Work Text:
Grace and Rocky are about three months into their trip to Erid when Grace is looking through the Hail Mary's manifest and wondering why on Earth they had packed, like, hundreds of caterpillar cocoons and one pound of bird feathers and remembers that he's a wizard.
Well, that's not really fair. He only did two classes on practical wizardry in undergrad to fulfill a core requirement. He knows - he digs through his memory with a conscious effort he didn't have to use before getting launched into space - maybe five spells. He's a scientist more than anything else, but no good scientist can afford to reject the arcane just as no good wizard can ignore science. They are, he recalls his freshman year lecturer for Introduction to the Arcane for STEM Majors saying, the mechanisms by which we discover the universe.
He took a couple of higher level theory courses and some divination and healing courses that complemented the astrobiology track he was on, but the Grace-of-the-past was content with his five spells. He really did not have the time or discipline to learn anything more.
'Cause, unless you were some kind of prodigy, it took a long hecking time to learn magic. You could understand the theory of magic forwards, backwards, and upside down and still not be able cast a single spell. It requires a sense, an intuition, that cannot be taught and has not yet been named. Science has no such barriers. If you have an eager mind and are willing to learn, its secrets will open up to you like a flower under sunlight.
Grace doesn't have the words to explain how to do magic and he hates that. That's actually something inherent about magic. It resists explanation. His instructors taught it via metaphor - magic is the moment between one second and the next, it is the transition between an inhale and an exhale, it is the dawn, it is the dusk.
That means nothing to him and it infuriates him that it worked anyway. Seconds are an ultimately arbitrary measurement of time, there is no space between them. Inhalation and exhalation is the expansion and contraction of the lungs in your chest. Dawn and dusk are determined by the rotation of the Earth. That's not magic. Or maybe it is? Like he said, Grace understands enough about magic to do it, but every time he tries to explain it, he confuses himself. He hates that.
Ilyukhina, he remembers, was the designated magic expert on the mission. A prodigy and a half, she had a Ph. D in the minuscule field of arcano-technology and was a 1st Class Artificer to boot. She cast spells effortlessly and seemingly thoughtlessly. She'd use magic to turn on the lights when she didn't feel like getting up to hit the switch and beam messages into your head when she couldn't find her phone.
The rest of the Hail Mary team were kind of in the same boat, hahaha, as Grace. Yao, DuBois, and Shapiro all knew the basic fundamentals, but part of their preparations for the launch was training in magic they may have needed over the course of the mission.
Stratt has neither a background in science nor a knack for magic. What she did have was Grace and her at times nonsensical faith in him. The science he was able to explain to her, that wasn't an issue, but for some reason she also brought him along when she went off to recruit wizards for the project. He would listen to their explanations of life support systems and accelerating astrophage growth and their ideas to slow down the end of the world and all he could say to her was, "Yeah, that works" or "No, that doesn't make sense" and she would accept it without question. He didn't know, he still doesn't understand, what she saw in him that made her trust him that much. Maybe it wasn't faith at all. Maybe it was desperation.
He'll never be able to ask her, but he's made his peace with that. And, hey, maybe this time he's even being honest about that.
Either way, he's trying to figure out if the bird feathers or cocoons have any nutritional value worth writing home about when Rocky finds him in the lab, surrounded by all of the spell components that he had Mary pull out of storage.
"What all this, question?" Rocky asks. They’ve been working on a new xenonite suit, one that was more maneuverable than the ball. The suit they had built for Grace so they could explore the Blip-A together was an early version of that. They want something to conform a little more to the body so they could help with the more complex tasks involved in maintaining the Hail Mary.
"Oh, just the spell components that were stored on the ship," Grace said absently. Someone, probably DuBois, made a pretty comprehensive spreadsheet with all the components, what spells they were used for, and how to perform said spell. Wizards joke that scientists keep reinventing spellbooks from first principles, but this is better than a spellbook in Grace's non-expert opinion. It’s much more organized and user-friendly and less likely to be enchanted to bite you. Looking through it, Grace doesn't feel too bad about forgetting he was, like, half-a-wizard. He can't even begin to wrap his brain around how to do a quarter of these spells.
