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The first time Suvi sees Ame’s daemon, her little winged ant, she audibly gasps.
She’s already settled! And settled as a bug! Everyone knows the best wizards settle as little things. (Suvi’s mom is so powerful she settled as a mite when she was just ten years old and her father is a dog but that’s okay because daemons aren’t everything, they’re just really important.) Ame is older than her – not Steel-old, definitely not Grandma Wren old, but still older even if she’s short – but she’s still really tiny.
“I’m Ame-and-Warashi!” Ame chirps brightly. “Who’re you? Do you like bugs? Do you like magic? Do you like magic bugs or do you think they should just be one thing and do you wanna follow me? Grandma Wren wants to see you!”
Suvi blinks at that. “It’s not good to say your daemon’s name,” she lectures, frowning hard in thought as she tries to remember everything her parents taught her about manners. “It’s okay that you did, because kids are stupid, but…but it’s rude. You only tell someone you really, really-really like what your daemon’s name is. Otherwise, it’s rude, and that’s bad, and you gotta say sorry.”
Ame scrunches her nose up. Her winged ant shudders and grows longer, losing its white little legs, changing the shape of its wings until it looks just like a dragonfly.
Huh. Maybe Ame isn’t settled? Maybe she just looks settled.
“Well, I like you,” Ame says. “So, so, you can know my soul-name, cuz I do like you and you are so cool.”
Suvi nods. That sounds right. She feels like her parents meant something different, but they know Steel’s ox’s name so it’s gotta be okay for friends to know each other’s daemons. “We’re, um, we’re Suverin Kedberiket…and I named my moth Fluffy. He’s not actually Fluffy, though, he’s just brown. Sometimes, though–sometimes he’s a bunny rabbit. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Ame asks. Warashi flies closer to Suvi, darting through the air like she’s looking for something. “And where’s Fluffy? Is he invisible?” Warashi pauses in the air as Ame shines with starry-eyed wonder. “Oh my gosh, he’s magic, isn’t he?! Magic and invisible!”
“He’s not invisible,” Suvi’s eyes start to water. “And he’s normal. We’re normal. I–I can’t let you see my daemon, that’s even ruder. It’s not allowed.”
Ame gasps. “But that’s so mean! Daemons aren’t allowed to talk to humans. If you don’t let Fluffy out then Warashi’s gonna have to be quiet the whole time we’re walking, and we hate being quiet, it’s the worst. Is Fluffy shy? Does he not like to talk?”
“I’m not shy,” Fluffy peeks his head out from his hiding spot in Suvi’s hair. “I like you. You seem nice.”
“NOO!” Suvi shrieks. “Don’t talk, stop talking! It’s not allowed at all! You’re gonna make mom so mad at us, why are you always so–”
“You’re so mean to me, I don’t like it–”
“You gotta SHUT UP! Nobody wants you to talk! Everyone always hates it when you talk!”
Fluffy starts growing furrier, starts growing fatter and bigger, then sharper and quicker, until he tumbles out of her hair and barely manages to right himself in time. Suvi’s house sparrow soul flaps his way over to Warashi, asking quiet questions about if she likes to fly, and if she likes them, and if it’s okay if Fluffy talks just a little bit because he never gets to talk but he loves–
Suvi bursts into tears and stomps her foot, pulling at her hair until it hurts. It’s not fair! It’s not! Suvi tries so hard to be good and her soul just doesn’t care about being quiet or smart or strong. Sometimes it feels like all Fluffy ever wants to do is talk to people and sit on her head and keep refusing to be a moth, because he wants to be a sparrow or a bunny instead. He’s so stupid. They’re supposed to be good, because if they’re good then people will like them, and if people will like them then people won’t be mean or angry or sad anymore.
“I like you!” Warashi laughs. “Wanna race to the cottage?”
Ame gasps. “Suvi, we should race to the cottage! That’s way better than arguing with yourself, right? We can go to the cottage and we can get Grandma Wren and she’ll make everything okay again. I mean, Taro might be a butthead but Inari’s not scary at all, even if she is a fox. She’s even a white fox, which is super rare, I think. Hey, Warashi, isn’t it rare for foxes to be white?”
“Definitely,” Warashi says, before Ame grins and starts running away, dragging her soul along with her.
Suvi looks at Fluffy. Fluffy looks at Suvi.
And Suvi follows the strange girl she’s just met, determined not to lose this race.
Ame hates how wizards talk.
She doesn’t hate how Suvi talks — her friend doesn’t look down on Warashi like she’s a stain beneath her boot, doesn’t refuse to let Fluffy speak even if her lips go tight at the corners when he does — but the Guildmage Morrow’s pot-bellied pig leers at her little mouse, while the Guildmage Morrow himself looks down on her…
All she can feel is hatred. Not for the man himself, who does not matter enough to have earned her hatred, but for the things he does and the ways he acts, for the contempt and disdain he seems to radiate at all times despite the constant simpering grin on his face. Ame looks at this, the baffled expression Morrow held at a simple local greeting, the way his soul has gone nameless, the disregard for his community, and she despises what she sees in a way that only a witch could.
This is the antithesis of me, Ame thinks, and it is bone-deep true, soul-deep true.
The Fox cocks his head to the side. “You can just bite him. You know that right?”
“We don’t bite people, Fox, even if they deserve it,” Ame says, petting his fluffy little head.
