signingbooks Episode Two Hundred and Twenty-Six: Me?
Episode Two Hundred and Twenty-Six: Me?
“Me?”“Yes. Watch what I’m doing, feel it…” he said, as he padded to the far end. A normal-looking sort of wand made completely out of a single type of wood without any decoration or carvings sat in front of him.
I centered myself, and tried to reach out to the magic in the wand that he was paying attention to. Indigo said the magic felt wonky, and I tried to find that. Instead, all I could sense was the magic itself. Warm, and surrounding the wooden wand.
A wave of green magic pulsed over it as he touched the tip with his nose. It cut off just as quickly as it arrived, but left the smell of walking through a forest.
“Ohhh,” whispered Indigo, leaning closer. “Fancy.”
The magic surrounding it didn’t feel any different to me.
“Did you catch what I did?” The Cat asked.
I shook my head no. “Let me touch the next one first,” I said.
The next wand was completely white, with a spiral carved up the entire thing, and about the size of my forearm. I picked it up and tried to sense the magic surrounding it.
This time, I picked up how the magic traveled along the spiral, but there was a place in the carving that wasn’t as deep as the others. The magic couldn’t flow as neatly.
I tapped the spot. “There’s something there that’s not right.”
“Good,” said the Cat, with a nod. “We need to smooth it out.”
“How do you do that with your magic?” I asked, trying to think about how I’d fix it with stone or fate magic.
“The first had a small crack near the tip, and I asked the wood to fix the crack,” he said, without even looking at me. “My magic makes it easy to deal with certain types of materials, wood being one of them.”
That wasn’t helpful.
“What about you?” I asked, looking at Indigo, who sniffed at the one I held.
“I’d start again, from scratch. My magic isn’t good for that,” she said, as she backed away. “Class time!”
Before I could say anything, she leaped to the air and took off up to the living room.
“Thanks,” I mumbled under my breath. I rolled my eyes but focused on the wand. “I’ll try. You can always fix it if it doesn’t work.”
I pulled at the magic in my core, using both my fate magic and stone magic. I nudged it through my hands to the wand, asking for it to smooth out the pathway of the magic inside the wand. Golden light shimmered as it rippled down the spiral, then stopped.
The taste of sand filled my mouth for a second, then disappeared.
“That’s one way to do it, I guess,” said the Cat. He touched it, then pulled away with a nod. “You used sand to grind the spot down to even it out.”
“My mouth tastes like it,” I said with a frown. I set the wand down and took a few sips of my latte. It helped a little.
“This one isn’t something you can fix,” he said, moving to the next one with a shake of his head. “The core is cracked, I’ll fix it.”
“Let me…” I didn’t get a chance to touch the magic before the green washed over it, like the Cat hadn’t heard me.
The wand with the crystals in it drew my attention again, and I picked it up while he worked on the one with the cracked core.
It hummed in my hands, making me smile as my bracelet also hummed.
The Cat froze, before turning to stare at me.
“I like this one, it feels friendly,” I said, before trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Nothing came back to me, and as soon as I touched it with my stone magic, each of the crystals pulsed twice.
“I think it likes me,” I said with a chuckle.
“Well, it's yours now,” he said, turning back to the others and focusing on the next two he’d skipped.
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I admired the wand, and tried to figure out what’d I use it for. It felt like my bracelet, but it contained different stones, and the inside of the wood felt like stone as well.
By the time I turned to ask him, green had washed over the last three.
“That’s done,” he said with a nod.
“I could have helped.”
He shook his head. “Your magic is all tangled up with that wand right now. You’d need to put that away, and I bet you don’t want to.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I opened my mouth, but shut it, unable to let it go. I set the wand on the counter, but after a moment I grabbed it again. Finally, I shoved it into my magical fanny pack, and it vanished from sight. Before I removed my hand, I sent the thoughts to it that we’d practice later.
“We still have a customer coming in that we need to sell one of these wands to, right?” I asked.
“Most of them, actually,” he said, turning to the door.
“A bulk order?”
“They run a wand shop, and will find their way to those who need them.” The Cat stretched out, then sat back in his spot near the counter. “Are you ready?”
