![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm going somewhere with this really I am.
(BTW Rita, I kinda changed Cassie a little. You probably won't actually remember because I didn't remember until I went back and looked at it, but if you notice that Cassie is not the age I said she was before, trust me, I did it on purpose.)
I sort of have an idea of what's going on now, so hopefully I can gain momentum from here on out. *sigh* I'm so far behind. *cries*
Oh, this brings my word count up around 13,200. Still five days behind.
That afternoon Cassie carefully walked Nessie through making another potion in her warm bright kitchen. Nessie decided that she really liked her mentor’s kitchen. The large windows let in a lot of the afternoon sunlight; the curtains were a delicate shade of green that nicely accented the pale cream walls; the counters were all a mocha color that went well with the walls and the window trim carried the same color up onto the walls as well. In a way, the large fireplace with a cauldron suspended above it happily boiling some indeterminate substance surprised Nessie less than the modern-looking fridge across the kitchen.
As they worked together to assemble the potion, Cassie imparted bits of advice and knowledge about magic as she thought of them. It was much more like hanging out with a friend than being taught anything. Nessie suspected that Cassie wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she was expected to teach something the way the teachers at school did, lecturing all the time, with boring, structured lessons every day. While Nessie was not entirely opposed to school, she found this way of learning to be a lot more fun. She liked being able to ask questions freely as she thought of them and direct the flow of information. After telling Cassie about her mishap the day before, they ended up discussing the possibilities of reverse stirring for half an hour. Cassie was very proud of her for figuring out her mistake by herself and even more so for having been able to correct it. She just smiled knowingly at Nessie’s excitement when she described how it had felt to take the potion she had made.
When the potion they were working on, one designed to clear the mind and encourage concentration, was finished, they moved into the sitting room for tea and more discussion. Helped along by a dose of the just-completed potion, the conversation was fruitful, flowing gracefully from topic to topic. Cassie spent quite some time relating the theory of the five natural elements and how they related to magic. Then she told her which parts of the textbooks she should look at for more information about the elements. By the time they finished that part of their talk, it was getting rather late in the afternoon and they had to call it a day. This time, when Nessie walked out the front door, she was not surprised to see forest she recognized, but was somewhat surprised that it was a different part of the woods, closer to her house this time. It was hard to wrap her mind around the way Cassie’s house moved even though today when she had gone looking for it, she had found it only just inside the back forest instead of deep in it. Regardless, she was glad of its location because the afternoon had been rather tiring and she was ready to get back to her bedroom and curl up with a book for a while.
The summer stretched on idyllically. Nessie spent a large part of each day gathering ingredients, reading about magic, or making potions, often accompanied by Cassie. With Cassie’s help, Nessie went into some of the wild forests of the magical realm searching for elusive ingredients. She couldn’t yet reach those places on her own but this didn’t bother her as she was still a bit daunted by them and didn’t particularly want to go alone. By the time August rolled around, Nessie had mastered quite a few different potions and had no difficulty understanding even complicated potion recipes she’d never seen before. Memorizing plants and exploring the magical realm was coming a little more slowly, but that knowledge was still coming along at a fairly good pace as well. She was more depressed than she’d ever been before at the thought of going back to school. Usually by this point in the summer, she was so bored that she was ready to go back to school, but this year she would have been quite glad to have summer continue forever.
The first day of school dawned meltingly hot. When her mom woke her up, Nessie tried desperately to go back to sleep. Her mother yelled at her again until she called back that she was awake and getting ready. With a sigh, she got out of bed and pulled on the outfit she had picked out before going to sleep the night before. In the kitchen, her mother was getting her own things ready for the day.
“Have a good day at school, sweetheart,” her mother said, “Make sure you don’t miss the bus.”
With those parting words of advice, Mom was gathering her things and youngest child and headed off to take Daisy to the baby-sitter’s and herself to work.
