Chapter 6 Melodia

I would have liked to say I managed to get all of my work done and then immediately jumped into learning magic. But sometimes life doesn't give us what we want. Instead it gives us a mom bursting into my room as I was finishing up. She had probably been planning to catch me goofing off before my work was done.

Once she figured out I was already hard at work, she calmed down and told me to head downstairs when I could. She left and for a second I was scared she had managed to spot Pickati. I glanced over at my bed only to see him no longer there, instead replaced by a unique looking white fox plushie with bat wings I didn't remember buying. Neat trick, I wondered if he would show it to me at some point.

I wandered downstairs to find my mom working on dinner. I tried to escape only to find myself getting pulled in to help. Arturo arrived a little after we finished, and then Dad showed up after that.

I didn't get a chance to go back upstairs and talk to Pickati until after dinner.

"I'm done," I groaned as I trudged in through the door, already in my pajamas. The Pickati plushie on my bed came to life as soon as I closed the door behind me. He stretched his shoulders and wings and let out a pained grunt.

"A bit of advice," he flapped his wings a few times, filling the room with a small wind, "never turn yourself into a toy as a disguise. It works well, but your body gets extremely sore after a while."

Somehow I doubted it would ever come up, but I nodded along anyway. Who knew, with how weird my life was getting, maybe someday I would have to disguise myself as a toy.

Pickati interrupted my musings by taking off and flying to the window. He hummed to himself as he looked at the sunset in the distance. "Okay, so it looks like we still have a bit of time," he turned towards me with a smile. "Let's get started. Before anything else, grab one of those notebooks over there on the shelf, an empty one if you can."

I walked over and quickly found an empty journal an aunt had bought for me about a year ago. She had probably meant for me to use it as a diary, but I never used it as one. And now it looked like her gift was going to become my new magic notebook.

"Okay so before we begin, then is one thing we have to do," he pointed his little claw at one of the pencils on my desk. "I want you to take your pencil, open the book up to the first page, and write a single sentence over it as big as you can. Make the words take up the whole page if you can," I raised an eyebrow at this but did as he told me. I held the pencil over the book and waited for him to give me the words he wanted me to write. "I want you to write 'magic is dangerous'."

I did as he said, making the words as big as I could and making them stretch from edge to edge. I even threw in some exclamation marks and circled the words a few times for extra effect.

"I want you to promise me something," he gave me a stern look which made me gulp, "I want you to promise me you will never try to practice magic on your own before I tell you you're ready. In the old days the children of magi would spend years learning about magic theory before they were allowed to cast their first spell, and for good reason. Some of what I need to teach you will be dangerous, and you could easily hurt yourself if you don't know what you're doing."

"Okay, I promise," I nodded as quickly as I could as Pickati seemed to relax a little. If magic was as dangerous to use as he was implying, then it was probably the right call anyway.

"Then we can begin," He looked down at the paper as he turned the page for me. "For now, just write what I say. We can go over it in more detail afterwards."

I placed my pencil to the paper as Pickati started to speak. Words flowed from his mouth, to my ear, then down my hand until they finally ended up on the page. I kept going until he finally came to a stop. I put my pencil to the side and took a chance to read through what I'd already written.

Most of it was a basic explanation of how magic worked. The whole idea was to convert my raw magic into a usable form called mana and then put ideas or 'concepts' into it in order to form a spell. The first applied concept of a spell was called the base concept, and most magi only ever used one. Mine, as it turned out, would be gravity.

I guess it made sense, considering the whole 'Gravity Crush' thing I'd done earlier to the doll. What else could I do with it? Float around like I was in space, maybe even outright flight? I kept thinking over the possibilities for a few more seconds until Pickati snapped me out of it by starting to speak again.

"If the pattern for the doll attacks holds up, the next attack should come in the next day or two. Not enough time to teach you a useful spell, but maybe enough time to awaken your magic. We should be able to get you ready to learn your first spell after the attack."

I nodded as Pickati sat up on his hind legs with his front legs hanging in front of him.

"Okay, so I want you to lean back in your chair, close your eyes, and relax," I did as he said, letting my breath steady as I felt the tension leaving my body. I felt a clawed finger on my heart and a second later I could start to see a little glowing ball of purple light in my mind. It was floating in the middle of a dark void, a lot like the one I'd been in when I had transformed.

The glowing ball felt… warm and comforting. Like a hug or a warm home cooked meal after a long day. It felt safe, like I could do anything and everything as long as I had it with me. As I felt the glow washing over me, I could hear a little voice which sounded a lot like Pickati's telling me to try and touch it.

