Days passed by as I tried to figured out the image, or the concept, of the dirt. I don't fully understand what Ard meant by grasping where each individual grain came from, the dirt was made this way, and it'll always remain this way. I mean, it has been like this for as long as I could remember, why would it suddenly change, and why would you bother to wonder about where it came from? What does this have to do with learning magic?

 Either way, I couldn't spend all my time meditating and thinking. For a large portion of the day I would spend foraging, occasionally coming across various herbs that I could still use even despite autumn having come. Some fruits, another woody apple tree, berries of several kinds, wild vegetables like onions when I could find them. The goal was to fatten myself up to best live through winter, since I didn't actually have much items that I could easily turn into long lasting foods.

 Life was significantly easier when I'm not constantly demotivated and wishing for death.

 As of right now, I was sitting parallel to Ard, within my new created camp next to the water basin, finally being told I could work on creating the sphere using manifested magic. The terms Ard had used to describe how the magic, the elementals as I'm used to calling them, would manifest, and how to get it to manifest properly into the world. None of my spells were ever actually visible to other people, only those with the vision could see them. Learning how to cast something that others could see was a first.

 I still didn't have the best control over external magic, however. And no matter how much Ard prodded me to move the dirt within my palm by shifting the magic within it, I couldn't. She wanted me to do it without showing me how the spell was cast as she had done with the fire resistance spell. She was convinced it was best to not rely on such crutches, but hours had passed. And hours turned into days. And still, I couldn't move the dirt in the way she had wanted me to.

 "I don't get it. Do fathachs simply have less magical ability? I know you can see magic, so why can't you manipulate it?" Ard huffed, or as close to huffing as she could get. Her face wouldn't move, as it never did beyond moving her lips, but something about her air told me she was frustrated. Perhaps I've been getting use to Ard's body language, but I get the feeling I would understand best if I could see her ears. She was very expressive with her ears.

 Ard grabbed at the dirt beneath us and grabbed my left hand with her right one, placing the palm of my own hand under her left one. Looks like she was going to show me from example, probably convinced this was the best solution forward. Maybe it was. Without saying anything, she began to move the magic within her hand, earth magic leaving her palm and touching the dirt of the material world. I had tried to do the same, and I knew this process, although not as delicate or intricate as her control over her own magic the raw shape of it was the same.

 But the result was drastically different. Her dirt started to move, in a way that I couldn't make it move. Even being forced to see the manipulation of her own magic didn't help me in my understanding. But one thing I did learn, the massive amount of magic she expended towards moving the dirt, and the way she went about moving it, was enchanting. She would gather up the dirt, harden it and merge it together into a decently hard clump, and then she would start to smoothen out the surface.

 But still, none of this meant anything if I couldn't replicate the simple movement of the dirt. Once the ball of dirt was made, she looked up at me as if expecting understanding. I shook my head, and grabbed more earth to try again. But the result was predictable, I couldn't. If I expended my own magic out into the world and tried to manipulate the earth with my own earth elemental, it wouldn't 'connect.'

 "Why aren't attaching your own magic into the earth?" Ard asked, looking at my hand with an intense gaze. I shook my head, it wasn't that I didn't want to. "I'm out of ideas, and I don't know how to teach you if you can't do even the basics. I've never taught any other species magic before, maybe we're too different for this to work out."

 Ard got up and sat parallel to me. Perhaps she's thinking, or perhaps she's given up.

 What are the differences between her and I? And what sort of things did I do to make up for my near lack of external control? I would take the elementals within me and infuse them into other objects, like plants. But, it would normally connect and infuse itself. Right now, it wasn't. I attempted to infuse the earth with my own magic as if it were a plant, and was surprised by the earth swallowing my magic as it should've. Alright, my magic can be infused into objects but can't manipulate them regardless.

 No matter what I attempted, I couldn't manipulate the dirt with my magic alone. For a week Ard kept having me try, before finally deciding that I couldn't, rather than won't, learn it. Very much so to her frustration, as she had thought I was pretending to be incompetent. Sorry, Ard, but I've never been good at this kind of stuff.