Glancing at the clock on the microwave, Nessie saw that she still had about ten minutes before she needed to go outside to watch for the bus. Getting the milk from the fridge for a bowl of cereal, Nessie rushed through it. She wanted to go through her new backpack one last time before she left. Mom had picked up new school supplies the week before and had also gotten a new green and black backpack for Eddie and a red and white one for Nessie. Hers was currently filled with some folders, a pack of loose-leaf paper, a pencil case containing several wooden pencils which she had already sharpened and a bright pink rubber eraser, and, out of sight at the bottom, her copy of “Introduction to the Magical Realm.” Nessie had yet to work her way straight through the book. She frequently used it to look something up when she had a question, but she spent so much time doing the things that led to having questions that she hadn’t found the time to read it cover to cover. At least school would give her plenty of time when she would have nothing else to do but read, especially on the long bus ride every morning and afternoon.
Eddie was right where she had expected him to be, in front of the TV.
“Come on; we’ve gotta go. It’s almost time for the bus to get here!” she called to him from the hallway.
He glanced up at her and then turned back to the TV.
“Come on, Eddie!”
He didn’t even look up this time.
Nessie sighed and walked to the front door. She picked up her backpack, opened the door and went outside to wait on the short sidewalk that led straight to the road. She’d been there less than a minute before Eddie slouched his way outside, shut the door behind him and then leaned against it, looking painfully bored. She could sympathize with that; she wished she were doing anything else but going to school. School wasn’t that horrible, really; it was just that it took up a ridiculous amount of time each day. It hardly left time for anything else, especially the education she would rather be getting. She was going to be running ragged trying to keep up with her magical studies with mundane school taking up so much of her life. But she was determined that she would not let her magical education suffer.
Her first day of fourth grade went much as Nessie had expected. The bus ride was interminable, made tolerable only by her well-trained ability to tune out the yelling, exuberant kids in the seats around her and concentrate only on her book. Classes were nearly as bad. Homeroom bored her to tears, they did little other than stupid vocabulary and spelling lessons. Her English teacher was some sort of demon in human form put there simply to make her miserable by forcing her to read boring horrible literature and then yell at her alternately for not having done the reading or for having read ahead. Science class made her cringe – how many times can one learn about dinosaurs and electricity without going crazy? – with its overblown sense of importance. Nessie had never been fond of history and her teacher in that class seemed to be in a perpetual state of confusion just to make it worse. Math was the worst, though; Nessie actually rather liked math which was what made the class truly excruciating; her teacher refused to actually teach anything! They spent the first few weeks going over everything the students had learned the year before and then spent an entire month covering division! Nessie had understood it after the first day and was eager to move on and learn something more and was truly annoyed that school was so efficiently holding her back. Perhaps Cassie was good at math and would show her what came after division if she asked her about it? She decided to ask her about it soon.
Undoubtedly the worst part about school, however, was that it was very difficult to read during class. For the first few days she had tried frequently. Unfortunately most of her teachers were alarmingly adept at noticing when students had found something they would rather be doing than paying attention. After being told to put her book away several times and finally being threatened with having one taken away, a prospect which rightly terrified her, Nessie gave in and stopped trying to read while the teacher was actually teaching in every class except for History. It was ironic really that the one class where she might have actually benefited from paying attention and learned something she didn’t know already was the one class where the teacher paid no attention to whether or not anyone was listening. She still took every opportunity to read after finishing in-class assignments or when they had free time in class. During recess, while the other kids were playing on the swings, merry-go-round, slides, or other playground equipment, Nessie gladly settled on a nice patch of grass far from the noise and laughter of the other kids and read for half an hour. It always made her feel more relaxed and better able to handle the rest of the endless school day.
