Old acquaintance

The smell of pine filled the room where Cosima was preparing her breakfast before going to her student residence for the first time. For the first time in her life, she will be leaving the place she calls home, even if only temporarily.

After pouring oil in the pan, she broke an egg and tried to turn on the stove, but after a few tries, she realized the gas lighter had reached the end of its life span. It wasn't surprising, as the mansion where she lives was too big for just one person, and many things needed fixing. But the stove was not one of them, because as long as the gas kept coming out, she really didn't have a problem.

Stepping back, Cosima raised her hand at the stove, pointing it with the index. All of her being focused on that one point. A slight pain sprung out on the back of her head. All of this acts as preparation for what will follow. Her very soul was expecting the words that would activate a phenomenon.

"Scintilla."

A tiny red dot was shot from her finger, and the stove turned on.

"Heh, every time it becomes a bit easier."

Cosima Farfali has a secret. She is a mage, a wizard, a witch. A person capable of magic—that's what she is. The correct word would be manasi; it's just that terms like mage are what non-magical people are more familiar with. The problem arises when you ask what the exact difference is between a mage and a witch, because the definitions are vague.

Albeit Cosima herself is naught but an amateur who trudges through on self-study, but that, however, only does wonders for people heralded as geniuses. In Cosima's case, the knowledge only serves to make her daily life a bit more comfortable.

After eating, Cosima looked herself in the mirror for the last time to verify she looked presentable. Her pale skin combined with her scarlet hair always made her think she looked like a candle, and the yellow-orange color of her iris didn't help. Her body was skinny and tall, almost reaching the one hundred eighty-centimeter line, and her hair was long enough to touch her shoulders. She was sure that when she walked at night, people always looked twice to make sure she was truly a person. But as much as she liked complaining about this, deeply inside she enjoyed the resemblance. 

Cosima slipped her hands through her hair and went to take four big suitcases that she prepared last night and left near the entrance, one for clothes and the second for the student's needs like a laptop and a certain amount of books. The third one had all types of personal items. There was no way to know how fussy her roommate or roommates could be.

The fourth suitcase, on the other hand, had nothing to do with her college subjects but with her magical studies. Inside, there is a collection of five books for a novice she took from her mansion library, as well as crystals and materials she used. She doubted that someone else would ever see what was in the suitcase, but if it ever occurred, she could say it was some objects from an old fantasy movie that a cousin asked to have. Obviously, said cousin didn't exist.

Standing outside of the mansion, Cosima waited for a taxi she called to take her from her city, Montepulciano, to Firenze, where her college was located.

Meanwhile, she gave the mansion sporadic glances. She wasn't exactly sure about how old the mansion was, but if she had to guess, it was at least six hundred years old. With every century, the mansion grew as more members of the family were born. Until it reached its actual dimensions of three floors with twelve rooms each, two dining rooms, eight bathrooms, a basement, and an attic, it was surrounded by an even greater garden in all directions except for the entrance, where Cosima was.

In its best moment, forty people could live in it, but these days, only Cosima walked through the halls. Her father died when she was six, and she never knew her mother, making her inherit the mansion and becoming the lone guardian she was.

Between the street where the taxi would eventually arrive and the wooden door through which she had just exited, a space of fifteen meters was delimited by an iron fence, forming a gated state that added to the feeling of reclusion that the mansion gave off.

As the taxi arrived, the fence screeched, almost with sadness.

"It's only for six months." 

Cosima says this, half for the mansion and half for herself. Living with someone she doesn't know is scary.

"Do you need help with all that?" 

The taxi driver was talking to her, referring to all the luggage. This took Cosima by surprise, as she was thinking without attending to her surroundings.

"Yeah, please..."

She half-muttered an answer and took the fourth suitcase herself, taking it to the back of the car.

The driver put the other three in the back, and the travel began. If the traffic didn't cause problems, they would probably arrive in an hour and a half.

The vibration of the car was relaxing, almost enough to put one to sleep.

"Is there something you want to hear?"

The taxi driver asked, reaching for the radio.

"Nothing specifically."

The taxi driver turned on the radio to hear the news.

"The police department is investigating six disappearances that occurred this week in Firenze."

