his arms and thundered, “Silence!” The thunder was literal as the windows of the mansion they were living in on Mt. Curve Avenue overlooking Lowry Park shook in their frames. Only Luca and Ranghild’s unity spells kept them from shattering. Across the street in the park, an autumn flock of common egrets took wing, rising up in a cloud of white stark against the golds, reds, oranges, and browns of the pond.
The wizard looked down on them, having swelled to twice his usual height. The floor beneath him creaked as he stepped toward them, saying, “þearf sy forþsetennes héafodcwide manian gescaep lifiendee!”*
They looked at each other, shrugged, and Ranghild said, “Your Immortal Greatness, we are currently in the early part of the 21st Century. I’m not sure shouting in Old English will accomplish anything. Especially as neither one of us can understand it. You enchanted us with this century’s English vocabulary.”
Sidaji stared at her, blinked, then said, “I seem to be having some trouble remembering things today.” The wizard’s apprentices both stepped back in unison, finding that the grand piano behind them blocked their retreat. Sidaji laughed, rattling the chandelier in the entryway.
“You’re immortal!” Luca exclaimed.
“What do you mean you’re having trouble remembering?” Ranghild exclaimed.
Sidaji pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing heavily tattooed forearms. His hands were blunt – the hands of a farmhand rather than a dandified city boy – and his nails, while clean and trimmed, the nails of a man who had worked for his livelihood. He looked at his hands, studying them for a moment. Then he looked at his apprentices. He smiled and said, “My body is immortal, child. There was never any guarantee that my memories would be immortal as well.”
They looked at each other and Sidaji laughed again. “What are you laughing at?” Luca said.
“The two of you are acting like you’re in a movie. Are you really that much in love that you can’t think independently?”
Both of them, temporarily frozen in age as teenagers and prone to forget that they had actually been born in 11th Century Denmark and the Kingdom of Bohemia, were neither teenagers nor Americans and effectively his slaves – blushed furiously. Sidaji waved them away, remembering at the last moment to disempower the gesture, said, “That doesn’t seem to help me remember how to turn this swamp water into botulism infected water.” He looked at them and added, “Why are we going to poison the water supply of Minneapolis?”
Names: ♀ Denmark, Belgium ; ♂ Austria, Czechoslovakian
Translation: (From Old English – http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/) “There is far more of import here than your mortal sex lives!”
Image: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg
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