Doubtless, Nessie would not have managed to put up with the day-to-day tedium of mundane school without her continuing lessons with Cassie. Her mentor’s home had obligingly moved closer on the afternoon of the first day of school, to allow Nessie more time spent learning and less time traveling. These days, Nessie frequently found the small house just inside the woods near her home rather than across the wide field. Sometimes, she thought she could see it from her yard when she stared off at the woods longingly while waiting for the school bus in the early morning light. Nearly every day, Nessie spent an hour or so with Cassie at her home, sometimes working in the small garden full of both magical and mundane ingredients, sometimes exploring the wonders of the magical realm, sometimes working in the kitchen on potions, sometimes just drinking tea and talking, and occasionally going to visit one or another of Cassie’s fellow witch friends. Nessie hesitated to spend any longer than she already was with Cassie because Mom was apt to notice if she was gone all evening every day after being gone all day at school as well. Weekends were a relief because they provided much larger blocks of free time both for studying with Cassie and for practicing magic on her own in her secret fort or in her room.
One Saturday late in September, just as the weather was beginning to hint at the coming cold of winter, Cassie brought Nessie to visit a friend of hers, a fellow witch named Nathan Blake. His house was sprawling and a little bit rundown looking, as though he were just a bit too busy to worry about how it looked. In contrast, the large garden in the front yard was just as sprawling but nowhere near as unkempt. It seemed to be scrupulously kept up and Nessie saw several plants she recognized from Cassie’s garden and from her “Dictionary of Common Potion Ingredients.” She didn’t have time to look very closely at the garden that managed to be simultaneously beautiful and utilitarian because then they were on the front step and Cassie was knocking at the door. The man who answered it seemed about Cassie’s age, maybe a few years older, but most definitely no older than forty. His face broke into a smile as soon as he recognized Cassie and Nessie decided that the smile made him look very nice. His hair was a light brown shade somewhere between Nessie’s hair color and Cassie’s; it was kind of long and floppy and she sensed that it probably spent a lot of time getting in his eyes a lot like her own bangs usually did; there was just a hint of curl that made him seem a little bit boyish. Between his immediate smile and the sparkle of humor in his incredibly blue eyes, Nessie decided that she wholeheartedly approved of Nathan Blake.
“Cassie!” he sounded delighted to see her, “What brings you here today? I’ve hardly seen you for months.”
Nessie immediately noticed that Cassie smiled back at him brighter than she’d ever seen her smile before.
“Nate, I’m so sorry I’ve been scarce lately. I’ve been a little caught up training Nessie, here,” with that Cassie reached back and put a hand on Nessie’s shoulder to draw her forward so that Nathan could get a better look at her.
Even though she had decided that he seemed nice, Nessie was still a little daunted at being studied so thoroughly by a grown up.
“How nice to meet you, Nessie,” Nathan said, sounding genuinely pleased.
Disconcerted, Nessie mumbled, “Umm, it’s nice to meet you too Mr. Blake.”
“Please, child, call me Nate,” he was still smiling as though he was too happy to wipe the look away, “Do come in, both of you; there’s so much to catch up on!”
Complacently, Nessie followed her mentor inside Nate’s house. The inside of the house had more the air of the garden than the outside of the house. Obviously, Nate took care to keep the inside of his house looking nice, probably, Nessie thought idly, because he had to look at it much more than the outside. Directly inside the front door, there was a small foyer with a coat rack and a small catch-all table. The room had hard-wood floors that gleamed ever-so-slightly, subtle sconce lighting, and walls painted a color that reminded Nessie of the sky right before it rained; she couldn’t quite decide if the color would rightly be called blue or gray.
Nate led them on into his spacious combined kitchen and dining room. Like Cassie’s kitchen, it was equipped with modern appliances as well as everything necessary for potion-making. A large rectangular table seated with six chairs took up much of the blue and white tiled floor. Nate’s kitchen had several large bay windows that looked out on his back yard as well as a double sliding glass door. Between the windows and large door, the wall facing behind the house was more glass than actual wall and let in a lot of natural late-morning sunlight. Nate got Cassie and Nessie settled at the table and then rushed to make a pot of tea for them all to drink while they chatted.
Once the tea was ready and they were all settled at one end of the large kitchen table, Cassie and Nate took up the conversation. Quickly, they caught up on each other’s lives and Cassie began telling him about how Nessie’s studies were going. Nessie felt kind of awkward, as though she were being talked around, but Nate kept drawing her out, asking questions of her as well as Cassie about how the learning process was going, and eventually she was talking as animatedly as the two adults.
