Phoebe Emrys Yonah

[cocoa]

Dark green leaves, vibrant fronds peppered throughout with splashes of yellows, purples, and reds fill the forest to the brim in a kaleidoscope of color, drawn in nature’s design the so-called DNA, the code for life: the code described in Phoebe’s books.

Today, the sky is a light blue, the sun low in the east, just barely shining through the ferns; it cast long shadows interspersed by blades of light. At places, the yellow light shone through the plant life, giving the blood pulsing within the plants a color, neon green webbed with veins.

Phoebe pushed back another fern with his dark paw, leaning forward to squint into the undergrowth, his horn casting light to the shadows. It did not have what he was looking for, and he went on. His soft black fur was riddled with twigs and leaves, twisting yellow and green between his uncombed fur - he had been wandering the forest all morning. This forest is rich in earth magic, Phoebe thought, petulant at his lack of findings in the past two hours, there should be some sort of artifact infused with magic. He’d like to find something other than a yellowing bone this time. The others clearly didn’t like him being “weird”, and a simple feather would be much easier to carry around without any questions.

It was nearly eight in the morning when he finally came across something - but not necessarily what he was looking for. Phoebe was at the eastern part of the woods, still close to the Qocuria’s border with Sloniris, but also far away from any other tribes.

That something stood, unassuming, carved cobblestone brick, wrought with designs in celebration of the sun and the moon in the sky and the air, with the god Uya residing in the earth; a stone overhang cast the designs in shadow. The roof was stone, not thatched wood or clay like one would see in Sloniris or Qocuria, overflowing with plants that seemed to be a collection of all the color in the forest, a miniature, unadjusted rainbow. Vines ran down the sides, twisting and turning and fitting into grooves that seemed to be carved for them. It was unlike any architecture of Hasnetania Phoebe had ever known: perhaps the country of Dienan had its castles, but they were either marble and grand or a simple wooden tower. There were no windows, either; whatever inhabitant must live there must live by the candlelight.

Ever curious a kalon, Phoebe hesitantly walked up to the door, made of dark iron and covered with rusting patches. He grabbed the handle, sticky with the rust, and pulled it open with a great heave, his muscles straining and sending him staggering backwards when the door suddenly uncaught, and fell open. Dropping back down to his paws, Phoebe took a step into the dark room, a orange candlelight reflecting off of his dark eyes. There’s someone here, and suddenly, Phoebe was afraid, ready to run out of the room, knowledge be damned. Who knew what kind of monster or exile lived so far away from humanity?

“Master Yonah,” a voice called, before he could turn tail and run far away, “do not fear me. I am not a monster, nor a murderous exile. You may call me Miss Ioko.” Phoebe froze. How did they know him? Threatened, Phoebe puffed up his fur, taking a cautious step back.

“H-h-how-” Phoebe broke off, struggling to compose his words, and took a calming breath, “H-how do you know my name? And how did you know, you know? Show yourself.”

The voice gave a laugh. It was not a deep, evil chuckle, and nor was it patronizing. Rather, it was a kind, feminine voice - it kind that would calm a child. “Rather brazen words for someone who wants to run away.” There was a movement in the darkness, and a click sounded, electronic lighting flickering to life.

Miss Ioko was not a kalon nor a human. She the shape of a cream golden retriever, but dripping galaxies seemed to pour from her feet and her tail, small horns the same color as her pelt sitting atop her head.

“Answer my question. What are you? Why are you here? What is this - stuff? Are you a magician? Can you teach me? That is, if you don’t plan to eat me?” Phoebe’s eyes were wide, captured more by the various ingredients and magical artifacts lining the walls: jars of herbs, seemingly useless items: rocks, feathers, bones, old discarded household items - all alive with the magic of the earth. A round, woven carpet was decorated similarly to the outside of the house, but with color and detail. Scrolls with various runes written on them hung from the wall, or sat in a curled pile. Miss Ioko wore a smile.