"Spell?" Rocky asks, tilting their carapace in a facsimile of the gesture they've seen Grace use. Grace has started stomping his leg when he asks questions so he’s been picking up Rocky-isms too. "Like spell word? Rocky no understand what means in this context."
"No, I mean," Grace guesses they never really talked about this, somehow. Grace and Rocky were both men (?) people of science. "You know. For magic?"
"Need word. Magic?"
"Uh, you know." Maybe they don't know. Grace certainly has no idea how to explain this. Maybe Eridian magic systems are totally different. Maybe they don't need spell components or all of them are mineral based? They certainly wouldn't have the same spells, right? What use would Eridians have for the dancing lights spell or darkvision? "Remember that documentary we watched? About the witch nanny who floated down from the sky and danced with penguins?"
"That was documentary? Rocky thought was fiction!"
"Okay, I'm pretty sure parts of that were made up, but Jane Banks was a pretty important historical figure so it's a pretty faithful retelling of her childhood."
"Ah, I understand." Rocky misunderstands. "You are messing with Rocky. Now tell Rocky real reason why Grace surrounded by random objects."
"You don't have anything like that on Erid? You know, people who can create lightning or make things fast."
"We talked about this already. You say on Earth they are called electricians or athletes."
"Well, yes, but no." Okay, obviously this isn't working. Grace has enough trouble explaining magic, let alone to someone who has no idea what it is or has a completely different frame of reference. "I can, I can show you, I think? Just give me a second." He scrolls through DuBois's spell spreadsheet for the spells he actually does know he knows.
Okay, prestidigitation.
This spell is a minor magical trick that novice spellcasters use for practice. You create one of the following magical effects within range:
You create an instantaneous, harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint musical notes, or an odd odor.
Okay, well Rocky can't see the sparks, feel the wind, or smell so that's out.
You instantaneously light or snuff out a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
None of those are on the ship. Grace is pretty sure you can use that effect on the lights, that's what Ilyukhina did anyway, but Rocky could just say he had planned this trick with Mary.
You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot.
Well, Grace doesn't have to do laundry anymore, but not really helpful in the moment.
You chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 cubic foot of nonliving material for 1 hour.
Hmmm. Okay. So, prestidigitation is perhaps the most important spell anyone has ever created. Good to know.
You make a color, a small mark, or a symbol appear on an object or a surface for 1 hour.
This effect boring.
You create a nonmagical trinket or an illusory image that can fit in your hand and that lasts for 12 seconds.
Oh, okay, this could work! Grace reads through the casting instructions, remembers that this spell is actually pretty easy to cast and was pretty handy in class when he couldn't find any hackeysacks, and claps his hands together.
When he separates them, a little Earth-colored hackysack appears in the palm of his hand. "Ta da!" He says, shaking his other hand in a lonely jazz hand.
Rocky tilts back, but instead of going Ohhhh, Eridian word for magic is lfslsdkgsdgdknag, they say, "Grace say 'ta da' is used when showing off impressive thing. You are just showing Rocky Grace hand? Not impressive."
"Well, that's hurtful," Grace says, but he looks back down at his hands. He's definitely holding a hackysack. He feels the weight of it - the things are filled with those plastic pellets - in his hand and can feel the stitches under his fingertips. He walks over to Rocky's ball and tries to drop it on top of Rocky's suit and Grace hears it plop down on the clear xenonite, but Rocky doesn't react to it at all.
Grace tingles with the Implications. This means something. Grace might have stumbled on some new fundamental understanding of magic and maybe a Real Wizard would be able to understand what that means, but Grace isn't a real wizard so all he can think is that it sure is a shame that Grace has no idea what is going on because if he did this would probably be really cool.
"Grace is going crazy, question?" Rocky asks and the worry is sounding a little too genuine.
"Okay, hang on a second." He goes back to the DuBois spellsheet and tries to find something else.
Mending.
Bingo.
"Rocky, could you bring me the mug you broke the other day?"
