The Warning
He seems annoyed by your reaction. “Come here mutt,” he mumbles, reaching out and grabbing you behind the jaws to pull you towards him. You yelp in fear and pain, before teleporting out of his hold. All right, you had enough of this: you start galloping towards the source of Blurred’s voice.
The door of his workshop is closed, but you only have to zap though and you are standing in the place where they perform their magic. It is a tall room with round windows and so many plant samples that it gives you the impression that dried out trees are growing along the walls. In the far end are the cabinets where they keep their jars with all kind of magic ingredients. The cupboards are mostly closed and you are glad for that: some things in there are obviously diverse body parts form various animals and you would like to keep your breakfast thank you.
Blurred himself is talking with one of his clients who appears to be a butterfly the size of a foal that talks using antenna sign language, something the magician seems to be fluent it. The latter looks at you as you waddle up to them and a worried expression appears on their face.
“Skippy? What is the matter?” They ask, kneeling to get at your level. You yap a little to show that it is a serious business and you take refuge behind your master. If the way their client’s wings flutter is of any indication, they are quite annoyed to be interrupted.
There is a knock on the door and the elf enters without waiting for a reply. Upon seeing that the room is the magician’s workshop, he pauses in the doorway a moment, his dark eyes scanning the room with a frown, before they land on you.
Blurred takes a step in front of you and the newcomer disappear from your vision. You inch towards the edge of your master’s robe and you peep over the other side. “What is it? Arch? What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Blurred…” he replied. “I need to check on the little one I left you. Where is it?”
The magician glanced over his shoulder to you, then to the giant butterfly. “Not now. Wait outside.”
“Wait outside? You are awfully high-nosed, magician. And I can’t help but notice it is since you got what you wanted from me.” The dark eyes of the elf narrow dangerously and he takes a step forward, his hand reaching up to the stick over his shoulder.
“No need to get angry. We can talk later. Now, I have a client…” Blurred take a step forward. You can’t see their face, but you know, from the sound of their voice, that they are getting dangerously annoyed at the elf.
“Blast your client, there is trouble coming down the road for both of us, and it is coming now. Where is the human?”
Oh, so the whole deal is about you, isn’t it? You hide once more behind your master and see the butterfly flutter away and out one of the open windows. You don’t blame it. The tension in the room is pretty intense and difficult to handle. You too, you wish you were elsewhere – but you are currently trapped behind Blurred’s ample robes.
There is a little moment of silence, as both humanoids seem to be in a deep consideration of their situation. It is the magician that speaks up first. “What do they know?”
“They noticed that there was a human traveling to our world. You know yourself how dangerous they consider the ones that had been banished, even after all this time. They will try everything to send it back and, if they can’t… you know they will try to kill it. And I am not even getting started if they notice anything wrong with
you… They tracked me down, and they know I had a close contact with you recently and you are the only one that would be able to spend enough money to get such a pet. And the only one that is insane enough too.”
“And how much time do we have?” Asked Blurred. There is an edge in his voice and you guess that even the eccentric magician does not appreciate being called crazy.
“I don’t know. Not much.”
You listen intensely to the conversation, since it is obviously about you, but you don’t get much of it. There are too many unknown variables for you to get everything that is implied by the two of them. You are a small, innocent puppy! How could these serious matters be within the reach of your tiny paws?
You don’t really know if you should be excited about the adventure or scared of the eventual consequences. Getting sent back seems like a good thing, getting killed doesn’t. Is it even about your safety here? You sound more like a huge threat rather then the most adorable thing in a ten miles’ radius. But you’re just a normal (albeit temporarily changed into a dog) human!
Blurred suddenly turns around and picks you up to hold you close. “What should we do?”
“That’s the human?” The elf came closer, his face, for the first time since you met him, expressing surprise. “You changed it into that? But I thought…”
“Yes, it sorts of… happened. And then I didn’t have the courage to change them back.”
Arch shook his head. “All this effort, and you are not even using it as you intended. You’re a dork, Blurred, you know that?”
“I know, but I don’t think that you have anything to say about that since I paid you. Mind your own business.”
You start to have enough of all these allusions to things you don’t know about. Just what in the world is going on? You try to wiggle out of your master’s hold, but he doesn’t let you go the least.
Written by Clayem on 10 April 2016