Nessie was excitedly talking about how much she enjoyed working with Cassie in her garden and how great his garden must be because it was so much bigger than hers when Nate’s eyes widened as though he had just thought of something. Nessie interrupted herself to say, “What?”
“I just remembered,” he began, “Yesterday when I was weeding my garden, I noticed a few of my plants looked a bit strange. They have the strangest sort of spots; I can’t tell yet if it’s a disease or a parasite causing it or if it’s magical in nature or mundane. I’ve only noticed it on a couple of fairy trees so far, but I don’t want whatever it is to spread to the rest of the garden. I was going to call you to ask for your help anyway, Cassie, if I couldn’t take care of it myself. Since you’re here, perhaps you could both help me try and find a cure?”
Cassie and Nessie both quickly agreed and, as a group, they all moved out to the gardens to take a look at the problem plants. It was very peculiar, really. There seemed to be only three plants showing signs of the affliction. None of the three were in the same part of the garden since Nate used the easy to grow plants to form separating rows between other species. Other than the few small black splotches that looked a bit like ink had dripped on them, the only sign that something was wrong with the plants was that they looked weaker than the surrounding ones. They were dying for no explicable reason. Admiring some small, strange brightly colored flowers in one corner of the garden, Nessie looked closely at them and saw that one of them looked a little less bright than the others. Kneeling next to it, Nessie carefully examined its petals and leaves; finally, she saw a small black spot on one of the delicate pink leaves. Worried, she called Nate and Cassie over to look at what she had found. After they both looked for themselves, they glanced meaningfully at each other. They looked more worried than seemed warranted for a plant.
“Whenever I have a problem in my garden, I usually try a general purification potion before anything else. I think we should try that first before we do anything else,” Cassie suggested.
“It can’t hurt,” Nate agreed.
“Well, let’s do it then,” Nessie said, a little bit excited about making a new potion.
(BTW Rita, I kinda changed Cassie a little. You probably won't actually remember because I didn't remember until I went back and looked at it, but if you notice that Cassie is not the age I said she was before, trust me, I did it on purpose.)
I sort of have an idea of what's going on now, so hopefully I can gain momentum from here on out. *sigh* I'm so far behind. *cries*
Oh, this brings my word count up around 13,200. Still five days behind.
That afternoon Cassie carefully walked Nessie through making another potion in her warm bright kitchen. Nessie decided that she really liked her mentor’s kitchen. The large windows let in a lot of the afternoon sunlight; the curtains were a delicate shade of green that nicely accented the pale cream walls; the counters were all a mocha color that went well with the walls and the window trim carried the same color up onto the walls as well. In a way, the large fireplace with a cauldron suspended above it happily boiling some indeterminate substance surprised Nessie less than the modern-looking fridge across the kitchen.
As they worked together to assemble the potion, Cassie imparted bits of advice and knowledge about magic as she thought of them. It was much more like hanging out with a friend than being taught anything. Nessie suspected that Cassie wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she was expected to teach something the way the teachers at school did, lecturing all the time, with boring, structured lessons every day. While Nessie was not entirely opposed to school, she found this way of learning to be a lot more fun. She liked being able to ask questions freely as she thought of them and direct the flow of information. After telling Cassie about her mishap the day before, they ended up discussing the possibilities of reverse stirring for half an hour. Cassie was very proud of her for figuring out her mistake by herself and even more so for having been able to correct it. She just smiled knowingly at Nessie’s excitement when she described how it had felt to take the potion she had made.
