This is a test. If this had been an actual post, I would have had something intelligent to say. But I don't.

Fnord!

Vincent is currently reading: Make Love!: The Bruce Campbell Way by Bruce Campbell.

The following is a story:

Runeheart Blanc

Everyone in her family always had such a profound grasp of the arcane, she had been told. Her sister, the warlock, could reach beyond the Silvered Curtain, her gaze always seemed to bring out a funny little stutter in whoever she spoke with. Her brother was the master of magicks at some far away academy in some place she couldn’t pronounce. Both her parents sat on the city council on chairs made of energy, and she was beginning to suspect that even the family tabby knew at least a cantrip or two. Every holiday, the family would gather to go over the latest spell or tome one or the other had come up with, speaking in excited voices, each pushing each other out of the way to get a better look at whatever scroll had been laid out on the counter. They would go deep into the night, burning candles as they debated. It was starting to get really, really annoying.

Rune didn’t sleep on the couch during these holidays, but she would spend the night laying on it. She could hear her family in the other room, the main foyer and chambers, each laugh sounding like a mocking cackle. She would pass the time doing what ever she could, sharpening a sword, polishing whatever of her ‘usual outfit’ that she could, sometimes going so far as to pick up one of the well-worn books on the table, flipping through it in a futile attempt to understand the symbols contained on the pages. It would always end the same, the book being thrown across the room in disgust, usually followed by fresh tears, drowned out by another laugh from behind the doors. She hated herself for being that weak, that depressed. She was an optimist, dammit.

Why can’t I walk in there? Just push the doors open and have a seat at the table? I used to, when I was younger. When I was important. She shared the same traits as her family, the dark hair (though she had cut it short after a bout of depression) and light skin that marked her as a person from the Imperial North, the same fair features, the same athletic build. She was just like the other members in her family, she knew that. Optimists, even her sister, though she’d hate to admit it. Everything the same. Exactly the same. Except for the fact that she was about as magical as a rock.

Well, not a magical rock. You know, the ones that glowed.

Runeheart Blanc wanted to glow.