The snow was intensifying. Wild flurries whipped at the windshield; blotting out the outside completely, until it felt like the whole world condensed down to just the interior of the vehicle. She felt like she should have been worried--but instead she slumped back against her seat, dreamily. She trusted Star.
They were going on a trip. Lily didn’t know where. That bothered her a little.
“Where are we going anyway? I can’t even see the road through the snow.”
Star opened his mouth, and a voice came out. It was excitable and simple. He leaned forward, panting, and a young man’s voice emerged from him, energetic and excited.
“Doesn’t matter!”
Lily scrunched up her face.
“I mean, it matters a little. You’re driving, I hope you know where you’re going."
“Road only goes one way. But we’re together. Together all the way." He glanced sideways, locking her with his big brown eyes. "That's all that matters.”
"I guess."
Lily rubbed her hands together, staring out the windshield. Big flakes of snow pattered against the glass as strange cars passed by one by one. She could only make them out through the shine of their vibrant headlights. She watched one with flickering greens turn off down what she presumed must be another road, and sighed.
“I’m kinda sick of feeling aimless though. I feel like I’m constantly getting pushed in one direction or another. Even when I try to make decisions for myself, it feels like the current takes me where it wants, and I never get to know where I’m headed.”
The cold was getting to her. Lily could see her breath. She turned up the heat, but it really wasn’t helping as much as she’d like. Sunset was fast approaching.
“Too hard on yourself. Doing your best. Good. Lily is a good girl.”
“Pfft. You’re just saying that because I give you treats.”
“No no! I believe. Lily has no direction from outside. All are choices. Even simple choices. Could have stopped. Didn’t. Could have left me. Didn't. Could have give bad food. Didn't. Is a good girl.”
“Well, geez. You’re really sweet. I just wish I knew where I was going. I don’t feel like I know what’s going to happen next. Where magic is taking me. Where this spell is going to take me. Even what I’m doing day to day. I’m flying by the seat of my pants you know? Just doing my best to survive.”
“Do you have any treats?”
Lily laughed until her chest hurt. The sun was down now. Maybe it had been down for hours. The headlights shone off the white snow, and it was difficult to see more than a few feet in front of the car. But they continued cruising along, and Lily didn’t feel like she was in any danger. She saw the green car again. It was somewhere behind them now.
“No, I don’t. But I promise to share when I have some.”
“Survival is a choice. You say no making choices. But survival is choice. You could die instead. You choose not.”
Lily sighed.
“I guess I get it. I hate when people think of that as some kind of bravery though. Like, I’m just taking the path of least resistance that leaves me alive. It’s cowardice if anything.”
“If you died, we never meet. I die too. We die together. Chose to live. Chose to live with me. Be happy. I’m happy.”
“Well, if you ever know how to teach me I’ll be your first student, okay Star?”
The steady thump of his tail was the only answer. Lily closed her eyes, and drifted into wakefulness.
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She rose from slumber, into the world of pain and cold. Her body hurt all over, and she was freezing. It felt like there was a boulder on her chest. For a few minutes she just lay there and tried to breathe. Then she realized the boulder was fluffy, and warm.
Lily opened her eyes. She was laying just outside the magic circle, in the early light of dawn. Had she slept all night and into the morning?
The exhausted girl groaned and shook a little. Her furry protector raised his head. Star’s tail wagged fiercely and he lunged forward to start licking her face. Lily giggled and feebly tried to push him away.
“I’m okay! Really. I’m okay. Please!”
Her arms and legs were freezing, but where Star had been laying was pleasantly warm.
“Did you lay on me all night to keep me warm? Geez, you’re too good. We gotta stop doing this so often.”
Lily sat up. Pain coursed through her. She blinked a few times, feeling bleary eyed and tried to examine the spots she was hurt. The first thing that caught her notice were her hands. The girl’s heart nearly stopped in her chest as she saw something she hadn’t expected.
Wounds covered her hands. They looked almost like puncture wounds, but if she didn’t know any better she’d say they looked like they came from the inside. Some of them had already healed a decent amount, and were scarring over. But not even the ridiculous speed of recovery was the strangest part. The wounds were glowing.
“Oooooh god. What the hell is that?”
In at least thirty spots between her two hands, she had wounds that shined with an opalescent light. Each little one had a familiar shape.
“The mana glyph?”
At a glance, the wounds looked like the mana glyph. A star with four sides. Or the hole left in something after it’s punctured. There was less blood than Lily would have imagined. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad or if Star just licked her clean when things started to heal. There were a few spatters of blood on her clothes, and as she examined the spots underneath them, she found more of the same wounds. They were strongly concentrated on her hands though, even overlapping in places.
