Humans imagine wizards to be wizened old men. This is an unfortunate misunderstanding, though not as unfortunate as their view of mermaids.
No, wizards have chubby little torsos and long spindly limbs. They look at humans like we’d look at homo heidelbergensis.
Wizards often live high in the mountains and send their children to far away schools. Emma Lee Tannon, a young wizard, couldn’t go to school. Her father decided she needed more time, but she could study using internet courses while he tended to his day business.
Three months into her course on transformations, the course started on living transformation. After months of practice, Emma transformed rocks into cabbage and bread into lava like second nature. Her father hadn’t been pleased she had practiced the bread-into-lava thing at the table.
She barely wait to try living transformations. Emma practiced the spell several dozen times before skipping down the mountain to find a victim. Father forbade her to transform goats.
A little town of humans perched on a nob of the mountain. Emma had seen it many times before, but never went inside. She sneaked through the brush and looked around. One very short nobby human chopped wood.
Emma pulled her want out and spoke the incantation. The human wobbled and made strange noises.
It fell over.
“Hm. I’ll just have to try again,” she said.
“How did your school go today, dear?” Father said.
“It went great. I’m nearly done with all my homework.”
“Emma Lee.”
“Yes, father?”
“You have to take responsibility for your actions, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Emma marched down the mountain and rounded up all of the humans she’d transformed. She wasn’t really sure how her father had even noticed the difference.
They didn’t look so different with chicken heads.
When they were all rounded up and she’d walked them home, she set out some corn. She laughed to see them bend at the waist and peck at it.
#75
2 comments:
Cute premise. I liked the matter-of-fact tone she used about bread into lava and how it made her father upset.
Thanks! :D
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