Wizard Merlin Thistlewood — Not THE Wizard Merlin, who has never been recorded as having any sort of last name — was the first wizard who attempted to actually categorize magic. He was reported to have eventually compartmentalized six hundred and sixty-six unique categories of magic and was still going strong before he disappeared and was presumed dead at the age of seventy-three. His legacy, the young wizard Kestrel Thistelwood was unsuited to the task of continuing his father’s learning, and so Wizard Merlin’s unique magic classification system was lost to the annals of time, and he was lost to a mere footnote on the bottom of page two hundred and forty-six of the Comprehensive Compendium of Wizarding History — eight book omnibus.

The next most successful attempt was made by Wizard Emanuel Mordechai Menovchinsky who broke Magic down into a mere two parts. Anima, and Mana.

Wizard Emanuel Mordechai Menovchinsky’s method is still the most widely used method as of the tenth edition of the Comprehensive Compendium of Wizarding History, he is referenced multiple times in all eight books, and he lived to a respectable age of seven hundred and two.

— Excerpt from Why Numbers Matter by Wizard Barnibus Jefferson Barnwinkle, Essay (never published)

* * *

There were seven fish which were big enough to eat. Seven. So Barnibus stood in the center of them, clapped his hand over his eye’s, spun around in a wobbly circle until he was good and dizzy and had absolutely no idea which fish were where, and then pointed at the ground at random.

His finger landed on a patch of grey-green moss growing between two gnarled roots of what would have looked like a pine tree, if the needles had been half as long. So, he did it again — three more times.

The fourth time his finger jabbed directly at a spiny fish with mottled, grey and orange coloration.

Barnibus nodded to himself in satisfaction, dutifully, if exhaustedly, bundled the fish into his Hat with all of the other non-suitable-to-eat fish and carried them all back to the river where he dumped them back in.

It wasn’t that there was something necessarily bad about the number seven, so much as momentous about the number 7. For one, it was odd and you always wanted to be careful around odd numbers. Moreover though, it was a prime, and if odd things tended to stack around odd numbers then primary things tended to group around primes — and that was all the justification needed for Barnibus.

If he had cared, Barnibus could have drawn from a wealth of other associative concepts. For instance the number of primary sins, or the six plus one days of the week, or lost in a desert for seventy years… and given some careful thought and some lengthy existential calculations there was a good chance that Barnibus might have discovered that there was nothing at all worrying about seven fish.

But Barnibus felt very strongly that far too many odd and momentous things had happened in one day as it was, and that there was little need to risk adding another one to the list just because he was greedy about his fish.

Barnibus gutted the fish quickly using a small kitchen knife he pulled from his robe. This was not strange. Wizards were always gutting or dissecting or harvesting materials for the odd potion or charm, and a squeamish wizard might as well be a skydiver with a fear of heights.

Out of force of habit he harvested the heart, the eyes and the fins, and stowed them each away in separate baggies he carried on himself for just such an occasion. And of course, as each fish wriggled its last, he withdrew the anima from its body as it died, and stowed it away up his sleeve for later use.

There wasn’t very much of it.

In very simple terms, Anima was essentially the spiritual essence of a living thing. It wasn’t really an energy as some apprentices thought of it, so much as the manifested, ephemeral summation of potential. And you could imagine that six fish swimming their way through a river, eating bugs and river detritus did not have much potential to impact much of anything. But everything had some, everything living at any rate, and it was a primary ingredient in spell craft.

Night had fallen and the cold was really starting to set in by the time, Barnibus, shivering in his sopping robes, and feeling like there was a hole where his stomach was, knelt down in front of the small pile of wood and dead leaves he managed to scrounge up. He rummaged in his robes briefly for a catalyst — some wood ash, or oohhh, the Warmth of a Roaring Fireplace in Winter would have been really nice — but his fingers were too numb to feel anything by this point. So instead, after casting about with little hope, he rubbed his hands together for a little warmth, flicked his fingers three times at the bundle of leaves and dried grass the same way you would flick water from your fingertips, and intoned through chattering teeth “U-Up flames. Up f-f-fire. Dance and play the night aw-away”.

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He heard a snort from his Hat as the majority of his newly acquired anima disappeared into a flame the size of his pinky which quickly started to shrink.

“N-No!”

He hunched over it blowing carefully and feeding it some bark shavings and leaves until it began to grow again and then began carefully building it using small sticks and tree branches until it was roaring. Barnibus stripped his robe off and the clothes he was wearing underneath and placed them as close as he dared by the fire for them to dry off. Then he went back to huddling and wishing dearly that he had some way of convincing the wind to keep off of his back for just a little while. Unfortunately, with the minuscule amount of anima he had left he was pretty certain he could not have convinced even a summer breeze to do so much as hesitate.

