How I Did Not Make Friends With Teniel eu Letxie

Two drinks, and I start telling people I can do syokk.

Is that entirely accurate? No. Can I stop myself? Also no.

The party is at my frenemy Eurli’s flat, and she air-kisses me hello as I push a bottle of my least favorite brandy at her. “Didn’t you bring anyone?” she asks, but fuck if I’m going to knowingly inflict Eurli on another human being. I shrug at her and escape to the drinks rack. I don’t recognize anyone here so this’ll suck unless I start talking to people, and fast. I hi-my-name’s-Gebrenie-what’s-yours around the place until I wind up in a circle of people sprawled on cushions, one-upping each other.

Well I had my very first paper published in Magic.

Well I got that grant for thaumoquantum transference, trials begin in City Brenetxie next month.

Well I just got off the waitlist for a Triu Tetxe wand.

“Oh, you’re all magicians,” I say.

Nods all around. “Aren’t you, Gerit?” someone says.

“Gebrenie,” I say. “No, I never picked it up properly. But I did learn a little something when I was younger.” Not the Brenetxie magic they’re talking about, though.

“Aw, show us then!”

“Yes, you must!”

Credentialed magicians love nothing so much as watching an amateur struggle.

“Couldn’t possibly,” I say, because you have to, but I set my drink on the floor, because I am a showoff.

“We can give you some tips,” one of the magicians says sweetly.

“Loooove tips,” I say. But instead of pulling a cheap wand out of my bodice, I close my eyes and lock my hands together. And—my mind blanks.

Oh shit oh fuck. Did I really forget how to start?

I haven’t really done syokk in over a decade. I tell myself I can still do it if I want to, because it’d be sad if I couldn’t. I used to love it. I still love it. But do I practice? Nah. It’s depressing practicing alone and I can hardly show up to the Cultural Center Ingaraadie on my own, looking obviously Ebrenetx. What would I even say—“Hi, I swear I’m not a total weirdo with an unseemly interest in your traditions! I just learned syokk when I was young and want to practice!”—which sounds suspiciously like something a total weirdo would say.

Somewhere in the midst of my drunk blanked-out panic my second-year teacher’s voice floats into my head. Start with breath. Go as slow as you need to. She’s speaking Tuibrenetx, not Ingaraapk, which isn’t right, but hey. It works. I remember, and I breathe. The sensation gathers between my palms. I open my eyes to a froth of cinnamon-colored light around my fingers, shapeless and faintly warm.

Fuck, I’m rusty. The light is supposed to be clear and strong, not…bubbly. But it’s workable. I poke and prod at it until it starts reacting, like a glob of taffy. Draw out a glimmering, uncooperative neck, and a set of fins because triangles are easy, and then I have something like…a giraffe shark? Not fancy. Just a stupid party trick. Magic from a place that never wanted me anyway.

The magicians have gone silent and stony, the syokk-light glazing their faces dark red. One girl’s leaning forward, something sharp in her eyes. With a jolt, I recognize her.

“You know syokk,” she says.

Teniel eu Letxie. We’ve only met once before, but I know more about her than I should. We run in the same circles. Not friends—yet. Online she’s pretty loud about Ingaraadz politics. (She’s half, Eurli told me last week. The famine brought her grandparents all the way here. And they’re dead now.) Teniel probably does gorgeous syokk. Builds whole myths out of light one-handed. And here I am with a lumpy little glob. She’s about to tear me apart.

“Only a little,” I protest.

Her gray eyes bore into me. “How’d you learn?”

Online class, an Ebrenetx might say. Saw a traveling exhibition and became enamored of the art. Ingaraadie stuff is just so cool, you know?

“I, uh, I learned it in primary school. In Ingaraad,” I explain. A more legitimate reason than most Ebrenetx have. “I grew up there. Well, almost. Not entirely. Just a few years.” (Two. Barely.) “Then we moved back here.” Teniel’s not saying anything. My syokk begins to flicker. “But, uh, yeah, in school we did syokk every morning, after math. I’m not very good anymore, as you can see, but uh…” I gesture vaguely with both hands, and my giraffeshark bobs along like a deflating balloon. “It’s fun!”

Fun. I hate myself.

The magicians are getting up, making noises about drinks, but Teniel crawls onto my cushion. Oh no, she’s going to clap in. I’ll have to pull out all the stock patterns I still remember, and hope she gets bored before I drown in the light like the fraud I am. I grit my teeth and yank some Ingaraapk out of a dark corner. “Syokk-n lluwty?” Shit damn fuck, wrong tense. We practiced syokk? I sound like a dumbass. Worse—she hasn’t even told me she’s Ingaraadz yet.

She just stares at me, and my will to live shrivels. I hope I black out and forget all of this.

“Sorry,” I mumble. My giraffeshark falters and melts into nothing.

Teniel watches it go without expression and then says abruptly, “I can’t even speak it. Let alone practice syokk.”

Horrible relief. I almost laugh, but that’d be ghoulish. “Oh,” I say instead.

“I didn’t want to learn, growing up,” she says. “And no one pushed me to. But now I regret it.”

“You could still try,” I say. “Online class?”

But we both know that’s bull. Childhood acquisition windows and all that. You’d never get more than a tiny glimmer up, starting after age twelve.

“Or I can teach you what I know,” I say, too eagerly. I shouldn’t even care. Why do I care? It’s weird that I care. “But, you know, like—I’m really bad now. I used to know way more. And it all—faded. And I don’t know if I can ever get it back.”

Teniel looks at me for several seconds too long. “Well, I never even had it at all,” she says. “Your plesiosaur was cute, though.” She drains her drink and rises from the cushion without a backward glance. “Good talk, Gebrenie.”

In Brenetx, that’s a friendly enough goodbye. In Ingaraad, it’s fuck you.

I know which way she meant it.

© 2023 Bree Wernicke

About the Author

Bree Wernicke is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Her short fiction has appeared in Neon Literary Magazine and The Dread Machine, and she was a finalist in 2023’s NYC Midnight Short Story Competition. She lives in Los Angeles.