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In the end, you stop in the middle of the yard, feeling grass and mushrooms and dandelions creeping towards your feet. You drop the pillow and, carefully holding onto your teacup, lower yourself down until your eyes are barely higher than the top of the grass. The smell of plants and soil and fresh evening air envelops you as Arctus sniffs and dashes away out of sight.

Once the sound of Arctus exploring the yard fades into the back of your mind, you close your eyes. You focus on your breathing—on the warm, fragrant taste of tea—and, most of all, the electric tingle of magic that comes up from below. Right now, you feel like you could do anything—and you feel like you want to try.

You look up at the clouds and try to imagine a beautiful silvery whale soaring through the clouds. For some reason, however, you can't quite picture what you want to see—and although you think you start to see the glimmer of an outline, you can't make out many details.

After a couple of moments, however, you realize that the misshapen outline in the clouds isn't staying put. In fact, it's sinking fast—sinking through the sky towards the ground. As you watch in dawning horror, you see your lumpy, flickering illusion, as big as a house and only vaguely resembling a whale, is falling closer and closer to the earth like it's trying to swim. At the last second, you wave your hands desperately and the illusion explodes into wisps of light—but even as it dissipates, you can't be too sure that someone else in the neighborhood didn't catch sight of the strangest beam of sunlight they've ever seen. You can only hope they didn't spot a fin or a tail.

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