Today is a wonderful day indeed!
I breathe in the pristine mountain air until my lungs are bloated with it. I sink my arms elbow-deep into my dragon's down, its feathers each of every color of ten rainbows. Its wings bat with such finesse and such grace, that I feel as secure upon my dragon's back as if on solid ground, even as we climb ever higher into the clouds.
Ever since I learned magic, everything has changed for the better. Just this morning, I spotted a prince and princess clinging for dear life from the balcony of a burning castle. Thankfully, I had mastered my storm spells just the week before, and so I judiciously called upon my rain spell to quench the castle of flames before any harm could be done, after which I sped down on the back of my dragon to ask the boy and girl if they were alright. The two lovers were so delighted by my heroic deed that they sped through the castle and brought to me a green velvet bag tied with gold tassel. As I soon learned after my departure, this was a magical bag, whose contents were constantly replenished with fresh muffins of every flavor imaginable. It was a thoughtful gift indeed, and just in time for breakfast!
I wipe the crisp muffin crumbs from the corner of my lips and lick the crumbs off my fingers. The roof of my mouth is still coated with the muffins' eggy and sugary dough. I lean back into my dragon's thick, plush down, my arms stretched wide upon the feathers, appreciating the fullness in my stomach.
...and what a delicious breakfast that was!
I roll over to the side of my dragon's back and look down. The lush green forest is so far beneath us now that it appears flat. The clouds laying on the forest cling close to their shadows, making them appear like paper cutouts glued over a painting. All of it is muted by a thin white film of atmospheric fog, like a painting bleached by the sun.
I sit up and peek beyond my dragon's rainbow-colored mane. Far ahead of us are mountain peaks covered in snow and clouds, a three-dimensional anomaly blocking the path to the horizon. Our destination is a castle somewhere beneath those clouds, the Britwal School of Magical Arts, where I will meet with Kenneth for our daily magic training.
What spell will we be learning today? The tree-growing spell? The fire storm spell? The ultimate teleportation spell?
No, those spells sound too boring. I have an even better spell in mind: the Super-Incredibly-Undead-Annihilation Spell! What other legendary spell would be capable of vanquishing the army of undead approaching from the East tomorrow? Scratch that... the GIANT army of undead. And there will also be necromancers... and dire wolves... and evil fire wizards too... and they will all be riding dragons!
Now that I think about it, since most of those evil beings are not undead to begin with, I should also learn the Ultra-Incredibly-Evil-Magic Annihilation Spell as well. I already mastered the Super-Incredibly-Evil-Magic Annihilation Spell, but one can never be too careful when battling against Very-Incredibly-Evil-Magic. Training that spell to the next level is certain to secure my victory, even with all the Very-Incredibly-Evil Dragons on the opposing side.
I rub my hands together in excitement. There is going to be a lot of magical energy flying around in that mountain school today. I hope the custodians are ready because castle walls are definitely getting busted.
I hear a deep rumble beneath me as my dragon prepares to speak.
"Oh wise and mighty Iris," the dragon speaks in its deep, powerful voice, "Pardon me for questioning your wisdom, but could you perhaps be making too heavy use of common plot tropes? I am sensing that you have summoned yet another army of undead to challenge us from the east, and... please excuse me for saying this, as I love a good undead army battle as much as the next dragon... but I do hope you would consider adding some variety to the plot... perhaps by introducing a new, more formidable villain, or instead by padding the action with some filler to drain the emotional tension. Perhaps you could even make your main character face some relatable psychological weakness."
"Silence, dragon! I have no need for your brainless plot ideas!" I command. "I would destroy you this instant if I were not too lazy to come up with what the next dragon I summon would look like. Plus, your fur is really fluffy..."
I lean back into the down of the dragon and feel my body sink into it. I hope the flight to the mountain school lasts a few more hours so I can just lay here and appreciate how wonderful it is to rest in this perfect cushion.
I stretch my jaw open and yawn deeply. Before I can close my mouth again, I feel the urge to yawn once more. Even the fresh mountain air feels heavy and warm in my throat now.
"Why do I feel so tired all of a sudden?" I wonder aloud. I feel my eyelids close.
"Wake up, Iris!" I hear calling above me.
I yawn again. "What are you talking about? I haven't even fallen asleep yet!"
As I say those words, I feel myself mouthing them with my lips, and the exertion of my voice forces me awake. As the dim morning light brightens around me, I feel the lovely memories... of the view of the lush forest from the sky, of the dragon's uncountable rainbow feathers, of the taste of those perfectly sweet and eggy muffins... fade until they are nearly forgotten, no matter how hard I try to claw them back with the power of recollection.
My vision above me is blocked by the face of Kenneth leaning over me, his eyes devoid of sympathy for the damage he had caused by forcefully pulling me out of my dreams. How dare he make me forget the taste of those delicious muffins!
The image of Kenneth's smile registers in my sleepy mind, and I suddenly remember why I am here. Complaining about forgetting what dream-muffins taste like would not make a good first impression on Kenneth as my instructor.
