All Shades of Magic

A Teaching Journey

Light filtered in dimly through the leaves. I tried to sit up and found the same splitting headache from the last few times I had used too much magic. I really should've expected it, but I seem to forget every time.

I just laid in the leaves for a while and waited. Finally I sat up. No dizziness.

I needed some food. Even after my snooze I felt exhausted.

All of yesterday's events ran through my head, the temple, the columns, the murals, the three masked people, their voices rang through my head still. Something about what they said still bothered me. Not the society, which I needed to know more about, not the word tone-mixing or robotic glitches, it was something else.

And then, just as I was about to walk around a bit to search for berries, it hit me.

They called me their queen.

I wasn't the queen, I was the princess, we don't have a queen. Our kingdom isn't supposed to have a queen. Not yet. Not until...

Not until my dad dies.

I stopped thinking about it, before I started over-thinking, and peeked around for berries or edible leaves. Maybe some fruit trees. Anything. I needed to find some food so I could start putting my plan into action.

I wasn't walking all the way back to the kingdoms. War was happening. I needed to be faster than that.

So I was finally going to try out the teleportation spell.

It was possibly the most deadly, dangerous spell to people who hadn't cast it before if they tried it on themselves, or anyone else. They could end up being teleported without their insides, or heads, maybe without their brains. Or their joints would be twisted, memories wiped.

It could be messy.

Hours could be wasted trying to learn it, and they will be. Because I need to get home and I had never even attempted this spell before. I was always afraid of things turning out poorly. But I had no choice. Besides, I didn't have to perform it on me. Yet.

"I can start with food," I said to myself.

So I started with food. I thought about chokeberries first, but decided if i teleported some yucky chokeberries i might disappoint myself. No crabapples, too soon to be reminded of Kimi. Blueberries would be good though. Yeah, blueberries.

"Ianuae," I mumbled, thinking of blueberries. A few mashed up spoiled ones appeared. I decided it wasn't bad for a first attempt. Until they disappeared into muck in the ground. Dam.

Time to spend a few hours on this i guess.

**sorry for the short chapter. I'll write more soon!**