When the potion they were working on, one designed to clear the mind and encourage concentration, was finished, they moved into the sitting room for tea and more discussion. Helped along by a dose of the just-completed potion, the conversation was fruitful, flowing gracefully from topic to topic. Cassie spent quite some time relating the theory of the five natural elements and how they related to magic. Then she told her which parts of the textbooks she should look at for more information about the elements. By the time they finished that part of their talk, it was getting rather late in the afternoon and they had to call it a day. This time, when Nessie walked out the front door, she was not surprised to see forest she recognized, but was somewhat surprised that it was a different part of the woods, closer to her house this time. It was hard to wrap her mind around the way Cassie’s house moved even though today when she had gone looking for it, she had found it only just inside the back forest instead of deep in it. Regardless, she was glad of its location because the afternoon had been rather tiring and she was ready to get back to her bedroom and curl up with a book for a while.
The summer stretched on idyllically. Nessie spent a large part of each day gathering ingredients, reading about magic, or making potions, often accompanied by Cassie. With Cassie’s help, Nessie went into some of the wild forests of the magical realm searching for elusive ingredients. She couldn’t yet reach those places on her own but this didn’t bother her as she was still a bit daunted by them and didn’t particularly want to go alone. By the time August rolled around, Nessie had mastered quite a few different potions and had no difficulty understanding even complicated potion recipes she’d never seen before. Memorizing plants and exploring the magical realm was coming a little more slowly, but that knowledge was still coming along at a fairly good pace as well. She was more depressed than she’d ever been before at the thought of going back to school. Usually by this point in the summer, she was so bored that she was ready to go back to school, but this year she would have been quite glad to have summer continue forever.
The first day of school dawned meltingly hot. When her mom woke her up, Nessie tried desperately to go back to sleep. Her mother yelled at her again until she called back that she was awake and getting ready. With a sigh, she got out of bed and pulled on the outfit she had picked out before going to sleep the night before. In the kitchen, her mother was getting her own things ready for the day.
“Have a good day at school, sweetheart,” her mother said, “Make sure you don’t miss the bus.”
With those parting words of advice, Mom was gathering her things and youngest child and headed off to take Daisy to the baby-sitter’s and herself to work.
Glancing at the clock on the microwave, Nessie saw that she still had about ten minutes before she needed to go outside to watch for the bus. Getting the milk from the fridge for a bowl of cereal, Nessie rushed through it. She wanted to go through her new backpack one last time before she left. Mom had picked up new school supplies the week before and had also gotten a new green and black backpack for Eddie and a red and white one for Nessie. Hers was currently filled with some folders, a pack of loose-leaf paper, a pencil case containing several wooden pencils which she had already sharpened and a bright pink rubber eraser, and, out of sight at the bottom, her copy of “Introduction to the Magical Realm.” Nessie had yet to work her way straight through the book. She frequently used it to look something up when she had a question, but she spent so much time doing the things that led to having questions that she hadn’t found the time to read it cover to cover. At least school would give her plenty of time when she would have nothing else to do but read, especially on the long bus ride every morning and afternoon.
Eddie was right where she had expected him to be, in front of the TV.
“Come on; we’ve gotta go. It’s almost time for the bus to get here!” she called to him from the hallway.
He glanced up at her and then turned back to the TV.
“Come on, Eddie!”
He didn’t even look up this time.
Nessie sighed and walked to the front door. She picked up her backpack, opened the door and went outside to wait on the short sidewalk that led straight to the road. She’d been there less than a minute before Eddie slouched his way outside, shut the door behind him and then leaned against it, looking painfully bored. She could sympathize with that; she wished she were doing anything else but going to school. School wasn’t that horrible, really; it was just that it took up a ridiculous amount of time each day. It hardly left time for anything else, especially the education she would rather be getting. She was going to be running ragged trying to keep up with her magical studies with mundane school taking up so much of her life. But she was determined that she would not let her magical education suffer.
