Magic 101

I sit at the trunk of a beech tree. Its autumn leaves are like a blanket at my feet. The beams of light that break through its branches flicker around the pages of my book. Illuminating detailed images of birds and different rodents that fluttered above or skittered below. Whenever I saw the book's living counterpart, I would mark the page. I inhale the soft breeze, allowing it to fill me with energy. I grow still as I allow the flow of my surroundings to seep in.

The distant chirp of birds calling to return home was clear and crisp, the squirrels scurried around the beech tree crevasse to crevasse depositing goodies before scurrying away, a fox digging deeper into his burrow, in preparation for something to come. I close my eyes and inhale deeply once more the air had grown slightly thicker a new thin film of pressure sat over everything and to confirm it a drop of rain burst at the tip of my nose.

"It's raining." That is all I manage before the torrential downpour begins. I clutch the book tight to my chest. The remaining leaves of the tree serve as some protection. A crude gust of wind pushes me to my side.

I brace myself as I feel the abrupt stop of the train, leaving me in the grasp of inertia. "You looked like you were having a good dream." Kairo stood next to the exit doors waiting. I rub the sleep from my eyes and embarrassingly the drool from my face before standing and joining him at the door. My eyes had to adjust to the sunlight when they did, though I could see we were in an open field of grass that was a slight tinge of blue, but besides that, nothing too different.

"Newbies first." Kairo joked, holding a hand out while stepping out of the way. I confidently march through the threshold and am immediately hit with the familiar electricity flowing over my body with great intensity this time. It was bracing like stepping into a pool for the first time. I take a sharp breath, which introduces the sensation to my lungs, the electricity courses through my muscles and veins, but then it stops. Gone as quickly as it had come, a glorious sensation replaced by longing within mere moments.

"What was that!?" I exclaimed like a child experiencing soda for the first time. Kairo laughed hard, so hard and long that I was glad for it he had been gloomy and standoffish since we met.

"That was magic saturation." He replied through tears.

"So I'm soaked in magic? What is magic anyway." I asked between deep breaths, trying to reclaim the sensation. Kairo went from laughing to downright, giddy.

"Last ones off!" He yelled over his shoulder. The train kicks to life, closing its doors and beginning its way. I watch the front of the train intensely, wondering where it would lead. at top speed, the car began to dip into the ground as if it was a submarine, its tail sliding into the earth behind it. I was baffled by the image but my attention was drawn over to Kairo who was now creating figures and models out of pure light they all scurried around a stage made of the same taking places and different positions.

"Once upon a time..." As if following a script, the figures began moving to the narration of Kairo.

"The world was whole, and beings of all sorts lived amongst each other." The figures swirled each other playfully. From their shapes, I could make out werewolves and faeries, even something that resembled a dragon, but their features were soft and beautiful.

"Each being embodying the very essence of the rules and energies that went into creating them and the worlds they Inhabit." The figures of light began to spin and merge, creating beautiful scenes of plains scorched by endless flames, seas with the brightest depths, and castles in the sky amongst flying behemoths.

"And Magic was the bridge between them all. The Light That Lived in All the Lands is how they referred to it." The particles swirled into a star from that star, and a kaleidoscope of light showed down onto figures of each type when the figures interacted with the colors of the light merged, creating something new and shared by both creatures.

"As the story goes, the light was ever expanding and allowed us to not only interact with each other but also to see each other for who we were." The figures stood next to each other on the stage in a line. Humans in the middle and from there on each side one of each type of mythical creature.

"To see each other for who we were?" I asked, enveloped by Kairos' story.

"Humans lived in the light with the most undefined connection to magic and always have made do with that while living in the human realm, but as the legend goes on an entity appears shattering the Light causing the connections to each realm to fade into nonexistent." One by one, the lights of the creatures furthest from the center faded to black.

"This may have cut them off from us, but it also stopped many from returning to their homes and severing them from their origin of light. Many feared what being trapped in a world with dying light may entail so they fled their homes seeking asylum in the surviving realms, where the light didn't show any signs of waning." The figures on the edges shuffled to the center crowding into the last three realms with light.

"Trapped in foreign lands with even stranger magic and inhabitants was already hard enough, but something unforeseen happened next, without the lights of each creature's origin being with them it left them plunged into darkness humans now saw them as monsters the things that plagued their nights and what most humans see as mythology is the endless war between the lost creatures that are just trapped in your realm." The figures warped and changed into the menacing beast I was more familiar with fighting human warriors clad in armor before the ethereal curtains shut and reopened to show the figures resembling people of today walking the street looking at their phones as they wait for a bus or train.