(cw mild body horror, mention of internal organs)

“Please? Pretty please? Extra pretty please?”

Despite my best puppy eyes and persistent begging, Mom remains immune to my demands.

“Kalle, what day is it?”

“It’s the first of midmonth rest!” I say, animated with excitement.

“And what is midmonth rest?”

“The four days around the Day of Beginnings and other stuff each month.”

“And that means tomorrow is what?”

My excitement vanishes perishes, its death rattle coming out in a drawn-out groan.

“Do I really have to wait until I’m five for you to tell me anything at all about magic?”

“You’ll have to wait until you’re named, actually, and have a few friends to show off to first.”

“That’s not fair! I’ve been asking you since the day before yesterday, and you kept saying wait until rest, but it’s rest now and you’re still not teaching me magic!”

“Life isn’t about fairness, Kalle, it’s about managing your expectations for your circumstances. For the same reason Daera’s fancy about your secretly being some stuck-up royal is ridiculous considering who your Pop and I are, you shouldn’t expect the earth to tremble and the seas to churn at the wave of a hand. I’m putting it off because you have had some very colorful ideas of what magic can do. I want you to spend some more time watching us use our magic without looking for some clever new way to make a mess. Tradition aside, there is a tried and true order for these things, that makes them safer for you and everyone around you. Nobody ever chopped down a tree without learning how to swing an ax at their neighbor first. And besides, you'll like making friends. They are your neighbors, after all.”

I can’t help giggling at the absurd joke, but I do my best to stay mad at Mom for perpetuating my ignorance about the coolest part of this life.

“Fine, I’m getting Pop to teach me instead!”

I spin around on my heel, swinging my hair back over a shoulder with an indignant flip. I’m really starting to enjoy doing that. Mom’s laborious efforts from the day Ulesi came by were completed the next day, and from what I’ve seen in the mirror it looks a bit like tons of tiny french braids which are blended and twisted and braided together again like rope, until the last few fingers of hair are three thick strands held together by dozens of colorful threads. Flipping it all together is a bit like swinging a weight attached to my head, but I’m getting better at not stumbling around every time I do it. I’m out the door before Mom tries to stop me.

Pop is weeding the garden, a fistful of soil with a thin root hanging from it in his hand as I get closer. He creates a flame large enough to burn the weed to a charred husk, and drops it on the pile of other weeds just like it. I watch him pull and roast another one, the way he holds the carefully weed like it's a delicate and precious thing, and lights it upside-down starting from the tips. The way its spores become a visible cloud as the tips ignite, only to flare into ash as the flames consume them too. When it's charred and twisted to the root, he tosses the clump into a pile built up from nearly an hour's work

“Can you show me how to do that?”

He practically leaps off the ground, and wheels on me with surprise.

“Kalle! I’ll be damned, how’d you sneak up on me like that?”

“I dunno, I just thought I should be quiet and watch. Can you show me how you burn the weeds? I wanna help.”

He gives me a wary look, then glances at the house.

“What’d your Mom say?”

“She never said I couldn’t ask you.”

Pop chuckles and shakes his head.

“Yeah, I bet. Kiddo, I’m not sure I can teach you anything. I’m just an evoker, I get the bare minimum, and it's not like what a caster or enhancer can do. Most people don't even count it as proper magic, just... evoking it. Your Mom is a much better person to teach you anything about magic. She’s the one who got to go to the Academy.”

“What’s wrong with being an evoker?”

“Nothing, not really. We don't get to strengthen our bodies or create grand effects like plowing a field or holding back a river to make a dry crossing.”

“But you can do *some*.” I fold my arms, and he sighs. 

“Okay, okay, go grab a few pieces of firewood. Small ones, no logs.”

I salute and run around to the side of the house where our woodpile is stacked under my bedroom window. I get a lot of spiders, but so far all have been friendly and skittish, unwilling to be touched but willing to tentatively approach and gently tap a finger. I spot one of them almost as soon as I reach for a slender split of dry kindling, and pause to wave to it. A foreleg lifts up, then lowers back down before the spider skitters off to the back of the pile. I take my pieces, making sure there’s no webs on them, and hurry back to Pop.

“Alright, set up a lean like we do for picnics.”

I set up the campfire in a bit of the scrubby grass that’s got more gravel than soil. Pop kneels about three of his paces from it, which is more like five and a half of mine, and holds me around my waist to demonstrate his point.

“From what I’ve been taught by your mother, right around here you should be able to feel a sort of lump or pool of power.” He takes one hand and points directly at my belly. “Focusing on what’s in there lets you feel how to reach out and affect what’s out here.” He uses his other hand to gesture around the yard, then turns me around by the shoulders to face the unlit wood.

“Close your eyes, and feel for that power. It’s like seeing with your eyes, or hearing with your ears. You’ll know it as soon as you start paying attention to it.”

I do as he says, but when I try to sense the different parts of my gut I can’t find anything in particular. When I say as much, Pop prods me gently with a finger.

“Maybe it’s ‘cause you oughta listen to your Mom?”

I scowl and bat his hand away, then focus again, eyes closed and brow furrowed.

It’s in my guts, right? Sort of? I mean I can feel the weight of them, though it doesn’t seem like much. An uninvited image of slimy, lumpy tubes wriggles through my mind as my stomach churns on a rising tide of nausea. I push away from the thought on instinct, wanting it as far from me as a forgotten nightmare can get.

“Pop? Do I have to think about my guts every time?”

He gives me a weird look.