Her first day of fourth grade went much as Nessie had expected. The bus ride was interminable, made tolerable only by her well-trained ability to tune out the yelling, exuberant kids in the seats around her and concentrate only on her book. Classes were nearly as bad. Homeroom bored her to tears, they did little other than stupid vocabulary and spelling lessons. Her English teacher was some sort of demon in human form put there simply to make her miserable by forcing her to read boring horrible literature and then yell at her alternately for not having done the reading or for having read ahead. Science class made her cringe – how many times can one learn about dinosaurs and electricity without going crazy? – with its overblown sense of importance. Nessie had never been fond of history and her teacher in that class seemed to be in a perpetual state of confusion just to make it worse. Math was the worst, though; Nessie actually rather liked math which was what made the class truly excruciating; her teacher refused to actually teach anything! They spent the first few weeks going over everything the students had learned the year before and then spent an entire month covering division! Nessie had understood it after the first day and was eager to move on and learn something more and was truly annoyed that school was so efficiently holding her back. Perhaps Cassie was good at math and would show her what came after division if she asked her about it? She decided to ask her about it soon.
Undoubtedly the worst part about school, however, was that it was very difficult to read during class. For the first few days she had tried frequently. Unfortunately most of her teachers were alarmingly adept at noticing when students had found something they would rather be doing than paying attention. After being told to put her book away several times and finally being threatened with having one taken away, a prospect which rightly terrified her, Nessie gave in and stopped trying to read while the teacher was actually teaching in every class except for History. It was ironic really that the one class where she might have actually benefited from paying attention and learned something she didn’t know already was the one class where the teacher paid no attention to whether or not anyone was listening. She still took every opportunity to read after finishing in-class assignments or when they had free time in class. During recess, while the other kids were playing on the swings, merry-go-round, slides, or other playground equipment, Nessie gladly settled on a nice patch of grass far from the noise and laughter of the other kids and read for half an hour. It always made her feel more relaxed and better able to handle the rest of the endless school day.
Doubtless, Nessie would not have managed to put up with the day-to-day tedium of mundane school without her continuing lessons with Cassie. Her mentor’s home had obligingly moved closer on the afternoon of the first day of school, to allow Nessie more time spent learning and less time traveling. These days, Nessie frequently found the small house just inside the woods near her home rather than across the wide field. Sometimes, she thought she could see it from her yard when she stared off at the woods longingly while waiting for the school bus in the early morning light. Nearly every day, Nessie spent an hour or so with Cassie at her home, sometimes working in the small garden full of both magical and mundane ingredients, sometimes exploring the wonders of the magical realm, sometimes working in the kitchen on potions, sometimes just drinking tea and talking, and occasionally going to visit one or another of Cassie’s fellow witch friends. Nessie hesitated to spend any longer than she already was with Cassie because Mom was apt to notice if she was gone all evening every day after being gone all day at school as well. Weekends were a relief because they provided much larger blocks of free time both for studying with Cassie and for practicing magic on her own in her secret fort or in her room.
One Saturday late in September, just as the weather was beginning to hint at the coming cold of winter, Cassie brought Nessie to visit a friend of hers, a fellow witch named Nathan Blake. His house was sprawling and a little bit rundown looking, as though he were just a bit too busy to worry about how it looked. In contrast, the large garden in the front yard was just as sprawling but nowhere near as unkempt. It seemed to be scrupulously kept up and Nessie saw several plants she recognized from Cassie’s garden and from her “Dictionary of Common Potion Ingredients.” She didn’t have time to look very closely at the garden that managed to be simultaneously beautiful and utilitarian because then they were on the front step and Cassie was knocking at the door. The man who answered it seemed about Cassie’s age, maybe a few years older, but most definitely no older than forty. His face broke into a smile as soon as he recognized Cassie and Nessie decided that the smile made him look very nice. His hair was a light brown shade somewhere between Nessie’s hair color and Cassie’s; it was kind of long and floppy and she sensed that it probably spent a lot of time getting in his eyes a lot like her own bangs usually did; there was just a hint of curl that made him seem a little bit boyish. Between his immediate smile and the sparkle of humor in his incredibly blue eyes, Nessie decided that she wholeheartedly approved of Nathan Blake.
“Cassie!” he sounded delighted to see her, “What brings you here today? I’ve hardly seen you for months.”
Nessie immediately noticed that Cassie smiled back at him brighter than she’d ever seen her smile before.
