Real Magic

Maizy woke up, full of energy, ready to run and jump and glide and explore! She was rearin' to go! Which, of course, meant that it was the middle of the night while Mom was asleep.

She discovered this fact after popping her head out of the pouch and noticing Mom's gentle, sleepy breaths. Mom was lying on her back, and Maizy didn't want to wake her, so she tried to get out of the pouch as gently and quietly as possible.

While very carefully pushing her way out of the pouch, Maizy paused for a moment when Mom suddenly stirred, then started sleep-talking. She thought she heard Mom quietly moan out the words "what," "no," and more "no." Lots of "no," actually.

Yeah, I don't like that guy either, Maizy thought to herself, knowing that Mom's sleep-talking likely had nothing at all to do with that total jerk of a god, WHAT. Probably. Maybe.

I wonder what other gods exist? Maizy thought as she descended the sleeping giant.  WHAT definitely said he was 'THE god' in charge of my reincarnation. He didn't say he WAS God.  She thought about it some more and remembered when he spoke his name. He said that was 'the language of the gods,' which implies there's probably a lot more than one. Enough that they needed to develop a language.

She reached the... floor? It was slightly squishy, really easy for her claws to dig into. It felt kinda nice, actually. She pressed them in and out a few times, and the feeling felt oddly familiar. She decided to sit up and look down—her eyes weren't quite as forward-facing as a human's—to get a closer look. It looked a bit like wood—if wood were made of lots of tiny, individual pieces of wood. Is this chipboard?  She thought, remembering the mildly-better-than-cardboard wood product commonly used on Earth to disappoint furniture buyers.  No, then it wouldn't be soft like this.

Then Maizy had a sudden realization. IT'S CORK! This is cork!

Nice digs, Mom!  She mentally approved of Mom's choice in flooring. Or maybe it wasn't a choice? Well, whatever, Maizy decided to focus on more important thoughts like, why is the floor curved upwards at the walls? Am I inside a tube?

She looked around and realized, Yes. I AM inside a tube. Mom sleeps in a tube?  She pondered.  A tube made out of cork.  Tubular.

The cork tube seemed long and wide enough that it could fit several Moms in here.  Maybe five or six?  She thought.

Before her lay the open end of the tube, so she crawled forward and poked her head out to see where she was.  It's the library, she thought.  This must be a back corner.  She could see the pile of scrolls she had crashed next to last time she was out of the pouch down below. She was up pretty high near the ceiling of the room and was very close to one of the rectangular boxes that emitted light. They had been turned off somehow.

She started searching back in her memories to see if she could remember the presence of the tube near the back of the library when she noticed a faint glowing light coming from somewhere behind her. It snapped her attention back to reality, and she turned around.

There was nothing there. Mom was still asleep, and as far as she could tell, nothing at all had changed. Or had it?

Maizy decided to play "spot the difference" with her memory to see if something had changed between the moments when she was descending Mom and when she was just standing here at the edge of the tube. As she focused her mind on that moment, she again noticed the glowing light coming from behind her.

Is that ME?  She thought.  Is my ass glowing or something?

She reached around with her hands to grab one of her tails and found that it wasn't so easy. Ooph! Well, this is frustrating, she thought before remembering, Wait—I have thumbs on my feet! I'll just...  She grabbed the cork wall with her left hand and left foot, then used her right foot to pull both tails towards her chest and immediately hugged them.  Oh, this is kinda nice, she thought.  It's like having a built-in body pillow! And I've got two! "Ki ki," she laughed quietly at herself, then, without thinking, started to groom one of her tails with her right foot.

She stopped herself.  Now isn't the time for that! I need to figure out this glowing situation.

Maizy started thinking about when she first noticed the glow and, sure enough, one of her tails started glowing the moment she tried to access that memory.

My right tail glows blue whenever I try to remember something‽ she thought, dumbfounded.  That's annoying! She suddenly became very irritated.  What did that damned god do to me‽

She decided to test it out. My name is... Maizy, she thought to herself. The tail didn't light up.

