Weather Report
an excerpt

“So what do you mean by ‘Weather Guardian,’ anyway?”
“Exactly what I say.”
“Meaning…?”
“Well…wow. I forget how new you are to this. I mean, when I was in training…at least I knew what was what, you know. Even if I didn’t know how to be a Guardian yet.”
“Okay. So the answer to the first question is…?”
Limf sighed. “Weather Guardians. My—your—our, I guess, job is to protect the weather and climate and all things related, as well as all lives mortal, not-mortal, and immortal, from the Weather-specific Demonkin.”
“Oh. Well that explains everything!”
Limf looked relieved. “Oh, good. I was worried I’d have to spend hours elaborating…”
“Sarcasm is really lost on you, isn’t it? Okay, so I protect the, uh, weather from Demonkin. And they are…?”
“The Demonkin are…well, they’re demons, spirits, beasts…I’m not sure what the word is. Those Heat Waves you fought were some of them. But there’s a lot more where they came from. And they wander all around on the planet Earth (and several others, I suppose, although we don’t worry about those so much), and live and eat and reproduce. Some affect the weather and climate, some affect other things, but it’s usually only slightly. We can leave most of them alone. But there’re still a lot that cause problems—the colonies get too big, they start preying on humans, and worst of all, interfering with the Way Things Are Supposed To Be.”
“Gotcha,” said Leanne. “And you’re supposed to protect people from them.”
“Exactly,” said Limf. “But now, that’s your job.”
It took precisely one moment for that to sink in. Then:
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not,” Limf replied smugly. “I offered you my powers, you took them, and you fought the pack of Heat Waves. That makes you a Guardian…mortal or no.” He frowned.
“Mortal or no…wait, you mean you’re like…like a god or something?!”
“A god? No!” Limf looked aghast at the thought. “Just an…immortal, I suppose.”
“Just—”
“Well, maybe it sounds odd to you. Being a mortal and all.”
“Odd? Not at all. People live forever all the time where I come from.”
Limf sighed. “Is that that sarcasm thing again?” Leanne nodded, and Limf sighed again. “Look, it’s not quite… Well, Guardians are born, and Guardians die. But we count as immortal because we can’t die of old age.”
“But then you’re not immortal.”
“Well…yes. Technically. We’re not immortal so much as not mortal. You understand, right?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“Mainly, I suppose, it’s because you live on the mortal plane, and we don’t. Although Guardians spend a lot more time there—here—than other not-mortals. And yes, we can die, although it takes considerably more to, er…finish us off than it would a mortal.”
“So being a Guardian makes me an immortal? Not-mortal? Whatever?”
“No,” said Limf. “And there is the problem. Powers of—of Guardianship, of Management, of anything else—they don’t come with not-mortality, they just…the people made for them happen to be not-mortals, because mortals can’t handle it. On many levels. So it’s all theoretically possible for a mortal to wind up as a Guardian. But it’s also theorized that a mortal wouldn’t last very long with that kind of power.”
“So then tell me, Limf,” Leanne said cautiously, “why did you give me your powers—which, by the way, I never asked for nor accepted!”
“But you did.”
“But I didn’t.”
“What! Do you think you need some sort of—of ritual to become a Guardian?”
“Well…yes.”
Limf laughed. “You, girl, accepted the burden when you took my hand, and proved you were worthy of them in the battle that followed.”
“I didn’t accept anything! I just let you help me up!”
“No, you accepted my help. All I had to give. Help standing up, and help with my powers.” He looked thoughtful. “It’s strange, because I never thought it would work. Not on a mortal—certainly not on a child.”
“Teenager,” corrected Leanne.
“Well. In any case, you accepted my help.”
“I didn’t. You didn’t say—you didn’t make your terms clear or whatever, can’t we revoke it…?”
“We could have, until you thrice used the powers I gave you.”
“Yes, except that I didn’t.”
“You fought the Heat Waves.”
“That was different. I just whacked them with my spear a couple times.”
“Yes. And there you go.”
“Well…not—not thrice! Whatever that means.”
“Three. You used them three times. In fact, the trial Guardians in training have to pass to become a full-fledged Guardian has three parts. For the same reason—it cements the powers and knowledge.”
“So tell me how I used the powers three times, O Great Guardian Limf.”
Limf winced. “Do not call me that. I am a Guardian no longer. You—”
“Yeah, yeah, I am. Go on.”
“Fine.” He sighed. “Girl—”
“And my name isn’t “girl,” it’s Leanne Curran. Get it right, for once, not-mortal.”
“Yes, yes—Leanne. You accepted my powers. Then you used them to increase your strength, to manifest your spear, and to increase your abilities to fight with it.”
“I only did one of those things.”
“Consciously, though. You didn’t really think about running faster or fighting better, you just did it on instinct.” Limf wrinkled his nose and went on. “Not the greatest display, I suppose, for lack of training, but a part of a Guardian’s power is to make us stronger and faster and more able at combat than other not-mortals. You did that, and did that without thinking about it, because it was second nature. First nature, even. That’s why I think it worked, at least. A mortal might be burned out by a Guardian’s power, even if it could be successfully transferred in the first place. But that mortal would first of all need that power badly enough, because granting someone your powers in a last resort, and should only be done in direst need. And they’d need to have…I’m not sure what you’d call it…the calling for it, maybe. The personality for it, something like that—they’d need to be, in their very essence, suited to the power they are given.
“Or else it would consume them.”
“Oh, that sound fun,” Leanne said. “Now I get to be consumed.”
“No,” responded Limf, “because I think that would have happened in your battle with the Heat Waves. And the power definitely fully transferred, because I couldn’t even cast a simple quenching spell!
“But you did. That’s important, because the final task given to any fledgling Guardian is to conquer a problem without the use of anything to focus their Weather-power in; with the forces of nature alone. We call them “spells,” but that’s a bit improper, because they really aren’t. Not quite. And you did that.” He looked Leanne so fully in the eyes she couldn’t not believe that what he now said was absolutely true. “You are a Guardian.”
“Great!” Leanne said. “Fourteen years, and my life’s already ruined.”