Chapter 3: The fabulous art of magic

It has been two months since I awoke in this world. I was slowly getting used to my life here; I have a close relationship with my ‘new’ mom, a friend, and my general understanding of the Fae’s language has improved a lot. Thanks to that, I’ve been able to have small talks. Strangely, I started to enjoy making small talk with people. I guess dying would change just about anyone.

I was currently flying around. Fae were the type to take their time and walk for 2 hours instead of flying for 5 minutes. I loved flying; it came rather naturally, and I learned how to fly in less than a week. I had made a friend, Sélène, who was just a bit older than me.

She was currently yelling, “LETS RACE, FIRST TO THE FLOWER WIN.”

Most of the time, she was rather childish but adorable; she was the first Fae after my mom that I had seen. She was the Fae who talked to me the most and was always cheerful.

I got a smile and started to fly in a straight line to the “flower”. It was the name given to the flower in which I was born. I had learned from my mom that every Fae was born in this flower. Fae had no ‘parents’ but a ‘tutor’ who was somehow linked to them; in fact, it was just like a parent, you just had only one of them.

Apparently, Fae couldn’t die of old age, but they were sages; at a certain point in time, when they thought they had lived long enough, they could just choose to die. They had no fear of death, and it was very rare for a Fae not to pass away in this manner, since they were secluded in their forest without any predators or danger.

Once a Fae died, another one was born from a flower a week later. It was a significant event, and thousands of Fae would gather around the flower to witness the birth of another member of their kind.

As for the role of tutors among the Fae, it was a mysterious process. Tutors were not chosen through conventional means; instead, it was more instinctual, something in the innermost of your being. Well, that was as far as I was explained, at least.

I was in the middle of my race with Sélène, we were flying around the city, always trying to be faster, and laughter filled my heart.

“I SAID NO RACE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY!” Mom's voice rang with authority.

My mom had already been kind enough to allow Sélène and me to fly around the city, but it was frowned upon by other Fae. In fact, Sélène's mom faced the same issue; both Sélène and I were frequently scolded for flying around.

I resigned and just stopped racing; Sélène did the same. We exchanged a knowing look; both of us were aware that we would be scolded. We each went our way, and I headed over to Mom, who was standing in front of our house.

As expected, I received a scolding when we entered the house. It was already dinnertime; Fae didn't need to eat because we were magical beings. I guess this question of “how do we survive without eating” can be answered simply by “Shut up, it’s magic”.

As usual, my mom retrieved a dish from the 'hole'. I had never eaten the same dish twice; I had no idea how many dishes she knew.

I have learned that the ‘hole’ was ‘backpack’ magic; that was the name that was given to it, and its capacity to uphold is based on your magic.

Magic was used as a tool by almost every Fae. After seeing it many times, I made an attempt at feeling it and using it, but it did not go well. I got a stern scolding from my mom because of it. However, I learned that I would be taught magic along with other things once I was five years old. It felt strange to regress to childhood, and I wasn't even one year old, despite having the body of a teenager.

Five years was definitely too long to wait. I was eager to learn more about magic, but if you want to use magic before you’re five, you need a teacher. Getting a teacher wasn’t as easy as it might sound. Only a few people were considered ‘magic masters’ in the Fae land, and they were all eccentric hermits.

As frustrating as it was, I had no good solution to the problem at this moment. I finished my dish, and mom made it disappear. Only to replace it with another dish and place it in front of me…

“You can’t think straight on an empty stomach,” is what she was saying. Nonsense; I had no sense of hunger and I never felt full, and she had explained to me that we had no need to eat. Either way, Mom was all too happy to see me eat for me to stop eating before she stopped bringing out new dishes.

After an unending number of dishes, Mom was finally giving me dessert, it was the same cake that she had given me the day I woke up, and damn. It was delicious.

She sighed and looked at me, saying, “I know you and Sélène want to have fun with magic and fly around, but you just need to wait a few more years, and then you will be able to be taught at a school.”

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They have a school system, but since newborn Fae were rare, it was just some teacher with uneducated Fae in a rather wide age range. “I know, mom, but flying can’t hurt people, right? I’m just having fun…”

She had a displeased look. “Last time you had fun with something, it was magic; do I need to remind you how it ended ?”. Eh, she was right; I had screwed up with magic on my very first try.

I gave up arguing with Mom and just went to bed and let myself fall on the soft mattress. I really, really wanted to learn magic. Was there no way for me to try magic ? With my inexperience, I could hurt someone if I wasn’t careful, and other Fae could sense magic being used near them.

It was decided that I would wait for my mom to fall asleep before going deeper into the forest. We were currently in the “Fae realm,” a world made out of magic separated from the 'real' world, where human land was.