"Rocky did not break mug. Mug just did that and Rocky was just there. Was sad about being so ugly, Rocky thinks. Will fix for Grace. Promise." But then they did the little shuffle that meant they were lying. Grace hopes that's just a Rocky thing and not an Eridian thing.
"Just get me the pieces of the mug, please."
"For mug funeral, question?" He didn’t need to sound so hopeful about the idea.
"For a demonstration."
"Ugh, fine."
Rocky comes back with the pieces of the mug. Grace has no idea what Rocky finds so objectionable about it. Well, it is shaped like a geode so maybe it looked like Grace was drinking out of an Eridian to Rocky's senses which Grace would understand finding disturbing, especially with their hang ups about eating. While Rocky was away, Grace fished out the two lodestones that were the material components of the spell.
Grace kneels on the ground in front of the mug pile and places the lodestones on either side of them. "So this spell is called mending. It's supposed to perform simple repairs so I couldn't use it to fix Mary, but it was pretty much designed for stuff like this."
"Sure. What are the magnetic stones for? "
"They're the material component of the spell so they help to direct and amplify the magic. Somehow. I don't really get how it works to be perfectly honest with you, it just does. Not all spells have a material component. The one I just tried to use only needed verbal and somatic, physical, components."
"Whatever you say. This is new puppet show for Rocky, yes?"
"No. Just...watch." Grace was always self-conscious when it came to the somatic components. He preferred simpler gestures instead of the fancy-schmancy dance moves that the wizards who took all this stuff way more seriously did. He's not going to do an entire interpretive dance to fix his mug. He holds his hands out, fingers towards the ceiling and palms facing each other, so that he can see the broken pile framed between his hands and his hands are lined up with the lodestones. He takes a deep breath and imagines the mug before it was broken.
This is what I want, his mind whispers to his lungs, which breathes the wish into the air. Whatever the fudge that means .He claps his hands together and when he pulls them apart, the mug is whole once again.
"Ta da!" Grace says, doing jazz hands. "This is actually a pretty basic spell so it's not that impressive, but this is what I mean by spell. What's the Eridian word for it?"
"Kebrluvetldrkfadjklfsddsmdas," Rocky shrieks, which is probably not words, and scurries out of the room, knocking into equipment on their way out.
Grace sighs, picks up the mug, and stands up. "Mary?"
"Yes, Dr. Grace?"
"Make me a cup of coffee?"
---
Grace looks for Rocky after an hour and finds them in the Don't Go Crazy room, rewatching Mary Poppins on the screens.
"What do you mean this is a documentary!" Rocky yells as Mary Poppins flies away on her talking umbrella.
Grace plops down next to Rocky and lets his legs dangle over the edge of the walkway. "Well, some bits were exaggerated for drama, but Jane Banks was a real person. Wizards weren't very accepted in the past, but apparently she and her brother were such menaces that their very traditional father was desperate enough to hire a wizard as the kids' nanny. They learned that magic wasn't anything to be scared of just because you don't understand it and Jane Banks grew up to be pretty influential in the fight for women's rights and magic rights."
"...Can Grace fly in air?"
"Uh, no, that's a pretty complicated spell. I can just do the basic stuff."
"Ugly mug that Rocky broke was in 398 pieces. Now it is fixed. No, not fixed. It is like it was never broken. That is basic, question?" Stomp, stomp.
"I guess?" Grace shrugs. "I don't really get it either, buddy."
"But you can do it? And other humans?"
"Yeah. Not a lot of magic, it takes a long time to learn, but anyone can learn and a lot of people have learned a lot more than me."
"Then why not use magic to fix astrophage problem?"
"There's a limit to what magic can do," Grace says. "It resists understanding, as a basic principle, so Earth doesn't know enough about it to fix the astrophage problem directly. But we knew just enough science to come investigate Tau Ceti instead and enough magic to help with the science."
"And why not use magic when we almost die on Adrian?"
"I, uh," Grace rubs the back of his neck. "You know how I didn't have a lot of my Earth memories when I woke up?"
"Yes. I am not going to like what Grace says next. Grace forget about magic too, question?"
"No, that would be like forgetting what the sun was. I, um, forgot I could do magic."
