Sensational

The Speaking Potion

As soon as he made it down the stairs, he went over to his work table. He reached inside his robe and took out the jar of cormorant blood, setting it on the table, then grabbed the potion book and began to read through the list of ingredients again.

She went to the table too and looked at the book, bouncing with excitement. Wormwood landed on her shoulder and also looked at the page. Of course, as a bird, he can't read, but he was still curious about what it was.

After Cedric had finished carefully reading over the page, he turned to Myra- and Wormwood since he was resting on her shoulder- a little amused at her bouncing excitement. "Just so you know, this is a very complicated potion," he told her, his tone growing a tad serious. "If we get it wrong, it might either do nothing, or it could have disastrous effects on Wormwood." With that, he turned back to the book to read the list of ingredients aloud. "As such, some of these ingredients may seem a little unusual to you. Of course, we need the cormorant blood. We'll also need dried hyacinth, absinthe nectar, cockle shells, an adder stone, and a human voice box."

She calmed down and stood still to listen to him explain to her. "A human voice box? Do you just have one of those lying around, because we left to get the one thing you were missing." She wasn't too concerned, she thought he probably had it, even though that was a bit disturbing.

"Well of course I do. It's rare, but it can be used in other potions," he explained nonchalantly as if it were a perfectly normal thing to have. Walking over to one side of the room where a bookcase stood embedded into the stone wall, Cedric pulled on a sconce that was mounted beside it. Doing so caused it to spin around, revealing a secret bookcase full of potion bottles. He bent down and pulled out a very long drawer at the bottom of it, full of an assortment of glass bottles and jars, and began to gather the necessary ingredients for the speaking potion.

"Great!" She smiled and pet Wormwood. "Before long you'll be able to talk to us and tell us what's on your mind! Won't that be cool??" She asked him. He was pretty nervous though, especially after hearing what could happen if it went wrong. So much for not having potions tested on him..

Once he had gathered all the ingredients they needed, Cedric kicked the drawer shut, his arms now full of bottles and jars, and the shelves of potions spun back around, showing a normal bookcase once more. "The potion will take about 8 hours to set though," he told Myra as he walked back over to the work table. He carefully put the potion ingredients down, making sure not to accidentally drop anything, and pulled some other instruments they would need out of the drawers in the desk. "Ready to begin?" he asked once he had everything set up.

"Mmhmm!" She was still super excited. Wormwood made a little upset sound and she pet him gently. "It's okay, I promise.." She told him. "Maybe we'll test it on something else before you. Don't worry." She told him and he seemed to calm down a bit, but he was still uneasy.

"If that's the case, we would need another animal to test it," he told her. "An inanimate object won't do since the potion will only work on living things, and neither one of us can test it since we can already speak." He looked at Wormwood perched on Myra's shoulder, noticing that, for an animal, he did look just a little bit worried. Perhaps he shouldn't haven't mentioned what could happen if the potion went wrong. At least not in front of the raven. "Like Princess Myra said, Wormy, you have nothing to worry about. I'm not going to bungle this, I can guarantee that!" he reassured his familiar.

Wormwood gave him a look that pretty much said, 'are you sure about that?' and flew back over to his perch. "Well yeah, we'd need something to test it on. Are there not plenty of animals around that we could use? I saw several in the castle following Sofia around," she laughed a little. "Like I don't understand why they say animals follow princesses like that. All I have is a mouse that follows me."