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| Prologue |
Prodigy Island's sallow sun cast its enchanting tangerine spell over the eastern side of Lamplight Town and cut its way through the translucent curtains in a fifteen-year-old's cramped bedroom. It took the bright star several hours to finally wake her up with its increasingly harsh knives of light; eventually, a fourth of the way through the day, she emerged from her loose cocoon of a bed and took a sip of the dregs of chamomile tea she left on her nightstand from last evening. It was too sweet to her, but she swallowed it knowing that the town's water tasted worse than raw grasshoppers.
Finally, she yawned, and the emerald eyes of her Inferneigh shot open. The little colt batted its bronze eyelashes a few times and let out a breath of ashy steam and sat up from the corner of his owner's bed. It sighed at looked at the teenager with contempt because it clearly wanted to rest longer.
"Morning, Prancer," the wizard with a carnation-colored bob spoke, reaching out to caress the mane of her irritated pet. It stood on all fours and hopped down from the bed, thudding its hard hooves against the wooden floor. It brayed a little and turned away, going over to the door and scratching on it like a dog left outside in the cold. His owner exhaled a giggle and walked over to one of the sunlit windows, opening it inward to take a fresh breath and, of course, to teach Prancer patience.
What greeted her was as she expected—her second pet, a restful little Dreamlet. She was sunning her back and wings while standing on top of the tulip flower box she used as both her bed and, occasionally, her litterbox. The wizard smelled no evidence of her doing this since the last dirt change, so she felt comfortable picking the rainbow creature up and bringing it into her room.
"Oh, Pride, you've done such a good job keeping yourself clean!" She noticed that the reptile's blue feet had minimal traces of topsoil. She held the creature like a football to free one of her hands for the doorknob she needed to handle to let her fire horse free. She opened the brown port to her second-floor hallway and let Prancer take off to the downstairs kitchen where the wizard's father would have by now filled his bowls with water and hay.
Before the teen and her restful plant pet could follow her starter down the stairs, though, a large Acromi landed noisily on the edge of her open window sill with its tail feathers digging themselves into her precious flowers. "No, no! Shoo," the girl hollered before realizing that the owl-like thing had a metal ring around one of its legs and a scroll in its scarily huge beak.
She approached it and reached out to accept the document, and it obediently dropped the ribboned parchment into her free hand. It made haste flying away which left some of the tulips flop over to the opposite side from where the Acromi launched itself. She cursed under her breath, giving the scroll to Pride while fixing the flowers with a minute amount of plant magic she had stored in the Powerful Plant Relic on her middle finger.
Not wanting to deal with any more messages, she shut her windows and drew the foldable paper blinds. Pride looked up at her and handed the teen the paper, but before she could set the pet down to read it a familiar voice downstairs began to talk rather excitedly. It was most definitely the wizard's father, Hermes Pinkhair, making a midmorning deal with a potential customer to buy one of his liquid products in bulk. Her family was full of apothecaries that sold both experimental and proven medicines and battle items to help with healing from magic-induced injuries, and Mr. Pinkhair became an entrepreneur who wanted to strike out on his own as a prestigious potion vendor. However, little of his job mattered to his daughter.
She decided to wait a while before coming down for breakfast to read the letter. Pride, who was always interested in news, held her owner's hands with its own little grippers in an attempt to get her to go into the hallway where there was enough light to read it. The Dreamlet levitated and then floated behind the girl as she sat up again from her bed to get out of the closet-sized cell.
The wizard patiently scraped away at the sanguine wax seal and undid the scarlet silk ribbon, looking up occasionally at Pride to increase the suspense. Once finally unfurled, the frayed document read this in address to the girl:
Dearest Val: Hi! My boss and I are looking for participants who want to go on an adventure of a lifetime to a week-long caverning trip halfway to the summit of Mt. Sublime in Shiverchill. It'll take three days to get from Bok's Cave to the place and three days back, but the extra day is for our team to do some research there. We need another Academy grad like us with specialty in plant and fire magic to help fight off any potential rogues as we get to our destination. You'll be rewarded several thousand in gold and a few hundred in shivers for defending our weak little team. As your friend, I can vouch for that knowing my boss already has millions in funding for this one lark up the mountain. It sounds like a really big deal and I'd like you to come! I'll give you more deets if you and your pets meet me and mine at Eerie's uncle's tavern for lunch. Respond ASAP, Gin
Val grinned and, in response, Pride bared its teensy white teeth happily. She dropped the scroll and rushed down the stairs with just her socks and pajamas on with her flying multicolored friend in tow.
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