“Quite the demanding one, aren’t you? It seems your parents could have taught you better.” Phoebe flinched at that. Miss Ioko’s eyes sharpened at Phoebe’s reaction. She hummed. “I can read you like a book. You are a very expressive kalon, I’ll have you know. And well known by the tribe scouts in the area - for one so young, you do your fair deal of wandering in the big, scary dark forest, Master Yonah.”

Phoebe stood straighter, as if to strengthen himself against Miss Ioko’s next attack. If it could be called that. “I can deal with a forest. It’s all sunshine and rainbows, there. You still haven’t answered my questions. I’ll ask them again -” Nothing on Phoebe’s face indicated that he was lying, but the words themself gave him away.

“You know, if you’d learn how to choose your words for your lies, you might be good at it.” Miss Ioko said, cutting Phoebe off. “Master Yonah, have patience. I am a coffee dog, a magician, those are my magical artifacts, runes, and ingredients, and no I won’t eat you but I can teach you if you like. I won’t tell you why I am here, however, except that I have been here for the past ten years, so this is my home, if you will.” Miss Ioko’s smile grew. “And you just barged into my home. I think you owe me, wouldn’t you say?”

Phoebe balked. “Owe you? How about we get back to you teaching me, instead.”

Miss Ioko’s expression didn’t change. “Why, if I teach you, that debt will become very large. I hope you plan to pay it off at some point.”

“Of course I will,” Phoebe offered, his face plain, already turning to the walls. “These runes - I’ve been mainly focusing on runes in my magical pursuits, for your information - I’ve only seen a few of them before. Think you can teach me them?” Miss Ioko did not respond, still eying Phoebe. He replied far too quickly for that to not be a lie, but she thought little of it. After all, perhaps if I teach him, I can teach him something about having… ah, nevermind that for now. She gathered up several scrolls and set them in front of Phoebe.

“Take these and be off, Master Yonah,” Miss Ioko intoned, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Phoebe stared, but asked no question, shuffling the scrolls into his bag and leaving.

[cocoa]

Phoebe was thirteen when he met Miss Ioko that day.

He didn’t return until a week later, having read all the content of the scrolls and attempted to put them into practice. He’d failed, mostly - gathered magic just blowing up in his face when he attempted the activation ritual. Then he’d came back to the small hut, barging through the front door and whining right off the bat over how it just didn’t work.

“Stop,” Miss Ioko warned, “complaining will not make things better. If you want to improve at your magic, show me what you’re doing wrong and we’ll work through it.” Phoebe stared, and stared, because whenever he complained about just about anything, said person would either ignore him, brush him off, or throw more work on him that might work, but often, didn’t.

That was the kind of person Miss Ioko was. Kind, mending, and acting as the figure Phoebe needed in his life, a figure others couldn’t take up for him.

Phoebe was the kind of kalon that needed someone to look out for him. Miss Ioko could act as that. So they worked through Phoebe’s problems in magic.

“Look, your lines don’t meet. Here, here, and here,” Miss Ioko pointed at various points of his attempted recreation of a rune circle with ink on paper, “the lines are shaky. You have missed some marks as well. Overall, I’d say you need to pay better attention to detail.”

Phoebe traced the lines that Miss Ioko had pointed out, comparing it to the reference text. He scowled, upset that Miss Ioko was right. “How do I fix it? Maybe… maybe I should work with artifact magic instead.”

Miss Ioko shook her head. “No, Master Yonah. I can tell, your speciality would be runes. Artifact magic requires a different personality than you. Potions are even more technical.” She smiled at him, “I know you can succeed, you just need to be properly taught. Instead of creating a rune circle right away, I want you to draw these runes a hundred times over.” She placed a different scroll in front of him, with a list of at least a hundred runes in itself.

The dark kalon went slack jawed at the amount of work that he was suddenly shouldered with. “W-what? That’s at least a thousand drawings of runes! I can’t do this, what the heck?”