“Sure…” I didn’t have anything else to do, even though I wanted to try a few things with my new wand.
The shop didn’t do a thing and remained in its current state. The door unlocked, but that was all.
The Cat huffed. “Sometimes he takes his time.”
“You’ve worked with him before, I take it?” I said with a smirk.
The Cat didn’t answer, but he glared at the door, like someone forgot to give him a treat.
I sipped on my drink and tried to remember all of the things currently on my to-do list, since I’d just added the parenting book for dragons, and figuring out what my new wand could be used for. I was pretty sure I needed to see if my brother was back from his last minute trip, too.
There wasn’t anything to do with Indigo’s schooling, unless I’d forgotten something.
The door chimed open as a three foot tall lizard stepped inside. Big green eyes, scales that shimmered, and a long tail sweeping out from under a robe behind him made an imposing sight. A messenger bag rested over one shoulder, all in a dark brown leather.
“Ah, you have more inventory.” He scurried closer to the counter, and I shivered.
He moved much faster than I’d anticipated, and snagged out a pair of glasses that he somehow placed over his head. His tongue stuck out from one side of his mouth.
“Welcome to the shop,” I managed to get out.
“This is a great selection,” he said with a nod. “Cleaned up by you all, but still good quality. I bet they’ll match with some of my human customers pretty easily.”
“Humans?” The question slipped out before I could help it.
“Oh, yes,” he said, turning to face me.
Those giant eyes. Did. Not. Blink.
“Wands and magic usually respond better to those who share characteristics with the type of magic inside them. Say a stone user created wands, other stones users would have an easier time of using them to increase their magic. Makes sense right?” He nodded at me. “That isn’t to say someone else cannot use them, just that it’s easier.”
“He likes to talk,” warned the Cat, as he laid down on his front paws.
“There is an entire field of study about how different folks can use different magical objects, though the most interesting questions to me are the ones that make little sense. Like, some folks can use certain objects that they have no affinity for at all.” He shook his head still not blinking. “It makes little sense, especially since there are documented cases of non-magical folks able to use magical items.”
“Sounds like something you’ve done a deep dive in,” I said, trying to figure out a way to stop the conversation. He closed his mouth for a second and I kept going. “So, you want all of these?”
The Cat nodded.
The lizard nodded as well. “Yes, please. I’ll add them to the collection in my cart. It’s parked inside if you want to take a look. I have plenty of other objects as well.”
“Tell him I want the yarn this time,” said the Cat.
“Yarn?” I asked out of curiosity, trying to not get too distracted.
“Really?” said the lizard. “I knew he’d want something like that.”
“That’s the price,” I added, looking at the Cat and moving closer to the register to double check. The screen stated as much.
“One second, I don’t carry it on me. I’ll need to open the cart.”
The table behind him vanished into the floor, along with the runner. Then the floor plan grew bigger, somehow. I tried not to watch as it made my eyes ache.
He didn’t notice.
“Is that space big enough?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder and his eyes went wide. “Oh, yes.”
Then, he pulled a small object off a leather string tucked under his robe. He tossed it into the air.
With a pop, an old fashion cart with a pull bar in the front and four wheels appeared. A curved cloth tent covered the top. He scrambled into the opening, leaving only his tail sticking out.
Then, three large balls of yarn were tossed out. I caught one, and the other two went flying before the Cat batted at them, making them both land on the counter.
The lizard crawled back out, then the cart shrunk back into a small object.
“There we go,” he said as he finally blinked his eyes. “All mine now…”
“Yep.”
He popped open his messenger bag and pulled out a leather roll. Inside, loops lined the cloth, along with a fuzzy surface. He slid the wands in one by one and then rolled the leather up before putting it back into his bag.
“There we go,” he said with a nod. “Oh, wait, I was going to show you the merchandise I have.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a wave. “Work comes first.”
“Work is very important, especially when you work at a place like this.” He waved and scurried to the door, his tail sweeping over the floor behind him. “Good luck, Threadfinder!”
The door closed behind him with a snap.
“Threadfinder?”