Fledgling Developments: Dinnertime Displacement
Jarzyl continues testing her magic and the trouble continues
Jarzyl Fledgling Developments: 7
Mini-series first chapter (chapter 1): https://sofurry.com/s/Rnoz2Yxm
Previous chapter (chapter 6): https://sofurry.com/s/nLr4PL3e
The first time had been so shocking and unexpected that Jarzyl could hardly believe it had happened—with magic and energy swirling around her, the young dragon had displaced herself from her bedroom and into the kitchen.
The second time had been thrilling, proving that it wasn’t any blind fluke of magic, but truly that she had some level of displacer affinity. She’d only moved within her bedroom, but it was teleportation—she was clearly displacing. Same for the third time, when she’d made it to the kitchen again, although not really by intent.
Now Jarzyl was wandering around her home, trying to manifest her magic and displace for a fourth time. Tiny glinting sparks danced around the edges of her wings and spiralled around her four paws, but the magic wasn’t focusing. As Jarzyl walked from room to room, her limbs left long streaks of colour in her path that lingered for a moment before fading away.
Heading over to the bathroom, Jarzyl turned on the shower and put her wing under the spray of water. The sparks of magic moving across her body were neither attracted or repelled by water, but they did seem to slide slower through water compared to air. She shut off the shower and flicked her wing dry.
“Magic, please, magic!” Jarzyl announced to her bedroom. She spread her wings open, then folded and unfolded them one at a time, left then right then left again. Magic swirled around her body, but it didn’t do anything. “I have displacer affinity and I can relocate myself by bending space and reality. I would like to relocate to the kitchen. Come on!”
Despite her enthusiastic optimism, the young dragon wasn’t able to trigger her magic again. Jarzyl scampered up to the side of her bedroom and then she turned to face the opposing wall. “Walls do not limit me!” She took a determined breath, then lunged forward and sprinted across her room.
Sparks of glowing magic danced across her scales and Jarzyl imagined that she would displace herself straight through the wall, but at the last moment she turned aside and hit the wall sideways rather than running headfirst into the hard surface. The impact to her side was still sufficient to knock the breath out of her, but the blow to her pride hurt more.
“Grrr!” Letting out an annoyed growl, Jarzyl whipped her tail and slapped it against the wall—but unexpectedly, instead of bouncing off the hard wall, she felt her tail tip sink into a soft, pliant surface. For a split-second Jarzyl wondered if she had hit her bed somehow, but when she spun around, she saw that there was nothing but the bedroom wall, which now was marked by a small, horizontal indentation that was exactly the thickness of her tail tip.
Jarzyl’s neck frill perked up and she shook her head. “Oh, no!” Raising her tail, she jabbed the tip against the wall experimentally. Bright, colourful magical sparks swirled around the point of contact and her tail tip sank easily into stone surface. It wasn’t like pushing into water or liquid, but instead felt as if she was pressing into a dense, mushy material that resisted her movement before yielding with a crunch.
“Hey, that’s not displacer affinity! That’s just stone magic.” She pressed further, and then suddenly the very tip of her tail could shift around freely—she’d managed to go all the way through the wall and made a hole into the corridor outside her bedroom.
Then Jarzyl tried to remove her tail, only to find that the stone was no longer soft, and had gone back to being as hard and rough as it was normally supposed to be. She tried again to extricate her tail, but now it was trapped in the stone, with the wall back to being all solid around the small hole her magic had carved.
So she was stuck. Jarzyl wasn’t sure if she wanted to swear or just laugh. She took a deep breath, and let out the longest, most dramatic groan she could muster. “Graaaaahhhhh… Atlas was right. I’m just having a magical surge and my affinity isn’t stabilized at all.”
With her tail still stuck in her bedroom wall, Jarzyl tested the limits of her movement. She couldn’t stretch far enough across the bedroom to reach her light field projector or grab her radio set, either of which she could have used to send a message for help. Such were the drawbacks of being in an apex clan, and living in a nice neighbourhood—her room was too big. Now her tail was stuck in the wall and there was no one to help her.