Miss Ioko did not break her smile. “Practice makes perfect. Do this, and you will thank me; if you want to be proficient at magic, you must be able to instinctively draw these runes.”

Hunching over to pace around the scrolls, Phoebe sulked. “A thousand runes,” he muttered under his breath, “blah blah blah. It’d be easier to just learn to do the rune circle right away.” Then, raising his voice, he said, “Yes, of course.”

The mysterious dog across from Phoebe raised an eyebrow, the liquid of their galaxy tail and paws shifting in the candlelight. “A thousand runes. I’ll know if you don’t.”

A sheen of nervous sweat clumped Phoebe’s fur, a nervous jitter starting up. If I can do the rune circle just fine, she won’t notice, right?



She noticed.

“I said a thousand runes. If I can’t trust you to draw it on the dirt yourself, I want proof on scrolls.”

Phoebe’s jaw dropped before he snapped it back, his teeth aching like steel. “B-b-but, that’s a lot of m-money for that many scrolls!”

Miss Ioko shook a paw. “You broke my trust. Now, you must work to make up for it.”

Phoebe dragged his feet all the way back to town, only momentarily distracted from his sulking by the flight of a toucan. He’d have to work more shifts to pay for the scrolls. I’m too young for this, he thought, children shouldn’t be subjected to unnecessary amounts of work! Nervous, Phoebe ran a paw through his hair.

But Phoebe knew better than most that no matter how much he complained to himself, his parents weren’t coming back and his aunt wasn’t going to suddenly start loving him.

[cocoa]

Phoebe worked harder at the sanctuary to gain the extra dollar, doing the more grubby jobs or difficult to handle ones with the eagles, despite his uncomfortableness with those situations. Everyday, he painted in ink runes on the scrolls that he bought with the money.

It took him what felt like months, but one day, he came back to Miss Ioko’s house pulling a cart full of scrolls, sweat dripping from his brow and fur ruffled and unclean after hours of work.

When Miss Ioko looked up from whatever work she was doing at Phoebe’s entrance, she smiled. “I’d say you’ve passed my test, Master Yonah,” she murmured, walking towards to flip through several of the scrolls. “You’ve done well. How about we really get into teaching now?”

That very day, Miss Ioko had taught Phoebe how to construct the basic rune magic circle, showing him how he could use the runes he used to make all different kinds of meanings, and subsequently, magics. Phoebe was shocked at just how easier it was to draw out the runes, and the fact that for once, they actually worked.

From that day on, Miss Ioko taught Phoebe countless lessons. Phoebe was less rebellious after the initial beating via rune writing, but he still frequently got into little disputes with his mentor - more and more often, ones that centered around the nature of the magic itself rather than just whining and not wanting to do something too hard. Phoebe was, after all, a very smart kalon, and an argumentative one to boot. He took knowledge in, flaunted it, argued with it and built his beliefs off of it.

From Miss Ioko’s lessons, Phoebe learned everything he needed to know about rune magic. He learned which runes do what, which are the most useful, how to use them together to form spells, how to write them out efficiently to use in the field, and how to activate them with a pinch of potion-dust, burning the currents of the magic of the earth god Uya into the lines of the runes.

Phoebe grew to trust, and he grew to see what it was to be raised by an adult, and to be an adult himself. Years passed like quicksand, and within her lessons of magic, Miss Ioko taught him of the familial love he’d only had fleetingly as a child, how to be a hard worker, how to conduct himself in public, treat others with respect, and how to be brave when facing danger.

Phoebe would never quite truly learn all these lessons Miss Ioko imparted him. He still shivered at the sight of inherent danger; he still cried when he was overwhelmed with emotion; he still lorded his intelligence above others, the words slipping from his tongue like second-born nature; and he still was, and probably always would be not very popular with others. But Phoebe had learned how to regulate those things, and how to live well and responsibly and mold his dreams and ideals into reality.

