Daily Dram: The Silver Sea

The warm wind blew across the tops of the aspen making their silver leaves shimmer in the sun.  It continues eastward, flowing over the hundreds of miles of forest and up into the Helzoun Mountains where it finally loses all warmth and life. 

Daily Dram: Hael Thornweaver

His hands had slight tremble.  Hael shook them trying to stay relaxed for the final portion the trial.  He had to strike five of the seven targets with only three castings of Stinging Nettles.  What made it worse was that the targets would be moving to simulate an actual battlefield, thanks to Captain Thandrin Ulim's magic.  Hael stepped into the training ring determined to earn the wings of Owl Corps

Daily Dram: Bee Stings

Hael Thornweaver stood among the aspen, surveying the goblins encamped in the clearing.  This latest foray of the Split-tongue clan would be turned back, as always.  With the signal given, Hael and the others of his order began sending needles streaking from their fingertips.  By the time the sides joined in melee, the goblins had their numbers reduced by almost a third.

Swelling, fading, and never was.

Flavia was thrilled.  The decision to travel to northwestern shore and build a tower there had proved correct. Every day she was making new discoveries in transforming materials. There was no telling how deep this convergence pool went.

Wonder of wonders. The light from the lantern spilled out across the dusty armory with glittering pricks of reflection. The tunnel Benth had discovered while exploring the ruins in the South Wood apparently had belonged to some long dead kingdom. Where else could such marvelous items of workmanship come from?

Gwyneth's hands quickly snapped up, nocking an arrow.  The band of brigands she was hunting were returning to farmstead they previously pillaged.  It wasn't her problem to fix, but when she would arrive at Lord Winston's home with an extra four scalps, there would definitely be an extra pouch of coin in thanks. Coin she needed since her horse had just been stolen in Shandon.

...

In trying to think about MW, I cant seem to decide on which direction magic is going.  Everything I think of seems derivative or cliche; it is too like Tolkien, or Jordan, or Gaiman. I want to have a world where not only no / low magic campaigns and adventures could take place, but also high magic.
My first thought was to have them to be time shifted along a spectrum, but then is that increasing, decreasing, or even cyclic in magical properties.

Currently I am toying with a cyclic plan, with the cycle to be too far beyond the generations of men to properly recall the time of high magic or prepare for the time of none. Nonhuman peoples perhaps do know of the cycles in better terms due to much longer lifespans, but keep this knowledge withheld. Magic must be earned so that the proper respect is given to it.  As magic is used, pools of it drain. When they dry, people cease and forget, allowing time for the pools to refill and replenish.

The Concentration of Magic

Henrik raised his hand to his eyes to try to give shade to them.  For the last several minutes, the air had a brightness and haze to it that belonged on a summer's midday, not the wet and chill spring morning they were enduring.  Indeed, it felt as if they were at sea as the prairie's grasses undulated around them.  And just as at sea, they kept their eyes up searching for a tower that might provide the guidance that would save their lives....