I woke up on the couch where I'd passed out last night after the tramatic box expirience. I had a bedroom set up, but foor some reason I'd decided to sleep out here. Judgement calls were not my forte late at night.
Drowsily I groped the floor in search of my phone, wanting to know the time. After a few second, I found it and read the clock. It was six fifteen. School started at eight. As I sat up and rubbed my eyes, I was grateful I remembered to change into something more comfortable than that dress. Hunger gnawed at my stomach. I decided on brushing my teeth to get rid of my morning breath and change into a suitable first-day-of-school outfit.
Silently reviewing my wardrobe in my mind, I considered what I might wear today. Oh a whim, I decided I'd wear a sweater today. Grabbing my brush and some toothpaste, I went to work on brushing my teeth. Soon, I was done and I rinsed out my mouth. I avoided looking in the mirror, sure I had massive bags under my eyes. Oh well.
I walked into my closet, which was fairly large. Judging by the size of the house, I got the idea that Grandma wasn't exactly too bad off. Luckily for me. I had a lot of clothes. I settled on dark blue jeans and a emerald tank top under a thin white knit sweater, dressing it up with cognac brown leather boots and a matching leather jacket. A dark blue beanie and the Mocking jay necklace I'd gotten for my sixteenth birthday finished it off.
As I walked back to the couch intending to retrieve my phone, I gracefully tripped over one of the boxes I hadn't opened last night. Somehow the the cardboard lid managed to fly off and everything spilled out. I groaned, kneeling to put everything up.
As I began to pick things up, an old looking bound by black leather caught my eye. There was a clasp on the side that looked like it could be made of gold. Or at least, plated gold. I'd never seen it before. I sniffed it, being a sucker for that old paper smell. Well, it smelt old. It looked ancient. It couldn't have been any less than two hundred years old. It was dusty and I couldn't make out the title. I wiped it off with the sleeve of my jacket, and characters that weren't from any language I knew and the image of a majestic dragon were revealed.
Then something strange happened.
The little characters were made of intersecting lines that alternated between wide and delicate strokes that formed peculiar knots. They were clearly spaced apart, like letters of a long dead language. As I stared at the symbols, they- blurred before my eyes. The intricate symbols became English letters as I watched. I blinked. The foreign characters weren't there anymore. They had changed. I dropped the book loudly.
I backed away for a second, blinking and questioning my sanity just a bit. Did I hallucinate that? I breathed heavily for a few seconds. Eventually, curiosity outweighed my fear. Hesitantly, I picked it back up. "The Mage's Practical Guide to Understanding The Lore" it read. Minutes ago it had not said that. Or I hadn't been able to read that. The characters had changed. I swore it. Either way, it had undoubtedly piqued my interest.
What the hell was a Mage? What was this strange book that in parents' things? How did they find it? What was in it? I stood up, forgetting about the other things I had knocked over. I took the odd tome back to my room, deciding that since I was already ready for school I had time to study it. I sat back on my bed, opening it to the first page carefully, as to not damage the pages. They weren't as fragile as I thought they would be, but I still wanted to be careful.
The first page had more of the intricate knots that had originally appeared. This time they were smaller than the book's title. As I concentrated on them, they transformed to English before my eyes. How was that possible? I shook my head. I'd finally lost it. This was crazy and I knew it, but wasn't it also crazy to deny what was in front of your eyes? For now, I guess I'd just roll with it. Maybe it was connected to my parents somehow. The thought cleared my mind of all misgivings. I began reading the first page.
