Qira's Stink Spell
In this article:
all artwork by Shade Melodique
Katta, peeking into the kitchen.
KATTA
Qira, what are you doing?
Qira, holding up an eye-watering spicy onion.
QIRA
I'm conducting super-secret experiments so ghosts
can get the full, sensational experience of elfine leafcakes--
hey, where are you going? I'm serious, you know!
can get the full, sensational experience of elfine leafcakes--
hey, where are you going? I'm serious, you know!
Katta, from outside the house.
KATTA
That's why I'm leaving.
Qira
Once upon a time, there was a bored deity who thought it a shame that ghosts could not smell (or taste, or eat and drink for that matter). There were so many lovely scents in the world, and ancient souls had not had the pleasure of smelling them for eons.
So he set about developing a spell to allow a being without an olfactory system to smell.
As with all things Qira, his good intentions did not go as planned.
Sweet Scents
In particular, Qira believed every being, from the youngest babe to the eldest ghost, should enjoy the bliss of smelling, tasting, and eating elfine leafcakes. The delicate pastry with the sugary scent of honeypetal blooms was his favorite food of all time--and everyone deserved to indulge, even those who had passed on to the Evenacht.
He set about eating platterfuls of the leafcakes--research, you see. Then, with an extra-full belly, he hobbled around Talis, searching for the sweetest honeypetal flowers. He discovered them in the garden of a faun Nature adherent named Ydellis. She grew the flowers for a midyear celebration honoring Talin flora, and did not take kindly to a red-haired human leaving footprints in her lovely rezalia cordon to get to the flowers and snipping the best of the best petals.
With singed hair and a gleeful smile, Qira whisked away with a handful of the blooms. Taking a deep, satisfying breath, he set about experimenting.
Annoyingly, the task was not as simple as he originally thought.
Qira always went to great lengths when involved in a new idea. Not everyone appreciated his dedication.
Ghosts don't breathe--and that makes smelling a bit difficult. On top of that, creating workable organs with ghostly essence is a difficult and often unrewarding venture.
Ghostly Essences
Ghosts are made up of a core to which wispy essence is attached. This essence, magic by nature, interacts with the Evenacht. Ghosts refer to this interaction as Touch, of which there are three main kinds; Ethereal, the ghostly default, Physical, which allows ghosts to interact with physical objects, and Mental, which is how ghosts cast spells.
If a ghost were crafty, they could do all sorts of things with their essence that their earthly body could not (like phase through solid objects). And several crafty spirits decided that the ultimate in essence manipulation was to look, and behave, as if one were still alive. From these experiments came the realization that ghosts could eat, albeit far differently than the living, by combining several aspects of Touch.
This was good news to ghosts who were cooks and bakers in life and wished to continue their craft after death. After a lengthy education on combining aspects of Physical and Mental touch, they could taste food. Tasting what they created made it easier for them to bake, cook and brew tasty foods and drinks, but there was one catch; no smell. So while ghosts could savor a general flavor (like sour or sweet), subtle differences still eluded them.
Qira thought that altering the spell to combine smell with taste would be easy breezy, but, of course, that required some way for ghosts to perceive scent. And that proved elusive.
Limitations of Ghostly Essence
Odor particles were simply too small for ghosts to perceive. No matter how his Light-blessed helpers changed their perceptions, they could not sense scent.
A puzzle, and one Qira obsessed over while in his cups and enjoying an elfine leafcake or two. He was puzzled because particles of ryiam, the essence of magic, were also minuscule, and ghosts could interact with them just fine. So he pondered and muddled around and grumbled about his lack of progress, enough so that Katta told him he was finding a nice, comfortable spot on a beach, with waves, wind and heat, and would stay there until he ungrumped.
That only made Qira grumble louder.
Lucky Day
Luckily for Qira (and everyone around him), Rayva tipped his thinking into a new direction.
Rayva loved strolling down roads, sniffing everything in sight. Qira took her for a walkie walkie, sunk deep into his thoughts, and did not pay much attention to her eager nosing around until she started to sneeze. Their walkie walkie was at a new spot, a lovely backroads meadow with multiple flowers and stately trees that produced so much pollen, the air was a bright green.
Now, Qira knew that reaction--he actually had it around the vulfs, as he was allergic to their fur. Rayva was allergic to pollen! Or allergic to that much of it. He could not recall another walkie walkie where she experienced such difficulties, and it seemed related to the amount of green in the air. He sent her to Katta for a wash and a reassuring petting (Katta needed to make himself useful, as all he had done for the past season was laze about on the beach) and set about researching how to magically clump smells together.
And he succeeded!
Kind of.
Sure, his test subjects could smell--or what they took as smell. The scent was so repugnant they lost their essence--an interesting phenomenon, but not what Qira expected or desired. No matter how he altered the clumps, what his helpers perceived was so far from enticing, he gave up, disappointed.
Until he needed a stink smell.
Katta, accustomed to Qira's annoying leaps into the unknown, tended to take himself away while his friend delved into whatever caught his attention. Why?
Katta had been the unfortunate victim of several experiments, and he learned to vacate so Qira would not have a convenient friend to try new things on.
Stinks R Us
Qira, as a bored deity, tended to get into quite a bit of trouble to alleviate that boredom. From tweaking a monster's nose to baiting buccaneers, he had a habit of dumping himself and Katta into sticky situations--and then delighting in the ways he extricated them from their predicaments.
One such predicament arose as he availed himself of elfine leafcakes; a local Merchant Mounds shopkeep outside of Evening had dozens for sale at her stall, and the mouth-watering smells issuing from them attracted him to the plates. True, she had taken liberties with the recipe, but the honeypetal originals sat among them. He purchased every single one, and with a big smile, turned to leave.
Unfortunately, Finders stood in his way.
Now, Qira left Finders alone if they left him alone. He disliked dealing with the sanctimonious organization who thought they, and they alone, could Redeem spirits in the Evenacht. They claimed Death's charge--he claimed BS, but mostly kept that to himself.
This particular cluster, however, sought a particular peer, one who did not follow precedence and absconded with a Condemned she was not supposed to Redeem. They shoved their faces into everyone else's, demanding to know if anyone saw this wayward Finder.
Qira attempted to slip past, but one grabbed his arm and yanked, which dislodged his hold on the elfine leafcakes bag and sent them to the ground. The Finder kicked them away in disgust; the sack opened, sending the treats flying into the dusty, animal-trodden soil.
No one comes between Qira and elfine leafcakes.
He picked up the sad sack and the now hopelessly dust-coated cakes, and turned to the Finders with eyes that looked like chipped sapphires. He flung the cakes at them--along with the smell spell he'd worked so long on.
The ghosts gagged, slapping hands over their noses. Onlookers raced away, the shopkeep had a more severe, unfortunate reaction in a mixing bowl. He tossed the remainder at the cursing Finders, and they, as one, discorporated into shuddery essences, the energy that motivated their forms sucked away by the smell.
Discorporated! Qira was delighted; he now had a potent weapon against ghostly annoyances!
Feeling guilty over making the poor shopkeep sick, he paid extra for the remaining elfine leafcakes, and while they were not honeypetal, when he finally sat down to eat them, they were just as delicious.
KATTA
No.
QIRA
But--
KATTA
NO.
QIRA
But it's for science--
don't look at me like that.
It doesn't smell THAT bad.
don't look at me like that.
It doesn't smell THAT bad.
Comments