If this sort of thing had happened to Atlas in his bedroom, he’d have no trouble reaching anything in his tiny room, given that his personal living space was barely the size of Jarzyl’s cupboard. Then again, if this had happened to Atlas, he’d easily have been able to call for help, given how crowded with clanless young dragons the sheltered home was. Jarzyl sighed softly to herself. A warm longing for her best friend rose in her chest, despite the fact she’d seen him just earlier in the afternoon.
The dragon fledgling stretched out to grab her blanket off the bed. This didn’t do anything to get her free, but at least she could spread it on the floor and lie down on it. Her father could easily use his stone magic to get her free, but she wasn’t sure when he would be returning home soon.
As she lay down of all fours and rested her chin on her front paws, energy continued to swirl around her body, but not any useful or predictable way. Yet the energy quickly started to build up again, so Jarzyl stood up and tugged at her tail, seeing if the surge of affinity had returned and might let her soften the stone.
As she was trying to pull her tail, she tried flapping her wings to provide more force—except instead of yanking her tail free, her outstretched wing clipped into the adjacent wall and sank into the stone with a soft crunch and a sudden outburst of magical sparks. Now not only was her tail stuck in one wall, her wing was clipped through the other wall and she was even more trapped. Jarzyl flailed in place, before slumping down in the corner of her bedroom.
“You know what? I changed my mind. Magic sucks!” Jarzyl announced to the empty space of her bedroom. “Why did I ever say I was bored of being a fledgling? I don’t even want to be an adult yet! I don’t want to leave school! I don’t want to go to work! I don’t need magic! Magic sucks!”
Mid-rant, she spotted another little spark of magic flowing down over her foreleg and then skipping up her other foreleg. She flicked her paw and tried to shake the magical spark off, but it stubbornly clung to her scales. “Get off me!”
Instead bright, colourful sparks of magic swirled all around her, so numerous that they were like snowflakes dancing through a blizzard focused only on her position. The energy buzzed and crackled, then dissipated with forceful thump—and Jarzyl stumbled a few steps to the side, disorientated from the sudden shift. The young dragon blinked her eyes and squinted at the evening sun, as it cast long shadows from the tall skyscrapers and buildings of the City of Wings. One moment she had been at home, but now she was outside.
“Oh, magic is awesome! I’m a displacer.” Jarzyl swung her tail about and pranced from side to side, enjoying her newfound freedom. She did a cheerful little hop on the spot, then glanced around to take in her new surroundings.
This was right near the edge of the Mintaka residential zone, courtesy of her unstable magic. On one side were short apartment buildings of just a few stories height, interspersed with rows of houses meant for individual families of dragons, while on her other side were much taller office buildings for clan business and commercial use.
She wasn’t too far from her house, and a few minutes of flight would get her home again. This was a new record for her magic—no longer was she merely displacing from room to room, now she’d gone all the way out of the house and right out of the neighbourhood.
Jarzyl nodded to herself, pleased. Her magic was coming along nicely. Although she wasn’t making any progress regarding controlling her displacement, she was going further now, which surely was a sign of growing magical power. And at the very least, at least she was no longer stuck in her bedroom.
In the air above, Jarzyl watched as a group of dragons flew in on final approach to a residential tower. It was getting late in the day, and people were increasingly returning home as they finished work or school.
Jarzyl idly shuffled her wings about on her back, and tapped her paws against the ground. “It would be convenient if I could displace myself right home.” She adjusted her wings and limbs, trying to see if she could summon up any magical energy, but the sparks of magic didn’t appear.
Instead Jarzyl spread her wings wide and flapped into the air. In a few wingbeats she had enough altitude to clear the nearby houses, and then she turned sharply, following familiar landmarks to make her way home.
Embarrassingly, Jarzyl got distracted with staring at the fiery colours of the sunset sky, which so nicely matched her own orange colouration, that she overflew her house without stopping and kept going for a few minutes, flying all the way across the neighbourhood.
When she realized her mistake, Jarzyl started to turn around—but there just so happened to be a pair of elderly drakken enjoying a slow flight in the nearby airspace, who rocked their wings in a wave and gave a friendly nod to her, so Jarzyl returned the wave and then made a long, gradual turn as if she was just enjoying the sights of all the houses below her. It would be too embarrassing to turn very quickly, and make it so obvious that she’d gotten lost in her own neighbourhood.
