Many people in this place are mistaken about magic. When I try to describe it to them, they tell me I am crazy, laugh, and buy me another drink. One of their older sayings is that you hold your enemies closer than your friends. Another is that laughter disguises fear.
	Magic is not entirely a psychic task as you may have been previously led to believe by fiction and superstition. Magic is a task, like all those worth performing by humanity, that is partly physical, and partly mental. More accurately, half and half. If the body is not prepared for the stress that the mind can inflict upon it, then the caster can easily injure him or herself. 
	What is required is a balance. There must be both the necessary strength and reflexes of a trained athlete, and the poise of a dancer. There must be the sharp, keen focus of a warrior, and the open drifting imagination of an artist. These things create a pool from which the caster can draw power and magnify it into a spell of their choosing.
	I am not an expert, by any stretch of the imagination. However, in this place, I am as good a teacher as you could hope to find. The only other mage on this planet is my darkest enemy. It also happens to be my master.

	I awoke one morning to the sound of rain and thunder. The tall glass doors which had been eased open that night to allow the balmy wind to lull me to sleep where now flung wide, and a spreading pool of water gathered beneath them from outside on the stone balcony. I rose from my bed and quickly pushed at their wooden frames, cursing at the water surrounding my feet as the doors shut out the gray skies in front of me. A few swipes on the rug at the foot of my bed rendered my feet comfortably dry once again, but not warm. The great wind in the sky had sucked my fire dry early in the morning, leaving only blackened coals in the fireplace. I pulled on a pair of canvas pants, buckled with a thick leather belt. Another belt slung across my hips held a short sword. I had no intention of attacking anything. It was just habit to equip myself so every morning. Afterwards I donned a plain white tunic that ruffled slightly at the collar. Following that, a once deep blue poncho, bleached to a babyish hue by so many months in the sun. I, however, remained untanned.
	As I stormed out of my stone chambers and slammed the oaken doors behind me, thoughts of Gild raged through my head. Why must he insist on waiting until the most pleasant times of year to bring about his great storms?
	Perhaps I am confusing you. Stone rooms? Swords? Gild? Where are these that you speak of? Yes, I should step back. Imagine the world as a coin, immeasurably wide, and infinitely flat. Two dimensional. Its two sides are vastly different in their detailings and meanings, but they are both carved from the same material. One side is your home, and the other side is mine. For now, this explanation should suffice.
	Gild was a master of magic. I cannot say he was master of the magic arts, because they are as numerous as the clouds in the skies. He was adept with his own breed of magic, and more so than any other warlock I had encountered. He dealt with earthen themes and elements. Clay. Mud. Fire. Ice. More than anything, though, he was fascinated with water. He could watch it for hours. He loved the taste of it, the smell of it, the sensation of being soaked in it. It was in this gleeful state I found him on the ramparts of the tallest tower, standing upon the wallstones and shouting at the sky in a language unknown to me.
	My art differs from Gild’s in two very important respects. One, I do not use language of any sort to perform my work. Two, I do not revel in my own power. I know its limits, and I know its wonders. I need no more than I have, and I want no more than I need.
	Gild turned to me, brushing the long graying hairs out of his intense hazel eyes.
	“See the rain, Jaile! See it flowing from the skies like the blessing of heaven upon us. Any time I want I can bring it from the skies!”
	I sneer at him as he spreads his arms wide and laughs into the sky. He is wearing a long seaman’s coat, unbuttoned to reveal his muscular torso. As I said before, half physical. The veins on his temple throb still from the force he has exerted. Although I laugh at him, I am secretly afraid. In ten years I could not do this thing he has done, not even its equivalent in my own form of magic.
	When I say my own form of magic, I mean pressure. As Gild deals with nature, I deal with pressure. The gravity of things, the forces pushing against them, the concept appeared to me an endless blanket I could roll on, adapting my art easily to whatever end I might need. The day I am able to lift a train with my magic, I shall be equal to him.
	“Damn it, Gild. It’s the warmest it has been all year, and you wake me up with THIS.” I spread my hands, palms up, and frowned at him. Of course, I was not wet. Before lifting the wooden trap door at the towers topmost story, I had cast a blanket of air about me, pushing up and away from myself. The rain water stops a thumb length above my crown… Sorry, forehead. From there it slides down a gentle arc until it reaches the ground. Small cushions of pressure on the pads of my feet keep them from contact with the damp wooden floor. Gild, now looking at me for the first time that day, chuckled sharply. Suddenly I felt like a child, showing off a toy to his parents, even though it was through their means that he came into possession of it. I felt very foolish, and Gild’s shoulders still shook with silent laughter as he swept past me and down the trap door. I followed.
	“You’re so boring, Jaile. You sit in the orchards plucking fruits with your mind, you sit on your balcony reading books, you walk to town and watch the people passing by. To me, the rain is a much better form of entertainment. Each drop so characteristic of its kind, yet beautiful and distinct. Pooled together they twist light and space more than any magic I possess. Water is beautiful, Jaile. I hope one day you can see things as I do.”
	Still in a pissy mood, I retorted without putting much thought into it. I wasn’t really listening to his words. Just his voice. That same raspy, father voice he used whenever I didn’t see things his way. 
“I’m boring am I? You sit for hours in the cold, getting wet, watching raindrops in the vague hope that they will teach you something about yourself...”
He turned very suddenly now, forcing a single syllable of magic through his clenched teeth, and a blaze of fire enveloped the round stone stairwell. My hands raised instinctively to create a pressure shield against his anger.
“I ask nothing from the rain. It is beautiful, and I love it. You however, are very much ugly. I tire of your moods, your human emotions that flow from you without reason or want.”
A brief mist splashed the hall, emanating from his open mouth. It extinguished the fire, and somehow managed to soak me through my barrier, which I then released. He stormed off down the stairs, skipping every other step with cat-like precision. I lowered my arms.
“I hope you are aware that you too are a human.” I snarled at him.
“And I hate it.” He snarled back.

