Les Usages du Merveilleux

Introduction

The marvellous is already here

Lumes, tiny sparks of will, are everywhere around us.

They follow patient gestures, attach themselves to houses, love workshops, sincere promises and objects people refuse to abandon.

Most people never notice them. Others learn to see them, understand their movements and live alongside them.

When an intention becomes clear enough for them to understand, the world responds. Heat moves, an object remembers, a house develops habits.

The gesture becomes magic.

The Lumes

Tiny forms of magical life

Lumes appear as sparks, luminous dust, fireflies or small reflections in motion. Their colour and intensity change with their activity, the energy around them and the place where they live.

A Lume has a simple will. It is curious and playful, drawn to gestures, transformations and functions it can understand.

It can follow a repairing hand, carry a little warmth, accompany a movement or strengthen an action someone has begun.

Together, they learn

When they remain gathered around a person, object or place for a long time, Lumes share their habits and experiences.

Little by little, they learn to recognise faces, anticipate gestures, express preferences or refuse certain actions. An old enough group can shape an object’s personality or maintain a house’s memory.

One Lume follows a gesture.
A swarm can learn to remember it.

Why does nobody notice them?

Lumes are everywhere. In their diffuse state, they are discreet enough to be mistaken for dust, a reflection, an insect or a simple change in the light.

Some people perceive them naturally. Others learn to distinguish them through contact with a magical place, an enchanted object or someone used to working with them.

Lumes are defined as a basic form of magical life. A single Lume understands simple intentions; a group can develop collective intelligence and a personality.

Magic as a language

An intention the world can understand

Magic does not rely on a secret language or a universal list of formulas.

Lumes understand gestures, words, recipes, materials, symbols, scents, rhythms and habits. Every magical practice is a different way of communicating an intention to them.

They create neither matter nor energy. They transform what already exists to produce a concrete effect.

The five elements of a magical act

The source

Every act of magic uses available energy: light, heat, electricity, movement, growth or energy stored in an object.

The intention

Intention describes the desired result. The clearer it is, the more precisely Lumes can act. “Protect me from everything” is difficult to interpret. “Keep this room warm until sunrise” gives them an understandable function.

The language

Language communicates intention through a gesture, word, recipe, sewn pattern, perfume, music or repeated habit.

The vessel

Magic acts through a material, object, plant, flame, body or place. Stone keeps a function easily. Liquid spreads it. Fabric can wrap it or connect it to several people.

The ending

Every enchantment must know how to end: after a duration, when its source is exhausted, when a condition is met or when a precise gesture unbinds it. Magic without a clear ending may simply continue for far too long.

What the world remembers

Habits leave traces

Lumes understand repetition especially well. A daily gesture becomes a habit. A habit maintained for years can become a memory. With enough time, attachment and Lumes, that memory can develop a will of its own.

Objects

An enchanted object performs a precise function. A cup keeps its heat. A stone finds the keys. A coat keeps some warmth from a hearth.

Older objects may recognise the people who use them, negotiate, disobey or ask to change.

Places

Lumes that live in one place for a long time remember its gestures, emotions and habits. A workshop learns an artisan’s work, a field recognises the seasons and a house remembers its inhabitants.

An old kitchen may still prepare one extra plate each evening because a family did so for generations.

Promises

Lumes are drawn to sincere promises. An oath can bind a person, object or place to a function for generations.

A generous promise can become unsuitable when it outlives the world that shaped it. It must then be transformed without erasing what it meant.

The many uses of the marvellous

From a cup of coffee to a dragon’s territory

The marvellous has no single scale. The same rules can keep a drink warm, repair a hinge, protect a valley, guide a migration or maintain a magical territory rich enough to shelter a dragon.

In a kitchen, soup can warm someone until they feel safe. In a workshop, an abandoned object can receive a new function. In a house, doors can recognise its inhabitants. In a forest, paths can turn aside travellers who do not know what they are seeking.

Making

Artisans use materials as a language. Wax attracts and releases gradually; stone preserves; metal conducts and joins; fabric wraps; paper holds formulations, images and commitments.

Dwelling

A house, street or neighbourhood can become a magical home. Its inhabitants’ habits build a shared memory, sometimes welcoming, sometimes intrusive and often full of opinions.

Protecting

Magic can stabilise a place, maintain a boundary, preserve a promise or accompany someone in danger. Protection must still be able to change, or it may imprison what it meant to save.

Passing on

A passed-down object keeps gestures, memories and habits. A workshop can recognise an artisan’s successor, and a house can welcome a new inhabitant without forgetting the old ones.

Accompanying

Magic can reveal what characters try to ignore, give shape to a promise or make a shared object react. It accompanies relationships without creating feelings or solving conflicts for people.

Wondering

The marvellous can be immense, ancient and dangerous. It can also be a temperamental teapot, a talkative plant, a candle that insults mosquitoes or a lizard that always swallows the last useful screw.

The World of Les Usages du Merveilleux

Les Usages du Merveilleux is a shared universe where magic is born from the functions, habits and promises that beings repeat and pass on. Lumes can give a place a memory, an object a personality, authority to a title, or bind a territory within a law that has become impossible to interrupt. From a temperamental teapot to legendary kingdoms, each story explores what our uses eventually create, and the responsibility to know how to transform them or bring them to an end.

Rivebrune

In Rivebrune, Nils discovers that the salvage shop where he works is home to conscious objects, unexpected creatures and a magic he never knew existed. Guided by Iris, an inspector for the Magical Watch, he learns to understand what abandoned things are still trying to accomplish. A bright and intimate contemporary fantasy romance, where magical investigations, craft and gentle adventure accompany the birth of a couple and a house of passage.

Avéré

Avéré is a mythic fantasy trilogy about different forms of responsibility. A King must answer for an order that became a catastrophe, Lala must reclaim a kingdom frozen by those who claim to protect her, and the Wanderer must free a people trapped in a territory where the dead return and memory belongs to the powerful.

How do you act when no power can repair everything?