“You know,” whispered his Hat in a dangerously friendly tone. “I think… yes, I think if you had thought to collect some of the Crackling of Leaves Long Fallen and… maybe a little bit of the Heat from a Man’s Breath of which, you could supply… why, you might have been able to whip up a casting that used barely any anima at all. Hmm?”

Barnibus’s eye twitched.

“And just think. With all of that extra anima you saved, you might have been able to even use one of the incantations in this book” —

Something thudded onto Barnibus’s head from deep inside his hat, and he pulled out Household Spells for Dummies from underneath the brim.

— “To animate your robe just a little to act as a wind break” —

Barnibus sniffed, more wetly then he would have liked. “A-a little cold now, H-hat, is worth having a dry robe l-later,” he chattered, and reddened.

“Yeesss” The Hat said dryly. “Its not like you could have used all that extra anima you could have saved to dry out the robe…. Not like you spent a week stuffing it full of Aridity of the Desert, or baptizing it in motor oil to coax the slick into the weaving.” Hat huffed a laugh. “That robe practically has enough mana all by itself it might have done it for a polite request.”

“And it still —”

“YOU STAYED IN THE RIVER FOR SEVEN HOURS!” The hat rejoined almost loudly enough that Barnibus had to cover his ears. “And the desert wasn’t even that dry of a desert. Its not like you traveled to the Sahara like I suggested, if you recall.”

Barnibus stuffed the book back into the hat angrily and than pulled the brim down over his eyes. “Why do you hate me, Hat?” He muttered.

“Do you think it might be because —”

“To whom dost thou speak, Stranger?”

The voice which drifted over from beyond the tree line, landed upon his ears with the tinkling, crystalline beauty of a lonely mountain spring just barely touched with frost, and shoved a spike of frigid fear so hard up his spine that it brushed his amygdala.

“Flying F-Fishsticks!” And for the second time today, Barnibus found himself with air underneath his feet.

* * *

Wizards are always Wizards. Even when wearing nothing but mundane boxers and their hat. The hat was important. Without that, Barnibus would have really been naked.

Laughter rang out like tinkling bells and the figure sitting on a small stump that Barnibus was quite certain had not been there a moment ago rocked back and forth holding her knees in delight.

“Like a snow rabbit! I have ne’er seen a man hop so high. Thine legs must have been drawn from taut yew or elder-wood.” Her eyes trailed down Barnibus’s legs openly, and she propped her chin on her palm for a better vantage, beaming beatifically.

Barnibus cheeks turned red under his beard. And yet, Wizards are wizards.

Barnibus swept off his hat with a flourish, bowing low.“Why, hello there, my lady” — Barnibus allowed a carefully sized pause for her to substitute her name, and when she just beamed some more, he continued — “I regret to say, that you’ve caught me in quite the pickle! Please, forgive my most untoward display.”

Then Barnibus landed and he learned that bowing while Jumping in Fright produced very un-wizardly results.

Barnibus scrambled back to his feet quickly, blushing furiously and the figure howled with laughter and fell off of her stump.

She was beautiful, Barnibus saw as she emerged from behind the suspiciously placed stump. Impish, with a wild grin stretching across her pale cheeks and white hair that curled this way and that and barely tickled her shoulders. It shook with mirth as she picked herself up and Barnibus saw that she wore a type of silver-grey tunic that shimmered almost like silk, a woven belt carrying a very small belt knife and nothing on her feet.

“I am so very sorry My Lady” —

“Oh, not at all, not at all!” The lady replied with a wave of her hand. “I came across thine campsite as I stalked my quarry under bow an' o-er brook, an' I find I hath been quite repaid for my diversion.” She giggled and it tinkled like a bell in the night. “An' there is no need for thine honorifics, my good sir. I am merely a humble forerunner.” The lady mimed a flamboyant curtsy, then twirled with another laugh and bowed at the waist.

Barnibus found himself laughing as well so pure was the merriment. “Well. In that case you must call me Barnibus.” He responded. “And I welcome you to my camp, Ms. Forerunner, if you care to tarry a little longer! I have fresh caught fish, warmth and I dare say more entertainment to offer.”

The Forerunner twitched almost imperceptibly, but then she was beaming again so brightly that Barnibus was certain he had imagined it as she skipped over. “It would be my delight to share thine fire, Barnibus” — She rolled her ‘r’s and pursed her lips around his name as if tasting it “My quarry grows weary an' a small abide may well enliven the hunt. I bring nought but my company, humor an' good grace.” She eyed Barnibus beadily. “Will that suffice?"

“That all is more than sufficient!”

And as the nearly naked wizard ushered The Forerunner to the fire, his hat breathed very, very quietly in his ear.

“That… isn’t a human, Barnibus.”