FLASH FICTION: Wizard, Hat, and Bracelet

I am a wizard, with my hat and my bracelet.

The hat was enchanted with a protection spell. All bullets would be diverted away from my body. That's how they got you back in the olden days -- a sniper's bullet to the head killed many a wizard, but the enchanted hat prevents that from happening anymore. Of course, this means that I have to wear the hat at all times, but it's fine. I don't really like the way my hair looks and the hat also keeps the sun out of my eyes and the spell protects me from getting wet in the rain. No umbrella needed during those winter rainstorms.

Some wizards claim that a traditional pointed hat is necessary -- the point at the top makes the spell work optimally, they say. They are lying, probably trying to sell you on buying one of their "traditional" hats, made from the "finest material" and sewn with "most magical threads." Most are bunk, made from felt and glued together, looking nice at first, but they fall apart after a day. And then if you try to find the wizard that sold them to you, well, good luck. Most of them have anti-locating spells attached to their bracelets making them all but invisible when they want to be.

You can use pretty much any hat for the enchantment, really. I've seen wizards with fedoras, boaters, bowlers, cowboy hats, even one wizard who fancied himself a detective and wore a deerstalker. Me, I wear a simple baseball cap. Instead of a baseball logo, however, I have Raidō rune, symbolizing a ride or journey. It helps when I'm on a work trip, although others claim that stuff is also mumbo jumbo, but hey, we're wizards, if we don't believe in runes, what do we believe in?

The hat is for defense. The bracelet, however, is mostly for offense.

Lots of people see them and think they are charm bracelets and, well, they are. But while a "normal" charm bracelet holds trinkets that have sentimental value or trigger happy memories, our charm bracelets hold actual charms and spells. It's far, far easier to pre-spell a tiny object and attach it to your bracelet than it is to do a spell mid-battle. Just remove the object, whisper the activation code, and toss that sucker towards the enemy. Depending on what type of spell you enchanted it with, make sure you are five to fifty feet away.

I've seen wizards with two bracelets on both arms and fifty charms on each bracelet and, boy, do they clink when they walk. Sure, they are loaded to the brim for battle, but all that means is that they have to look far longer to find the right spell to throw at their enemy. Having a bracelet is kind of useless if you have to take five minutes to make sure the charm you are throwing is the fire charm and not the firewalker charm (it makes your feet fireproof). Plus, load up a bracelet with too many charms and you risk some of them getting loose and falling. Which is a bad thing -- if someone finds one of your spells on the ground, you are responsible for everything that happens to them. And you don't want to be responsible for any injury or deaths that occur -- not only for your conscience, but because the Spellcasters Bureau will go after you and they are ruthless. (They wear specially enchanted helmets and heavy duty iron bracers with one spell: negate magic. Nobody fucks with the Spellcasters Bureau.)

Me, I wear one bracelet with about ten spells on it. They are all primary spells, relatively simple, so easy to replace if used, but useful. Four of them are for the elements, one of them is a healing spell (you always want one of those, even if you have a good hat on you), and the remaining five are…well, I don't want to give that information away. They are good spells, though, and you can tell, because I've survived every duel I've been in.

I mean, part of that is luck. A good enchanted hat and charm-laded bracelet will only get you so far in this world, after all. Wizarding is a tough profession. Sometimes I think about leaving it, just throwing my gear into the river and walking away, letting myself fade into a crowd and then finding a nice little house in some far away town where there's nothing interesting going on and nobody cares who you used to be. I would spend my days working at the local diner and chatting with the customers and spend my lunch breaks reading cheap paperbacks from the local used bookstore and spend my nights at the bar chatting with the local drunks who lament about the world today.

But that's just a pipe dream. I am who I am. And I am a wizard, with my hat and my bracelet.