It is as I suspected, folks. Andie has been piecing their work together all week. They genuinely can’t help themself. We started learning about alchemy in arcane theory this week, so I was able to see the signs.

Genuinely, I think that if we hadn’t been doing our little intro course on alchemy I wouldn’t have known for certain what Andie’s been fiddling with in their notebooks, because alchemy is the most confusing bullshit I’ve ever seen in my life — though I will say, at least now I know why they’re making us take physics and chemistry and shit.

Lily opened the week being all enthusiastic because alchemy is the magic that can be learned by anyone who really wants to get their teeth into it. Magic accessible to anyone who can learn it.

Lol accessible to anyone WHO CAN LEARNED IT meaning that it’s accessible to any of the few hundred people who know alchemy exists and can dedicate like decades of their life to it’s study.

So like, it’s not accessible at all really. BUT, for someone like me, who by some hilarious, impossible series of misfortunes, has found herself at Palefish — there is no reason that I shouldn’t learn alchemy. Except maybe that I’m not smart enough hahahahhaa.

Alchemy looks sorta different through history from what I understand. Early alchemy is what you think of when you think of alchemy (unless you watch a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist, then it’s the other thing you think of when you think of alchemy). A bunch of lunatics from the crusades trying to turn lead into gold. It works by combining the properties of various elements in order to get magical results. So it’s potion-making, and using powerful objects to make charms and wards — some of which do actually work! — and it’s also medieval “scientists” playing with mercury until it makes them insane.

But over time we started wondering why certain potions and spells and wives-tales actually work, and we started doing research. Most of what we discovered was like… science lol. I mean I guess it’s all science in that it’s stuff we learned by following a systematic methodology based on evidence. But we’re not going to go down the path of science vs magic. Apparently there’s lots of academic arguments about the difference between magic and science around here, and I for one will not be taking part in it because I am going to be a Bellhoof student and I don’t need to.

“Alchemy is the language with which we communicate with existence,” Lily said, drawing a gold symbol in the air with her fingertip. It hung there glittering. “If we can learn the language, we are able to communicate with the very bones of the universe, down to a molecular level. The more fluent you are, the better you can communicate your will into existence.”

I’ve seen my share of wonders in that room. Lily has been cheerfully walking us through REAL, ACTUAL MAGIC all quarter, but this is the first time I’ve been genuinely in awe of something. I’ve got Bird and his friends in my head, all so beautiful and glamorous, untouchable, and of course, dead — and all they left behind were their scribbled, half-finished conversations with the very fabric of the universe.

“All magic manipulates reality,” Lily went on. “It is a force that exists externally to physical matter, which magicians use to enforce their will onto reality. In our world, that force is very rare. It must come to us through rifts, or after generations of cultivation, or from the lingering energy of the dead.

“Alchemy is different. It requires no access to the forces we call magic. Instead, it communicates directly with the laws that govern physical existence and is able to manipulate what it finds there.”

Listen, I wanna talk to the fabric of reality.

On the other hand, you can already sorta talk to the fabric of reality without it being arcane hahaha. Like I’m not out here trying to become a chemist, or biologist, or engineer. At lunch Bass said, mouth full of sandwich, “I mean it’s basically like coding. But like… for the real world.” Which Andie grudgingly had to admit was a fair comparison. But I’m not trying to learn python lmfao.

Also, the reading this week explains in painstaking detail how the actual language of alchemy works and listen it’s fucking awful. I mean just nightmarishly difficult. The language itself is incredibly complex, but even if it wasn’t there’s no space for even the minutest mistake. It is exclusively a written language (as far as we know lol) and if even a dot is out of place the whole meaning might be changed. Which is bad news, because most magic at least sort of depends on the caster’s intentions — according to Bass if witchcraft goes awry, it’s not the magic going wrong, it’s the witch hahaha. Meanwhile, if an alchemist drops their pencil on their sigil in the wrong way they could like… idk turn themself inside out or something

So it’s not magic to be fucked with.

I say, and then immediately explain how bad I wanna fuck with it.

Actually, what I really want is for Andie to fuck with it, because I do not possess the skills lololol. Earlier Andie was reading on their bed, so I just said the thing I’ve been wondering all day:

“Do you understand what their sigils were saying?”

Andie answered without so much as a hitch. “Yeah, more or less.”

“Do you think you could recreate it?”

They paused for a long moment, oddly frozen, not lifting their eyes from the page of their book. Then they said, somewhat stiffly, “yeah, I think I could.”

So my heart is like racing, already tripping ahead of me.

But then Andie said, “I don’t think it would work though.”

“Why not?”

Andie finally put their book down to look around at me. “There are kinds of alchemy that you can’t do unless you have certain experiences.”

???????? “What do you mean?”

They couldn’t meet my eye again. “Look I don’t know, we’re not taught the details at boarding school alright, it’s super serious magic —”

“Like what?” I repeated.

Andie nestled down into their blankets, and mumbled, “I mean there are rumors about all kinds of —”

“Like what?” I demanded.

They deflated. “When I was a kid there was an alchemist who murdered someone. They said there was alchemy they couldn’t do with killing somebody.”

I definitely shivered. I became aware of the wind clattering at and whistling through the gaps in our window.

“You think Bird and his friends killed people?” I asked.

“No,” Andie said quickly, looking away from me. “I don’t know anything about them. But no one has ever done this magic, and if there are thresholds you have to pass to be able to access certain levels of alchemy…” They shrugged. “I mean, it seems like rift opening would be at that level.”

That makes sense. It feels right, as someone who has seen a rift, that the magic required to open one would be not just advanced, but like… primordial.

But also — if there is a way to open rifts, there is also a way to close them. Imagine if we could close rifts and protect ourselves from the things coming through them. Think of the lives we could save. We could send these creatures back to their own worlds. Nothing would ever have to live in an inhospitable world, where they could harm us or be harmed by us again.

I mean, if there was a cost to be able to do that kind of magic, surely it would be worth paying?

“Do you think anyone is still studying their work?” I asked.

“I mean, I can’t imagine it was abandoned entirely,” Andie replied. “But also… I mean, you saw how they died.”

Yeah, I did. Rebecca’s disembodied feet have been added to my nightly slide-show of horrors.