My 'emergence day' was yesterday.  Again, the tail didn't light up. Though, she thought she could see a very faint glow for the briefest of moments when she remembered the phrase, "emergence day."

Now for the real test, Maizy thought.  There were... 11, no, 13 scrolls in that pile yesterday, but there's only 12 right now.

As she was remembering—and counting—the number of scrolls in the pile yesterday, her tail definitely glowed with a faint blue light. It seemed to grow brighter when she "zoomed in" on her memories to count the scrolls.

She also noticed something else: It felt a bit like she was flexing a muscle. Not a tail muscle, no. A muscle in her mind.

So that's why I felt tired after going through my memories so extensively yesterday, she thought.  I guess I'll need to pace myself when remembering things.  She sighed, thinking that's a bit of a ridiculous situation.

Maybe it won't be as bad when I get older, she thought.  I AM kind of like a toddler right now, after all. I can always work out to build up my stamina!  She then imagined herself lying on her back, lifting tiny little weights with all four hands and feet simultaneously, and ki ki'd at the thought.

Maizy thought about her situation some more.  If my right tail glows when I access my memories, does that mean they're stored in my tail? Or perhaps my tail is just giving me something like an affinity for memory magic?

Ooh! Maybe my other tail does something too! Maizy mused.  Mom has that arrow-like pattern on her head... Maybe she's got an air tail? That'd be cool, Maizy thought.  I wonder if I have an arrow on my head too... Or maybe some other symbol?  She suddenly became desperate to find a mirror.

She looked around the room and spotted one: It was right next to the...  door?  It was a circular door with a great big wooden ring around it. All over the ring was a number of odd-looking symbols.

What the heck? How did I not notice this before?  Maizy suddenly felt a strong sense of excitement and wonder.  Oh my god! It looks like a star gate! My front door is a star gate!  Then she realized that it had a pretty boring brass knob and something that looked like a deadbolt. It was a perfect circle, painted red, with very fancy woodworking details all over its surface like it was carefully crafted by a master artisan.  Probably NOT a star gate then, she sighed internally in disappointment.

Maizy decided to go have a look at herself in that mirror, so she leapt out of the cork tube and—without thinking about it one bit—spread all four of her limbs out wide, attempting to glide as far as possible. She didn't get very far before smashing into the floor, but she felt like she glided at least a little bit.

I definitely need more gliding practice, she thought.  It's nice knowing I never have to worry about falling to death!  She gave herself a mental thumbs-up.

She made her way to the mirror next to the door. It was too high for her to see herself, so she climbed up the wall—she could look at her face, at least.  Wow, I just grabbed on to the wall and went right up! Maizy was impressed with herself.

She leaned over and got a close look at her face.  Definitely NOT a human face, Maizy thought, then made all sorts of faces at herself in the mirror, trying to understand the depths of her facial expressions.  I don't have anything at all on my forehead... It's just white fur. Is ALL my fur white? she wondered.

She wanted to look at her whole body, but this situation—clinging to the wall next to the mirror—wasn't cutting it.

She looked around for a ladder or chair or something, anything that she could stand on to get a better view in this mirror. There was nothing like that in the library.

Duh, I'm a creature that can easily climb up most things. Why would Mom have a ladder?  She suddenly felt silly looking for such a thing.

Maizy then had a sudden realization, This is a LIBRARY! I'll just pile up some books.  She backed down from the wall, went over to one of the bookshelves, and started tugging on one of the books.

Daaamn this book is stuck TIGHT! she thought as she struggled to pull it free. She couldn't make it budge—not even the smidgiest of smidges. She stopped herself before she felt like her claws were starting to tear at the binding.

Maizy looked around.  Maybe there's a book that isn't stuck so tight?  She spotted a shelf that wasn't completely full.  Surely if one whole side of a book is open to the air it will be easy to pull out.

She crawled over to that shelf and tried to pull the book free, but again, it was so tight she couldn't do it. She decided to take a different approach and started wedging one of her claws between the top of that book and the book next to it in an attempt to tilt the book out from between the shelf above and below. It was working!