Gild, I think, was angry at the world. He was a gifted person from the time of his birth. He needed no teacher to perform the magic he did. Perhaps that is why he found it so hard to take a student such as myself. He had been outcast from society at a very young age. A fire he caused, or something of the sort. I asked him about it once, and the response was far from pleasant. I never asked again. In any case, he was not a social person. I, on the other hand, very much enjoyed the company of people. Often I would leave his castle and venture into one of the surrounding villages for a carnival or simply to spend the evening drinking with an old friend.

It was on a dry evening that I finally discovered him. Deep inside his study in the lower levels. It was an earthy place, with bare floors, and vast catacombs of stone archways and open living space. Yet now it was dark, and gloomy. I only ventured here to find Gild, and Gild only came here when he was busy with something. For a week I had not seen him at work with the weather, or at all, for that matter.
He was at his desk, poring over a book. A single white candle burned nearby, its yellow light casting ghostly shadows across the worn wooden surface. More books where stacked haphazardly on the left. To the right, the Doll.
I despised the Doll. It was actually a very plain doll, the sort a child would receive from their grandfather. It appeared to be a simple wooden doll, its joints held together with string, all rounded with no pointy edges. No face had been painted on it, only a set of black lines I took for eyes. I say it appeared to be wood because I never touched it. It haunted me in a way I have difficulty describing. Have you seen a dead body? Staring up at you from a casket? Eyes closed, yet still alive somehow, still able to rise up and grab at you. So this doll had an effect on me.
Gild had a strange attachment to it, which on more than one occasion provoked me to question. He only went to work harder, and ignored my curiosity. I was to learn of its significance much later.
Still twenty feet away and silently creeping towards him, I blew a tiny gust of wind underneath the corner of the page he was laboring over. This was a trick of mine to notify him that I was approaching. He hated being set upon without warning.
His response caught me rather off guard this time. I had been expecting the usual indifferent “yes?” Instead he slammed the book shut, barely missing the fingers he had placed there to mark his progress in the text.
“Get out, NOW!” He told me in a stern voice. Cold as the ice he worshipped. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared. Then I turned and left. The look in his eyes was like fire, and I dared not tread towards such danger. The fire could easily leave his eyes and burn me alive. My shields were no match for the infernos he could summon, but my curious mind only set to work on discovering what books he was reading. What scripture would evoke such actions from him? Some deeply personal journal of his youth? No. He had not written so much as a paragraph in his childhood. His formal education had not begun until the age of thirty, he once told me. Perhaps a tome of magic too mystical and incredible to share with a simple novice student of magic. I was very curious indeed.