Clover

Darkness.

'Darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darkness darknessdarknessdarknessdarknessdarknessdarknessdarknessdarknessdrknssdrknssdrknsdknsdnsdksdksdkndknsdksdksdsdknsdksdksdnsdksssssssssssssssssssss.' Talia shakes her head to try and get rid of her own deteriorating thoughts. "H-he-oo-ll, ?re-whe I am-am¿" A line, a line, a line a line a cricket line a line a line, follow, follow, follow the line, the line thelinethelinetheline, Cl-Clover, Clover CLOVER Clover, help help, Clover Clover Clover two Clover Clovers CloversCloverscloverscloversclovers.

"MOMMY" Morgana screams in her face, waking her up with a start.

"Ughhh" Talia grunts closing her eyes tightly and holding her head in pain. "What happened?" She whispers, her throat feeling scratchy.

"You were crying in your sleep and wouldn't wake up mommy" Morgana explains herself with teary eyes.

"I… I was?" She touches her face and feels the wet tracks of tears left behind.

'Clover, do you know what happened?'

[…]

'Clover?'

[…]

"Mommy what's wrong?" Morgana asks still worried.

"I'm not sure, baby" she holds Morgana tightly and kisses her head.

[What's going on?]

'Oh my gods you're back. Where were you? What happened?' Talia asks worriedly and not letting go of Morgana.

[What do you mean?]

'There was this weird dream, and I was crying in my sleep and Morgana woke me up and I called for you and you weren't THERE.'

[Woah, it's okay, I'm here now, I was just sleeping, you must have woken up before me, that's all, did you have another one of those memory dreams?]

'No, it felt different, like it wasn't mine.'

[What wasn't yours?]

'The memory'

[So it was a memory dream?]

'Yes, no… maybe?! it just, it wasn't my dream, I think it might have been yours'

[What?]

'It was worse than the memory ones, everything was confusing, my thoughts kept looping, my words were all out of order and all over the place and it was so, so, so, sooooo dark.'

[That matches with what I remember as well, but from what you say it was way clearer for me then it was for you, maybe it's because you don't have the mental capacity to understand one of my dreams?]

'Maybe… Shat were you dreaming about, anyway?'

[Nothing much, just had a little conversation with myself is all]

'I didn't know you could keep sleeping when I'm awake.'

[Me neither]

"It's okay, sweetie, it's all better now" Talia tells Morgana.

"It's Clover back now? Is she okay?" Morgana asks worried.

"What are you talking about, sweetie?" Talia asks feeling like she just got caught.

Morgana shrugs "The one you keep taking to in your head, I never heard her respond to you, but you're always having half a conversation with a Clover in your head."

"Oh, uhm" Talia scratches her head feeling like she should have seen this one coming, she knew Morgana could hear her talking to Clover already, but since Morgana never interrupted them or asked anything about it she might have forgotten about that possibility.

"She's fine now, she was just… uhm… sleeping is all" Talia answers.

"Okay" Morgana accepts without further questioning, to which Talia lets out a small sigh of relief.

[She's a good familiar, tell her I said hi]

'Seriously?!?!'

[Sure, why not?]

"Clover said hi" Talia tells her begrudgingly.

"Hi Clover, bye Clover" Morgana says already leaving the room to go have breakfast downstairs.

Talia and Clover both laugh at Morgana's antics as Talia follows her downstairs.

"Good morning, mom" she hugs her mom, and takes a sit by Morgana's side.

Georgia smiles at that "Good morning, princess, did you girls sleep well?".

'Don't tell her, Morgana.'

"Like a baby" Talia says as Morgana just nods along.

"That's because you are a baby" Georgia says pinching Talia's cheek playfully.

"Moooom" Talia protests blocking her face with her hands to stop Georgia.

"Okay, okay, I'll stop" Georgia lifts her hands in mock surrender.

"Where's dad?" Talia asks, starting to eat her breakfast.

"He had to go into town to deliver some of the orders we finished, generally we do this when we take you there, but this was kind of a rushed order" Georgia explains.

"Okay, and what are you doing today?" Talia asks.

"Your father and I talked about what happened yesterday and we both agreed we shouldn't be letting you alone in the backyard, at least for a little while…" Georgia says sitting by her side.

"What? Why?" Talia asks trying to think if she did something wrong lately.

"Well, because of the swords from yesterday, I know it seems like a gift and all, and it wasn't cursed or anything, but for someone to just put it in front of our door and disappear… It's a little weird Talia" Georgia explains.

"But I'm safe in the backyard, and you can see me from the kitchen." Talia tries to protest.

"Sweetie" Georgia holds her hand "we're not going to stop you from going there, we'll just go with you, okay, just to make sure you're safe."