“Um. Have they been glowing the entire time? What does it mean?”
Lily looked over at Star, but he just whined and wagged his tail, clearly happy she was awake again. Her hands hurt like hell, and so did the other wounds on her body. She was sore from sleeping on the asphalt all night. Her shoulder ached where Star had had to grab her. Her hands and wounds were glowing with strange presumably magic energy. Lily decided it was time to go home.
“Okay buddy, I think we need to get out of here. Let’s see if I can stand up, huh?”
Lily in fact, could stand up. Barely. Her body was beyond stiff. She limped over to her car and popped the door open. It hurt so bad to use her hands, but she wasn’t actively bleeding anywhere. Which seemed strange, given the obvious wounds. Did they self cauterize or something?
As Lily sat down in the car, she noticed another thing she’d missed, because she hadn’t been looking in the right spot yet. There was a HUGE ball of light floating above the remaining ruins. Lily vaguely recalled setting that up. Everything after Star began helping her cast the spell was a bit of a blur. Wait, didn’t she set up the charging spell? Aw crap, she did not want to go into the spell circle with that much mana running through it right now.
“Hey Star, wanna do me a favor? Let’s test how much you can really understand me, huh?”
His tail began wagging. Lily popped open the trunk.
“Okay, I have an important mission for you. I don’t want to interact with a spell with whatever is going on with my hands. So, I want you to take a chaos emerald from the trunk, and put it in the charging circle. Can you do that for me?”
Star barked. But he didn’t move. Lily sighed.
“I don’t know which part of that was too much either. Okay, let’s try this. Star, go get a chaos emerald. Please.”
Lily made a circular gesture with her hands. Star perked up, and ran to the back of the car. He came back with the blue sphere in his mouth. Lily got way too excited, and clapped once, before she realized her mistake.
“Ow ow owww. Good boy. Gooood boy. Okay. Now. Put it in the circle! Over there!”
Lily pointed. This time, Star definitely got it. He happily ran over to the charging circle and dropped the chaos emerald inside it. Then he bounded back and sat in front of her with a very happy look on his face. Lily grinned at him and pet him for a minute. Her hands hurt, but he really was impressive.
“Okay, this spot clearly has more mana than any other one we’ve found. So. Can you do it again? One more time? Please?”
Star immediately rose, grabbed another chaos emerald and ran it over to leave in the same spot. Lily had him go one more time for a total of three charging gems, and then lavished praise on him.
The wounded exhausted girl embraced her companion as he got into the car with her.
“You’re so fucking smart! I love you!”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Lily laughed through her pain.
“Now let’s go home. I need to stop touching things and figure out if I have magical super cancer or something.”
She eyed her glowing spots, but they already seemed a little less vibrant. Lily was extremely hopeful they would fade away given a little time and rest. That spell had really messed her up. But, she had a day to reflect on that when she was home and safe. She turned on the car, and to her surprise the dashboard came alive as if it were perfectly new.
“Oh. Uh. Wait. Did I repair the car last night?”
Oh well. It didn’t matter right now. Lily threw the car in reverse and started to head away. The ball of light floating above the ruins was already getting visibly smaller. That made sense. Lily idly wondered how much mana the light spell expended. It didn’t immediately go out, so that implied it was like a little sun, running off mana instead of matter.
As she turned the car and pulled out onto the road, she cursed. This was going to be a very painful ride home. But she didn’t feel like she had a choice in the matter. So, onward she went.
The mana compass on her dashboard was pointed behind her, which made sense. She’d have been shocked if that wasn’t the biggest source nearby. Now that she was on the path to safety, she let her mind drift a bit more though. She was very frightened about her hands. Her hands! Glowing wounds couldn’t be good, right? Somehow, she didn’t feel like they were particularly dangerous, and she thought that might have something to do with her not panicking before now.
“Wait, I tranced out pretty hard while casting that spell. Am I under the effect of some kind of mental manipulation? Ah shit, how would I know? Hey Star, am I acting weird?”
He barked. That was… inconclusive.
“Hah, you know I had a dream where you talked to me. You were simple and cute. I loved it.”
His tail thumped against the seat. Lily yawned and tried to keep focused on the road.
“Okay, but for real. What happened? I was trying to concentrate on the spell. I remember that. I’ve done that before, but for some reason this time I sunk way deeper into it. It’s like I became a part of the spell circle for a little. The mana was flowing through me, rather than just through the circle with me manipulating it. And then… What did that look like from the outside? I wish you could tell me.”
