Inventing magic
Pulling his arms above his head to stretch out his inactive muscles, Wulf groaned in defeated pain. Even with the rare unicorn hair he had managed to acquire he still couldn't perform anything but the simple light spell under ordinary circumstances. Like all wizards, his powers flared out in unpredictable ways when he felt strong emotion – especially anger or fear – but he had yet to find a way of making his magic work all the time. The other wizards were stronger; they had enough power to cast simple spells even when completely calm, but no amount of power seemed to enable a wizard to cast spells that could properly utilize that power under proper control.
Wulf's parents had sent him off to the temple as soon as he had begun to show signs of magic. The wizards who lived there had immediately begun training him to suppress strong emotion, so that there would be no more accidents around him. His teaching in actual magic, however, had barely begun, and he was beginning to wonder if he would ever learn this. He was eighteen years old already, and all the others his age had passed the tests that would make them fully practicing wizards.
Snarling in frustration, Wulf picked up a thin, whippy stick lying on the ground and slashed it at the pile of leaves he had been working on all day. "Nach oben auf," he ground out from between his teeth, 'Fly, damn thee, thou stupid leaf.'
Slowly, as if stirred by an invisible wind, the first leaf in the pile began to rise. Quickly Wulf concentrated on his power, trying to see what was going on before he lost control. When he finally found what he was looking for he did lose the magic. Tumbling down to the ground, Wulf stared at the leaves that, released from his spell, drifted slowly back to earth. Only then, tremblingly, did he allow himself to look at the stick in his hand.
The unicorn hair that he had been clutching so tightly was pressed against the thin willow branch, but other than that there was no trace of what had happened other than the already fading traces of magic wrapped around both the hair and the thin stick. 'Could it really be?' he wondered, 'Did that stick really channel my power?'
There was only one way to find out. Carefully tucking the unicorn hair into his pouch, he raised the stick, again pointing it at the leaves, and repeated the spell. Nothing happened. Did he just imagine it? 'No. I did not imagine it. What is it that I missed?'
He ran over what had happened, and then took out the unicorn hair wrapping it tightly around the stick. "Nach oben auf." He concentrated his will on the pile of leaves, doing as his teachers taught them, and refusing to believe that what he wanted could possibly not happen. Slowly, the leaves began to rise again. He had really done it! The stick with a unicorn hair wrapped around it really did focus his power! The masters would understand why that was, but he wanted to experiment with it for a bit longer before he shared this wonderful discovery with anyone else.
Now, what spell could he do that he'd never been able to do before? Ah! That was it! He'd summon his bag over to him. Concentrating on his goal he summoned it. "Kommen." The bag zoomed into his hands, faster than even the masters could call something. Whatever it was that made this work, he didn't care. This discovery would make him a master for sure!
Wulf was whistling happily as he packed up his things, making sure not to leave any scraps of food lying around for the wild animals to find. If others could use this strange magic too, then the entire wizard community would benefit from his discovery. There would be no more angry man or women insisting that if they'd been real wizards they could have done such and such a thing. Now they would simply be able to do it. Just a wave of the stick, and any magic was possible.
There was something nagging at him though. Stick didn't sound like a good magical name, and in magic it was very important to have proper names. No magic could possibly be worked in one's own language. Firstly, the magic would not be able to be kept within proper bounds – it would get out of hand just as it did when the wizard was angry – and secondly it was much harder to believe in a spell if you were just saying 'up' than if you said what he had, 'Nach oben auf.' So the stick must have a proper magical name as well.
He'd heard about the Greek god Hermes, who carried some sort of magical stick. Wasn't that called something strange? He hadn't really paid that much attention when his teachers had talked about the Greeks. Wulf wouldn't have to fight them after all. And now that he needed to know, he couldn't remember a thing. What was that stupid thing called? Ah, that was it! It was called a wand. He would call the stick a wand.