The first one they encounter is Neuse. A 15 year old boy, attuned to water. He lives with his father outside a city, and tends a pharmaceutical garden for use in his father’s medicine business. He uses his water skills to nuture the plants, usually by pulling it through compost and extracting the minerals with the water, to then be deposited in the plants. He can also use it to encourage plants to grow, in general or in specific directions. He is a quiet person, and though opposite in personality from Kyevi, he bonds with him. Rue stays with them and speaks with him and his father about what she’s learned of magic use- and how it will eventually make him go insane. She convinces them that its best for him to accompany her, for she can take his powers and prevent this from happening. Neuse is conflicted, for it is something he loves, but he goes with anyway.

Next they meet Poli and Pui, fraternal twins who work are circus performers. Poli is light and Pui is air, and between them both they can create fantastic tricks that nobody ever suspects are actually magic – they are the most public of all the children. They are both 12, and thin. They look similar, but not identical; Poli has darker hair of the two though they are both blonde. Pui is the more flighty of the two, less prone to paying attention and more interested in investigating her surroundings. Poli too is inquisitive, but she focuses on what’s going on with the people around her, mostly concerning her companions. She wants to know the plans, the next steps they’re going to take, while Pui wants to check out a certain bug flying to that tree over there. They don’t have parents, and are in fact owned by the circus company, and really don’t particularly want to leave. Kyevi uses his male charm to both charm them and convince them of what a great adventure it would be, catering to their specific interests – He tells Poli of their plans for their mission, and he tells Pui of the strange sights they’ve seen.

At this point, they split. Rue takes Poli and Pui and goes off in one direction, and Kyevi and Neuse head off for another city.

Conda is found by the girls, a 10 year old girl who is attuned to dark. She is completely emo. She doesn’t dress as a ‘goth’ would, but her primary trait is viewing the world as being a horrible place, full of pain and despair. She despises Poli. All she can ever think of is what can go wrong. She tends to be impulsive, jumping into situations while the others prefer to sit back and analyze first. Her main use of her powers revolves around pulling darkness into her surroundings – she can make a dark night darker, a dark corner deeper, she can darken someone’s vision momentarily to slip past them unnoticed; she also likes to manipulate shadows for her own amusement, which sometimes run to the darker side, no pun intended. She lives with her parents, who are actors in a theatre troupe – they travel, and she is usually used to help backstage, and she occasionally ‘assists’ with effects. They rest of the theatre workers think she is just skilled at effects. The theatre is her only joy. Rue uses the same tactic on her parents as she did on Neuse’s father.

The boys find Ogume, an 8 year old boy attuned to earth. He is brilliant, wise beyond his years. He lives with his grandparents, his grandfather is an aging fisherman. He is loving and friendly, but evasive about his powers, and they don’t really get to know anything about what he does. The boys stay with them for a while, during which they notice odd occurrences that Kyevi keeps attempting to associate with an element, and yet he can’t catch him in the act. He seems to have an obsession with flipping a coin, which unbeknownst to the others, he can actually manipulate so it’s not as random as it seems. Somehow Neuse discovers this and confronts him, and he finally explains what’s going on. Kyevi by this time is fed up with the kid and ready to leave, but Ogume flips a coin – for real – and decides to go with them, making the decision that maybe he needs to stop manipulating circumstances and just live.


Total wordcount: 3,432/50,000
Story wordcount: 0/50,000