The voice of the narrator was very disciplined, able to transmit the information without putting any emotion in her words but without making it boring.

"That's where we're going."

"I will be careful."

"There's no reason to think that the disappearances are related since the only thing all victims have in common is that they all live in Florencia, said one policeman in an exclusive interview."

Cosima thought a bit about this, but the one who circled around her head the most was simply: Even if those are kidnappings, I would have to be very unlucky to be one of them in a city of three hundred eighty-two thousand people.

After some minutes, the taxist changed the news for some electric music, not very much for Cosima's tastes.

Beautiful scenery passed in front of her eyes. After all, Italy is extremely gorgeous this time of the year. The landscape contrasted with the mansion gardens Cosima was so accustomed to, but she didn't feel like it was a bad experience.

As if her eyes were cameras, Cosima tried to save the images that she saw through the passenger window in her head. Maybe she could draw them later.

The closer they got to Florencia, the more buildings flew by. Buildings were something of an interest to Cosima. It's the same interest that drove her to pursue a career in architecture. One could only imagine the joy she felt upon being accepted into a university seated in a city of such architectural marvel.

Half an hour later, she's found herself at a street named "Via San Gallo," where between a hotel and a hardware store lies her student residence. It was a temporary lodge, but it was housing none the less—a place to rest her head while she picked out a proper living space. Pricing wouldn't be an issue for her as she had the full capital of the Farfali house at her disposition. However, in regard to distance, she would prefer somewhere close, preferably comfortable. Those were the minimum requirements she had in regard to proper housing. 

The taxi driver left after taking the suitcases out of the car. Cosima went to the student administration to make her arrival known.

Quite comically, Cosima had wandered about for almost a whole hour before even getting a whiff of the place. She must have known how silly she appeared, with her face glowing red with embarrassment.

Upon entering the building, her first thought was that it was clean—so clean, in fact, that she could see her reflection in some places. She became self-conscious about whether the parts of the floor she had stepped on would ruin the aesthetic; the dirtyness of the outside shouldn't ever stain such a bright floor.

It took a while for it to fully settle in, but the place was cold. Looking at the thermostat, you could see it was a whopping 14 degrees Celsius. Combined with how clean the place was, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in the reception of a hospital.

Drawing her attention away from the aesthetic of the place, Cosima turned towards the administrator's desk, expecting a line to join, but there was none whatsoever. Going up to the desk, she meets with the administrator, whose eyes are glued to her computer screen. She's a forty-something-year-old woman who's seemingly unbothered by the temperature of the room.

"Cosima Farfali?"

"Yes, that's me."

She started typing something on her computer.

"We only have mixed residences available; is that a problem for you?"

"Ehmmmm..."

She looked at Cosima directly in the eye.

"With how many people would I be sharing?"

The woman started typing again.

"Ah, there is a room with a man and a maximum capacity of three. In other words, you would be the second person."

Cosima doubted for a second.

"There's not much to worry about with that one; he only comes here to sleep, and he'll be gone before you wake up; you'll basically have the whole place to yourself."

"Give me that one."

Cosima wasn't someone who worried too much about the problems in her life.

The administrator gave her the house keys, and Cosima left carrying as many suitcases as she could. It was truly a funny view.

It only took her fifty minutes to arrive at her house in the residence. The residence itself consisted of a row of two-story houses, very small compared to the mansion, and as much as Cosima said that they were to her liking, the truth was that she felt like a big fish in a little fishtank.

"Hello?"

She said this as she opened the door.

"Are you here? I am your new roommate!"

There was no answer; he probably wasn't home.

"Agh, I should have asked the administrator for the guy's name."

Cosima decided the best course of action was to leave her belongings in the living room and wait until he arrived. Meanwhile, she could look around the house.

The house had on the first story, just after the entrance, a living room that connected to a tiny kitchen with a fridge, a furnace, and a dishwasher. This living room consisted of no more than a table, two sofas, a bookshelf, and a television on a wall.

If you stood up in the middle of the living room, you would have the entrance behind you, the kitchen in front of you, a room on your left, a bathroom on your right, and next to it, the stairs that went to the second floor. The stairs were made of wood and creaked with every step. It was impossible to walk them without making noise. The second floor had two rooms and storage at the end of a hall that went in one direction and a big space in the other that Cosima was unable to tell exactly what it was.

