[PART 1]
“Listen closely, students. Restoration may be a simple spell, but you must follow the procedure with the utmost care. All magic has a source, and to give life to one being requires the taking of life from somewhere else. Do you understand me?”
I pay no notice to Professor Yiracil’s droning on – I’m locked in a staring contest with a frog next to the lake. That little green squishy thing isn’t breaking my streak! I beat that faerie from earlier, and a dragonfly… I think.
A gnarled wood staff slams onto the rock table in front of me, “Hanrah! Do you understand me?”
I jump up off my chair – the other kids giggle. Professor Yiracil’s judgemental stare pierces me, “Y-yes! Professor!” I flash a cheesy grin, “Don’t kill the flowers, yeah?” From the table in front of me I snatch the flower and proudly present it to the Professor. The flower wilts over, leaves brown and shrivelled, “Aw… d-did I kill it?”
The other children snicker. Professor Yiracil sighs loudly and walks to the centre of the grassy field, “It was already dead.” She spins to face us, standing to her full height, about the same as the line of distant trees behind her, “Your task is to restore this flower. Give it life once more, but be careful where you draw that life from.” A moment passes as she scans the class, “Do you remember the incantation?”
Her eyes finish their scan, falling upon me. The others follow her gaze, and I feel a host of eyes staring me down. Jeez, you go on one adventure and suddenly everyone expects you to either be a prodigy or the class screwup. “Is it Vitalys?”
Professor Yiracil’s slams her staff into the dirt – I feel the ground vibrate, “Vitalryth. If the incantation is wrong then the spell will fall to chaos. Especially druidic spells. Natural magic can be beautiful, but without proper spoken bindings it can be immeasurably destructive.” No one is laughing this time. I nod, my neck rigid and expression serious.
With the class dead silent, the Professor perches carefully on her log and gestures for us to begin.
The surrounding animal calls fall into a slow rhythm – an audience calming before a magic show.
I hold the decayed flower up to my face and pay close attention to every detail. The brown and black petals twisting down to the ground, the neck of the stem moist and floppy. It’s a sad sight – I can understand why many of my friends want to focus on healing magic. Not for me though. I already know my kind of magic. I’ve already done plenty of practice, and while I can’t quite control it properly-
“Hanrah! Y-your flower?!” A classmates voice breaks my daydreaming, and an odd wriggling in my hands.
There isn’t a flower in my hands anymore. A long worm with a head kinda like the flower, but if each petal was a flat, wobbly tooth. Also, the worm’s body is covered in red fur.
The critter writhes about in my hands – I try to hold it still but it slips away and attempts to slither along the dirt. Kids around me exclaim in mixes of horror, excitement and confusion. The excited voices distress the furry worm even more.
A forked staff impales the dirt either side of the creature, and it stops, quivering softly.
I pause to look up at Professor Yiracil. She utters an incantation under her breath, and when I turn back to the worm it’s a dead flower again.
Feeling those judgemental eyes on my back again, a slowly lift my head to meet the Professor’s scornful frown.
I’m gonna cop it this time…
* * *
The wooden door of the teacher’s office slams shut and Professor Yiracil sighs deeply, “Tell me, Hanrah.” She pauses as she sits next to me in the centre of the floor, the great tree’s 1000 year age rings encircling us, “Is your head a hollow log, with the brain stuck to the outside? Did you hear anything I said about chaos? About incantations?”
Not wanting to show her my dejected expression, I keep my gaze on the age rings, “M-maybe?”
A silence hangs in the air between us. The only noise I can hear is the dull humming of the Professor’s magical fruits on her work desk, and that weird colourful cricket she keeps – dang thing never stops chirping.
“You have talent. No one is denying that. You even managed to return to your elf form after a dangerous first attempt at shapeshifting. Albeit, with outside help…”
I meet her eyes at this. After I spent those few weeks travelling with my friend, with me in my fox form, a lot of the high druids here had to help me return to normal. I wasn’t meant to shapeshift so early in my training, apparently, “I-I’m sorry, Professor Yiracil. I need to take my training more seriously.”
She smirks, “I know you well enough that you went on that journey because you take your training seriously, and that your little stunt today wasn’t only a practical joke. Heh… giving life to that flower, by morphing it into a deformed worm-fox hybrid.”
Laughter from my classmate’s echoes in through the window – they’re out playing in the lake. I kinda wish I could play in the lake too, and not get another lecture…
“Hanrah, over here.” I’d already gotten distracted, lazily gazing out the wooden hole of a window. “You’re serious about learning more shapeshifting techniques. All of your professors know that. The issue is patience. Druids must have immense patience. Nature magic is all about waiting. Slow, gradual change. Allowing nature to shape our futures. We are merely custodians to the path nature has chosen for us, and we must try to keep the world on that…”
She clicks her fingers in front of my face. I startle and roll onto my back. “S-sorry, Professor. You were saying? Something about shapes and changing?” Were those just the words I wanted to hear?
With another heavy sigh the Professor stands up, “Hanrah, I want you to wait here. Right here. Don’t go anywhere.” She moves to leave the room, watching me the whole way, “Kricks will be watching you. He’ll tell me everything.” That darn, snitching cricket would do that.
The door closes softly behind Professor Yiracil. I’m now alone in the room… alone with humming fruits and a rainbow cricket glaring at my back.
So she wants me to wait here? And do what?
For how long? Did she say when she was coming back? Did I not hear her again? Something about my hollow log head?
I get up and amble past the windows – big circles cut into the sides of the tree trunk. Out of the windows I can see across our little lakeside village - houses, trees, some huts, a bigger tree. None bigger than this tree, though. The great tree – centre of our town, and a major source of nature magic-
An orange shape streaks across the distant forest floor. What was THAT?
My eyes are glued to the tree line, watching for any other movements.
With no more cues, my attention drifts away-
IT’S BACK.
A long orange and... black? Creature? Maybe? It moves like one, but I can’t be sure. Before I can get a decent looks it’s already darted behind the tree cover.
Whatever it is, checking it out is much more interesting than being cooped up in this tree tower, like some kind of whiny princess in distress. And I’ve heard that we druids can learn additional shapeshifting forms by befriending new animals… so maybe I should go make a new friend!
I dart a glance at Kricks. The cricket hasn’t even moved. I bet Yiracil was lying about her cricket being able to keep tabs on me… Even I know animal familiars aren’t that smart!
Ok, I can do this. Shapeshifting, but actually trying to do it.
Maybe I need a picture of a local fox to remind myself what I’m shifting into. Glancing around, I spot Yiracil’s bookcase, and the animal encyclopedias. A quick flip through the pages and I’ve found it.
I place the book down on the floor then drop to my hands and knees. Staring intently at the picture isn’t doing much. What if I close my eyes? Was there an incantation for this too? Or was it purely instinctual? Is this where I should have paid attention to what Yiracil had been saying?
Wait a moment… I can feel it. It’s happening! My arms wobble as they morph into forelegs. My elf legs squish up into hind legs, and suddenly sprout layers of bright red fur, with little black fur booties. My nose stretches out into a canine snout. Fluffy ears pop up on my head, and I wriggle them about, as I do with my big bushy tail.
I announce my new presence. “Ree-iiii-ak-ak-ak!” Or in other words; behold, Fox Hanrah is here!
After a quick stretch and a toothy yawn, I leap out the window, landing on a nearby branch. Before I lose my balance, I scurry down – I leap from one branch to the next. Running around is so much easier on four legs!
[CONTINUED IN PART TWO...]
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