When she finally came home, Jarzyl discovered that her father had also returned. A drake with scales of warm golden yellow—he was still ever so slightly larger than her, but over the past couple of years that difference had been sharply reducing. Galon Mintaka was in the kitchen, unpacking groceries from the pouches of his flight harness.
Jarzyl beamed and scampered over excitedly. “Hey! Hey! I’m back! You’re back!”
Her father’s neck frill perked up, and he smiled at her. “Hello, Jarz. How was your training hunt today?”
“Oh. I left the training hunt early because I was having some headache problems. But turns out that was a good thing, because it’s just a minor side effect from…” Jarzyl drummed her paws against the ground excitedly, then she threw open her wings dramatically. “Getting my affinity! Yes!”
“Really? You got your magic?”
“Yes!” Jarzyl danced on the spot, bouncing between her four paws. “Guess what affinity type I got?”
Her father continued unpacking groceries from his harness, and neatly sorting them into the kitchen larder. “Tell me?”
“No, you have to guess. Come on.”
Her father thought for a moment. “Healing affinity? Inherited from your mother?”
Jarzyl continued to prance about on the spot. “Nope, wrong. Guess again. I’ll give you a hint—I was just outside, because of my magic!”
“An outside sort of magic? Perhaps air affinity, and you were outside practicing flight while using magic on the winds?”
Jarzyl shook her head. “Not that either. Oh, I’ll just tell you—it’s displacement! Amazing!” The young drakka bobbed her head up and down, and pumped her wings open and closed repeatedly.
Galon Mintaka smiled at her exuberance, and he walked over to put his wing over her back, pulling her into a side hug. He looked proud of her, though he didn’t quite match Jarzyl’s level of glee. “Congratulations! Displacement—are you certain?”
“I think so! Maybe. Atlas was saying he think it was just a magical surge, because I was having firebreath and frostbreath also earlier. But I think I’m stabilizing on displacement. I’ve displaced myself at least three or four times today! At first I was just relocating from room to room around the house, but the last time I made it all the way out the house and to the edge of the neighbourhood!”
Jarzyl cackled, then she pulled out of her father’s embrace and scampered out of the living room. “Let me show you something! Come!” Going down the short corridor, she stopped right outside her bedroom and pointed at the wall. “Look at this!”
Her father peered at the wall—there was a small hole leading into her bedroom now. “What… caused that?”
“I caused that! I stabbed a hole in the wall with my tail by accident! Weird, isn’t it? I was sneezing firebreath, then it was frost, then I displaced myself a few times and poked a hole in the wall using stone magic. But I’ve been using displacement most of all, so I think that one is most likely.” Jarzyl nodded excitedly and mimed poking the wall with her tail. “And also I need you to help me fix the wall because… um… yeah, there’s a hole there now. My bad.”
Her father shook his head, looking amused. “Jarzyl,” he sighed. He strolled out of the room, then returned a few seconds later, carrying a long ruler he’d taken from the living room. “Lucky that I have stone affinity, or your magical surge would’ve been more expensive to fix…”
Jarzyl flicked her neck frill up then down. “If you didn’t have stone affinity, then it would be less likely for me to inherit it and less likely that I accidentally poke a hole through the wall. So in a way, this isn’t entirely my fault and counts as a family problem.”
Her father only laughed. He placed one forepaw flat against the bedroom wall, then he slid the ruler across the stone and the surface moved—no dramatic magical sparks, no exertion at all—the stone simply shifted like it had become soft malleable liquid, and he used to ruler to sweep across the hole, filling in material and then smoothing it out. He made it look easy, which Jarzyl knew from her own brief experience with stone affinity that it very much was not.
“Thanks!” Jarzyl chirped. She stepped into her room to examine the fixed wall from the other side, and then saw that the adjacent wall had an additional large horizontal gash. “Also there’s more.”
Her father followed her into the room and let out a dismayed groan when he saw the damage. “That is a structural wall! I would have thought it too thick to be damaged just by you having a magical surge. How did you manage that?”
