August 5th, 2 AC
“It's all about the pink elephant!” Timothy asserted even as a full dozen cartoonish anthropomorphic elephants of the aforementioned color squeezed themselves into existence, dancing a riotous circle about his head. A few transformed their trunks into trumpets, others pulled out symbols or drums as the parade began to the familiar drug-addled beat of Bum-pa-Bum-Pa-Bad-da-da-dum. Stomping on one another and being stomped in turn in a display that only Disney could create.
“You see it, you hear it, and you can't unsee it. You can't unhear it. It's there in your minds even when you try to look away.” He grinned looking out at the large domed room. Fifty-three children sat on the first of four ascending rings with him on a dais in the middle. Each with their own square platform of polished stone. Thin walkways snaked between them, angled upwards such that only the back of the platform was level with them. The paths snaked a bit back and forth to avoid the massive rings of pillars that held up the dome, a perfect half sphere of polished and gleaming stone some 30 feet overhead.
Each child was separate but united in the small presents he'd set out for them. The most obvious of the lot was a large stele. The bastard child of a blackboard and a fence post, it stood 6 feet high and 2 feet wide on each of its triangular faces. Beside it sat a line of goods. A stone incense burner, a chisel, and a pair of stacked wooden plaques, though they were two different woods.
One a pretty purple color and the other a light yellowish brown.
He wasn't a complete monster so in addition to the school supplies he'd left them a decently fluffy cushion. Stone was clean, cheap and beautiful, but it was hardly comfortable. So on beast hide cushions, hand sewn and stuffed with plant fibers, they sat open-mouthed and staring at the pink dancing abominations.
“Now, my new students- No, no questions yet my dear.” He gestured for the young lady in front of him to put her hand down and followed it up with a mass silencing spell for good measure. “I want each of you to make an original animal for me.” Flicking his sleeve in an exaggerated arc he flung out a stick of incense into each of the waiting burners. With a snap of his fingers they ignited, spewing out pungent but not unpleasantly scented smoke into the air. A smoke that did not proceed up and away, but remained trapped above the incense burner in a slowly growing cloud.
“Simply touch the burner in front of you and command the smoke. Tell it what you want it to be, and it will obey because you have a will and it does not.” he smiled but didn't bother with waving hands or in one case, jumping child. If they wanted to survive, they'd have to learn to be a bit more independent. And he'd do them no favors by babying them one moment and brushing them off the next.
He watched amused as a few tried to leave their platforms and failed, beating at walls of air that simply didn't care. He just sat there, waiting. Waiting for the silliness and indignation to give way. Hopefully to curiosity, but he'd take boredom. Waiting till at last they all sat down, looking at him now half sullen, half attentive. Or at least he hoped it was even half attentive.
That would change with time. Satisfied, at least for now, Timothy placed his own hands on either side of his own burner, sitting with his legs lightly crossed around it and commanded the smoke, both in front of him and in every burner connected to it to shift.
And it did.
In perfect sync fifty plus balls of smoke morphed into a rhino in mid-charge, gray-scaled but distinct, then twisted itself into a lion stalking through tall prairie grass, then a great silver-backed ape marching through a highland jungle. He held the last scene for a few extra moments, then removed his will from it, and watched the smoke fade back into a formless cloud.
He smiled as curiosity and wonder took the place of sullen stupidity. “Remember, a fully original animal.”
In bits and drabs, the pillars of smoke began to eddy and twist beneath no wind. Faint shapes at first, but it was a simple easy process. He wouldn't have started them this way if it wasn't. He'd also stacked the deck when making the incense. All they had to do was think at the smoke and it would react. Slowly, haltingly shapes began to take shape in the new world’s version of macaroni art. Only actually cool. All the while the horns, drums and cymbals bleated out a consistent Bum-pa-Bum-Pa-Bad-da-da-dum to the still dancing anthropomorphic, now pink and blue tie-dyed elephants.
He forced his face to remain still as clouds left and right gave birth to elephants, pulsing in time with the music, then rapidly twisting to something else, only to morph back a few moments later. He felt a bit of a bastard but wasn't about to change stream now.
Still, he gave them a gentle reminder. “Original means you thought it up. Not something you have, or are currently seeing.” He lost it, grinning wildly, as dozens of little faces turned toward him in petulant frustration. Bum-pa-Bum-Pa. Their mouths opened and no doubt spewed out silent complaints. Ahh, that had to be an unpleasant feeling.
Still, he wasn't a sadist, he let them fumble about for a bit but didn't let it drag out. With another command each image, no matter how half or malformed, froze. With a bit of pep in his step, he hopped down and moseyed over to his first victim, ahem, student.
“Imaginative, but your octopus hybrid has trunks, not tentacles my dear.”
“Very pretty, but your mutated butterfly's wings look suspiciously like Dumbo ears.”
“Cow legs, lion head, turtle body... original, but why'd you paint it bright pink?”
From one to the next, giving each a bit of his time. Giving out a number of compliments as he went. Fascinatingly imaginative creatures poured out of artistically inclined young minds.
There were also, predictably, many more that were decidedly not. Pegasi and manticores were not original, no matter how well done. Not even a pegasi with an elephant tusk worn like a unicorn horn. An elephorn? The manticore with a mane of trunks was pretty creepy at least.
But original or not, none managed to completely block out the drug-addled pink elephants and the driving polka beat. Its presence infested every image. It was just a question of degree.
Finishing his circle, he lightly jumped back onto the 2-foot-high dais pedestal and reclaimed his seat. Dropping the Silence, he spoke. “None of you managed to escape the Pink Elephants. Despite my reminders and hints, they snuck in anyway. That's alright, while I told you to avoid it, I didn't expect you to succeed. And that's the point.” He waved his fingers in time to beat. “This, in all its cartoonish glory is a metaphor for how dangerous it is to teach a pathfinder.”
