By Amber Michelle K.
myaru@etherealvoid.net

* Suikoden belongs to Konami. This is just a random bit of entertainment.

The books had a lot to say about the difficult skill called 'teleportation,' and Luc even more over the last few days, but when one day he swept her out to the beach after the noon meal and summoned his staff from wherever he kept it, Sarah didn't feel at all ready to cast the spell. She knew the way it would look and feel thanks to Luc's demonstrations, and even had the advantage of knowing every inch of the island like the back of her hand. He said she should be confident, and Luc never said such things if he didn't mean them.

But Sarah clutched her hands together tightly until her knuckles turned white, and watched her teacher draw a circle in the sand with the end of his staff. She wasn't allowed to have her own staff yet, but he'd given her a ring with a small focus so she wouldn't have to cast the hard way. It was held tightly, trapped between her hands.

"Sarah," he called, and gestured to the circle he'd just traced. She walked over dutifully and stepped in, and then watched silently, again, as he paced away, counting under his breath, and then drew another circle.

"Um..." She had to say something - it just wasn't time yet. What if she failed? He would be annoyed. "Master Luc?"

He looked up, and she snapped her mouth shut. It was hard to tell what his expression was like with the sun shining in her eyes. After a moment of that steady gaze, he stepped into his own circle. "You'll be fine, Sarah. Try not to worry about it."

Easy for him to say! How many ten-year-olds were running around casting teleportation spells? There was a reason they left it for the last lesson everywhere else!

"Stop worrying," he said sternly. "Concentrate."

She jumped and nodded, squeezing her eyes shut. The rounded edges of the ring bit into her palms as she turned her focus to it and felt the jewel respond, echoing her magic. That she could do, that was fine. There weren't any other people nearby; only the breaking of waves and the sigh of wind defined her world.

She called upon her rune and wove the spell carefully. Then she let it go, and with a swift lurch she stumbled into Luc and clutched his sleeve to catch her balance. "T-that's it?" She barely caught the ring before it slipped through her fingers.

"It was only a few meters," he responded, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Now do it again - go back to your circle."

Sarah bit her lip. "Okay."

He didn't say any more, which meant he wanted her to decide how she would retrace her steps. It was possible to feel traces of her last spell through the ambient magic of the island itself; if she wanted to, she could follow that path. There was a more difficult way that involved coordinates and angles and things she wasn't very good at, so Sarah tightened her fist around the ring again and took the easy way out, retracing her previous spell. She stumbled again when she reached the circle, but managed to catch herself. It hadn't been very hard after all.

A whisper of magic flickered behind her. She clutched the ring to her chest and turned around. "Mast--" The sunlight was swallowed suddenly by shadow when Luc appeared in front of her, and the rest was of his name swallowed in a squeak.

"You should know what the spell feels like now," he began without preamble.

"I--"

"You should also know," he continued over her protest, holding his sleeve up, "that when you teleport like this you must pay attention to your proximity with other people."

Half of his sleeve was missing, the wool sliced cleanly through. Sarah whipped her head around frantically to find the piece she'd accidentally brought with her and snatched it up from the sand. "I can fix it!" She held it up between them like a shield, staring at his robe and biting her lip. The shirt he was wearing underneath seemed fine, but it could have been a part of his hand she sliced off, instead of the sleeve. "I'm sorry!" It made her sick to the stomach - she didn't want to see blood again, especially not Luc's.

Besides, that was an expensive robe. How many trading missions was it worth--?

He took the scrap of wool from her hands and she couldn't help but look up. "Try it again. This time, pay attention to where you are as well as where you're going."

Luc's voice grew progressively sharper as the hours wore on, and his orders increasingly more demanding, but by the time the sun fell low in the sky, Sarah knew that beach more intimately than she ever wanted to. Her last attempt under his guidence, to teleport from the treeline to the shore, landed her in knee deep water with a messy splash, and it was then he called to her that it was time to stop. And rather than teleporting, Sarah sloshed to shore on her own two feet instead, dripping and shivering in the wind.

Some small part of her was sure he did that on purpose to get back at her for ruining his sleeve. That was a long distance to teleport.

Luc was waiting for her just beyond the reach of the waves, circlet glinting in the fading light. He held his hand out, unsmiling. "Are you hungry?"

Sarah ran the last few steps and took his hand, nodding. His spell enveloped her before she came to a full stop, much smoother than any of her own teleportation attempts that day, and the bath chamber materialized around them before she had a chance to figure out where they were going. He tugged her over to the towel rack; dry clothes were folded and waiting on the bench beside it.

"Rinse off and get dressed," he said. "I'll be waiting outside." Which meant she had better be quick about it. And she tried to hurry, but once in the nice, warm water, it was hard to get out again. She took extra time rinsing the salt from her hair. His sober expression was as much of a deterrent as the cold.

