To Have Faith

         “Sometimes, faith isn’t enough,” a blue-haired girl whispered to the bowl of water, her young willow-green eyes gazing back at her in still reflection.
         “Sometimes,” she breathed, sending away ripples, “You need to peek and make sure your judgment is correct.”
         The clear river water quivered before darkening, turning deeper than ink and wispier than the wind. A lock of auburn hair fell on the bowl’s rim before a delicate ivory hand pulled it back.
         Eyes bright with magic, Lirel mouthed a name her heart called for: Jet.
         The darkness spun in the magicked water, and then other colors blossomed and took form into a forestry background. The image shifted and invited in the back of a man who wore a short coat of white and soft blue and midnight blue pants with chains looping through and off the black belt. Neither fabric was known to this world. A shock of blue hair spiked his head in thumb lengths and rustled faintly with the breeze. His shadow was long, just longer than his six foot height and weighed much less than one-hundred-seventy pounds. It traveled across the ground in a great stride the man’s legs could keep and control.
         The spell the young magician wove did not include sound, so a silenced air wove through the empty room she stood in. She didn’t mind; preferred it, in fact.
The person she watched had been walking; now he paused, as if something caught his attention. The girl’s heart fluttered as he turned toward her spell, his blue-shaded sunglasses glinting in the sun. His weather-beaten face held a warm smile as he saluted to her with a fighter’s bandaged hand. Lirel gave a small smile back; he found her out, just as he always did.
         Clearing away the spell with a wave, the girl stepped back from the lone table and moved to the door. It creaked as she opened it. The untamed forest surrounding the small, one-room house parted in a deer path. He would be arriving that way, and the girl was content to wait.