 "Alright, let's start with what you can do. You can reinforce your body using your own magic, this is something we've established. Then let me rearrange the order of lessons, rather than starting at the beginning let's start with something much more complex. These kinds of spells are much more complicated, and require me to show you them myself, through mutual contact. There's only three that we've developed to any appreciable degree. The first you've already seen, the second is body strengthening, and the third is healing.

 "There's not much beyond what you've done yourself with fire resistance, so I'll ignore that. Body strengthening is best learned after healing, since you can be assured of your own harm, doing something very stupid. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, even I've done stupid things before. Healing, however, is pretty difficult. Much more difficult than moving earth around, or any other form of magic.

 Ard came up to me and took out her knife. She gave out her hand, as if telling me to place it on top. I've grown to trust this girl, so I did so, even if it meant probably getting injured in the process. She made a very quick, small cut on the top of my middle finger, enough to start trickling blood. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt me much.

 "There are two forms, the first is enforcing the body's natural healing process. This is the least desirable of the two, since the result would be creating scar tissue. You need only look at your right hand to understand why that's bad. And, by the way, if you're ever brave enough to allow me to cut it off, I'll be able to have you repaired within a couple of months. But ignore that, the second is intentionally knitting the body back into it's original shape."

 I'm not going to ignore that offer. She's told me this before, and I hadn't really believed it back then. But now, after I've seen the kind of healing she could do to my burnt hands, it didn't sound that far fetched. And especially after the feeling of her magic, the sheer amount of it is insane. Maybe I should start taking her words a bit more seriously from now on.

 "Paying attention?" Ard suddenly asked, as if reading my mind. Maybe she herself has gotten better at reading human facial expressions. I nodded. "Good, because this stuff is important. The body itself already has an essence to it, it already follows a plan and there's an optimal state inscribed within it. By tapping into that plan knitting the body back into place is possible. You use the one being healed's own magic, preferably, and if not then using your own is fine. It doesn't take as much magic to heal things as you might expect. And eating is a rather inefficient way of gathering energy. It's only good for attaining resources."

 "Healing larger wounds, like massive cuts or lost limbs, shouldn't be done in one go, either. For the same reason why eating food is for mass rather than energy, it's easier to use what is already there and accessible than it is to create new mass. Creating new matter is possible, but don't bother doing it. Just eat it."

 Creating new matter? Maybe I should keep as much skepticism as I can around Ard's words. We're not gods, we can't do that sort of thing.

 "I won't teach you how to accelerate natural healing, that should come to you later, or rather, you seem to already know how," Ard looks at my right hand and continues. "For now, I'll teach you how to knit flesh back. Watch how I move the magic."

 Ard grabs my middle finger by the base and slowly begins to circulate a light shade of yellow within it. She reaches down to my bones, the light yellow deepening into a rich red for a few moments as it sat within the center, then pushes that deep red of dense magic towards the small cut. I don't know what this deep red signifies, it's not the same kind of feeling that I felt with the bear, that feeling of dread and terror. Rather, it much more mundane. The cut began to heal itself, sealing the skin seemingly of its own volition. The blood had already coagulated throughout the entirety of Ard's talk, though the blood not yet a scab. That was broken down, receded into my body once again, and then there no longer was evidence of a cut.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

 "Catch all that?" Ard looked up to me. "The first step is to reach out towards the bone marrow, the base of your essence, and using that to fix any injury. This is the normal procedure, in the case of your right hand I can only safely reconstruct the scar patterns, there's too much tissue that would need to be changed otherwise. You'll be doing something similar to what you had done with the dirt, that is try to meditate on the marrow of your bones. Figure yourself out that way, and when you think you've got everything understood, we'll try having you heal yourself."

 I nodded. I'm not sure how I was able to heal my burn wounds, the terrible one made my right hand horribly scarred, and I'm not sure if I could replicate it. It's not guaranteed I was the one that did it, to begin with.

