Arthur lived a life of charming mediocrity in the wonderfully weird city of Obelus. While his neighbors might casually conjure breakfast with a flick of their wrists or teleport their laundry to the dry cleaners with a cheerful incantation, Arthur considered it a triumph if he managed to turn on the telly inside one minute. He didn't have enough mana.
His childhood magic aptitude test had been about as conclusive as a blank sheet of parchment: nil. Nada. Not a spark of inherent magical talent in sight. Correction: he had no mana.
This, perhaps, explained his rather intense, some might say borderline obsessive, fascination with Luna Celeste, the weather lady for Obelus’s official news channel. In a city where elemental magicians were the stuff of legend, whispered about in hushed tones like particularly elusive garden gnomes, Luna seemed to wield the very skies.
Every evening, Arthur would settle into his armchair, a lukewarm mug of tea precariously balanced on the armrest, and watch her with rapt attention.
Luna was, undeniably, a ray of sunshine even when forecasting rain. Her smile could melt glaciers (a useful talent in Obelus, given the occasional rogue ice elemental), and her wardrobe was a marvel of meteorological coordination. If she predicted a “perfectly pleasant possibility of scattered showers,” she’d be in a charmingly polka-dotted raincoat.
A “high chance of whimsical winds”? A delightfully breezy scarf would appear. The weather, like Arthur, always seemed to listen to her. When Luna promised a “bright and breezy morning,” a gentle zephyr would indeed rustle the leaves outside Arthur’s window, and the clouds would politely arrange themselves into picturesque formations.
“Barnaby,” Arthur declared one evening, eyes glued to Luna as she confidently pointed to a sun icon on the weather map, her yellow dress practically vibrating with optimism, “she’s doing it. She’s definitely an elemental mage.”
Barnaby, Arthur’s friend and a man whose skepticism was as sturdy as the enchanted gargoyles adorning Obelus’s rooftops, merely adjusted his spectacles. “Arthur, she’s pointing at a picture of the sun. I do that sometimes when I want people to know it’s sunny. Plus, there are no more elemental mages. That's just a child's fantasy.”
“But the way she does it!” Arthur insisted, gesturing emphatically with his teacup, nearly sending it tumbling. “The confidence, the knowing look in her eyes! And the weather always follows. Well, mostly.”
Barnaby sighed, a sound like a deflating enchanted cushion. “Arthur, you’re smitten. She's really pretty, bit it’s making you see magical portents in perfectly normal meteorological announcements. No way she's an elemental mage.”
One day, the world tilted on its axis, much like one of Obelus’s famously unreliable gravity-defying scooters. The Obelus Daily Buzz, in its usual flamboyant style, splashed the news across its front page: “Luna Celeste’s Heart Has Been Swept Away!” Apparently, the radiant weather lady had been spotted "sitting in a tree" with someone.
Primordial lightning stuck at Arthur's heart, Arthur’s tea suddenly tasted of ash, and the world outside seemed a little less sunny, even though Luna had predicted clear skies.
Despite the emotional turbulence, Arthur continued his nightly ritual. But something was off. Initially, it was subtle. She’d forecast sunshine, and a persistent, slightly damp fog would linger for days. Gradually, the inaccuracies escalated.
Today, Luna’s sunny disposition seemed strained as she tried to explain why the “negligible chance of enchanted snow flurries” had resulted in a blizzard of tiny, giggling snowmen.
Obelus, built on the long-forgotten form of a giant whose magical essence were rumored to subtly permeate the city, amplifying emotions and desires, continued its quirky rhythm. Sometimes, though, Arthur would catch a fleeting feeling, a strange sense of being perched high above the city, as if he could see the clouds swirling from a dizzying height, and the wind would whisper secrets he couldn't quite understand.
Arthur found himself increasingly perplexed. Luna, the supposed elemental maestro, couldn’t predict a simple rain shower anymore. His grand theory about her being a secret weather-wielding mage was looking decidedly soggy. Especially considering his own utter lack of magical talent.
One particularly chaotic Tuesday, Luna was forecasting a “calm and clear evening” while outside Arthur’s window, a miniature whirlwind was attempting to steal a gnome statue from his neighbor’s garden. Arthur sighed, reaching for his lukewarm tea. He felt a surge of something akin to disappointed fondness for Luna. “Oh, Luna,” he murmured to the screen, “what’s gone wrong?”
He took a sip of his tea. It was instantly, shockingly, ice cold, a thin layer of frost forming on the surface. Arthur blinked. His apartment wasn’t exactly known for its sub-zero temperatures. Just then, as Luna on screen nervously chuckled about some “unforeseen atmospheric anomalies,” a gentle, swirling mist began to coalesce around Arthur’s feet. It rose, cool and damp, enveloping his legs like a ghostly hug.
Arthur stared at his now-frozen tea and the miniature fog bank in his living room. He thought of Luna, his unwavering focus on her, the increasingly bizarre weather, and that strange feeling of height he sometimes experienced. Could it be?
Was it him?
The realization hit him with the gentle force of a snowflake, yet carried the weight of a blizzard. The magic wasn’t hers. It was his. His longing, his heartbreak, even his slightly ridiculous belief in her elemental abilities, had stirred something within him, a dormant power awakened by his amplified emotions in the magically charged city built upon the slumbering giant.
And suddenly, the erratic weather of Obelus, the chilled tea, the unexpected mist – it all made a wonderfully, whimsically, and utterly unbelievable kind of sense. Arthur, the most mundane man in Obelus, was apparently the elemental magician everyone hoped for.
And his crush’s new boyfriend was probably wondering why it kept hailing frogs whenever they went for a stroll.