I slowly reached out to it, my fingers trembling as they neared the orb. My breath started to quicken as I felt my heart race. The closer I got, the more I felt a strange heaviness on my shoulders. Like something was pushing down on them. It was getting to be too much. I needed to finish this now. I sprang my hands forward, expecting to take the ball here and now.

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And then as quickly as it came, it went. My fingers only had a little bit to go before the light faded out of existence. As soon as it was gone, I could feel the void around me start to fade away with it.

I opened my eyes with a gasp and took a second to calm down.

"Not bad for a first attempt," Pickati gave me a little smile as I recovered from my ordeal. "Do you want to try again?"

"What was…?" I trailed off as I looked down at the hands which had been so close to touching my magic.

"Not sure," my head snapped to him as his expression remained unchanged, "the awakening of your magic is deeply personal and no two people will ever awaken their magic in the same exact way. The only relatively common element is part of the process involving touching that which represents your magic with your bare hands."

"Oh," well I guess that made sense. Maybe awakening my magic would have been super easy, maybe it would have been near impossible. There would have been no way for Pickati to know so how could he warn me? I let myself calm down and reach the same state I had been in before. "I want to try again."

Once again I appeared in the black void. The purple ball of magic in front of me. Maybe the problem was I'd gone too slowly last time. That weird weight on my shoulders could have appeared because I took too long to touch the orb.

So this time I reached out and tried to grab the orb as quickly as possible. And instead of a gradual build up, the weight on my body came all at once as I felt myself getting forced awake again.

"Oh," I whispered as Pickati raised an eyebrow. So it looked like I needed to do the opposite of what I thought. It wasn't about doing it quick, I needed to do things slowly and calmly. It was a marathon, not a sprint. I looked over at him before leaning back again with my eyes closed. "Again."

I found myself in front of the orb once more. This time I took a second to collect myself before starting to reach out with my arms. I moved bit by bit, inch by inch, the weight on my body building with each spark of movement. It was like I had chains draped over my shoulders, constantly trying to pull me down into the void and away from the orb.

I couldn't let them take me. I kept going, constantly shifting my attention between moving towards the orb and pulling on my chains.

I made it to the point I had reached earlier, with the orb hovering over my fingers. This time there was no last lurch to ruin things. I calmly pressed my fingers on the orb even as my shoulders screamed out in pain.

I let the warmth of the magic wash over me as the orb started to shift and the weight on my shoulders started to fade. I let out a sigh of relief as the orb kept shifting around, like there was something inside it trying to break out. I blinked as the orb collapsed inward before turning into a purple flame.

I held the purple flame in my hand as I felt it sending something into me. The strange sensation grew inside me until I felt completely full. Once I could take no more, my eyes flew open and I was back in my room.

I touched my chest, and found I could still feel everything. The warm feeling the flame had filled me with was still there. And as for the purple flame itself, all I needed to do was think about it and it appeared in my mind instantly.

"Congratulations," Pickati's voice brought me out of my daze, "what you're feeling is your magic, in its purest and base form. Normally this would be the part where I would teach you how to use it to cast a spell but…" He trailed off before pointing over to the clock. My eyes widened as I tried to rush out of my chair. 'Tried' because as soon as I was out of the chair, I felt a weird dizziness and almost fell to the ground.

"Calm yourself," he flew up and helped me steady myself so I wouldn't fall, "awakening your magic is a time consuming process. And many magi say time seems to go by quicker while attempting it."

I would have to agree. It had only felt like a few minutes, but it was already late enough for me to go to sleep. I let myself calm down as he helped me stumble into my bed. I made the right call changing into pajamas before we started this whole thing. I managed to sit up at the edge of the bed as he flew in and started floating in front of me.

"Okay so before you go to sleep, you remember what I told you about pure magic right?" He asked as I thought back to what had been in the notebook.

"Never use it without concepts," I got a heavy nod from Pickati.

"That's right. Pure magic without anything added to it is dangerous. The human body isn't capable of using it," he looked over at the clock again. "We'll have to call it here tonight. Which means I have to teach you how to drop your magic."

Pickati explained the process for harmlessly releasing the magic I had built up inside of me. I followed his steps and felt the warm feeling inside me fade away, leaving me feeling a little emptier than before. I was half tempted to try to fill myself back up with magic from my purple flame, but convinced myself it would be too dangerous.

"We can try to start your real training tomorrow," he kept going, unaware of my annoyance. "If we're lucky, we'll have time for me to teach you how to form a basic gravity concept before the doll attack," he explained as my dizziness faded enough to get back to my feet. I walked to the desk and grabbed the notebook, putting it away in a spot on my shelf where I knew I could find it later.

I couldn't help but smile as I climbed into bed. Magic, I was a real magi. I had my magic and tomorrow I would have my concept. I went to sleep dreaming of the possibilities.