Other Sight

[rix_scaedu]

This is my response to Day 5 of http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/'s 30 Days of Flash Fiction, the list for which can be found at http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/221684.html?view=1245940#t1245940

The goblet had the old man, Tarrascotti, worried. Every evening when they camped they set it down on the flat beside the camp fire, filled it with good Arcanum rosé the innkeeper had supplied, added a drop of blood each to keep the Trideian goddesses happy, and left it overnight. A makeshift shrine. Every morning the goblet was empty and clean. The clean truly worried him. Animals would have left dregs in the undisturbed goblet. A drui, he was used to manipulating magical energies himself but divine agency scared him. The motives of the gods were not, well, human.

The others asleep, he composed himself to keep watch. Other sight was not a spell, more a way of seeing the world, a meditation of sorts. Tarrascotti was very interested to see what it would show him when he looked at the goblet.

As he slipped into that other mind state his view of the world changed. The fire gained a centre and halo of that deep warmth beyond red. A wash of the same colour overlaid all three of their bodies – he doubted Edita would be comfortable with the detail of her person that wash showed him. The colour and intensity of the stars above him changed with the addition of this warmth and the thin, cold fire that burnt on the other side of violet – stars and the sun had so much of that.

Various items on all of them glowed with imbued magics. His own wards set just outside the bounds of the encampment were silver, green and beyond violet to this sight.

The goblet – the goblet was wreathed in godstuffs: beautiful, potent, deadly. He could see it absorbing their offering like a beautiful woman licking and sucking honey slowly off her fingers.

While looking back at him.