It started with one claw, then two whole fingers, and the book began to lean to one side. Eventually it got past the point of stuck and promptly fell on its side, exploding outwards from the shelf.  It then fell to the floor with a loud, "thump!"

Maizy watched in amazement as the book quickly grew in size. It became bigger and bigger to the point where it was at least three—no, four—times bigger than she was.

Wow!  She exclaimed mentally, then puzzled out the tight book situation.  So the reason the books are so hard to remove is because they're constantly trying to expand themselves, but they can't because they're limited by the space in the shelf.

How do they shrink?  She wondered, when Mom suddenly leapt down from her cork sleeping tube with an angry expression.

"MAIZY DEBUGGER!" Mom shouted Maizy's full name—the multiversal language of moms everywhere that informed a child that they were in trouble. "What do you think you're doing‽" She blurted out as she hurriedly tucked something into the robe-like poncho she was wearing.

Maizy can leap from a tall perch without fear and won't even flinch when an enormous book suddenly explodes in size and slams into the floor right next to her. Such things don't faze her in the slightest. However, when Mom shouted her full name... she jumped, shuddered, and gasped all at the same time.

At that moment, Maizy felt fear.  Real fear. The heart-stopping, butterfly-inducing, fur-raising shock that every child everywhere feels when they are caught—by their mom—doing something they shouldn't. Not so dissimilar to the feeling of instant regret that husbands experience when their wives catch them in similar circumstances.

Maizy immediately started to lose control of her emotions. She can't remember much, but she knew she had lived at least one life already. A long time ago, she was an adult, and suddenly, all that wisdom poured into her consciousness like a kid attempting to drink from a firehose. Her thoughts quickly culminated into the perfect, singular course of action that she must take. The conclusive type of action that—surely—can only be understood by someone with a lifetime of experience:  She began to cry.

The tears flowed out of her eyes like water from the side of a leaky faucet. They dripped off her furry face and onto the floor.

Acceding to Maizy's wise course of action, Mom immediately sighed and deflated. She then moved to stand in front of Maizy—preparing to execute the official "pickup and pouch" maneuver that she'd practiced innumerable times with Maizy's older siblings. As difficult as it is for a mute little creature to communicate, Maizy knew precisely what to do next: She rubbed her eyes and—with Mom's full attention—pointed at the mirror.

"Oh!" Mom suddenly understood exactly what Maizy was trying to do. She had—in fact—performed this same type of action herself in the past. And gotten in trouble for it with her own mom—though it was in a much more mundane setting. And she was an adult. And it was only two seasons ago.  Hah! Like mother, like daughter, she laughed internally at that thought.

"You were trying to look in the mirror?" Mom asked in a sweet tone, and Maizy nodded. Mom then did something Maizy thought very strange:  Instead of picking up Maizy and holding her in front of the mirror or lowering it to the floor, Mom walked over to her desk, grabbed some fingerless leather gloves, and put them on.

Mom then grabbed a book from the shelves, effortlessly pulled it out, and placed it on the floor next to Maizy. Immediately after placing it down, the book began to grow in size—just like that other book that explosively popped itself out of the shelf. Though this book wasn't growing nearly as quickly. In fact, it was growing quite slowly.

Mom then touched the book with her left hand, and as she did so, the book grew very, very big in an instant. She then turned to Maizy, took off her right glove, and asked her, "Would you like to try?"

Maizy's eyes could not grow any wider in excitement as she nodded and reached for the glove.  THIS MUST BE MAGIC! Maizy thought in boundless wonder.

Maizy held the glove—it didn't look like anything special. It was made out of some kind of soft, shiny leather, and had a symbol on the back that looked like a downward-pointing arrowhead with a line over it. On the palm, Maizy could see a bit of plain wood that had been shaped into a small circle. It looked a bit like a lapel pin.

The glove was much too big, but Maizy put her hand in and held it in place with her other hand. Mom then gave her some instructions, "Touch the palm of the glove to the book and then try pushing some magic into it."