“Honey, did you stumble across a carcass out in the woods or something?”

“Uh, no?”

“Why’re you on about guts, then?”

I shrug. "You said that's where it was. Inside my guts."

“I can promise you, your guts aren't the matter here. It's not about your body, it's about your soul. You gotta feel it with your thoughts, not with your body, if that makes sense.”

As soon as I nod, Pop grins and turns me to face the wood again.

“Look for just that this time. Slow as you like.”

I close my eyes, trying not to think about slimy tubes of digesting food, and try to think of it like a sense of touch rather than a sense of sight. There's a long moment of confused nothing before I realize it's already in my grasp, as if looking for glasses I'd left on top of my head. It feels like a rough marble, or a knot pulled so tight the cord becomes hard as stone.

“What do I do with it?”

“You… uh, hm,” Pop says, prompting a giggle from me. The knot trembles with each laugh. “I’m not really sure what to do. I just think about what I want to have happen and it works alright, I suppose.”

He gets a long stare from me, and then I turn back to the wood once more. With my bangled arm, I point at it and imagine it smoldering, sparking, and flickering to life. In time with my imagination, flames rise up off the sticks.

Pop is ecstatic. He picks me up to swing me in circles, cheering up a ruckus that gets Mom to come outside. She outscreams him about leaving a fire unattended in the scrub grass, and Pop sets me to putting it out.

“Any way you like, but do it fast,” he says, gesturing at the flames. They aren’t large, and I want to try it without water.

I don’t raise a hand this time, and can’t smiling like I'd won the lottery as the flames flicker into nothing in moments.

“That’s not how fire magic works, not even in a skilled mage's hands,” Mom muses, glancing between myself and the scorched wood.

“It’s air,” I say. “Fire doesn’t burn without the right air, so I gave it the wrong air and it went out.”

Now they both stare at me. I shrug.

“What?”

It’s well past the time we would normally have eaten lunch when Mom finally lets me rest. She put me through the wringer, making me try out all kinds of different tasks enhanced or performed by magic. Turns out, being half the height needed to stand at our kitchen counter means I can’t actually get enough leverage to punch a tree in half like Mom does when collecting wood. Still, I manage to bust up the bark without hurting my hand too much, and I even figure out how to make myself run faster. I don’t quite figure out how to not trip and fall on my face while sprinting fast enough to leave a real-life dust trail, though, and end up getting carried into the house to deal with a bloody nose and several dozen small cuts and bruises.

“While it’s good this happened fairly gently, this is why I was nervous about you learning too quickly,” Mom says as she dabs my head with a cloth. The paste on it smells like garlic and sweet flowers, and it burns in my open wound. “I hate seeing you hurt, even when it's from fun. Magic can be extremely dangerous, and injuries can be a lot more painful than this.”

“Okay,” I say, wishing nodding weren't a problem right now. My voice is congested, a rag holding some medicinal paste under my nose that smells of pepper and ginseng.

Pop disappears into their room for a minute, then comes out with two items wrapped in colorful cloth.

“Derran, is right now really a good time?” Mom says when she realizes what he’s doing. He shrugs, smiling.

“Early achievers should get early rewards, shouldn’t they? Besides, her nose is fine for now, it'll heal just fine in time without needing to set it.” Mom just shakes her head. Pop sets both of the presents on the table next to me, then takes his seat, leaning forward onto his elbows and smiling properly. I smile back, and he gives an exaggerated glance at the smaller of the two packages before winking at me.

“Well,” Mom says, using a clean corner of the cloth to wipe any excess paste from my injury. “Since it’s out already, I guess that means you can wear it to the ceremony tomorrow. I got gifts a whole palm before my Naming, so it’s not like it’s unusual…”

“Moell, you’re overthinking it. She’s brilliant, she’s easily pulled off just about everything you've thrown at her today. We can talk about the important stuff for tomorrow over dinner, but for now I don't see why we can't fill all this newfound free time with some stuff meant for the future.”

Mom gives Pop one of those smiles she gets any time he outpaces her, and raises her open hands in surrender.

“Okay then, open 'em up.”

I reach forward, then pause and give Mom a wary look.

“Both of them?”

“One at a time, at least,” she says with a laugh.

I smile and grab the smaller gift, feeling something stiff and rectangular with a little lump around the middle on a thin side. Unwrapping it reveals some sort of journal with a leather cord tying it shut. The cover is a well-worn leather, the corners missing wholly  and revealing the thicker backing to be equally worn. I untie the cord and open to the first page, revealing a fresh piece of paper folded up with what’s probably my name on it, and the first page of some kind of diary. I give Pop a look of uncertainty, but he just smiles.

“Pop, I can’t read. Or write.”

His expression freezes, but he recovers with incredible speed.

“Well that’s alright, we’ll teach you! With this! It’s good to read and write, and anyways that journal there is the one I’ve used since I first opened my store. It’s got all the most important ones, plus a few extras you might like to have.”

He gets a little shifty saying the last part, but I can’t read any of the text anyways so it doesn't matter for now. I set the notebook and my intrusive daydreams of secret poisons and ancient elixirs on the table, and pick up the second package. This one’s soft, and Mom’s beaming as I unwrap it.

The gasp I let out as a bright green dress unfolds in my hands is more of a squeak. I give Mom a wide-eyed stare.

"Really?"

She nods, and I leap from my chair to hug her tightly, then circle the table to hug Pop as well.

“Thank you so much,” I say over and over. “I love you both so much.”