> Galen Vesa

“Why did you bring me this book? And most importantly, do they know you're here?”

“No,”

The wind whispered in my ear, amused by the notion that someone might have noticed her.

“She wished you have it.”

Perverted spirits with no regards for privacy. Dead people sending parcels to the living. I do begin to miss my meds.

“Not the child. The mother gave it.”

That did not make things any easier.

“Why?”

“She is mine as I am yours. She wished upon herself the favor of mine. O queen of wind give me a child, she wailed. Her mana a price for the seed to take hold in her barren womb. Now she is mine, mine to take.”

“Send her this book and take all you want, now she said. But I will not take, she tastes of rot. You love, I want you! Call upon me, whisper my name love!”

She circled around me like a hungry hound.

“Enough. Leave.”

And she was gone unable to resist my word. Not much of a consolation when I knew she was there, waiting for a chance to come back. Like the voices in my head, her presence made me uneasy.

Nothing to be done about her. I couldn’t even coax off my finger the ring she enchanted. Now it had a friend stuck around my wrist in the form of a simple metallic bracelet that had a similar idea about parting with my body. The bracelet would shrink whenever I showed the smallest intent of removing it.

Not that I knew how it got there. I just awoke with it. Kind of like that time when my shrink experimented with my meds and next morning I found myself in bed with four naked Chinese girls and a pierced tongue. No recollections whatsoever. Nice girls by the way. They gave me breakfast. Cleaned up and pressed my suit before they let me go. Really nice people. Though the hole in my tongue took a month to heal.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Kicking off the heals I found myself a wineglass and helped myself to a bottle of, well, something semi sweet and watered down. It had no label nor any markings, but the golden liquid helped relax my body. It still accumulated stress and fatigue even if I couldn’t feel it.

With Moss gone to wherever she always went at this hour I plopped down on the couch and sipped the wine. Twenty-five days had passed since I woke up if I counted correctly. Twenty-five days of pretending. And now this. The book. It rested in my lap like a cat waiting to be scratched. So, I scratched it. I opened the leather-bound pages again and browsed through her life. Until I found it.

I really had to piss off somebody. All those complains I declined. But what did I ever do to deserve this? I closed the book and closed my eyes then let my consciousness fall in. Lair proved to be an effective if not an eccentric teacher. She had beaten a basic understanding of mana under my scalp and the exercises she forced on me worked wonders. The ease at which mana yield itself to my will scared me. And the amount of it. The day Lair had taught me of the mana and showed me her own I had realized how screwed we were. Something Erta failed to tell me.

When I sensed my teacher’s lingering power and could finally put a name to the sensations that ravaged my new body, I also asked her. The amount of mana she had. Was that normal? Quite normal. Perhaps average. For an elf that is. Humans mostly had half of that and Haggu were all over the spectrum. All would be nice and cozy if it weren’t for the fact that comparing her mana pool against mine was like comparing needle pin head to the size of Betelgeuse or Antares. First time in my life I felt like praying. Just so no one would notice the difference.

My mind sank to where Erta slept. Her dragon body protectively coiled around the tiny tree growing right beneath the orb of mana. If elven legends were worth a dime, this would be the tree of life. One more fact miss lizard decided to withhold.

I pat a scale of her tail. The nearest thing I could manage to a slap on her butt.

„We will have a long talk when this is over.”

If I live long enough that is. One bad move on my side and splat goes half the planet. Myself included. My only solace laid in the fact that my human body, or whatever bits and pieces of it left, could not handle that kind of power. I would probably roast myself before a fraction of that power could exit onto the world. Probably. Anyway. That’s a chance I won’t take. I don’t want to add genocide to my conscience.

As a result I stopped following Lair's directions during our sessions and just sat there playing the waiting game. Pretending nothing worked. Whatever the queen of winds did to me also helped. So far none of them noticed.

But this?

I gave the hibernating lizard one more pat and returned to the surface. At least now I knew how.

The book still rested on my lap. Waiting.

My fingers found the page and my eyes once again traced the lines of that image. The eyes, the pose and the ears. Even longer than mine. They had to be close for something like that.

The same hand that drew it scribbled the image caption:

“Lafirra and her glorious butt, with spots”.

So, her name’s not Moss after all.