In the early morning light of dawn, Lily drove past a donut shop and desperately wished it was open. She’d kill for a donut and a coffee right now. Extra sweet, of course. She couldn’t handle the bitter stuff.
“Okay, so that aside. Never doing that again. Never, ever again. We can erase glyphs in big spells, but no edits unless I’m sure I can control that much mana. Otherwise it… hurts me. Like this. This will heal right?”
Star whined, and laid his head on her lap. Lily rolled her eyes.
“You don’t know. You’re a dog. Ugh. Fine. Well, you did very good. Thank you for saving me. Again. That’s what, three times now? Hah, I’m starting to think you’re here to watch out for me instead of the other way around.”
His tail wagged harder.
“Oh shut it you. I’m still the one that feeds you, you know. Although… I guess you did bring back the animal. Hmm. I’m gonna have to think on this. Well, Sir Star, the kingdom thanks you for your service. There will be many celebratory duck feet today. Ugh. I’m hungry, but I can barely force myself to keep my hands on this stupid wheel. It hurts SO BAD. How is this not bleeding everywhere? This is so–”
Lily stopped talking. Her mana compass suddenly shifted from pointing behind her to pointing to her left.
“Huh. I guess there’s another spot that way.”
The car slowly came to a stop as Lily stared.
“I don’t think I can do spells right now. We can go home and check it out later. Or maybe I could go figure out where it is so I remember it later, then go home. I really don’t want to drive further. But I don’t want to risk losing access to something. Why is it always like this! Star, what do I do?”
She turned to look at him, and instantly got her face licked. Lily yelped in surprise, and then had to laugh at herself for getting jump scared by a puppy. Large or not.
“Fine. But when we get home, I’m not touching another thing tonight, deal?”
The dog whined and looked at her pleadingly.
“Except your duck feet. Okay?”
He barked. With that settled, Lily headed towards the source of the mana. Fortunately, this drive was pretty straightforward. It was a bit out of the way, but there was a road that led from the freeway straight to one of the other main roads through town, and on that road was very clearly where the spot was. It was a drive-in movie theater, and as Lily drove around the outside of it, she was sure. The compass always seemed to point into it.
“Huh. I can’t see anything obviously magical going on from out here, but I believe the compass. On the plus side, this is gonna be really easy to find again. On the other hand, I don’t want to fuck with anything magical while I have glowing stab wounds. So, let’s head back okay?”
Reluctantly, Lily pulled away from the spot. She’d remember it was there, but just couldn’t handle it right now. It was time to go home and rest. This spot and La Mancha could wait until tomorrow.
Thankfully, the rest of the drive home was uneventful, outside of the pain.
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Lily walked into her seaside mansion like a zombie, and practically collapsed onto the livingroom floor. Star approached and started licking her cheek.
“Thank you. Yes, yes. Thank you Mister Man. Really saved my bacon out there you know? Again. Again! I really thought that was going to be an easy one. At a certain point I need to make a spellbook for spells I know will work a certain way, and only ever use those unless I am taking every precaution under the sun. I can’t keep injuring myself like this.”
Thankfully, her wounds were almost not glowing at all already, and the glowing spots seemed to be getting replaced with simple scar tissue. She was going to have a million star shaped scars. Which was not ideal, but it was better than a magical illness. Lily thought she could actually feel the mana leaving them over time, but that had to be in her head. Probably. How had they scarred over so fast?
“I’m really starting to think I was partially right about mana repairs. I’m coated in the stuff a lot of the time, and my body has been healing faster than normal since the world ended. This is mana damage, and it’s healing faster. God I am so fucking tired though. That a consequence you think? It’s sped up, but takes the same amount of energy? Or maybe I’m on the wrong track entirely.”
But Lily thought she was onto something. What had changed since the world ended? Magic existed now. Also, she was healing faster than normal. Usually only by a little, but these wounds looked like they’d been pretty bad last night. And now they were almost entirely healed. Minus whatever the glow was.
But her body was beyond worn out, and her mind too. Lily didn’t think she was thinking clearly since she woke up. But it wasn’t the normal kind of brain fog she got. It was more like being emotionally exhausted. She just couldn’t bring herself to feel as much as she normally did. Instead, she just wanted to sleep. Depression? Magic depression? Lily didn’t know. But she was done moving until she felt better. Floor or not.
“Star, bring me the bag of duck feet. I’ll dole out some of the goodies. Don’t rip it up or I’ll be cross, okay?”
Lily spent the next ten minutes feeding Star all the duck feet he could eat, until she passed out.