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“When I do classes for guardians, it's very simple, even if the tasks are complex. Do this a set way. Think of this color or this creature. Match your constructs up against mine and keep adjusting till you get it as right as you can. This is the thought chain and the mnemonic you should chant in order to create this specific spell. It's hard for them to match mana types, but it’s not a matter of trying to find where they should go. In many ways, I could simplify it to: hold the wand thus, speak the words exactly this way.
Wingardium leviosa.” He waited out the spats of laughter. “That's for them. For you, there is no Hogwarts.”
Seeing a look of real sadness on a 12-year-old's face he couldn't help himself. “No, no, dear. No tears. Please don't take it the wrong way. It’s a good thing. Perhaps someday if you still feel sad, you can make such a place for yourself. And that's the difference between you and guardians. They follow directions. A set path with guideposts and a list of dangers to watch out for. You will make that path.”
“That's what you are here for. To listen and learn enough to stay alive, without contaminating your thought process in the learning. You can't find your own path, the original path that fits you perfectly if you know the way already. The one way that someone else has already discovered for you.”
With a snap of his fingers the lights and elephants went out and it became completely, terrifyingly black. No light leaked its way in, not the smallest spark. “When it's dark we need a way to see.” With another snap two beams of light projected out to illuminate a small spotlight of ground, leaving the rest of the room to its unnatural darkness. Then one of the beams turned, lighting up the source of the other and showing a very familiar shape in the doing. A cylinder with a widened cone on one end. “The flashlight. Familiar and a very useful thing, yes? With the knowledge of the old-world, we know that this is a thing. We know that light can be created and directed as beams not just torches and campfires.
We know that something is possible, and that is a huge gift! But, on the other hand, it's also poison. A mental poison that you will have to work very hard to overcome. This is the familiar, the remembered shape of portable light from our past. But why does it need to be this way? Is there anything about this shape that somehow fixes our problems better than any other? No!”
With a snap the cylinders and their beams of crisscrossing light melted and transformed into two crystal balls that shone light in every direction, throwing massive shadows out but also providing enough light, if of a harsh white florescent tone, to illuminate most of the room. “The first step is of shape. We don't need a single beam of light; we need to see! But then another thought comes. Why this annoying white?”
The crystals shifted from a clear quartz to an aquamarine color and the light followed suit. The new light was warm and eddied like the ocean was outside their little glass ball of a room. Like seeing the last rays of the sun through an aquarium. “Much nicer, yes? But why stop there? Why does light need to have a single source?” *Snap* The large crystal balls cracked and fragmented, each tossing out multiple smaller chunks that melted into spheres of their own before flying out to hover above each child's head. The spray of gentle light pretty much banished the shadows in the center of the room, though there was still a mess behind the rows of pillars.
“Or perhaps it doesn't need to have a source at all?” *Snap* The balls melted and sloughed down to coat the children in a thin film that glowed with an internal light rather than projecting anything. A film that rapidly expanded, moving towards the central dais to reveal Timothy even as it climbed the pillars to reveal the ceiling as well. Every bit of non-air space was now lightly glowing, but the shadows lived in absolute darkness between it all.
Timothy hid a shudder; this mode was a bit creepy. Where everyone could see, but the darkness sat there waiting, and somehow watching.
With a final *Snap* the glow dissipated and the original lights returned. Lights the shivering children suddenly realized they had taken for granted. Looking around they couldn't find a source. They couldn't find a cause, but the effect was obvious. A diffuse gentle light filled the room without leaving shadows, but also without being very bright in any one place.
Timothy stood up and flicked his large sleeves, allowing six small spheres to slide out of them and down into his hands. Spheres that he immediately began to juggle. Spheres that only seemed to be spheres when they touched his hands, while in the air they became a vast number of different shapes, if all of a cartoonish bent. Cars, airplanes, ivory toilets, ladders, toasters, stoves, refrigerators, trampolines, firetrucks, candy bars and many other pieces of modern life.
“All this knowledge has the capacity to bias your thinking already. Then I add in my own instructions and how do we avoid biasing you? The laws of magic that I consider stable might be more like suggestions for some of you, and rock-solid truth for others. I worry that while trying to avoid absolutes I'll only fix you with the moronic truth that there are no absolutes. That in telling you not to trust other people’s one true way, I might in turn teach you to distrust your own. I worry that my fumbling assumptions will be read by you as truths and my commands for your safety will be treated like suggestions. I worry, in a hundred ways and forms, that I will become your pink elephant.”
“The truth is that even if I avoid these pitfalls, you will still have the ghosts of the past to deal with.” With an elaborate flourish, one circle of balls in the air became two that interwove. “The memories of another world. Both boon and a ball and chain. A boon because we know so many things are possible! We have movies and tales to spark our imaginations. Ideas that the cavemen of the distant past never dreamed of!”
The double circle diverged and split, globes touching Timothy's hands for a mere moment, then shooting out in different directions fully ignoring gravity or any laws of motion even as they continually shifted from cell phones to baseball bats. From perfume bottles to a tank.
“Could he dream of a car? Or that flight was something for more than just birds? Such things are impossibly hard to pioneer. But you, you have a vast store of ideas to work from. Don't let yourself fall into the trap of just recreating what was lost. Substituting science with magic and trying to carry on like normal. As if it was merely a different socket in the wall. It's a trap. Like with the lights, just because we can make a light bulb doesn't mean it’s the best solution to the problem.”
“So, let me say it once again, welcome to the Paradise Academy for Pathfinders, and no you may not call it PAP. Listen to your teachers but think for yourself and always, always beware the pink elephants!”