“When my tail was stuck in the corridor wall, I flapped my wings to try and pull free, then my wing sank into the other wall and… yeah.”
“At least you didn’t collapse the whole house.” Galon examined the horizontal hole, which provided a view into the adjacent room. “I did something similar when I was your age, all those many decades ago. I was leaning against a wall at school, and then I had a magical surge and crashed entirely through the wall. It seems you’re finally growing up.”
Jarzyl nodded, then shook her head. “Yes! But also no. I think I’d much rather have displacement affinity instead of stone affinity. No offence. But displacing around everywhere is cool.”
“Any type of magic has its own particular benefits.” Her father used his paws to do something with the wall—there was a shimmer of magical energy, but the large hole remained. “This will take me longer to fix, perhaps an hour. I’ve stabilized the structure for now. Have you eaten dinner?”
“Not yet.”
“Let’s eat first then. Your mother has to stay late in the medical centre, but we can still have a family dinner.” Her father left her bedroom.
“Ok!” Jarzyl closed her eyes and tried to tense up all her muscles. “I’m going to… displace myself… and get to the kitchen before you do!!” This accomplished nothing other than causing her to tremble slightly on the spot, so after a moment she simply strolled out into the corridor and followed after her father.
“I’m hungry. Must be because of all the extra energy I’m using from channelling magic now!” Jarzyl declared cheerfully. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken and potato pepper pastry turnovers. I picked them up at the market on the way home.” Her father slid a paper bag across the dining table, and Jarzyl caught it. “But don’t you go running off to your bedroom. We’re going to have a family dinner.”
Jarzyl hadn’t been about to go off to back to her bedroom, but she had stuck her snout into the paper bag and been about to scarf down her large pastry in as few bites as possible. It was radiating warmth and a delicious smell that attracted her nose like a magnet. “But I thought you said mother was working late tonight?”
“Yes. But we’re still going to have a family dinner together.” Carrying his own paper bag in his jaws, Galon strolled over towards the adjacent living room. “Follow.”
“This again?” Jarzyl sighed and drooped her neck frill dramatically, but she grabbed her dinner and scampered after him.
“Don’t give me attitude. We’re having dinner together.” Her father went over to the side of the living room, and then he peered into the large rectangular glass box placed on a stand—an incubator box, containing two large white ovoids. Galon picked up a cloth from on top of the incubator and wiped his front paws clean, then he opened up the side door. He sniffed at the two eggs, then carefully reached in and picked up an egg and transferred it to a large floor seating cushion nearby. He moved the second egg as well, then he sat down on his front on the cushion, and carefully pressed the two eggs against the side of his body before draping his wing down on top of them.
Jarzyl sat down on another floor cushion nearby. Imitating her father’s movements, she picked up her paper bag with great care, as if the large pastry was as fragile and important as a dragon egg. Then she took her first bite. She approved. “Mhm. It’s good food. Though I still think it’s silly to own an incubator box but then keep taking the eggs out to nest them manually.”
Her father flicked his own neck frill. “An incubator provides heat and humidity, but not love. That needs to be applied manually.” He shuffled his wing, patting it lightly against the eggs. “Now it’s a nice family dinner with us four.”
Jarzyl took another bite and replied with her mouth half full. “They haven’t even hatched yet! They aren’t eating anything. What’s the point of including those two?”
“It is the principal of it,” her father insisted. “You might as well get used to it. Once number two and number three hatch, we’ll be having family dinners all together as much as I can arrange it. Although… there is a unique pleasure in nesting an egg, keeping it warm and safe to nurture the growing life within. It’s a very relaxing experience. I’ll enjoy it while I can.” Her father lifted his wing off the eggs and nudged them with his paw. “Here, why don’t you take one? You’ll see what I mean.”
Jarzyl scoffed. “Ho! No way. Keeping eggs warm is the lamest thing imaginable. We literally own an expensive machine to do that job.”
“Keeping the egg warm? No, it’s about showing love. Jarz, you enjoy hugs, but why? Because it’s relaxing, it’s a stress reducing activity, and a hug is to express love and affection rather than being something practical. The same concept applies for keeping egg nice and safe and snug.” Her father gestured at one of the eggs. “Take one. You’ll see.”
