Home / Fantasy / Rise of the Sciencemancer / Ch. 6 Breaking Up With Melindra
Ch. 6 Breaking Up With Melindra
Author: Jon Klement
last update2025-04-30 21:13:19

“I don’t understand! You’re breaking up with me?” Melindra sobbed, her eyes gushing forth such a deluge of tears that George knew that his now ex-girlfriend must have magically smudge-proof make-up, which made sense, since her family was just as affluent as his.

The scene that George had chosen to break the bad news to Melindra was her family’s private garden. While he had known that breaking up with the only girl he’d ever kissed in his young life would be devastating for her, he loved her, so he didn’t want it to be extra devastating for her in any way. By choosing her parents’ garden, Melindra didn’t have to receive the news in public in front of any of their peers, nor did she have to receive it in front of any of her family members. It was just the two of them. She would have a chance to compose herself, to decide when to tell who in her life, her parents, her friends, everyone, and how to tell them.

George Fothergill, jr. and Melindra Will-O-Wisp had been sweethearts since they had been little. Since the Fothergills and the Will-O-Wisps were each among the social elite of Sutter’s Village (each family had ancestors among the town founders), the pairing had been encouraged by their elders. Indeed, such a pairing would have been the kind that class conscious members of the Society of Sorcerers Born sought out for their children anyway. Both families were wealthy, with strong political connections, and consistently produced offspring with the Gifting of Magic. The fact that these two young people sincerely liked each other from a young age meant that it would save the adults around them the trouble of matchmaking for a generation.

They’d gone to school dances together, studied for exams in the library, and exchanged silly love notes via enchanted ink that changed color based on mood. There were bracelets they had enchanted for each other, little tokens meant to pulse with warmth when they were near. Now, George could feel his own bracelet faintly glowing on his wrist as it reacted to Melindra’s presence, unaware of the emotional gulf opening between them.

“I’ll be gone for several years,” George explained again. He had already told Mel the version of his story that he had agreed with his father to tell everyone so that no one ever found out that George had very little of the Gifting of Magic, barely any at all. Mel kept weeping and begging and persisting however, forcing the devastated young man to repeat the details over and over, sounding to himself as if he were trying to convince himself. George shoved his own feelings down far inside his heart. He knew that he would have his own private time to cry later. Right at that moment, he knew that what Mel needed was for him to be strong. If both of them broke down, instead of just her, then there would be a real mess. If George allowed himself to get emotional and cry, he might tell her the truth, the truth that he had no magic, that he was not worthy of her, that if they ever had children, those children might be born without the Gifting of Magic.

“My uncle needs help running his herbalist shop in Taalvora. I’ll continue my mage studies there.”

Melindra snuffled back some of her sobbing to control herself enough to speak. “Taalvora isn’t that far. We could afford for you to come have teleportation visits with me sometimes. And, eventually, you’d be able to use teleportation magic on your own, and so could I. Couples have long-distance relationships all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, but enough. We don’t have to break up.”

Mel’s hands were wet with her tears. She pushed back her unruly blonde hair, streaking it wet with her tears. She gazed at him with her moist blue eyes. George wanted very much to touch her hair. To put it back in place for her, but he knew that if he did, he was only making this harder for both of them.

What she said about teleportation visits was true, of course. It was also true that sometimes long-distance couples did indeed make it through times of separation and go on to get married. But how could he tell her that he, George Fothergill, jr., descended from a long line of powerful Fothergills, would never use teleportation magic because he didn’t possess even enough of the Gifting of Magic to be accepted into any mage college at all, even a lesser one than Praxis.

He knew what teleportation felt like, of course, because he had traveled that way many times on family trips. But those teleportations had been powered by his father’s magic or his mother’s magic, not his. He would never know what it felt like to wield such magic himself. Never.

And there were other moments, little reminders of the life he was giving up. The plans they had made, whispered in corners of school corridors, about building a cottage near Lake Estmere where they'd raise familiars and practice spells under the stars. Mel had even picked out names for the familiars. He remembered the way she had said, 'Fizzle for the fire cat. Starbloom for the owl.' How could he explain that he would never summon a familiar of his own? That he would never be more than a shadow in that dream they had shared?

He and Mel were seated at a beautifully ornately designed metal bench, painted white, in a secluded alcove in the garden. This was the exact spot where the couple had shared their first kiss, the first kiss for either of them as individuals. In desperation, Mel grabbed onto his hands. George couldn’t look her in the face. He looked away.

His gaze found the colorful fluttering of a beautiful blue and yellow butterfly as it alighted upon one of the magical carnivorous flowers the Will-O-Wisp family kept in their garden. George knew what would happen, but he couldn’t turn his gaze away. For one, eternally frozen second of time, a fleeting moment of beauty, the butterfly majestically rested on the orangish-pink flower. That moment would have made a beautiful painting. As a painting, that moment could be made to last forever, the beauty of the butterfly could live forever. But…

Vrusssh! Faster than George could blink, the carnivorous Bug Muncher flower had taken its meal. It remained closed for about three seconds, then opened. The scene in the garden looked as before, except that the butterfly, the beauty of the moment, was gone. George disengaged his hands from Melindra’s, huskily said, “I’m sorry,” rose from the bench, and walked away as her small frame behind him was wracked with sobs.

It’s begun, George thought. I’ve begun to lose everything.

And yet, as he passed through the enchanted ivy-laced archway marking the garden’s edge, George felt something cold and harden inside him…determination. He had not chosen this path, but he would walk it. For all that he had lost, he would find something new. He had to. Because otherwise, all of this pain would be meaningless. And he couldn’t allow that. Not for Mel. Not for himself.

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