Summer Adventure

[Real]

'Summer Adventure'

Real was never the type to do anything special on any day of the year. She hated celebrations – saw no reason for gifting other people on holidays or to participate in weird snowball fights with fellow magi. Summer was no exception. It was just an annoying excuse for people to go on vacations with their beloved creatures or to lazily stare at the clouds for hours in row, while giving treats to their pets.

She sometimes looked from the shadows, envying fellow magi for their bonds with their creatures. She once saw a magi playing with their direwolf pup, the small creature running around and jumping in happiness. ‘Favoritism’ – she called it. Why would one love one creature more than another? Why was that direwolf pup more special than an ice phoenix or an icist? Because it loved summer? Because it didn’t froze the magi’s fingers at touch? Why was it better than a moss snail? Because it didn’t crawl? Because it had more energy?

Real had these questions in her head every day. She personally didn’t have a favorite. She loved all her creatures equally. But in a way, she punished them, all her anger reflected on them. If she was meant to be alone forever, to be ignored by everyone and to have people turn their heads away when she was walking in the market, then her creatures would have the same fate. If she was lonely, then so were they. So while some fellow magi liked to hoard one species and ignore some other completely, Real preferred to own only one creature of each type.

She had heard magi talking about the new chinchillas in a summer morning, while she was gathering mushrooms. She preferred to listen to them talk instead of asking for details. The two magi talking seemed to be excited, one of them telling the other how they were going to relate their trip with their lunestre dragons from last summer. The other magi was claiming to tell about an amazing adventure in the Etain Desert with their alphins.

Real sighed, one thing bothering her. How could one raise a chinchilla in the summer? The creatures had too much fur for their own good. Too much heat could kill them. So why would anyone want to bring chinchillas at the Keep while summer time? Nonetheless, she wanted them, for her ‘collection’. One of each could do, and if this person the magis were talking about was willing to grant them with one of these amazing chinchillas, she was going to try her luck too.

So she went home and visited her rose imps, because in her opinion, those were the most summer-ish creatures that one could get. It took her a while to find them, because in the small garden she had arranged for them, the little creatures liked to get ‘lost’ in-between the high amounts of roses. They were solitary creatures, that she knew, and even if she owned only five of them, they still liked to keep to themselves and snap at each other when they got too close. Making them all stay in one place was something that Real didn’t want to try ever again. By the end of the day she had more claw marks on her arms that she could count, her hair was full of rose thorns and her skirts had so many holes that she had to throw them away.

But she didn’t give up. She wanted those chinchillas so she was going to make some effort and have a ‘summer adventure’. In the first day, she got her red rose imp of from its habitat, and took it in the woods with her, in search of herbs. What Real didn’t remember was that rose imps preferred to stay in their gardens rather than travel with their magi. The little thing got so scared by the new world that it hid itself under her clothes for most of the day. Real couldn’t really call it a successful day. At least she got the herbs she needed. She was on her way home, when the little imp found something very interesting in a nearby bush and decided to go investigate it. Real ended up chasing the rose imp for more than two hours before she managed to catch it and make sure it wasn’t going to get lost again.

The second day, Real tried with her white rose imp. Since woods were no longer an option, she took the little creature to the nearby garden, where other magi spent the day. It was all nice for about half an hour, until her imp became interested in someone’s cascara butterfly colony. Not only that the imp tried to eat the butterflies, chasing them around and making funny noises at them, but the magi who owned them got offended because she couldn’t keep her imp in line.

Third day turned out to be a boring one. Real chose the pink rose imp. She had taken it to the Koi Pond, a place that was silent most of them time. She had hoped for something, anything, but the imp was in no mood of much, and after chasing its tail for ten minutes, the small creature fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was night time. It was starting to become frustrating.

Real was perseverant though. On the fourth day, she took her yellow imp to the market. The idea was to buy some herbs then go home. And from her observations on her imps, the yellow one was the calmest one of them. As she waited in line at her usually herb store, she didn’t notice when the imp snuck away. Only when someone started screaming did Real realize that her ‘calm’ yellow imp was trying to munch on a ruby. The creature has climbed on a stone seller’s counter, and it was trying to swallow or munch on different sized precious stones. The creature didn’t accomplish anything, because they were either too hard to eat, or too big. Unfortunately though, Real did have to apologize for the ruckus her imp created and to buy all the precious stones that the imp had managed to ruin. No wonder they called them imps.

She gave up on the fifth day, and decided to leave the last imp, the black one, be. In a moment of anger, she left the precious stones in their garden. She had no use of them.

Real wasn’t expecting for a miracle to happen, or for the imps to make it up to her, and she only noticed what the imps had done two days later, while tending on some roses in their small garden. She was cutting some dead leaves, when the imps – all of them, to her surprise – gathered around her, the black one dragging something heavy looking behind it. At first, she wanted to ignore them, still angry with their behavior, but when the white one started tugging at her skirts, she bent down, all of them climbing on her clothes. She took whatever was dangling from the black one’s tail, to take a better look at it. It was a small necklace, the thread made from ivy, small pieces from the different colored stones, dangling from it. It was beautiful and Real felt like crying. It was the first nice thing anyone had ever done for her in years. The imps then left, only to return moments later with more necklaces made in the same way.

That night Real wrote a letter addressed to Emander Tyris. She knew her story about her little ‘summer adventure’ wasn’t much, but she had no friends, and sharing it even with someone she never met felt nice. She told him everything that happened, and when she took her letter to the magi who was collecting the stories she left a small parcel as well. The imps had made six necklaces – one for them was going to travel far, to that unknown person she just wrote to. Others should enjoy her imps’ art as well.