I had been curious about human land more than once, but my mom had told me that the outside world was really dangerous, especially to Fae. I still wanted to see it, but it wasn’t wise to go there right now when I know close to nothing about everything.

There was only one Fae city, and the rest of the Fae had no animals, creatures, or anything other than trees; it was safe. I could go deeper in the forest to try magic.

I waited half an hour before leaving the house. Fae had no problems and lived in a small land of paradise. They of course sleep easily; I was a bit jealous of that because, as a student at the university, I of course had a hard time getting a good night's sleep.

Anyway, with careful steps, I’ve left the house. Once on the outside bridge, to be sneaky, I have chosen not to walk and instead fly close to the tree but under the bridge to not be seen. Actually, at night, there were close to no Fae awake; Fae didn’t need sleep, but they still did it. I guess it's to stay saner ?

I easily left the village without meeting any other Fae and went into the forest. It was denser in vegetation since no one was taking care when handling it, so it was a bit harder to fly. It took me some time, but I found a small circle with no trees and less vegetation. Not only that, but something else caught my attention.

There was a small hut on the side of the circle; vines were starting to grow on it, and some planks were missing. I decided to go take a look at it. Once in front of it, I grabbed the vines blocking the door, removed them, and took a look inside.

It seemed like a room; it had a bed, a shelf with some books, and some herbs. Out of curiosity, I took a book, and the moment my finger touched the cover, it turned to dust. “Just how old is this place to have books turning to dust ?”.

It was old enough to trust the fact that no one would come here, and the moment I had this thought, I knew I had jinxed it. A crack echoed, and I looked behind me; it was Sélène trying to be sneaky…

She had this ‘oops’ face. "What are you doing here” I asked her, and she looked at me with an outraged face and said, “Shouldn’t that be my line”. She had a point, and yeah, I couldn’t really deny that.

“Were you following me?” I asked, and even without asking, I knew it to be true.

“Well, you’re the one suspiciously going out at night, not even just taking a walk around the city but going deep inside the woods where no one goes.” She rebutted, Sélène was definitely curious about what I was doing here; there was no point in hiding it; I knew she would follow me every night just to find out.

“I was looking for a place with no one to try out magic; are you going to prevent me from doing so?” I knew she wouldn’t go around telling mom or other Fae what I was doing; we were always following each other as fellow troublemakers.

“You're really obsessed with magic; don't you remember that you almost hurt someone last time?” What a low blow to use this story to win the argument.

“That’s why I am far in the forest; now, if you allow me to, I am gonna try magic.” I said this while leaving the hut. I sat down on a stone closer to the center of the circle and looked at where Sélène was.

She sat on the herb a bit behind, in a position close to one, like a meditating Hindu priest. “What, you thought I would just sit here and not try magic on my side as well?”. It cracked a smile on my face, and I got back to minding my stuff and closed my eyes.

The first time I tried magic was in the middle of the city, at the central place at the base of the staircase tree… Thinking about it, I really am an idiot for doing it in the middle of the city, but I was too happy to know that I could do the magic that I just tried on the spot.

Even if the result was, to say the least, not conclusive. I had learned that Fae had their very beings made of magic and used their bodies to channel the mana. Depending on the caster's state of mind, the properties of the magic could change. That’s why most people used magic that matched their character, but most of the time, I had a good hold on my feelings and could probably change its properties myself."

Since my very body was made out of magic and channeling it through it was as easy as breathing, I focused and tried to summon magic, but not too much; better be careful knowing my last attempt. I opened my eyes, and a small ball of water was flying just above it.

YES!!! I could do magic! Even if it wasn’t sky-breaking magic, I was feeling extremely happy to be able to handle magic at least a bit. Suddenly, the small ball of water splashed on my pants. I had lost focus for just a second, and there was no more of my magic restraining it. It could be dangerous with fire or some other sort of magic if not handled strictly.

I looked at Sélène; she was focused on her hands, but I didn’t feel like any magic was moving around her. I preferred observing her sometimes between two tests; if she lost control of it, we could both end up hurt.

And so I continued my test until the rays of the sun started to be seen between two leaves. It was hard to really see the sun in the middle of the forest, but we could guess it was already dawn. I got up, and Sélène heard me and did the same. During the night, she hadn’t made much progress; her magic was being channeled, but she couldn’t form anything with it. I didn’t know enough about magic to know if I was good, if she was bad, or if something in our magic was fundamentally different.

We got back to the city and agreed to make it our secret routine to go deep in the forest at night to test magic. We each went to our respective houses and behaved like every other day.