NaZooverse - Book 1: The Risen Curtain

Chapter 16 - The Interview: Magecraft & Magic

There is something cheap about magic that works just because it is magic.

~Richard Doekins

*****

Zootopia had stopped, as it now looked at the interview.

Mammals of the city now were stopping and focusing their attention in each screen that they could find to see what the ZNN was showing, as every screen available was now changing to that channel.

Well, most of them.

A teenage leopard just busted through the door, looking around as he tossed his backpack to the rack and nearly busted into the living room.

"Is it on!? They are still talking!? Did I lost anything?"

The leopards in the living room just looked at him, as the two adults and two girl cubs stared back at him, none of them saying a word.

"So... how was school?" The adult female asked, and the teenager insisted:

"So, what have they said!?" He spoke in an urgent tone. "It was something important!?"

"Oh, it was!" One of the girl cubs answered. "Princess Celestina just gave a speech to Glimmering Aurora."

"What?" The leopard said, and looked at the television.

"You're watching Our Mini Ostriches!?"

"Yeah, it's the new movie!" The other girl cub said.

"Your sisters wanted to watch it for a while". The other adult said. "So, we decided to rent and watch it today."

"And you guys are watching it in place of the interview!?" The teenager said in exasperation. This caused the adults to look at him.

"Interview? What interview?"

"Seriously!?" The teenager said, looking at them as if they had five heads each. "You don't know about the interview!? In what planet do you guys live!?"

"Okay, what is with the attitude, young mammal?" One of the adults said, not losing her patience. However, the teenage seemed to ignore them, and he just reached out for the remote.

"Look, you guys can watch this later! We need to put in the ZNN!" The teenager said, quickly changing the channel, causing protests from the two girls. "They are showing an interview with a mage! A real mage!"

Soon, the television was now in the ZNN, and they were right in time to see the interview.

"No one says a word!" The teenager said as he sat on the ground in front of the television, and the family just remained frozen in place as they now saw the interview that they had previously been unaware of...

"It is not magic, Ms. Vupen. It is magecraft. It is not the same..." The ferret said to the vixen.

*****

"... You can't just go calling magecraft magic, just like you can't refer to magic as mere magecraft." Zillah said, and it seemed that she was explaining something really important to the reporter. Vicky took it high in consideration before making her next commentary.

"Right, I'm sorry." She said, and Zillah looked back at her, sighing.

"Is okay. You had no way of knowing." She explained to the vixen. "Is just that the difference is very important. Every mage worth their magecraft knows it."

"Yeah, but the non-mages like me are not familiar with it." Vicky said, noting an obvious fact. "So, would you mind explaining?" She asked, and she hoped that the answer would be yes. And of course it was, for Zillah had already decided to explain what she could in that interview, and this was among the things that she actually could explain.