This space was too small to be a living room, but it definitely wasn't a room. It had lots of bookshelves and tables. She concluded it was the "study room.".

The two rooms on the second floor were one in front of the other. She could see that her roommate slept in the one on the left, but she didn't enter as that would be an intrusion and a lack of respect.

She went to the kitchen to cook herself something, but the fridge was empty. 

"Ah, I have an idea!"

After ordering from a pizzeria at less than five minutes of distance, she tried to turn on the TV, but she couldn't find the control remote. Then she took her laptop from the suitcase, but after turning it on, she realized that she didn't have the wifi password.

Annoyed, she took a pencil and some paper and started to draw the living room on the table. She couldn't leave the house until her roommate arrived because it was good manners to present herself, but being alone was a bit boring.

Two knocks at the door made her smile with anticipation, but after opening it, it was only the pizza guy.

She had ordered three pizzas the way she liked them the most. Cosima planned to eat the first and kept the other two in the fridge until her roommate came. Soon she realized that she had no way to know if the guy liked the ingredients or if he even liked pizza. 

"That would be so uncomfortable." 

She thought as she ate. Her face started to turn red.

"Ah? What's wrong with me getting all embarrassed over a guy I haven't even seen!? I'm getting nervous for nothing!"

She continued the drawing while she waited. Maybe it was really true that he just came to sleep and not an exaggeration from the administrator. The smell of this place was different from the one from the mansion, and Cosima didn't like that. It didn't smell bad, and it wasn't a particularly strong one; it was simply different.

"I can't be like this; I need to adapt, or I soon will be refusing to do things that take me out of comfort."

The electrical lights were white instead of yellow like the ones in her mansion; this was another thing she found disgusting, even if she knew she was being irrational.

The thing she knew she was lacking was someone to tell all of this to a friend, because Cosima Farfali was truly alone in the world. Unable to make friends out of fear of revealing she was a manasi, she locked herself in a shell, but getting along with her roommate was the first step to breaking out of it.

An hour passed, and Cosima decided to just start opening her suitcases to set up her room. Two hours later, she was done. She chose the room in the first store so she could have as much privacy as possible. Had she lived alone, she would have preferred the room that was already occupied.

With nothing else to do, Cosima changed clothes and left her wallet and phone on her laptop. Then she took a candle out of her suitcase and put it on a table in her new reclaimed room.

She pointed it with her index finger and followed the same process that she did in the morning.

"Scintilla."

She missed the candlewick, and the spark hit the wax. She tried again and again until she could turn on the candle, then she blew it and tried to do it again.

The door knocked. Cosima quickly hid the candle and ran to receive whoever it was. Cosima opened the door and found a man in his fifties. His hair was black, with some parts already turning gray. His tall figure was far over the two-meter mark, and by his elegant posture, one could tell that his body was well worked. But the thing that caught Cosima's attention was his eyes, looking directly at her, surprised but at the same time satisfied. Everything about him screamed danger and problems.

"Are you... Cosima Farfali?"

The man asked as he made his way inside the house.

"H-Hey! Who are you? You can't enter just like that! Why do you know my name?"

"Just right now, were you using magic?"

Cosima's face went pale after hearing these words.

"N-no, what are you talking about? I just moved here today! Answer me, who are you? If you don't tell me, I'm going to call security!"

"Oh, Cosima, you really don't remember me? And you were so close to me."

The man had a troubled expression, nostalgia mixed with envy. Like seeing something you have at reach but as you try harder and harder it escapes the grasps of your fingers.

"What?"

Cosima was without words; who in the world was this man? Why did he knew about the manasi? Why did he knew about her?"

"You know, I wasn't really expecting to find you here; I didn't know you and Massimo knew each other."

Ah, so that is my roommate's name. She thought in her head.

"Either way, you don't have to keep the secret of magic from me; after all, I was a friend of your father. You and I are both manasi."

"You knew my father!? What type of person was he?"

Cosima was now completely interested, forgetting how alarmed she was just seconds before. Memories from her childhood flowed in her head.

