First, Atraeya began by snapping both ends of the stick to the length of her forearm, making sure to supply mana to each end so it wouldn't disrupt the process. After that, she pulled off the bark. Her fingers were too small and clumsy for this part, so it took a while, even with the help of a knife. Gramps kept glancing at her while doing his own projects, but both knew she needed to do this herself or it wouldn't be her wand.

Only once the stick was bare and the proper length could she begin to carve. She held one end of it, and made a notch a little past where her hand was. This would become the handle, made a little longer so she could grow into it. She took the handle side, and cut and sanded down the edge to a round stump so it wouldn't poke her or give her splinters.

Then, she worked her way up to handle, carving in diagonal lines that ran the length of the handle, then more diagonal lines running in the opposite direction. This pattern would make it easier to grip, so her wand wouldn't slip off when in use. There was no way she could get strips of leather.

Next, she carved out and sanded down a ring where the handle met the wand. This was to further stop her hand from slipping. By now gramps had long gone to bed, but she couldn't stop now.

Now the fun part. She had deeply thought what she wanted the length of her wand to look like. She could swirl it, or make it extra pointing, or carve grooves along the side. It didn't have to be the best wand, at least. It was her first wand after all. She would grow out of it sooner or later, and would know what kind of wand would be better.

She decided to start with a swirl. Except, not only did it take forever to figure out and carve, but her hands cramped and were just too tired to work anymore. One tiny mistake ended with her throwing the tools and her wand to the table in frustration. All around her on the table and the floor, and even her dress, were covered in wood shavings and dust. Hours must have passed since dinner had finished. She didn't want to, but it was time to sleep. She could finish it in the morning.

Atraeya cleaned up the mess she made, stripped down to her shift, and curled herself into her sleeping corner. Her hand still tightly clutching her half-carved wand. It was not yet complete, so even now there was a small risk of it failing should it not have access to the mana necessary.

A cloud CRACK of lightning, followed by a deep and long rumble startled her Atraeya awake. She jolted up from her sheets to hear heavy rain pelt against the roof. Streaks of rain snuck past the half broken window and on to a rag that was supposed to catch it. Then the smell of breakfast wafted into her nose. Just how long did she sleep?

A quick glance at her hand revealed her wand, thankfully, still in tact. She could feel it practically bursting with mana. It could safely be set down now, but would slowly leak until she finished carving it. Best to hurry with her food. She didn't want to know what would happen to her hard earned, half-finished wand if she left it like this any longer.

Breakfast was more porridge, and some stale bread. She barely tasted it as she wolfed it down. Doing dishes was possible now, at least. She could stick the handle in her mouth and hold it with her teeth, so her hands could be free. Then once that was done, she raced to put on her clothes from yesterday. At last she could finish her wand.

Looking at it with fresh eyes, Atraeya spotted how ugly it looked. The handle grooves were wobbly, the stopper was crooked, the two swirls she had managed was already veering off course, and the entire rest of the length wasn't straight at all. This was the worst wand she had ever seen. Granted, she had only seen one other wand by mistake. But anyone could see this one had shoddy workmanship.

It would just be better for her to stick to a simple wand, then. With a huff and a sigh, she tried her best to fix the swirls at the base, and even out the rest of the wand length. For simplicity's sake, she decided on a blunt end. She feared that if she went with a point end, she would somehow mess that up as well. It took a while, but by the time she finished it had mostly been fixed. Some parts were still uneven. And the handle was still a mess.

But it was her wand. She made it. All by herself.

Atraeya triumphantly raised her wand. Her face beamed a proud smile. The mana inside the wand had taken to it, and stabilized. For once, something had gone right. Now she can do so many more things. Like make charms and potions, as a proper witch should, and determine something's manaprint, which should help make more effective potions. All she had to do was use her wand to envelope the object with her mana, and it somehow was supposed to come to her what properties of mana the object had.

She rushed to the cupboard, ignoring gramps' curious look, and pulled out the first food she could grab. A tomato. She gripped it in one hand, and carefully pointed her want at it from the other hand. Nothing happened for a while. Did she need to do something? She focused on the mana in the wand, and bade it to envelope the tomato. "Come on! Do something already!"

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Then she focused on the tomato, instead of her mana, and felt the difference. It had a greater Luminosity, a low Soul, a high Body, and very little Mind. She couldn't describe how she knew. It was like it popped up in her brain somehow. It was weird. But overall, the manaprint of this specific tomato mean that it was great as food ingredient, not so much as a potion ingredient.

Another option that was now available to her was imbuing objects with a will. Well, technically anyone could do it, but it took forever to do, and tons of time and mana to replenish when it ran out. So most didn't bother. But a witch imbuing a will would last for a lifetime. Or, should, if she does it right. In her excitement at her new found freedom, she decided to do so right now.