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Star watched his Master sleeping with rapt attention. She was looking a lot better than after the incident, but he wasn’t sure if he’d done enough to help. The wounds stank of mana. Star vividly remembered watching them appear. As the world shaping began to fail, his Master entered a state of total serenity. She had worked an immense magic, but the cost! The cost was great.
He had watched in horror as her flesh began to fail. Light moved under her skin, concentrated, and then burst forth like water cracking through stone. Like his teeth punctured hide, but from the inside out. Teeth of light that shone from the newly formed holes, and did not let up. More and more appeared, until he was sure she would lose herself to the power.
The moment he sensed the spell stabilize, he grabbed her and pulled her out of the circle. But the damage was done. She had been bleeding from many, many places. The mana continued to pour out of her like her very lifeblood.
She did not wake, no matter how hard he tried to rouse her. When it became clear he could not, he settled for keeping her safe and warm as best he could. She was breathing. Her heart was beating. Surely that meant she would be well again?
Twice in the night, Star had to chase off curious intruders. A stray dog, and some form of large cat. But neither were a match for him, and neither really thought the fight was worth the potential meal. So, he only had to bark and chase to send them running.
Even now that they had returned to the den he was quite concerned for her. But what could he do? She had mentioned being quite hungry before she blacked out. Could he provide food? There were no more eggs, and his Master preferred not to eat the duck feet, or from the stag. But she needed nutrients! What had she said before about food?
“I’m a human! I’ve almost never eaten anything that didn’t come out of a package from the store, like your kibble. I need my food to be prepared and cooked by someone else. Okay?”
Yes! That was it. She needed her food prepared and cooked by someone else. Star had seen her cook before. She had placed the food over heat, and waited for a while. That didn’t seem too hard, right? Surely he could do that for his Master. She needed cooked food.
So, what would he cook? It would hurt, but he could probably get a chunk from the Stag despite the cold. What else did he have? The bag of duck feet lay open. It would feel wrong to take them, but it wasn’t like he was taking them for himself. He simply wanted to create food for his Master. Yes. She would awake and be SO proud of him for his improvisation and initiative. This was a perfect plan.
Star began his process, setting off to retrieve a solid hunk of meat.
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Some time later, Lily stirred in her sleep. Something smelled weird. Very odd, even. She rolled over, determined to ignore it unless she absolutely had to rise. But it only grew stronger, until she realized what the smell was.
Smoke. She was smelling smoke. Lily’s eyes shot open and she sat up. Before her lay a scene that she wished was a nightmare. Star stood on his hind legs at the stove, trying to get a grip on and remove a burning hunk of meat placed directly on the burner. Hair and all. Lily nearly screamed. She jumped up and ran to the back door. A fire extinguisher was just outside with the barbeque. She grabbed it and ran back inside.
“Star! Outta the way!”
He got clear and she started blasting. The second she got within range she stopped for just long enough to turn off the stove top, and then got back to it. She was coughing as the white spray filled the air, but she was determined to get the fire put out as quickly as possible. She’d already lost enough to fire!
The extinguisher worked, thankfully. In minutes, her kitchen was a mess of black scorch marks on the wall and a little on the ceiling, and white powder coated near everything else.
Lily caught her breath, and then glared at her companion.
“What the hell were you doing!? I knew you were smart, but I never expected to have to toddler proof the house! Fire hot Star!”
He looked genuinely chastised and horrified, so she let out a deep sigh and tried to calm down a little.
“It’s okay. It’s okay. You didn’t know. We’ll get this cleaned up and everything will probably be fine. Okay? But you’re helping me! I don’t have good hands right now, and neither do you, so we’ll do it together, alright?”
Star’s tail wagged nervously, and Lily closed her eyes for a moment and counted to ten.
The dog had put a hunk of Stag meat on the stove. Directly on the stove top. Hair side down. There had been a few duck feet haphazardly tossed onto the top of the meat.
Lily started cleanup and tried to get Star to use a wet washcloth. For the first few minutes, she was convinced he’d tried to cook himself a meal because he’d enjoyed her cooking. And stolen some duck feet! But the more she thought about it, the more that didn’t seem right to her.
He’d always been respectful of the things she gave him in the past, and waited pretty patiently. Which was surprising for a dog. So, the more she thought about it, it just didn’t add up. And when she’d calmed down enough to really think about it properly, she had a realization.
“Wait, did you try to make this for me?”
Star’s ears went back, and he wagged his tail slowly.
“Oh. Okay. Well. That’s still stupid, but it may be the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. Tell you what buddy, after we clean up, let’s watch some cooking shows okay?”
She could swear her companion smiled.