It wasn't that he smiled when she did things right, so much as he at least looked a little less serious. She'd ruined her teleports so many times earlier that she couldn't even count how many times she'd done it right. Maybe he was mad at her.

When she left the water to dry off, braid her hair, and get dressed, it was with a great deal of reluctance. She couldn't decide if it would be worse to face his anger then, or later.

The look he gave her when she came out made her wish she'd chosen 'later.' "It's about time. What were you doing in there?"

"S-sorry," she mumbled, looking down at the towel in her hands.

He sighed sharply. "Well, come on then. The food's probably cold."

Bowls of thick stew, her favorite kind, waited for them in the parlor, and they were still steaming hot when they reached the table, but he didn't look any more cheerful about it, nor did he say a word. He never yelled when he was angry, most of the time giving cold silence when it was her fault, but sometimes she really wished he would. It was so hard to guess when he was finished being mad otherwise.

Sarah sat down across from him and tried to eat, hunching a little in her chair under the weight of his silence. She wanted to get it over with, but her stomach was tying itself in knots and making it hard to eat.

Why couldn't he just tell her he was mad? Or maybe make her repair his sleeve, even though it would look terrible. He could still wear it! Just not in public. Maybe it was her fault, but she'd told him she didn't feel ready to try teleporting. His claim that it was 'now or never' wasn't very nice, especially after how badly she performed.

Slowly, without her notice, Sarah's carefully sculpted mask of nonchalance slipped into a pout. He could have been nicer about it. He could have reminded her of the rules. He didn't have to be so- so mean!

"Did I ever tell you about Viki?"

She jumped. Luc was staring at her when she raised her eyes, spoon held above his bowl. Sarah shook her head mutely.

He shrugged. "She was a girl I met during the wars. Couldn't do much, actually." He interrupted himself to eat that spoonful, and she blinked up at him expectantly, her own food temporarily forgotten. He didn't talk about those people very often. "She had a huge mirror that helped her teleport us around when we needed to visit places outside of our territory."

"A real teleportress?" Sarah leaned forward. "Did she have a Blinking rune?"

Luc snorted. "Not that it helped her."

She worried at her lip a moment, then decided to ignore that in favor of another question. "How did she use a mirror to teleport? I've never heard of that before." And Sarah had read plenty of books on the subject.

"No idea," he said, depositing his spoon in the bowl and propping his chin on his hand. "She used it to see the locations she sent us to, but I couldn't make it work on my own. And it didn't work very well for teleporting either."

"Was it like..." Sarah trailed off for a moment, staring at the ceiling and thinking of the person waiting up there in the empty observatory. "Maybe she scryed? Like Leknaat?"

"Maybe." Luc laughed a little, and then said, "Maybe that would explain why she messed up so often."

This sounded less and less like a good story. "What do you mean?"

He folded his arms on the table and leaned over, pegging her with a stare. "I heard she accidentally dropped Tir into the lake trying to get him to town. Five times."

Sarah cringed back. "But... wasn't she..."

He shook his head. "That mirror can't tell distance. Just show images. You know?"

"But that's so important!" Her eyes were wide, and her stew abandoned so she could cling to her braid the way she'd held on to the ring earlier. "How can she try to teleport people without knowing how far?"

"That's what I wondered." He leaned back suddenly, his tone offhand. "It's not like she never got it right, but it looked like she was just throwing people around and getting lucky."

Sarah swallowed and twisted her braid around. "Did... did you ever get... dumped into the lake, Master Luc?"

He rolled his eyes. It seemed at first he wouldn't answer, but then he said, "Just that first time."

Sarah's hands flew to her mouth. "No! Did you get hurt?"

"Of course not."

"But-" She was afraid to ask. "What did you do?"

The corners of his mouth turned up and he snapped his fingers.

She stared at his hand for a few seconds, and then her eyes wandered up to his smile. Surely he didn't mean what she was thinking. "You..."

"Right into the water."

Sarah's eyes couldn't get any wider. "You threw her into the lake?"

Luc shrugged, smile fading. "She knew how to swim."

"But... but... still!" Sarah definitely didn't feel like eating anymore. She couldn't stop staring across the table at Luc's disinterested expression. He didn't seem bothered by the story in the slightest.

"Anyway." He stood up and came around the table to pat her shoulder before moving beyond, toward the bookshelves. "We'll try again tomorrow. I'm sure you'll do better now that you've had some practice."

Sarah stared at the remains of her dinner, still clutching her braid tightly with both hands. There were no lakes on the island. She knew that. She'd explored the place throuroughly already. There was the ocean, but - she couldn't swim! There were monsters in that water!

She swallowed hard and slid out of her chair, heading for the door without daring to glance back. "I-I'm going to go to bed now, if that's okay..."

"Hm? Oh. Good night, Sarah." Luc sounded a bit distracted but much better. "Sleep well."

"Y-yes, Master Luc. Good night." Sarah left the parlor quickly and started on the long, dark way to her room, and tried not to think of what would happen if she botched another teleport.