Finn's Character Profile: Magic

There was fire dancing around his fingertips and he didn’t know how to feel about it. A large part of Finn was in awe. There was fire at his fingertips, literally, and it bobbed with his bubbling emotions. It didn’t even burn! Another part of him, small and lamenting, was appalled at the fact he had fire at his fingertips and all that it could have meant. Anna was too young to understand, on top of not being around because Anna was three and she wasn’t interested in things Finn was doing, but this was something he knew humans couldn’t do.

Finn had never thought he was different than anyone else. Sure his feet looked a lot different than their mom or Anna’s feet did. He had a tail and wings that could sprout from his back with little prompting but he had never thought those to be odd things. Their father had even more weird things about his body! At least Finn didn’t have slit pupils, horns, or random scales dotted along his face and neck. His physical appearance had been a simple quirk of his existence and that was it, no further attention was called to it.

Except that wasn’t the case anymore. Their parents had finally decided Finn was old enough that he could take care of Anna and they didn’t need to be around. Now, Finn had to be the one to go out and use their meager funds to make purchases and he might only be six but he wasn’t stupid and he knew that the villagers called him names. They were kind enough not to insult him to his face but he’d caught the looks children gave him when he walked through the village market and people always seemed to dislike how his tail indicated his mood. He often felt like some exotic creature up for inspection and it wasn’t a nice feeling to have.

Over time, they had gotten used to him and how odd he looked. It was a simple village and there were no other people like him to use as a frame of reference so his general shyness and unwillingness to harm anyone had him become an accepted villager. Nobody gave him dirty looks anymore and he was often invited for dinner whenever the elderly women had extra they had made and he was looking particularly gaunt. Anna never had to go without. She had been accepted right away and there were at least five other families all willing to feed her whenever they spotted her. It was impossible to ignore the difference in treatment but they were family and Finn was fine with Anna doing well and him being left alone unless someone laid their eyes on him.

Magic, though? That wasn’t something that anyone could do. The village Finn lived in was average in terms of size and number of people living there but it was in a location that boasted almost no magical value. None of the local plants were magical, the animals around were all plain and unassuming, and the people had lived in the same village since it was founded nearly three generations ago. Wild witches roamed the forests around the village and sold their wares once a week in the market district but the village wasn’t old enough to have live-in magicians or sorcerers. Not yet, anyway.

The fire continued to dance and weave around his fingertips, alternating calmly between orange and yellow and red as it dimmed and flared with the mix of magical power and oxygen it was feeding off of. It was small and would exhaust him later but it was a sign. Finn had only been accepted by the locals because of his sister and his own docility combined with his age. He didn’t have a niche to fit into yet. People could still run him off if they decided they no longer wanted to see him so he had to seize whatever came his way. Magic had all sorts of uses and he had access to books his parents had left behind so he could learn some by himself.

Learning magic without a teacher was…unwise. Finn had no other choice. He refused to give up on the spark that had kindled within himself and he couldn’t make the journey to another village on the chance he might find someone else like himself out there. He would wait for someone to come around that could teach him more dangerous magic but healing was something he should be able to learn independently. They had no healer around, not even among the wild witches, and the element you were affiliated with didn’t dictate everything about your magic.

Unlike typical fire users, Finn used his element to burn sickness within someone else’s body. The crimson freckles adorning his body flared a few shades brighter, a dim glow radiated from his chest, and smoke tended to come from his hands whenever he harnessed his natural element. It took effort at first. Finn had to learn what magic even was before he could harness it. However, once he knew what magic was and what it could do… it was not unlike a limb he didn’t know he had that was slowly gaining strength.