Atraeya dug around in the closet until she found the broom. A regular ol' broom, dusty on the bottom, and the handle a bit worn in for years of use. She went and placed it on the table. Gramps glanced up from his own work, but said nothing. Like the tomato, she grabbed the broom with one hand, and pointed her wand towards it with the other hand. It had no magic in it, not even a trace of a previous mana, which was perfect. If it did she would have needed to throw out the old magic, which would have extended the time needed to complete this task considerably. Especially so, since she had no idea how to toss out old mana.

She knew this process was going to take multiple hours, so she made herself comfortable in the chair. When she was ready, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She began to will the broom to sweep. Sweep, sweep, sweep. She kept thinking such thoughts all while feeling her mana flow through her wand and into the broom.

Minutes passed into hours. The storm waned off and on all day. Gramps rustled around the house, doing various chores and commissions. Nobody came knocking, or disturbed her, not even gramps. At some point it looked like he wanted to use the broom but gave up.

Atraeya focused her all into getting this broom to sweep all on its own. Her wand arm had ached for a while now, and she could feel herself nearly empty of mana, but she couldn't stop now. A general rule of thumb for all magic was that once something had been started, it cannot be stopped in the middle or the witch would have to start all over again. She could feel like she was on the edge of a breakthrough. Just what did she need to do to finish this off?

The broom was filled with mana, that much she was certain of. She could tell it had the command of "sweep," but how would she know it could execute the action? Would it continuously sweep until it ran out of mana, even if there was no dirt? That would be a waste.

As she was thinking of a condition that would allow the broom to only sweep when there was dirt, it glowed ever so slightly momentarily. After that, it wouldn't accept any more mana. Had she done it? Atraeya carefully set the broom on the ground, as if she were about to sweep, and slowly let go. After a moment, the broom began to move on its own! It had actually begun to sweep!

"Yes! I did it!" Atraeya shouted. She turned to gramps, whose eyes were glued to the broom. After a moment, he gave a nod, clearly impressed. One less task for the both of them. If she could continue delegating the menial household chores to mana, she could prove to him and other folks around the town that she was not a danger to them. It's going to be great.

Her stomach rumbled a bit. Even though she didn't move all that much today, she was still tired and hungry. It must have been from expending so much money. Gramps must have heard her stomach. His attention turned towards the windows. It was still heavily raining, but it was much darker than before. Time really flew by. "It just about time for dinner," he said, and began to put away his tools. "Atraeya would you like to help?"

She nodded. "I'd love to." Now that she had her wand, she was going to look for all the was she could improve her daily life. Could she imbue a will into a spoon to constantly stir a pot? She could also make a cleaning potion so they can cook with cleaner water, and making doing the dishes easier. She glanced around the house as she was preparing the food. The fireplace would have to be manually fixed, but after that she could make a protection charm for it so it wouldn't be destroyed so easily.

"Watch your fingers," Gramps interrupted.

She had grabbed a knife and had been mindlessly cutting. Her fingers were dangerously close to such a sharp object and had been stopped just in time. Atraeya sighed in relief. She didn't have any potions of healing either, so that would have been a disaster if she had actually cut her fingers. She'll have to stock up on those as soon as she could. "Right. I'll focus now."

They continued to make dinner in silence. And eat in silence. And clean up in silence. Once everything was done, she pulled out the book she had taken from the witch's hut. Atraeya opened it to once again be overwhelmed at the sight of so many words jam packed in the pages. If all of these pages were as filled as the ones in the beginning were, then it must have plenty of recipes.

She was aimlessly paging through the thick book when she happened upon the same image from yesterday. Two flowers, one with the petals and the same one without. Only now she knew it was a poppy flower. It was labeled in the bottom. Two words. Was that how one spelled poppy flower? Probably. She made a mental note about it and continued onwards.

A few pages later, and the next image she saw was a well, with a potion being poured in it. This could have been the word for well, since it was only one word. Atraeya nodded to herself as if it all made sense. This could be how she can learn to read. If she was correct, of course.

She quickly went through the rest of the book to see what other pictures were labeled. A baby. Worms. A deer. Fish scales. In fact, there were quite the variety of animals in the book. So many that she had begun to wonder whether she had grabbed a bestiary instead of a grimoire.

At the end of the book she came to a few blank pages. If she had some ink and a quill, she wanted to write down all the letters that she knew of. But since no one knew how to read, no one knew how to write, so no one here would have owned one. Except the lord. The witch too, but their ink might have dried up by now, like the rest of the items on their shelves.

Atraeya sighed, and decided to simply commit the whole words to memory. Maybe one day she'll be able to read the entire book.