Push some magic into it? What does she mean? Maizy thought as she pressed the palm of the glove onto the book.  GO MAGIC GO! she thought, then, OUT OF MY HAND! but neither worked. She then tried to bring up the memory of her mom using the gloves, and before her tail began to glow, she remembered that feeling of magic flowing from somewhere inside herself into her brain. That feeling like she was flexing an intangible muscle.

She tried directing that feeling into her hand and it worked!  The book instantly shrank so small that the glove lost contact with it, and it disappeared from her view. Maizy sat up a bit so she could look for it, but it was gone!

Suddenly, Maizy felt bad.  Did I just destroy that book? Hopefully, it wasn't very expensive!  She thought she might get in trouble again and turned to look at Mom.

Mom was staring at the spot where the book had been, her eyes and mouth agape in shock. Then, she quickly grabbed the great big book Maizy had explosively removed from the shelf earlier and heaved it in front of her.

"Now try and shrink this one!" Mom said excitedly. "It's got a lot of pictures in it, so it doesn't shrink so easily."

Why does the amount of pictures matter?  Maizy wondered, then repeated the same action with the glove. The book shrunk down to the size of Maizy's hand.

Mom beamed with excitement and said, "WOW!" She then ran around in a circle a few times, as if she were chasing her own tail, and jumped up, shouting, "WOW WOW WOW!"

Did she just do a zoomie?  Maizy thought with a smile.  Because that definitely looked like a zoomie.

"Let me have that glove back for a moment," Mom said with a wide grin. Then she took the glove, put it on, and proceeded to retrieve and place a whole bunch of books down all around Maizy, which she then expanded to what Maizy assumed would be their normal size. From Maizy's perspective, all these books seemed enormous, but then again, she was very small.

"Let's shrink a lot of books! Shrink them down as tiny as you can!" she said and handed the shrinking glove back to Maizy.

Maizy was overjoyed to be practicing real magic, so she just smiled brightly and then, with an intense look on her face, leapt onto the first book, shrinking it to the point of disappearing.

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After practically disappearing a number of books—Mom kept them coming—Maizy leapt onto a book with a very fancy cover. It was super thick too: She could've climbed onto this one if she didn't make a concerted jump. She paused to look at it for a moment.

This book had what appeared to be an illustration of a white cow with a singular, corkscrew horn, standing in a field of... beans? It definitely wasn't grass, whatever that green stuff was supposed to be. Maizy thought that it must contain a lot of pictures because Mom had to heft it over to Maizy.

Mom then issued a challenge, "This book has given me so much trouble shrinking that I don't even bother anymore. If you can shrink it down small enough to fit on a shelf, I'll bake you some of my legendary cookies!"

Maizy nodded and gritted her teeth in a sinister smile. She was definitely feeling a bit fatigued from shrinking all those other books—some of which were almost done growing back to normal size—but this kind of challenge sounded right up her alley.  That stupid god DID promise to give me powerful magic!

Maizy then took a deep breath, mentally prepared herself, pressed the glove onto the book, and started sending magic into it.

The book began to shrink, but that was definitely something it did not want to do. Maizy wasn't going to just give up though, so she did her best to increase her magic output. It worked! The book was slowly getting smaller and smaller, but Maizy could feel the strain. That mental magic muscle was rapidly becoming fatigued—like trying to eke out one more pushup after a whole lot of them.

She reached her limit when the book was about the same size as her. Then she collapsed on top of it, her heart pounding.

Wow, that took a lot out of me! Maizy thought. Then she yawned.

Mom seemed to emit an aura of, "FINALLY!" as she walked over to Maizy and picked her up. "You did good, my little kaydee. Now you should rest." She moved Maizy toward her pouch, where she crawled right in.

What's a 'kaydee'?  Maizy thought. Then it suddenly dawned on her, Wait a sec: Did Mom just trick me into using up all my energy? Ooh, moms can be so devious!

Maizy couldn't see Mom's proud—and slightly sinister—smile as she hopped up into her tubular sleeping chamber and went back to sleep.