 Wait. If there's an optimal plan for my body, an essence that my body follows, would that be able to fix my voice? Worth a shot to ask.

 Ard had begun to walk back to the fire, to watch it as she normally does. She could leave, if she wanted, I had enough of a grasp of my current situation to not need her around. Perhaps she's worried that I might mess up once again, but that wasn't that necessary. I snapped my fingers, the easiest way to grab her attention, and waited for Ard to look over at my direction. She did, instantly, and waited as she normally does for my gestures.

 I lifted my chin and placed my fingers on my throat, running them up and down as if the throat itself was in motion. Then I made some talking motions with my hand, opening and closing my fingers as if trying to pinch something. Ard looked at me for awkward seconds, before finally nodding. She walked back towards me and sat down, much closer to me this time.

 "You're wondering about your voice, then. I'll be upfront, I'm not going to be able to heal whatever malady has afflicted you through physical means. I'm not sure it's physical to begin with, if it were I would've healed you the first time." Ard's gaze was strangely serious, although her face showed none of that. Probably my imagination more than anything. But, that was sort of a disappointment. It would be extremely nice to be able to speak to others as people normally do.

 "But, I do know a couple of things. One, there's a curse placed on you. One beyond what the trodding spirits have done, although I'm hesitant to call what they're doing a curse as much as it is nonconventional. Two, if it was at first a simple curse, it's been made complex through the passage of time, making it very difficult to unravel. Three, it would take me too much time to try to remove it. To be honest, I'm not sure how long you're going to be with me, neither do I know how long you'll live for."

 So fixing my muteness wasn't out of the question? But it sounds like there's going to be a condition on whether or not she'll attempt to remove it. Or if she could, to begin with.

 "And fourth, and probably the most important, I don't know who put the curse on you, and why. I don't want to interfere with business that really isn't mine, that I never had anything to do with. It could result in unintended consequences, and sorry, fathach, you aren't so important to me to justify risking my life, or worse, just out of compassion. I've only been willing to help you thus far because I felt myself somewhat responsible, and the risk in helping was ultimately not that great.

 "Plus I was curious of what the trodding spirit would do to you." Ard bored holes into my eyes with her look. I didn't expect much to begin with, having her be so honest about it was enough for me. If I couldn't gain back a voice, it wouldn't affect me in any way. I nodded and scratched my head, feeling sorry for myself mostly.

 Ard didn't move away from me, instead continued to look at me. A bad habit of hers, it made me very nervous when she starts doing this. Sometimes it's for no apparent reason, other times she's thinking of something related in some way to me. I suspect that at times she decides I'd be the new interesting thing to look at, not caring about the anxiety her look produces in me. Perhaps she doesn't know rather than doesn't care.

 "But," she started to speak once again, "I'd be willing to help you, even with all my reluctance and reservations, under a single condition. Become my property, and listen to my words as if they are law."

 That brought me somewhat back into reality, beyond the realm of magic and regrowing limbs, into real exchanges that will determine the rest of my life. I had a family to go back to, and while I'm heavily grateful for Ard's help I'm not going to throw my life into her hands. I know the faery tales. But... I don't think Ard is malicious. Am I willing to risk everything based off of a hunch? Or, am I willing to become a lifelong slave to a being I didn't know or understand to any great extent?

 If I went back to my family in one piece, I may or may not be able to retain the rank of a clansmen. I would probably be able to own land, granted that my parents gave their property to me rather than any of my other siblings. Giving Ita, my little sister, the land over me wouldn't be outside of my expectations. The real cost of this exchange is the chance for owning land, and perhaps the chance to even go back to the village to begin with.

 Neither does it sound like it'd be assured that I'd be able to remove this curse. And am I willing to trust her words to begin with? Neither Brenna, my master, or even I can see such a curse. She could've made it up. Am I willing to throw everything away for the chance to gain back my voice? Truthfully, yes, under the understanding that I would eventually go back to the village if only to reveal to master that I was still alive, and to not reduce my family to rags.