At eighteen, when Phoebe had learned everything he could learn, Miss Ioko told him the answer to the question he had asked long ago - who are you? It was a mystery built on her knowledge, a mystery built in magical nature of her species, and a mystery built on the strange architecture of her house and the mystery of her history. Phoebe had wondered the answer for many years, and had repeated the question many times, until he had all but given up. He thought it would forever remain a secret.

Until today.

“My name is Funai Ioko,” she said, “and I am from the Kingdom of Aegnis.”

[cocoa]

Nobody was supposed to have ever left, or entered, the Kingdom of Aegnis in a thousand years.

Phoebe’s secret role model, Octavia Vyner, a kiamara and the famous shadow queen of the Vekar Empire, was an amazing magician that he admired for having built herself up on nothing but her prowess and skill in magic. It didn’t matter if her reputation was a little crazy.

It was also known that Octavia aimed to get into the Kingdom of Aegnis, for undisclosed reasons. Phoebe thought it impossible. Yet, Miss Ioko stood in front of him, and if what she said to be true was true…

“How did you get here, Miss Ioko?”

Miss Ioko smiled. “Call me Funai. And, well. That’s a long story. To keep it short - I have a mission for you.”

When Phoebe heard those words, he knew the it would be bigger than any mission he had ever gone on before.

[cocoa]

If there was anything Phoebe loved being taught, it was magic. Runes were his speciality - it had been wise for Miss Ioko to teach him that, first. The other two branches of magic, disregarding inherent magic (which was extremely rare outside of the Kingdom of Aegnis), was potion-making and artifact manipulation, the latter having the ability to wield the same effect as inherent magic, but through the conduit of something of a ‘wand’.

He never had natural talent for his runes, but it was rather through hard work that he got better. He enjoyed the most the ability to place runes down and made spirits visible to act as wayfinders across the forest - maybe whole spirits, or just imprints of paths they took when they were alive. Elemental magic could be fun, too, if a bit dangerous. There was intricacy to Phoebe’s kind of magic: the careful drawing of the runes, circles in the ground, on paper, on tapestries - all to properly tap into the earth god Uya’s magic. It took years for Phoebe to learn how to have the patience to properly draw out the magic that rests in the earth, but with the guidance of Miss Ioko, he managed to succeed.

[cocoa]

Likes

birds
blue & orange
mangrove trees (there are some on the coast, about 30 miles away he has visited before)
mythical creatures (legends of dragons, phoenixes, and the legendary Guardian of the Mountain over the Kingdom of Aegnis)
treehouses
beanbags
snow
design (flags, books covers, banners, etc.)
pillows
all kinds of books, from non-fiction to fantasy
instrumental music
hugs

Foods: mashed potatoes & potato skin, zucchini, mangos, salads w/ vignette dressing, fried rice, sweet curry, sweet and sour, duck, fish

Dislikes

dogs, cats
cars, most technology
big cities
anything scary
mainstream schooling
hard chairs

Foods: anything spicy, steak

Quirks

- Has a habit to run paws through hair; sometimes compulsively smooths the fur at the top of his paw when writing (really considered weird for that)
- Tends to mess with glowing paw: put gloves over it, clean it obsessively so the glow isn’t obstructed, and more
- Typically does everything in the dark, only going by glow of horn and paw
- Speaks two languages: tribal language Qorian and the common language of Sloniris , which is also spoken in the Qocuria Kingdom, Sloris

[cocoa]

Personality

Weird
know-it-all (corrects people if they are wrong)
keeps to himself but isn't necessarily quiet
loves to talk with other intelligent people
asks constant questions
cold if other person uninteresting
stutters if confronted
sleazy liar, but super obvious about it
very curious
gets embarrassed easily
runs away from anything scary
mannerless
pampered
does what he wants

Weaknesses/Strengths

W: wimp, smart-ass, cry-baby, physically unfit for the longest time, a bit cold-hearted, weird/unpopular, tries to skirt around doing work
S: smart, preserving, a dreamer/idealist, adorable, interesting, easy conversationalist (when you talk to them), passionate

[cocoa]

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