"Since you really don't remember me, I will have to present myself. I am Domenico Abato."

Scenes about cold nights accompanied by delicious dinners and loud laughs replayed in her eyes like an old movie. This man was one of the three she had ever seen inside of her mansion. The second was his father and the third one an obscure figure which a face that scared her but couldn't quite remember, maybe a grumpy servant. 

"AH! Now I remember! You used to give me cookies all the time when I was a child.

"Let's drink something. Do you like coffee?"

He said this while sitting on the table and taking out a drink of cold coffee.

"Is it black or brown?"

"Brown."

"Serve me, please."

Cosima brought two little cups from the kitchen.

"What type of magic are you practicing right now?"

"Nothing very hard, just fire sparks."

"Ah, the scintilla spell?"

"Yes."

"So your elemental affinity is fire?"

"My what?"

"Oh, right, you didn't have a proper education since Jessopo died. Ermm, can you use the other elemental magics, like wind and water?"

"No, only fire."

"Magnificent. Its hard to find someone like that in this city."

"Can you tell me about my father? I don't remember too much about him."

"Of course, what a terrible accident it was; the only thing remaining were memories."

"It was a fire, wasn't it?"

Domenico once again made a troubled expression. Cosima understood that he didn't want to talk about that and when their glances met each other she gave a tacit approval to change the subject.

"Jessopo and I were working on an investigation that would be absolutely groundbreaking; he said that it would be a revolution in the magic fields. I don't really think you would understand the details right now, but it was about souls and life."

"It was so important?"

"It was almost twenty years of work. There was never a man so diligent, and with a talent bigger than your father, Cosima, I'm sure he would love to see the woman you have become today."

"You really think so? If he were as good as you say, I think he would be disappointed in having a daughter with no magic talent."

Domenico made a pause before continuing speaking, trying to find the correct words to say what he wanted.

"You know... The thing about talent is that you can interpret it as potential. You could say that you have the potential to be a great magic user, but you simply don't know how to use it. With a proper master and effort, who knows how far you could go?"

Cosima was so interested in the conversation that she had forgotten the coffee in front of her. But what she wanted was to know more about her father, and to do that she had to know more about Domenico.

"And what are you doing right now? Why did you come here? I heard about some kidnappings; I think it would be dangerous to walk alone."

"Ha, I'm too old to be kidnapped now."

"But still!"

"You are alone too and didn't seem to be worried."

"Heh, you are right, but what are you working on right now? Are you continuing my father's work?"

"Yes, but almost everything was lost in the fire that took Jessopo's life. I'm searching for a manasi, who can help me. I'm searching for one with fire affinity."

"Could I help you? I know I'm inexperienced, but I think helping to complete my father's investigation is a noble cause."

"I think... you could help me, at least with the basics, but... why don't you drink the coffee? It's going to go cold, you know."

Domenico drank his as he laughed, inviting Cosima to do the same.

Cosima drank a sip of coffee; it was very bitter and salty. She immediately felt tired.

"Heee... Eh... Oh... What is your relationship with... my roommate? Is he a manasi... too?"

Cosima asked while she tried to breathe through her mouth to keep herself awake.

"We have no relationship at all. I came here to kidnap him, but you will work too."

"Ah... Me?"

"Hey, can you still understand me?"

"Leave me alone."

"Well, you see... I'm conducting an experiment, and I need fourteen manasies for that, but I ran out of volunteers and started kidnapping novices. You are still following?"

Cosima mumbled something that was unintelligible.

"It's so great to see you again, Cosima; it's like killing two birds with one stone. But it's problematic to carry two people at the same time, even for me, so luckily for Massimo, I will take you today and him later."

Cosima hit the table with her head and spilled the coffee. She was completely asleep.

"Had you been more experienced, you could have easily resisted that sedative. If you die quickly, you would save yourself from a lot of pain."

Domenico grabbed Cosima's body and carried it like a sack of potatoes.

Once he was outside the house, he could not have been seen by anyone. But Domenico wasn't worried, as security cameras couldn't record him and normal people would instinctively look in the other direction the moment his figure came into their sights. 

Just like that, Cosima disappeared without trace.