Talia nods knowing she'll have to pull back on any advanced magical training for a while. "Do we have any of the carving stuff in the house? I could just continue that in my room today, where is safe, pleeeeasee" Talia tries giving Georgia puppy dog eyes.

Georgia agrees knowing Talia will be safer inside and she'll be able to do some chores around the house without having to worry too much.

Talia sits at her little table, where she usually studies in her room, and starts carving the pieces of wood Georgia gave her with the tools they had around the house.

'So, who do you think sent that box?'

[I don't know, but it's clearly upsetting your parents more than they're letting on]

'Yeah, to not want me alone even in our own backyard… They might be worried about someone kidnaping me or worst.'

[Can you blame them? You heard your grandma's story, and the box had your name on it. Who else could it have been from?]

'I mean… I don't think it was John or Maddie, they would probably put a card in it, also they have no reason to randomly gift me a sword, maybe the mysterious uncle?'

[Hard to say, they didn't tell us much about him]

'Yeah, and it's not like they know a lot of people, that also know me, and that would randomly gift me a sword.'

[The real question though is why, if it was the queen, why twin swords? Why not a note? or a threat? or any identifiable thing that connects to her? anything… It seems too random of a choice to have been her]

'It does, but there's not many others who could have done this' Talia sighs.

[It just made your parents even more paranoid]

'At least Morgana is still allowed to fly around the tree in the backyard.'

[Of course she is, she is your familiar, if anything happens you'll feel it and you can just summon her back to you]

'What? I can?'

[Yes, you didn't know that?]

'You know that I didn't know about that, you've been with me since before I was even born here, if you didn't see me learn about it, just assume I never learned about it.'

[Fair enough, no need to be rude about it. Aaaaaanyways, you can summon her to you if you need her, she can't really die unless you do so first, if you die and she doesn't she's just free to do whatever she wants, she can bond with someone else and be their familiar if that's what she wants, if she is gravelly injured to the point where she should have died, but you're still alive she'll just be like a ghost for a while, like a hologram that only you can see until she can heal herself enough to come back, think caterpillar getting out of their cocoon, she needs to be strong enough to break through herself to be able to come back, but the bond will slowly heal her back to health naturally and that's the basics on familiars. Now you know!]

'At least she's safe with me no matter what, and I guess we have never really been too far away from each other for the summoning to even be needed.'

[Exactly, also your hand is bleeding]

'Shit'

Talia looks down to see the wood she was working on is basically red now, instead of the off white it was originally.

'Well, it's just little cuts, I'll clean up when I'm done.'

[You do know blood magic is a thing here, right? I'm not sure what you're trying to do with this specific piece of wood, but you should know it's basically charged with your essence already]

'Cool, can I give it magical properties then?'

[Maybe, though you should probably shape it better before then, and I'll give you the steps when you're done]

'Deal. So, why is it again that you don't want me to be checking my status for at least a couple more years?'

[It messes with your growth, you should get as much of a childhood as possible, besides, it will divide your focus, just keep going as you are, training your elements, new skills and meditating, and we'll check that later, also I'm thinking about upgrading everything with your input this time, maybe adding agility and so on]

'Isn't dexterity like agility already?'

[Not really, no. Agility is more connected to speed, while dexterity is more connected to coordination, think of it this way, you could win a marathon with an unbelievable speed, but that doesn't negate the fact that to do that you could had tripped on your own feet like five times and fallen face first on the ground each time]

'You have no faith on my dexterity, do you?'

[Not even a little bit, that's why I'm thinking thinking about adding agility there, you can be an uncoordinated little speedster with no problem, as long as you're fast enough to fix whatever mistakes you make, we're still good]

'Like falling five times and still winning the marathon.'

[Exactly, though, carving might help improve your dexterity, I wouldn't count too much on it, that stat did go down this year]

'What? What do you mean down? I didn't think that was possible.'

[Of course, it's possible, just think about it, if you train in a random sport every single day for years and then spend triple that amount of time not doing anything even remotely related to that, do you really have the same physique? The same skill levels? It might be easier for you to get back to that, than for someone that's starting from zero, but still, you can lose stats, especially physical ones]

'Oh. Still, how did I lose dexterity? It's not like I stopped using it or anything like that.'

[You're a kid, you're growing, your gravity center keeps changing with every millimeter you grow, what did you expect? There's a reason children fall so much more often than adults, there's lots of reasons actually, but this too.]

'So I'm not that clumsy, I'm just growing.'

[No, don't get me wrong, you are extremely clumsy, but there are other factors as well]

Talia shrugs 'I'm used to it by now anyway.'

[Good for you. Now let's try to enchant this thing. Whatever it is]