Rocky is silent for a long time. Then, Grace starts to hear a low, faint noise coming from Rocky that is only growing louder and realizes that Rocky is vocalizing at the sub-Grace frequency. "Humans have all this knowledge. Light! Magic! Relativity! Radiation! Thinking machine! But brains too leaky like the rest of them. What the [swear word]?!"
"Hey!"
---
So on their way to Erid, Grace gives Rocky a crash course on human science and human magic. He also gives himself a crash course on human magic. He's got the time, after all.
He scrolls through the DuBois spellsheet and tries to pick the spell he would probably get the most use out of and then he sees the Find Familiar spell and chooses to learn that instead.
It takes a couple of months and he hopes that xenonite is an acceptable substitute for brass, but after spending an entire hour casting the spell under Rocky's steady and confused supervision, the Hail Mary is now home to one human, one Eridian, and one red fox that Grace names Laika. As soon as she is summoned, she throws herself into his arms and he buries his face into her soft fur and bursts into tears.
Rocky can sense Laika - and does so initially by doing the Eridian equivalent of throwing up because Grace just make living creature out of thin air??????? - but they can't sense objects created using prestidigitation, which is still interesting in ways that Grace can't really fully wrap his head around.
"Grace can eat, question?" Rocky asks tentatively.
"Don't even think about it!"
---
In spite of all the magic and science, Grace still arrives on Erid severely malnourished and close to death. Prestidigitation really was the greatest spell to ever be created because it let him eat the coma slurry and taumoeba without complaint. He had breakfast coma slurry that tasted like brown sugar poptarts and lunch slurry that he could make taste like steak tacos and dinner slurry that tasted like real ramen. Then, when he ran out of slurry, he had tiramisu taumoeba. Sour skittles taumoeba. Mozzarella stick taumoeba. It didn't really help with the malnutrition and scurvy and all of that, but it helped psychologically.
Rocky doesn't really like talking about the time just before and just after arriving on Erid. Grace was pretty out of it so he doesn't really remember anything, but Rocky does mention once about getting really scared when Laika disappeared. One second, she was wrapped up in Grace's arms, doing her best to keep him safe and warm, and the next second she was gone. And Grace didn't even notice. Grace resummoned her as soon as he could and she and Rocky must have really bonded while Grace was starving because she greeted Rocky way more enthusiastically than she greeted Grace. Whatever.
Anyway, once Grace is recovered enough, the Eridians take him on a journey in his own sphere to this immense mountain range.
"This is a great honor," Rocky whispers.
"Many Eridians are not able to make this journey, the Saviors of Erid get special treatment. As they should," Adrian adds.
They climb - well, Rocky and Adrian climb and Grace's sphere is kind of attached to them via some kind of harness - up the mountain for quite some time.
"Are you sure you're okay carrying me?" Grace asks.
"You weigh almost nothing," Rocky says.
"It's like you don't exist."
"Don't say that, Adrian. I was really worried about that for a minute."
The climb is pretty smooth and any struggle is apparently a part of the process. Still, Grace is ready to cast the resilient sphere spell in case of emergency.
When they get to the top of the mountain, there's a group of Eridians Grace has never seen before waiting for them. They speak too quickly for Grace to understand them, but maybe it is some kind of instruction because Rocky and Adrian get them settled on stable ground and start humming.
"You do it too," Rocky hisses. "At least at the frequency you can hear."
Grace tries to copy the sound to the best of his ability. After maybe an hour of...chanting(?) something happens.
The mountain starts humming back, maybe resonating with the Eridian thrum, and all the Eridians start performing these rhythmic movements. A dance of some kind in sync with the mountain hum.
And then, at least to Grace, the hum stops being a hum and becomes...a voice.
In his head?
Ah, you are not one of our children, but you are one of the Saviors of our children and for that you have our eternal gratitude. From now until the end of your life and beyond, you will have the Blessings of Erid and we will treat you as our own child. We sense your fear and confusion, our child, fear not. We are what you would call in your English language...gods.
"Gods are real?!??!" Grace shrieks.
"Oh, right." Rocky says sheepishly. "Did...did Rocky never mention?"