"Glad to see you're awake. We're gonna be on a busy schedule, so you better get used to waking up early... haha!"
Kenneth emits his trademark awkward laugh again. I think it is starting to wear on me a little.
I stretch my arms from underneath the blankets and slide my legs out of bed. The floor under my feet is freezing cold. I lean forward, and feel cool air creep down my body as the blankets slide off of my arms.
I already miss being in my warm bed.
I sit down and drop the book onto the living room table. The thump of the impact makes me jump.
"Be careful with that book, Iris," Kenneth nags. "It's very difficult to replace."
"Okay. Sorry," I reply impatiently. I estimate the beginning of the first chapter and finger apart the pages of the textbook.
"Why are you giving me such a hard time?" Kenneth asks.
"I just want to get this over with," I insist frankly.
"There is no 'over with,' Iris. Every sentence in that book needs to be memorized and analyzed thoroughly, not glazed over like some leisurely shortcut through the woods! Did you find the first chapter yet?"
After flipping back a few pages, I spot the first chapter title in large, bold print. "Yes."
"Give me the book. I am going to show you how to do this properly."
I lift the open book over my head and feel the weight of the book lighten as Kenneth grabs it.
"Watch closely, now..."
I turn the weight of my body to the side and cling to the back of my chair.
Kenneth's eyes dart back and forth at the page beneath him. After a couple seconds, he closes the book and takes a breath to speak. He recites the sentences each in turn at a breakneck pace, all without any discernible pause to breathe. As far as I can tell from my memory of the text, Kenneth recites every word perfectly. Kenneth must have spent days just reciting that one passage over and over again... yet he recites the words so spontaneously and sincerely that I feel as if he is speaking directly to me, his voice ringing with the passion of a scholar as he lectures to me on the theories of magic, relishing in the subtle explanations.
Suddenly, Kenneth's voice cuts off mid-sentence, perhaps only a few paragraphs into the text, just as I begin to forget that the words he speaks came from the book in his hands.
Kenneth's lips twitch into a lopsided smirk. "That is how you properly spell-read:" he declares with pride, "You read so that it's all present in your mind at once, but without... how do I put this... thinking about what the words sound like."
"That... sounds complicated," I reply, at a loss for words.
Kenneth's face becomes stern. "It isn't complicated. It only sounds complicated because apparently you've never done it before, despite everything you're supposed to have learned in school. You just need to be in the right state of mind."
Just as my imagination began to soar with the mysterious nature of spellcasting magic, Kenneth pulls me back to the earth with morbid adult pragmatism. Could Kenneth at least attempt to make spell-reading sound as fun as it did earlier? Could he at least pretend it was complicated?
"What am I supposed to do, then?" I ask.
"You look at each word, and you understand what each word means. You visualize the meaning of each word in your head as you do so..." Kenneth touches his hand to his temple. "...without thinking about what the word sounds like, until you have a clear picture of the meaning in your mind. You must do that for every word in the sentence before you say the sentence aloud." He hands the book to me. "That should be a good place to start. Do that with each sentence until you've memorized the entire chapter."
I grab hold of the book once more, and feel the weight of the spellbook return to my arms as Kenneth walks away.
I have a terrible headache.
I rest my chin upon a page of the spellbook. My pupils scan carefully upon the letters on the page, yet the words no longer have any meaning.
A day and a half has already passed and I am still trapped on the first chapter, even though I can already recite every detail. I remember all the compound elements and the unclassified element Aether. I remember how all people, animals, and monsters innately spawn with a mana pool of a certain element, and that a human's dominant element is Earth at spawn. I remember how a sufficiently weak spell can be cast using any form of magic. I remember why a sentient being is vastly more difficult to levitate than an inanimate object of the same weight...
And I could keep going on and on! Yet, in spite of my perfect knowledge of chapter, Kenneth insists that it is not enough. Four times I have tried to show Kenneth that I am ready to move on to the next chapter, yet every time he refuses with the same bland, uninterested disappointment.
The first time I recited the chapter, Kenneth complained that my prose was flat. The second time, he complained that I was being too dramatic. The third time, he complained that my prose was flat again. And the fourth time, he complained that I was speaking "out of character." What is Kenneth supposed to be teaching me, acting lessons?
Kenneth said spell-reading was not supposed to be complicated, so why do I not already understand it? Surely a girl with my level of intelligence should be able to comprehend the chapter of any adult book within a day. The only possible explanation is that Kenneth is holding me back on purpose. These acting lessons are just the first of Kenneth's many convoluted instructional milestones, designed to slow me down, to prevent me from learning real magic...
...yet surely that cannot be the case! Kenneth would not have accepted me as his apprentice only to waste time teaching me useless information.
...unless it just seems like useless information because I do not understand it. Did Kenneth make a mistake in choosing me as his apprentice? Am I simply incapable of comprehending magic entirely? Is the great magician I imagined myself as in my dream... never going to be more than just a dream? No dragons, no heroic deeds, no earth-shaking spells?
How would I be able to tell?