Warashi is wiping her antennae off with her forelegs, like she’s trying to will away the pungent perfumes that were lathered on Morrow’s daemon. Morrow had acted as if being a pig was something so dirty only a nauseating amount of flowers could fix it. Ame thinks of Morrow’s trussed up pig and all she can do is remember the farm woman and her baby. That woman had been kind and her daemon had been a sweet boar with a notched ear.
No. There is no shape to a soul, no possible way of having been born, that is something to be ashamed of. (Even if Morrow is very annoying.)
“I’m gonna bite him,” the Fox decides. “I mean, it’s up to you boss, but I…I ‘vote’ that we go bite that man. What’s the point in talking if it means we can’t bite jerks?”
“You can’t call him a jerk to his face,” Ame reluctantly informs her familiar.
Warashi finally chimes in, “Actually, you can and should. It would be hilarious. And deserved!”
The Fox grins, wide and sharp-toothed, tongue lolling out like a panting dog’s. “I like how you think, food-boss.”
“Still not a mouse,” Warashi chomps at the air playfully. “Daemon; not mouse. Daemon.”
“I don’t get why I can talk and I’m still a fox but you start talking and suddenly you get to be people. You’re a full-on mouse, even if you smell…weird.”
“I’m shaped like a mouse,” Warashi offers, eyes shining with mischief. “But you could hunt down a mouse, eat it right in front of me, and my only concern would be my human having to clean up all that mess.”
Ame smiles, all too tempted to let them keep talking, if only because it’s a better alternative then continuing to think through what counts as hatred and what warrants ill will out in the real world. She reaches over to gather both pieces of her up into her arms – both her animal flaws and her human heart – so she can feel a little less alone.
The world’s big. And some of it is grand, some of it is luxurious. But all Ame needs is her friends and herself and her home. That’s more than big enough for her.
When Eursulon calls himself by his name, by his father’s name, he finds that the world grows hostile to him.
So, he changes. No longer Eursulon, son of the Great Bear. Now, he is Bear of Toma. Then, when people are confused once again, and hostile in their frustration, he changes. Bear Toma. His name rots and shifts, bends and breaks beneath the pressure of a world which does not gladly grant him a place in it. He is here by mistake and the world itself seems to know it, some days.
Bear of Toma needs a daemon. How could he be a person without a soul? Without a creature by his side, serving as stalwart companion? Only monsters lack soul. Only Honored Friends have the privilege of living soulless without living heartless.
Eursulon, son of the Great Bear, had no daemon at all. But the soap-suds running through his fur gather with bits of hair in the tub, clinging to Suvi’s hands as they run through his pelt. But he says I am sorry, feels guilt as no true spirit ever could, and feels an itching at his shoulder, an almost sweetly aching throb. One day he wakes up, his heart shrieking with a certainty that he has been changed, and there is an falcon chick snoring on his chest.
Eursulon-and-Parrvula introduce themselves brightly, without shame. Bear-and-Parrvula introduce themselves wearily, without confidence. Bear Toma does not introduce his soul at all, anymore, because he has very few things he may keep and the sanctity of his soul must be one of them.
Even as his own name grows smaller…he cannot bring himself to allow his soul to languish with him in this.
He knows he’s made the right choice when they grow into their own – become a knight in truth as much as in dream – and Parrvula shrieks, rejoicing as they listen to the song of sweet, golden honey.
His friends know his name. He knows his name. Parrvula, his steadfast companion, his hope and his joy and his loss, knows their name better than anyone in the entire world.
It’s more than enough to live on.
Wizard daemons don’t have names you’re meant to share, which is the only reason why Fluffy’s insistence on keeping his ridiculous nickname isn’t a regular part of their arguments.
Suvi does not have the most noble soul. Fluffy settles into a rabbit’s body instead of something hardworking and small like an ant or dignified and subtle like a moth. Instead, Fluffy fits his cutesy namesake to a tee with an adorably pink little nose, a snow-white pelt, and two ridiculous lop-ears. Fluffy is an angora. The kind of rabbit one uses for wool. A glorified lamb with even less of a reputation.
Bad enough that Fluffy isn’t an insect – isn’t something subtle, something stylish, something that would draw respect – but worse still for him to be a rabbit. Not even just a rabbit but a livestock rabbit. Not even a pet.
Suvi treats him with a professional disdain that Fluffy responds to by hiding himself in her robes whenever they’re in public. She treats him gently enough. She swallows down most of her complaints. They get along just fine. Fluffy isn’t bad, he just…isn’t hers, really. He doesn’t feel like hers.
(She’s told him that before. He looked at her like she had ripped his heart out and eaten it as a snack.)
Ame coos over him and Warashi nibbles on his ears given half a chance. Eursulon takes his appearance in stride and Parrvula is silent as she always is, even if she’s extra careful with her claws when she wants to pick him up. Steel has never stopped teasing her about him.
But she can’t…feel much of anything. She can’t say she truly hates him – he isn’t bad, he’s just not what she wanted – but she really, sincerely can’t say she loves him either.
Fluffy shakes in her hands when Ame and Eursulon drive themselves into the ground, mindlessly seeking out danger for no real reason, nub of a tail trying to droop whenever she starts to think too hard about the way they brush her off, refusing to explain a single thing. (Is she not worth five seconds of an explanation?) She knows Quest Fever is starting because her soul starts chattering his teeth like they’re caught in an ice storm, shivering like something weak and feeble.
She hides him instead of screaming like she wants to. She’s been trapped. They both have.
There is no choice. They dash out of safety and into danger; they move as one for the first time in their lives; they snap to attention like the soldiers they are.
The world narrows down into pinprick focus. And it is enough. It has to be enough.
(Or else the people of Port Talon are damned.)