Jurnel of Desine.

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

I think I will name you Jurnel, (I hope that's spelled right), I will keep my story with you, and I won't tell any lies, or have any secrets in your pages. I promise I won't even exaggerate, like I know my father must do in his books, because I think it's important to have at least one place without secrets. You, Jurnel, will be my secret keeper.…..

 

My name is Desine, its spelled wrong, I know. It's spelled wrong because my father is a harebrained professional magician not a professor, scholar or whatever else they may think he is. Even though every single person who's ever lived on Mara calls him “the Professor.” (I've never seen his real name, I'm not sure if he even has a real name.) My name is also Desine because my father had papers on his desk.... Why don't I back up a bit farther so you can get down a bigger picture...

 

He was waiting impatiently for her to arrive that Saturday. He would pace back and forth, spill his tea, earning a glare from Mara, tap his feet and stare straining out the window to see if she was coming yet. The Professor was in love. All the staff could tell by his erratic skipping, tuneless humming, and the incessant smile on his face, but right now he was even more annoying sitting in their work space, blocking their way, making it hard to concentrate with all his noise. In fact he was so annoying the head cook later wrote a note to Mara, asking her to put windows in The Professor's rooms. Suddenly, he looked out the window and cried “there she is!!!” then he ran straight through the closed door skipped up through the air meet her and cried “Did it come? Do you have it? Where is it? Can I see it? Please?” She looked at him, an annoyed expression on her face and said, “Go back down to the ground and wait, I will to get to everyone in order.” The Professor took this as a good sign and said “but you have it right?” She ignored him and continued in her route with the professor following annoying her so much that she finally gave in. Reaching into her bag she brought out a small but heavy wooden box, shoved it into The Professor's waiting arms and marched away toward her next customer. The Professor giggled with excitement, called “thank you!” over his shoulder and teleported to his study, where he literally ripped off the lid of the chest, cracked open a book and delved his mind into it's contents. You see Jurnel, The Professor was in love with an idea, an idea he had gotten a few weeks ago, forgotten, and remembered by looking the doodles in the margins of his notes.

 

Approximately nine months later......

 

All the staff, in fact everyone on Mara was terrified of him. Well, everyone on Mara besides Mara, but Mara was super busy doing everything at multiple times so Micheal the serving staff, brought him lunch. Micheal swallowed nervously; balancing the tray on one hand he wiped the other on his pants, and quickly placed his hands back on the tray handles. He didn't think anyone was watching him, but he never knew with some of the other serving staff. He knew they sent him up here because he was the most afraid of The Professor, but if he was afraid it was their fault! He had just started working on Mara and had never seen The Professor, and the other staff kept telling him stories of the Professor. The worst part about those stories is at least some of them had to be true, what with the extra arms Taelin had and the bright purple hair Jemsi had, and the moveable wooden legs Strea had. Michael swallowed again, and heard a muffled giggle behind him. He felt his face grow bright red with embarrassment and he knocked softly, and winced. Nothing happened. He looked back at the door, and heard giggles behind him. He knocked harder.... Nothing happened. Micheal set the tray down on a small table beside the door, amidst echoing giggles, and pounded on the door with both fists. The door creaked open of it's open accord, and a slightly annoyed voice said, “Quit banging on my door and come in!” Michael slowly uncurled from the crouched position he had taken when the door started to open. He picked up the tray from the table slowly, and slowly dragged himself into the room.

 

He closed the door with his back and looked up, The Professor was a tall slightly tan young man in his mid-thirties, Michael guessed, with a short mop of black and silver curls which seemed to be every where at once. He was wearing a plain white shirt that had ink stains on the cuffs and back pants that looked as if they had been slept in, he sat in a broken chair at a desk completely covered in papers, ink, pens, and odd looking instruments. A quill pen was in one hand tapping upon a page and the other hand was scritching through his hair making it messier than it already was. His glasses were a bit askew as they perched on the end of his nose and his green eyes were trained directly onto the papers in front of him, the Professor was paying him no attention at all as he scribbled down several notes, looked at them, crossed parts of them out, and occasionally rummaged through his book shelves/piles for more information. Michael relaxed a bit, this strange man was certainly not the infamous Professor he had heard about, he looked about, perhaps the real Professor was hiding somewhere. He didn't see anyone else, though there were plenty of hiding places, even if this man was the Professor he certainly didn't invoke fear in him.

 

The Professor shouted “Ah HAH!!!!” and resumed his scribbled at a faster pace. Michael had heard The Professor did shout occasionally but it usually didn't mean anything, so he stepped carefully through the messy floor over to an upturned table and balanced the tray on the table foot which was sticking up into the air. He was just turning to make his way back through the mess to the door when he heard muttering behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and his eyes went wide as the dishes he had been carrying. He looked around frantically and stumbled through the mess toward the nearest cover he could find, a wooden closet imbedded in the wall. He had just reached the door and grabbed onto the handle when there was a “BOOOOM” and the whole room became a whirlwind of dirt, clothes, furniture, lunch and remains of other old meals, and papers. Papers and books flew through the mayhem as if they had just been waiting for the wind to give them wings for flying. As the room settled down, a thick black smoke that had been a less noticeable participant in the room's chaotic dance choked out the sunlight from the closed windows and made the Professor and Michael start coughing. Michael was half buried in a pile of debris still clutching the handle, of the closet he had tried to hide inside. Before he could even get up from where he lay a scream was heard. The scream was so loud the Professor and Michael's eardrums nearly burst. Michael got up and tried to stumble in the direction he thought he remembered the windows being.

 

Then the door burst open, and Mara stormed in. Her footsteps tapped immediately toward the windows, debris scattering before her, and threw them open. The black smoke rushed eagerly out the escape, and Mara turned and glared at a figure emerging from the rapidly clearing air in the center of the room. Mara turned and saw Michael staring at the windows in a confused manner, as if they had moved without his knowledge. Mara smiled at him, “Michael, thank you for bringing his lunch up. Would you mind bringing up a tub of warm water, some clean hand cloths, and a bottle full of milk, to the nursery? You can get those layabouts around the corner to help you.” Michael looked up, blurted “Yes, Mam.” and hurried from the room. Mara turned her stare back to the figure in the center of the room. She sniffed. He was fairly clean standing in the center of a little circle of clean, with a sheepish smile on his face and a baby screaming it's lungs out in his arms. Mara looked at the room and sniffed; The Professor followed her gaze and shrugged. Mara raised one eyebrow and sniffed. The Professor tried and mostly failed to arrange his face into an apology. Mara gave him one last glare, looked down at the babe and sighed. The Professor grinned. “So” he restated, “you'll let me keep it?” Mara sniffed. “Here, give her to me.” The Professor looked up “What? But just you said-” “Technically, I never 'said' anything. Now, she has a poopy diaper, unless you really want to change her yourself, hand her over. We'll settle the rest later.” The Professor's eyes grew big, he sniffed and immediately grimaced. Then kissing his daughter on the forehead, he placed her carefully into Mara's waiting arms and turned to start on the mess he had made.

 

Now I don't remember any of this, of course, because I was still just a baby, I only started being able to remember things when I was about 2 and a half. Michael, Mara, and my father told me these stories in bits and pieces, so I really don't know any of this for certain. Also, Michael wasn't there to tell me, and neither my father nor Mara will talk about it but there will always be rumors.

According to my source, when I got back some sort of a deal was struck. Papers were supposedly signed, though I have never seen a leaf or particle of them. To this day the Professor has never created an explosion the size of that one inside his room ever again, also, I heard that for the first 5 months after my birth his room was so clean and shiny it attracted glow bugs. That baby was the Professor's daughter, me, and that was the story of how I was born.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Bubbling Mud Heads

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

One day, approximately three and a half years later, my father was doodling on the edge of one of the many papers on his desk, and got an idea. Fortunately at the same time Mara came into his rooms and plopped me down on his desk, right on top of his papers. The annoyed Professor looked up, straight into the terrifying glare of an angry Mara, and was scared out of his wits. Then Mara spoke a question that had been bothering her for the past three and a half years, “what is her name?” She had tried to fix it herself and nothing she tried had stayed, she had even gotten others, famous others, to help her, none of the solutions had stuck either. She knew names were very important; there was only one who could truly give her the right name, her only living relative, her father. Right now however, as well as for the past three and a half years her father had been dithering and dithering while The Professor had been making messes, excuses, and having strange ideas that never seemed to work quite right. Right now my father was procrastinating, mumbling and hoping he could get away from this situation for just a little while longer, and the Professor was trying to remember what his teleportation spells involved, after all these years he was still better at casting illusions that much of anything else, reaching for a pen to write down the idea he just had before he forgot it, and trying to tug the piece of paper he had been doodling on out from under me to write on.

 

Mara however was serious, deadly serious, so serious the cloud we live on began to shake, spider-lings and insects that had been attracted to my father's messes shriveled up burst into flame and died, and mice fled from the tower only to find the rest of the cloud shaking with equally terrifying quakes. Mara glared at The Professor in all her fury and shouted “If you do not give her a name right now then I'm quitting!!!” The Professor looked up into Mara's eyes and quickly looked away; he knew he had no excuse for not giving his daughter a name for three and a half years. He looked around the room, out the window, at anything and everywhere except at Mara or the creature sitting on his papers. Mara glared at him, “Today, I told her our names, I pointed to myself saying Mara, and to Michael with his name. Then, she pointed to herself and made that face! So, give her a name now!” The Professor looked down, at his desk, one of the papers read: “Desi- New Cl-.” That paper really read: “Design for The New Clock Tower,” but I was sitting on more than half of it. The Professor could feel Mara's glare on the back of his head, he looked up and Mara spoke, “look at her, and give her a name.” The Professor looked at at the confused expression his daughter bore, and scratched his head, “ummm...” he glanced down quickly. “D-E-S-I....um....uhhh...” Unwilling or unable to move me from atop his papers he guessed for the rest of the spelling, “...I-N-E!.. Desine! Her name is Desine!!” Mara snatched the paper out from under the child, shot the Professor a withering look, causing a spider behind her to spontaneously implode, then rolled her eyes and sighed. I, the newly christened Desine, giggled and kicked over an ink bottle, I only partially understood what was happening. I suppose I was mostly just happy that everyone else was happy, because I honestly doubt I really understood what they were speaking about. Mara scooped me up and carried me out to the nursery, and this was how I received my name.

 

Well, now that I'm done with this, maybe I should tell you a little about the Professor, Mara, and the place where we live here, they are fairly important I guess. Then I can get started on my story, and perhaps catch up to where I am now in my room, sulking. Yes, Jurnel, I can admit that I am sulking, but only to you.

I'll start with my father; my father lived down on the land for the first 87 years of his life, at least 72 of which were spent as an apprentice to The Olde Wizard Oliver.

 

(I guess you wouldn't know this, that wizards normally live a lot longer than other people, or that the stronger a wizard is the longer they usually live, my father is currently about 340 years old, he'll probably live to be at least 850 some.) Side Note: If I ever meet The Olde Wizard Oliver I will have to ask him what my father's real name is, I believe he is the only living one who might know. That is a long name to write, I think from now on I am going to call him the old wiz.

 

Anyway, my father spent the longest time as the old wiz's apprentice, more precisely my father spent the longest time creating doubles of himself and sneaking off to go adventuring whenever the old wiz's back was turned. His doubles looked and acted enough like him, lazy, secretive, and perpetually bored of everything, always hungry, etcetera, that he was able to go missing for weeks at a time with no one ever knowing he was gone! I have been searching for that spell, I have a few ideas, Jurnel, on how it might work but I really need to see a book to understand completely.

 

Oh, the adventures he had, Jurnel! He sneaked off to rescue a dragon from a miserable princess the elderly nobles of Asteria had set upon it. He stole the crown of Esstim from the very head of King Anlebd and still has it locked away until he finds the right person to give it to. He even worked with the members of a group of old fairy godmothers, giving them advice and helping to carry out their plans to right toppled kingdoms and cement their role as advisers. It was on one of these quests that he met Mara, and saved Mara, I guess he must have made quite an impression on her because she has been with him ever since. It was when he helped a giant defend his floating land from a night thief, and received a copy of the plans to his floating castle in payment, that he got the grand idea to quit his apprenticeship. He had already learned everything he needed to know at least 49 years ago, but still enjoyed having a place to come back to when he was tired of adventuring. So, he told the old wiz he was done, passed all the tests he had put off for 49 years and left. He moved into his own little shack out in the ruins of an old castle, and started work, first he created the designs for his own floating land, using the old ruins as a starting base, and added his own touches to them. He also gathered tons of friends or friends of friends of his from all over this planet to act as staff for various things in the castle. Well, technically Jurnel, HE didn't gather anyone or even think that he might need serving staff. That was all Mara's doing. Then he got to work on the spell he needed and failed consistently for about 3 months, after which he thought he got a grand plan, and it backfired sending his power halfway around the world to the monastery labyrinth of Furellan to create a very elaborate pond full of gemstone colored ever-fish.

 

Here's the problem, basically, the spell he was trying to use was very precise, really complicated, and it needed more power. My father happens to be a very chaotic, absent-minded and scatterbrained person, and The Professor was too proud to ask anyone on he knew for help. So, naturally, he begged Mara. I don't know how he convinced her, but he did, and he linked Mara into the spell, giving him the stability to actually cast the spell and the necessary order and power to get the job done. The castle ruins reshaped themselves into the Professor's designs and rose up into the air, carrying all the staff and him and Mara and the few friends the Professor hoped to try and convince to work for him. I think he actually did manage to convince a few of them, I mean the elven gun-master is still here, and Jevnk the old tailor, Oh, and Vyl the hand fighting-master! Vyl is scary, but fairly nice; at least, that's what I think.

 

Anyway, a side effect of the Professor's spell was that Mara's soul or personality or whatever it is we have that makes us different from dumb ki-birds became sort of meshed in with the castle itself, so Mara literally is the castle and the cloud, trees, buildings and everything that we live on/in. I suppose it is a good thing that this happened to Mara and not to anyone else, because you see Jurnel, Mara is able to be in more than one place at the same time; I'm not sure how she does it, so I'll tell you more when I figure it out. Now, just because Mara is the 'land' we live on and can be everywhere at once doesn't mean that Mara knows everything that is happening on Mara. There are mice living here, she wouldn't allow it if she knew where they all were. Also, Mara is the castle, meaning: she is a ton of wood and stone as well as everything else, because stone cannot really be hurt and dead wood cannot feel anything neither can Mara feel if there are feet walking on her hallways, or small creatures hiding up in her wooden rafters. Another thing about Mara that is important is dirt, dust, spiders and unclean things either flee from her or become clean when she touches them. This happens because a genie granted her wish to never be dirty again, or something like that. Anyway, that's all I will explain for now, my hand is tired and I want to sulk more...

Edited June 12, 2013 by Bubbling Mud Heads

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

There will be even Moar later, but this is all I will put up for now:

 

Jurnel, sulking isn't nearly as fun as it should be, especially when there isn't anyone in the area to complain to. Hmm, I should also probably tell you about how I know all these things, too! I have been picking locks and could practically breathe the written languages, since I was 5! So, when I found a more difficult lock in the lower fake corner of my father's wardrobe I just had to see what was beyond it. However, this lock was guarded by a few spells of the Professor's, really annoying ones too, I remember one of them would have made created a flashing yellow sign appear over my head that read “Thieving Urchin”, a pair of hands that you cannot move would have appeared over my eyes intermittently blocking and unblocking my sight, and another would have created a floating face that followed me everywhere shrieking insults at the same time. But I didn't set any of them off; I looked up the spells in the Professor's books instead, and by looking them up and studying them for about a month, I was able to remove them when my father was asleep.

Late one night, I was sure I knew exactly how to remove the spells and had practiced casting and removing them each a few times. Maybe I over-prepared, Jurnel, I mean, I probably would have been fine without practicing the spells so much. Ah well, at least I did prepare, as nervous as I was something was sure to go wrong. As I crept into the Professor's room, I noticed there were lamps still on. I carefully crept over the piles and paper littered floor towards my father's bedroom. The door was open, and I peeked around the bottom just far enough to see that he was sitting up in bed in his night shirt, books and papers strewn around him, as he scribbled down thoughts in a brown leather bound book. Jurnel, I was terrified he would look up right then and there and see me, not that anything really hideous would have happened had I been caught, but it's the principal of the thing, when one is sneaking around doing suspicious activity to be afraid of getting caught. I scooted backwards so fast I knocked over one of the Professor's piles. I froze. I heard no noise besides the scribble of my father's pen on the pages, so I looked around the door just far enough that I could see my father. He was still scribbling in his pages; suddenly he looked up, glanced around the room eyes going completely past my head without seeing it. “Huh? I thought I heard something... hmm.. Maybe one of my dirt rabbits...” he muttered skritching at his head and going back to his pages. Then, possibly because of this display from the Professor's, I got an idea.

I decided that it would be foolish to cast a hiding spell or try to cause a distraction, like making a noise sound away from me. Here is way: one, any major magic would cause him to look up (I wasn't thinking about the unlocking spells then), two, he was already sufficiently distracted, and three any sound or further distraction he most likely would not even notice until morning. Also, trying to create a mess or sound or something would almost definitely make Mara notice that I was sneaking about in here. So, here is what I did, I summoned up my nerves, stood up and walked right past my father as he scribbled and into his wardrobe where I squirmed down into a cubby box near the fake corner. I had just pushed some boots, clothes, and boxes of things into the opening of the cubby box, when I heard a “Wait, what?” from my father, and the wardrobe doors were pulled open by a magic rope of wind, the Professor seems to be favoring wind usage lately, and clothes were lifted up in the air. Then the clothes were placed back down with a thump. The Professor sighed, “Huh, guess not.” He set his book and other things off to the side and the next thing I felt were layers of magic being wrapped around the room, alarms and spells far worse than any of the ones on this fake corner. The spells complete, I heard my father flop down onto his pillow and felt a thread of magic go off to extinguish his light. I had not prepared for this, Jurnel; I did not realize I would be trapped in here until the spells were removed. “Well, I guess there's nothing to do but wait,” I told myself as I tried to calm my pulse, and settled in to listen for my father's snores. I must have waited a few hours my heart pounding like crazy the whole time, but I heard it, finally, I heard the sound of my father's snores. Then I carefully created a simple light spell in the shape of a butterfly to hover by my shoulder as I began the spells...

 

Maybe at this point I should explain a little about magic. You see, Jurnel, magic is basically scientific knowledge of the way things work, and the power to bend the way things work just a bit, or in mine and my father's case, quite a lot. Magic is sort of an extra sense, like seeing, or like your arms but bigger than that, like you have a whole separate body that you control in your magic.

I have a theory, Jurnel, that this separate body thing is how Mara is able to be in multiple places at once, but the only way I can see her doing that is with really complex and precise magic, which somehow doesn't make any sense at all as she never really uses any other magic, besides the whole dirt being afraid of her thing, and the spiders... Anyway, all this means is that spell she uses would probably be pretty impossible for me. Not that complex spells are hard, Jurnel, I am quite sure that I could master any complex spell I wanted to. The difficult thing for me is precision, this is another thing about magic; every magician's magic is different. Some of them can cast the most specific and precise spells ever, and have this appear then and not a second earlier and nothing ever explodes ever! Others, like the Professor and I, have very chaotic magic, so when we cast something our magic always changes it. Simply put, we have very little control over our magic, though we have a lot of it, others may have more or less control and more or less magic, one of the magicians I read about could only make/cast spells in the form of mushrooms...

One important thing to know about magic is we only have a certain amount, by using or exercising our magic, it gets larger and usually more controllable. Also, we reuse our magic, it never disappears, and is only used up if we leave our magic somewhere as I and the Professor seem to do often. Then we have to call our magic back before we can use it again, or undo a few spells we have up and use the same magic for different spells. One spell will not use up all the magic that we have, Jurnel, because me and my father were made with much magic, but if we leave our magic in enough little spells everywhere, then we will not have enough to use for big spells.

Another thing about magic is all magicians sense it differently, we can tell if a spell is not our own by it's unique, well, I guess the best comparison word would be, smell. It's easier to say smell I suppose, because none of us can feel the magic, or sense it, and only if magic is cast in a visible form can we see it, but we can sort of "smell" magic. For example: my magic 'smells' different from the other magic a few persons on Mara have. I can't really describe they way my magic smells, but the little magic Thren, the ax teacher, has smells cold and iron-like. There's also a master weaver here on Mara named Mr. Froma, The magic he has smells sticky, but not sweet, more like the sticky sap of an pine tree, or a spider's web. Last thing, like 'smelling' magic, casting magic is a relative term; we simply hold what we want to happen, how we want to reshape reality, in our minds until we have used the power portion of our magic to complete what we wanted. I think that's a fair amount about different magics, now on to the spells I am undoing. The way I described them before is not completely accurate I suppose, the way the flashing yellow sign works is by mutating the top of the victims head, in an unobservable way, to emit puffs of glowing yellow gas at the correct places and times that they always spell the letters. This I discovered could be undone simply by 'casting' another light butterfly and sending my magic through the light butterfly to set the spell off, thus making the sign appear over the butterfly before undoing the spell. The butterfly is extinguished and the sign is released as magic to float back over to the Professor and join the cloud around him. Jurnel, it is a marvelous thing how deeply my father can sleep, he did not notice that, or my removal of the other two spells. Those two I had to defuse, by which I mean, pick apart carefully, rather like lock picking, only if I made a mistake it might accidentally set them off. So I picked them apart, sent the extra magic back to my father, and pulled out my lock-picks. Of course, my father had to lock this as well as protect it with spells, even though there was no one on Mara crazy enough to get into his things, well, except me, of course. I heard a click and pulled out my picks, and heard my father mumble something about not eating the frogs in his dreams. Then, I carefully lifted the corner piece out and looked underneath, into a small crawl space almost completely filled with heavy leather bound books, none of them were numbered and several of them looked very old, so I picked one at random and began to read.

Luckily, when my father woke up in the morning, I also awoke and managed to hide while he removed the spells, and I sneaked back to my room (the nursery, because Mara did not believe I was old enough for my own room yet) with a few of his books before he noticed. I am fairly sure that if he hadn't been concentrating so hard on whatever it was he was doing he would have seen me, and my secret would be out. I like to keep everyone in the dark about how much magic I really know, Jurnel. I am sure they would have some sorts of work or tests or something or other for me to do besides what I want, which would not be fun at all. I suppose it doesn't matter though because they all found out soon enough, that I will have to tell you later though.

So, there you have it Jurnel, that is how I know about My father's adventures and Mara, and how everything came to be here. Well, I also know because of the stories my father, Michael and Mara tell me. But, my father always adds extra parts and leaves out others in those stories that he doesn't leave out or add in his books, and Mara won't tell me anything that I really want to know, like how he created the spell that turned the tribe into glowbugs. Michael doesn't know everything that happened so he just makes up silly stories that I know can't be real. Anyway, I'm done! Goodnight for now, Jurnel.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Bubbling Mud Heads

[Quincunx]

This. . .this was magnificently bananas. Bananas of the speckled and wholly ripe sort, not the green and uniform supermarket ones.

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

Thanks! I like Bananas!

[Snypiuer]

O.K., still reading this. One thing I would say is, format. I, personally, have the habit of losing my place. This comes from the fact that I don't, so much, READ a story, but SEE it. There's, most likely, some place in my brain that recognizes 'C-A-T' that spells cat. But, to me, I see a cat in my head. The actual animal, not the word. I mean, I see the word, but it doesn't, consciously register as a word, but as the cat in my head.

 

Anyways, this leads to me losing my place. A LOT. Takes me forever to read things.

 

So, you need breaks. Only thing is, I don't know where. The story, pretty much works as is - as far as I have gotten, at least!

 

It's more for me. I need to be able to pin point where I am when I lose track. And your writing is so wonderful, I lose track COSTANTLY. I also have the habit of expanding what I 'see' when I read and end up straying from what is written - hence, ANOTHER reason for the whole 'losing my place' thing. The more I like a story, the more I lose my place because I get so involved and I begin to expand it in my head more and more, until I'm lost and I need to be able to go back to the beginning of a paragraph and your pragraphs are so long that I find myself rereading vast amounts of the story - BUT, the long paragraphs FIT the story, so - ARGHHH!!!.

 

I may not be able to finish this one. I let you know when I do!

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

That makes sense, I'll try to edit it a little and see if I can create paragraphs. I think my main problem is I have way too much that I want to say, but It's really not necessary to say it all and it creates clutter when I try to put those parts in... but I still want to add more to it... Anyway, Thank you! I will try to put up more soon!