 Being unable to speak has haunted me for as long as I could remember. The amount of words I wanted to speak, the amount of things I wanted to convey, and what I wanted to convey, was priceless in itself. There were times I would've given up much more than my own life just to say a single word. I'll accept Ard's trade, as long as I could convey to her that I needed to go back to the village, and I needed her word that she'd allow me to do that.

 I wiped some dirt off of the ground, an impossible task to an extent, and drew a circle. Ard drew her attention to the circle and didn't speak. I placed a single line on one segment, then drew another line on the other end. Then I quartered the entire circle by drawing a line between the two lines I've already drawn. I was hoping this would be able to convey the concept of seasons. We are in autumn now, and next autumn I needed to go back to the village.

 I looked over at Ard, her gaze turning to me as well. I moved my hand as if to show the world around me, then moved back to the original line I drew, the one I wanted to convey the meaning of autumn. I then made a thin line running across the entire circle back towards the original point, hoping she'd understand the concept of the movement of time. I drew a small roundhouse on the dirt, and pointed to it.

 Ard looked at the little drawing for a long while, before looking at me, then back to the drawing. She did this for a couple of minutes.

 "Is this supposed to be the seasons?" Ard pointed at the circle. I nodded enthusiastically, she's a very fast learner. "Then is this line supposed to be fall?"

 I nodded. She was pointing to the first line I drew. "And..." Moving her finger through the dirt to mimic the movement I had made, she once again spoke, "this is the movement of seasons? Then we'd be back to fall, once again." I nodded once again.

 "And this drawing, it is one of those homes your kind lives within?" I nodded once again, intently watching her in hope of her understanding. "Then, are you telling me you wish to go back home by next year? That's too short, that'll go by too fast for me. I can't agree to that deal."

 My heart sunk. She didn't understand. It took half an hour of drawing bad stick figures to convey the concept of my family dying if I didn't go back, and that I would only need to be there for a short while, afterwords Ard could do what she wanted to me. Ard, finally understood, rearranged her offer.

 "Very well. Next year, you may go back to the village. Otherwise, my offer is the same. Do you accept , Attie?"

 I didn't respond. Instead, I drew a stick figure, and then the stick figure for Ard, which was a small figure with long ears, and then tried my best to draw teeth. Her teeth, the impossibly sharp ones. I tried to overlay it over the bigger stick figure. I pointed at the stick figure being bitten, and then at me, and hoped Ard understood. I didn't want her to eat me.

 "If those are teeth, and that figure is you, then I won't eat you. If I wanted to eat one of your kind I wouldn't eat the one I've been spending weeks teaching and caring to."

 That's fair. I drew a stick figure tilling dirt, then dying from overwork.

 "I don't know what that means." Darn. I tried to gesture the concept of dying from overwork to her using body gestures, which she thankfully understood.

 "I won't make you work until you die, that would be a waste as well. Do your kind normally do this to others?" I shook my head, slaves might be taxed harder but they aren't made to work until they die from exhaustion. "Then why would I?"

 There are yet too many variables I'm unsure about. What did she mean by property? What does she want from me to begin with? Regardless, these things are starting to become too complex to convey. I finally nodded, and agreed to her proposal. She gave a deep nod herself, her ears once again moving under her hood, her eyes watching something I couldn't see through the air. This was very similar to the first agreement I made with her, of following her word and not hurting her.

 Perhaps there was a spell being cast that I couldn't see? Or do agreements hold more weight than I think they do?

 "Then you will be my property from now on. I will take care of you until you reach your natural lifespan. It's been a while since I've owned a pet, the last one was a doe I had named Leisce. I first got her when I was less than a decade old. She's unfortunately gone now, rest assured I didn't eat her even after her natural death. How long do your kind live for?"

 Did I agree to becoming her pet? And she named her pet Doe 'lazy'?