Jarzyl hesitated. She did like hugs. “Hmm. I… suppose I’ll try it over dinner. But I’m definitely not making a hobby of this.” She slid her floor cushion until it was right beside her father’s, then she carefully transferred one of the eggs over “Do you ever worry that you might get these two eggs mixed up?”
Her father shook his head. “No? They’re different shapes. That one is the rounder one, and this one is pointier.” He affectionately patted the remaining egg with a paw.
Jarzyl looked between the two eggs, but they seemed to be the same to her—both egg shaped. “They look the same to me. So which one is sibling number two, and which is sibling number three?”
“Hmm? How would we know that?”
“Oh! So you did mix them up?! You don’t know which is which!”
Her father laughed at her, but not unkindly. Ignoring her accusatory stare, he flipped out his wing and mantled it down over the remaining egg to push it against his side. “Of course I know which is which. But you asked which is sibling number two and which is number three, and that information doesn’t exist yet. Sibling order is based on which egg hatches first, not which egg was laid first. It could be either of them which chooses to break the shell first, eventually, when they’re ready.”
“Ah. Right. Of course.” Jarzyl nodded her head as understanding dawned. As an only child, she’d never quite thought about sibling order. Copying her father’s move, the young dragon gently nudged the other egg up against her side, then slowly lowered her wing over it. The egg felt warm and solid against her body. “Ok then.”
Her father resumed eating his pastry from his paper bag. “If you were asking about laying order, that egg you’ve got there is the one your mother laid first.”
“Lovely,” Jarzyl muttered sarcastically. “So when does this activity become relaxing? This doesn’t feel stress reducing. I feel very stressed.”
Galon chuckled. “You are doing great. Just keep the egg warm and enjoy the sibling bonding experience.” He took a few more bite and swallows before continuing. “So how has your day been?”
“Exciting, getting my magic. Firebreath, frostbreath, then stone affinity and displacement—but I think it’s going to stabilize on displacement.”
“Speaking of displacement, your Aunt Mira is back in the city. Her airship just returned from another merchant run, and she’ll be around for a few days. I’ll call her later and see if she wants to drop by after dinner or some time tomorrow. Maybe she can give you tips on your magic.”
“Thanks!” Jarzyl replied. “I have been leaking magic these past few hours. Sparks of energy keep swirling around my body.” She raised her tail, and sure enough, a trio of colourful sparks spiralled out from her tail tip and dissipated into the air. “Was it like this for you too, when you got your affinity? All sorts of affinity types, all uncontrolled?”
Her father replied. “No. As I said earlier, the only dramatic thing I did with my magic was to fall through a wall. Granted, it was merely a room divider, not a proper structural wall like you’ve managed to perforate, but that was how I got my stone affinity. Then once I had my magic, I had my magic. No magical surges.”
Jarzyl sighed. “Sounds nice.” She turned her head to stare out the open window, to the distant views of skyscrapers in the adjacent city sector, now cast in deep orange colours from the end of day. For a few minutes, the two dragons sat in peace—father and daughter, enjoying a meal spent together, watching the sunset.
And then just as Jarzyl was about to finish the last bite of her pastry, magic swirled all around her again. “Oh! Look at me! I think it’s happening again.”
Between all the swirling streak of magic, Jarzyl saw her father watching her—amused, curious, proud. “That’s much more dramatic than when your aunt displaces. So much colour.”
Jarzyl nodded. “Let me try to focus… I’ll displace to my bedroom! Watch me!” She fixed the location in her mind, trying to visualize her bedroom in as detailed a mental recreation as she could. Then magic pulsed around her, and she was away.
Left behind, Galon Mintaka blinked away bright afterimages from his eyes, and glanced around the living room. “Jarzyl? Where did you go? Are you…?” But his daughter was gone. Her floor cushion sat empty, dimpled with the faint impression from where she’d been sitting down.
The egg Jarzyl had been incubating was gone too. Galon drew in a sharp breath. “Oh.”
TO BE CONTINUED