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

Now I can get back to my story! I will grab some of Ethele's maps and stick them in here later, to help with seeing pictures. Right now I am sitting in my room writing to you instead of sulking. I don't want to go to sleep and I doubt I could sleep even after what happened today; also I am locked in my room. Mara said they should keep me in here for the rest of my life, they probably could too, but I really hope they don't! I'll tell you why I'm here, and how this happened. It all started, Jurnel, when I got an idea. The idea was from reading my father's books, it basically the same thing he did for years to the ol' wiz. I thought if I could create a diversion or a double or something then I would be able to sneak out of this old castle or maybe off Mara completely and have an adventure! My first goal though was just to get out of the castle.

So, here is how it went. I had this idea to build a flinger and send bits of my magic up past my father's window. He would notice the strange smell, and while he was distracted I would disguise myself as him, I am fairly good at illusions, and slip past the guards by the castle gates. It did work in a way I guess, I snuck in Master OrNele's clock-tower and built the flinger. Master OrNele is a good friend of mine, mostly I think, because he has pet mice, which I help him hide from Mara. He helped me build the flinger, and I took it and set it up in my room. Then I snuck out of the tower and across town, only to be caught by Michael.

I felt a hand grab the back of my shirt and lift me up into the air, as a voice beside me bellowed, “where are you sneaking off to now?” I twisted my head around and smiled sheepishly, “hello Michael!” “I am.... going nowhere?” I am not a good liar. “No, that's not right, you are going somewhere. Will you tell me where you are going, or should I tell you where you are going?” I looked down at the cobbles, trying to think of an answer, Michael was tricky, he would always find a way to trick me, no matter what I said, but I still wanted to think of something, the only thing I could think of was, “I am going to see if I can sneak past the guards and get outside town to the cloud forest so I can have an adventure and see what the clouds are like and jump around in them and try to catch frogs, and see if anything else lives there and have tons of fun!!” I didn't say this, because this was the only thing I could think of, instead of speaking at all I just hung there in the air, looking at the ground. Michael broke the silence, “can't think of anything? Well, I'll tell you what you're doing, you are coming with me to the kitchens to help prepare for the evening meal.” I sighed, somehow, I knew he was going to say something like this. Michael marched me to the kitchens and I spent what must have been hours scrubbing, and peeling gouti fruit. The nuts inside the fruit are super bitter and gross, but the peels are soft and crunchy once the juice has been drained, for use in other dishes. Even the bitter nuts inside gouti are used, in this drink that older people like, which is naturally disgusting. I finally managed to slip out when Michael was flirting with Strea. Jurnel, you probably wouldn't think that looking at someone’s face and barely talking could be flirting, but the way they acted definitely was flirting. It was scary. I sincerely hope this never happens to me.

 

Anyways, I slipped out of the kitchens the first chance I got and raced across town. I slowed down when I was in range of the gate and slipped into a dark corner. I sent my mind back through the town, up the tower to my room and triggered the flinger. Then, I pulled my mind back to myself and cast a simple hiding spell, and an illusion spell. The hiding spell just tricks the eyes of anyone nearby into not seeing at me, but if they accidentally did notice me then it wouldn't be that great, I'd have to send the illusion of my father in first, and get the gate open, then sneak through the gate while the guards are distracted, and have my 'father' change his mind and decide to not go out today.

 

Surprisingly, this all worked! I walked right up to the gate and waited. As soon as they saw 'my father' the guards opened the gate and I snuck through, onto the 2 feet of cobbles before the barrier, then I had 'my father' mumble something about checking his notes to the guards, turn around walk a few paces and disappear. I heard the guards muttering their annoyance, “Guy's like a cat....” as they closed the gate. I turned and walked through the barrier. Now, that I can think about it Jurnel, that was not the best thing I could have done. Luckily for me, the guards were facing the city and no one was looking over the wall. The barrier, the giant dome around our island removed all magic spells when you passed through it, I have been studying it, it's the Professor's, Mara's and a few other people's magic. They specifically designed this spell so that anyone entering our town would be revealed as who or what they actually were. The Professor and I prefer to know exactly who the people entering our world are. Anyway, when I passed through the barrier, my hiding spell completely disappeared, and I scurried into the cloud trees before someone saw me.