“Nate, I’m so sorry I’ve been scarce lately. I’ve been a little caught up training Nessie, here,” with that Cassie reached back and put a hand on Nessie’s shoulder to draw her forward so that Nathan could get a better look at her.
Even though she had decided that he seemed nice, Nessie was still a little daunted at being studied so thoroughly by a grown up.
“How nice to meet you, Nessie,” Nathan said, sounding genuinely pleased.
Disconcerted, Nessie mumbled, “Umm, it’s nice to meet you too Mr. Blake.”
“Please, child, call me Nate,” he was still smiling as though he was too happy to wipe the look away, “Do come in, both of you; there’s so much to catch up on!”
Complacently, Nessie followed her mentor inside Nate’s house. The inside of the house had more the air of the garden than the outside of the house. Obviously, Nate took care to keep the inside of his house looking nice, probably, Nessie thought idly, because he had to look at it much more than the outside. Directly inside the front door, there was a small foyer with a coat rack and a small catch-all table. The room had hard-wood floors that gleamed ever-so-slightly, subtle sconce lighting, and walls painted a color that reminded Nessie of the sky right before it rained; she couldn’t quite decide if the color would rightly be called blue or gray.
Nate led them on into his spacious combined kitchen and dining room. Like Cassie’s kitchen, it was equipped with modern appliances as well as everything necessary for potion-making. A large rectangular table seated with six chairs took up much of the blue and white tiled floor. Nate’s kitchen had several large bay windows that looked out on his back yard as well as a double sliding glass door. Between the windows and large door, the wall facing behind the house was more glass than actual wall and let in a lot of natural late-morning sunlight. Nate got Cassie and Nessie settled at the table and then rushed to make a pot of tea for them all to drink while they chatted.
Once the tea was ready and they were all settled at one end of the large kitchen table, Cassie and Nate took up the conversation. Quickly, they caught up on each other’s lives and Cassie began telling him about how Nessie’s studies were going. Nessie felt kind of awkward, as though she were being talked around, but Nate kept drawing her out, asking questions of her as well as Cassie about how the learning process was going, and eventually she was talking as animatedly as the two adults.
Nessie was excitedly talking about how much she enjoyed working with Cassie in her garden and how great his garden must be because it was so much bigger than hers when Nate’s eyes widened as though he had just thought of something. Nessie interrupted herself to say, “What?”
“I just remembered,” he began, “Yesterday when I was weeding my garden, I noticed a few of my plants looked a bit strange. They have the strangest sort of spots; I can’t tell yet if it’s a disease or a parasite causing it or if it’s magical in nature or mundane. I’ve only noticed it on a couple of fairy trees so far, but I don’t want whatever it is to spread to the rest of the garden. I was going to call you to ask for your help anyway, Cassie, if I couldn’t take care of it myself. Since you’re here, perhaps you could both help me try and find a cure?”
Cassie and Nessie both quickly agreed and, as a group, they all moved out to the gardens to take a look at the problem plants. It was very peculiar, really. There seemed to be only three plants showing signs of the affliction. None of the three were in the same part of the garden since Nate used the easy to grow plants to form separating rows between other species. Other than the few small black splotches that looked a bit like ink had dripped on them, the only sign that something was wrong with the plants was that they looked weaker than the surrounding ones. They were dying for no explicable reason. Admiring some small, strange brightly colored flowers in one corner of the garden, Nessie looked closely at them and saw that one of them looked a little less bright than the others. Kneeling next to it, Nessie carefully examined its petals and leaves; finally, she saw a small black spot on one of the delicate pink leaves. Worried, she called Nate and Cassie over to look at what she had found. After they both looked for themselves, they glanced meaningfully at each other. They looked more worried than seemed warranted for a plant.
“Whenever I have a problem in my garden, I usually try a general purification potion before anything else. I think we should try that first before we do anything else,” Cassie suggested.
“It can’t hurt,” Nate agreed.
“Well, let’s do it then,” Nessie said, a little bit excited about making a new potion.
Tags: