Nora was banned from using magic on the orders of Posie. She said it was too dangerous for someone so young to practice magic since their mana pool wouldn’t be fully developed until they were ten. However, she did say it would be ok to start practicing at age four.

Ever since then she started hanging out with Belle and Leo more often, at least once a week usually more. Besides that, she did the same old same old. Over the next two and a half years she spent most of her time with Belle and Leo. Leo started learning to talk around the age of three, whereas she had pretty much mastered talking at that time. Belle became more reserved but was still happy and fun to be around.

Grey had also come by here and there to babysit. She enjoyed being around him and he seemed happy to hang out with her. This also gave her mom and dad a chance to be away from her and have some time to themselves, which seemed to brighten their mood.

In her fourth year of life, her dad took her outside of the city to an empty field of grass. She still hadn’t spent that much time with her dad and she was looking forward to getting to know him. When they got to the center of the field he turned to her,

“Alright, from today onward I’m going to teach you how to use your magic.” Nora smiled and felt butterflies in her stomach,

“Really, Yes!” She hopped around in excitement, she’d been looking forward to this ever since she got banned from using it. She’d regularly considered practicing in secret but the thought of accidentally depleting her mana and having to go through that pain again kept her from doing so.

“Let’s start with you telling me what all you know about magic.” Her dad said. She didn’t know much about magic, only what she’d picked up here and there.

“Ok, I know that everyone is born with different types of magic, which is why mom did that ritual on me. I also know that everyone has a set amount of mana that gets larger as you age until the age of ten where it starts to stagnate. Besides that, I don’t know.” Her dad looked impressed at how much she knew.

“Good. You’ve been paying attention but you’re wrong on one count, not everyone is born with magic. Only some people. As for the types of magic, they are called affinities. There are broad affinities and narrow affinities. For example, the Fire affinity is narrow whereas,” With a snap of his fingers, a blade appeared in his hand,

“Conjuration is very broad and encompasses Creation, Teleportation, and Summoning. Basically, if it involves summoning or creating it could fall under conjuration.” With a flick of his wrist, the blade vanished. Conjuration sounded insanely powerful to her,

“So, with Conjuration you can do all of those things?”

“No, you can’t. When it comes to broad affinities most magical abilities are somewhat unique to the person using it. Narrow affinities on the other hand have everyone using the same magic in different ways. For example, the Fire affinity. It’s pretty obvious what that does, it allows you to create and control fire. Everyone with this affinity can do that and only that.” She thought It seemed kind of unfair but this wasn’t a game so it made sense that there wouldn’t be a perfect balance.

“Ok, what all affinities are there?”

“There are a lot of affinities. The basic and most common ones are Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. But there are less common ones like Light, Dark, Life, Illusion, Divination, Alteration, and Conjuration. Then there are unique ones. These are unknown affinities that are unique to a person and the only ones I’ve ever heard of are Nature and Dragon.”

“That’s amazing. So, there’s actually an unlimited amount of affinities?” He nodded. Nora hadn’t realized it was so infinite, “Let’s get back to my affinities, what all can I do with mine.”

“Your Darkness affinity is broad. You can create dark smoke and control it but all other abilities in this will be somewhat unique to you. Illusion magic on the other hand is typically considered narrow, though there is some debate about this. You can create and control visual and auditory Illusions. Now the reason there is debate around this one is that the limit of Illusion is based more on your imagination than anything else, but everyone who has it will have access to the exact same magic.” Cool so I might be able to create an entire fake person or maybe even an army.

“Can I try to do magic now?” She was done waiting,

“Sure, try to create some smoke.” She held her right hand out in front of her and focused on streaming the mana from her pool up her chest, through her shoulder, and down her arm. The burning energy came with it. As the mana went past her elbow pain started surging through her entire right arm and hand. She screamed out and stopped the mana from flowing. Her dad grabbed her,

“What happened? Are you alright?” The pain lessened but stayed in her arm and hand.

“I don’t know, I just tried to pull my mana into my hand but it started hurting really bad.” Her dad put her hand in his,

“Tell me how this feels.” His hand started feeling warm and tingly,

“It’s warm.”

“Ok, how about now,” Another jolt of extreme pain throughout her hand and arm, she yanked away,

“Ahhh, what are you doing?!” Nora yelled,

“I gave you a bit of my mana, are you ok?”

“Why?” She growled,

“To see if it would hurt you, I’m sorry but I think I know what’s going on now. Give me your other hand.”

“No, it’ll hurt again.”

“I promise I won’t hurt you ok.” Nora wasn’t sure she could trust that but held her left out to him, he put her hand in his. The warmth and tingle returned. Then the familiar burning energy washed over her left hand but with no pain. She immediately tried making smoke. It plumed out, thick and black. She started trying to control it but her dad pulled away. The smoke dissipated.

“There you have it. There’s something wrong with your right hand and arm.” He said, So she couldn’t use any mana through her right hand or arm. This fuckin sucks.

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“What do you think’s wrong with it?” Nora asked,

“Well if I had to guess, when you tried using magic and nearly killed yourself, you probably strained the mana paths in your right hand and arm.” That’s a thing? Fuck, I really need to be more careful with this stuff. “This is a problem.”

“Obviously.” She lined the word with sarcasm,

“You don’t understand, in a fight, mages enhance their entire body using mana. Making them stronger and faster but with this injury, you won’t be able to do that in your right hand or arm.” But… I’m right-handed. Fuck me! Why didn’t I just tell them when I first started doing magic. I could have avoided all of this.

“Great. Now I have to train to fight with my left hand.”

“It’s alright, I’ll help you get used to using your left to fight while I train you to use magic.”

“Ok, so what’s next?” She wanted to move on,

“Well, next, I want you to try to create an illusion in your left hand.” Ok, let’s just focus on what I can do instead of what I can’t.

“Alright.” Nora once again streamed her mana up her chest but this time through her left shoulder down the arm and focused it into her hand. She focused on forming the mana into a little sword but nothing happened. She instead focused on creating the noise of a bird, again nothing happened. “Come on.” She pooled as much mana as she could into her hand and tried to form it into a cellphone. Nothing. She released the mana and looked to her dad, “It’s not working.” She could feel herself getting more and more frustrated.

“That’s alright, you're not meant to do it on your first try. It’ll probably take you a while to learn Illusion magic but as long as you practice every day it’ll eventually come to you.”

“Let’s just move on to that body enhancement stuff you were talking about.” She wanted to learn something new. She wanted to be good at it.

“Alright when someone is fully trained they will enhance their entire body with mana but you don’t have enough mana to do that yet. So instead I want you to focus your mana into your left arm and hand.” She streamed as much mana as she could from her pool and focused it all on her left arm and hand.

“Ok.”

“Now focus mana into your eyes.” She streamed mana into her eyes “Now I want you to douse your entire left arm from skin to bone in your mana.” She spread the mana all throughout the muscles, bones, and skin. She could feel it covering her arm. It burned. “Now do the same with your eyes.” She doused her eyes in mana and started taking in far more visual information and she could see much further away, Awesome! “Now I want you to try to block my punch, ok?” Nora nodded.

His fist came flying at her chest, her arm moved at lightning speed easily deflecting the blow. Sweet! Nora smiled,

“How was that?” She asked excited, her dad smiled,

“That is the kind of skill I expect from my daughter.” Nora felt a twinge of pride at that praise.

“Can we keep going?” She asked,

“Of course as long as you still have mana.” Nora and her dad trained for the next hour. At the end of which, Nora felt exhausted and drained. They walked back into town and her dad led her into the market. He approached a store she’d never been to before.

“What’s this place?” She asked

“This place, is a store.” Nora groaned with a smile at the dad joke,

“I know it’s a store, what do they sell?”

“Why don’t you go in and look for yourself?”

“Alright, I will.” Nora wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge. She opened the door of the shop a cool breeze met her. There were only a few people inside. All of them had a wooden bowl in front of them filled with… ICE CREAM! Oh my god! Nora turned to her dad and hugged him tight, her tail wagging. He kneeled down and snuggled into her hug.

“I love you baby girl.” He said,

“I love you too dad.” Nora could hardly believe that ice cream existed in this world. Her dad pulled away,

“Let’s get a table, come on.” He grabbed her hand and led her to a corner table. An elven waitress approached,

“Hi, I’m Quinn, what kind of ice cream would you like today?” Her dad looked to her,

“We’ll have some chocolate please,” Nora said, She’d always loved chocolate.

“Would you like any cake with that?” Cake?! Holyshit this is amazing. Nora looked to her dad and nodded vigorously with a big smile on her face. He chuckled a little,

“We’ll both have a cupcake.”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a minute with your food!”

“So, what do you think of my surprise?”He asked,

“I love it, this is amazing!” He gave her a curious look,

“Do you even know what this stuff tastes like or what it is?” Oh right, She’d forgotten she shouldn’t know what ice cream was.

“Umm… Belle told me about it.” He nodded, seeming satisfied with the answer. That was close. A few minutes later the waitress returned with their food.

“Here you go.” She laid a wooden bowl of chocolate ice cream and a small plate with a cupcake in front of them both.

“Thank you very much.” Her dad said,

“Thank you!” Nora parroted, the waitress smiled,

“You’re very welcome!” She turned and walked over to another table with a little skip.

“Alright, you're gonna want to eat this slow or you’ll hurt yourself ok?” Nora nodded, “Go ahead.” She grabbed the wooden spoon and started digging in. It tasted like fudge, it was by far the best thing she’d eaten since coming to this world. She continued shoveling it in. It was better than ice cream from earth. Her head started hurting, Brain Freeze!, she grabbed it wincing. Her dad let out a laugh,

“I warned you not to do that.” She smiled, she’d never had a dad like this before, it was amazing and warm. She could see his tail wagging, same as hers. She’d never noticed people’s tails before but now she found them hard to ignore. It completely gave away what someone was thinking. She liked it.

They quickly finished their ice cream and went home. It was already dark when they got back. Her mom was sitting in the living room reading a book which she quickly discarded when they entered.

“How did the training go?” She asked,

“It went well.” He patted Nora’s head, “I think she’ll make a fine mage someday.” Nora smiled, her mom leaned down and rested her hand on Noras cheek

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing my little girl become an amazing mage.” Nora pulled her into a hug and yanked her father down to join them. They all cuddled in together.

“I love you so much.” She said tears welling up in her eyes, her dad and mom snuggled into her more,

“We love you too baby,” Her mom said, clearly on the verge of tears as well.

“We’ll always be here for you.” Her dad said softly. She couldn’t stop her smile or tears.

“I love you...” She whispered through the tears. Thank you so much. For being my parents.