Once upon a time in the great elven city of Imyellume, there was an elven girl named Aria. She lived in the enormous magic school that Imyellume was famous for. She was younger than most of the other students, but that didn’t stop her from making friends! In fact, her best friends weren’t even other students.
It was late in the day. She had just finished her dinner in the dining hall on her floor and was now reading her book. She was seated at her usual spot at one of the tables in the corner. It was nice to just sit and watch all of the people socializing while she read her book.
Her book was boring. It was a textbook on the ethics of magic. It was dry. She was only reading it because she had to for her class. It wasn’t full of stories of adventure and heroes like some of her other books were. It was just a book telling her what she shouldn’t do with her magic. It felt like a whole book of rules.
It was hard to focus on her book. Everything seemed to pull her attention away: the scuff marks on her table–I wonder how those got there? Carelessness? Nervous scratching? A bored girl like me playing with her fork?–the conversation a few tables over about a party they were planning that they weren’t supposed to be having in their rooms, the chair over in that corner of the room away from the tables moving on its own–Wait, what? Why is that chair moving on its own? A chair shouldn’t even be in that part of the room! Oh.
Looking more carefully, Aria saw a small person, about as tall as the seat of the chair, pushing the chair towards the opposite corner of the room. That’s definitely strange, she thought. What was even stranger was as she watched in fascination the little person pushed the chair through the wall, which rippled and shimmered momentarily, and then the chair and the little person were both gone. Huh? There’s not supposed to be a portal there.
Aria just had to find out what was going on. This was much more exciting than some boring textbook. She got up and walked over to where she saw the chair disappear through the wall, and sure enough, there was a translucent portal that shimmered to life as she approached it. Strange. The portal didn’t feel dangerous or like it went very far. She reached her hand out and tested the portal, and sure enough it felt like the portals she was used to that stayed within the magic school. Not feeling anything off from the portal, she walked through it. She felt the familiar tingly sense that told her she just went through a portal.
She noticed the air felt cooler and the light was dimmer here. In front of her was the little person now standing on the chair from the dining hall, trying to reach an upper shelf, but still humorously way too short to reach the upper shelf. Aria looked around the room and realized it was a storage room of some kind, with shelves upon shelves of potions of all different colors and textures on the various shelves. When the little person noticed her, he turned to look at her, a little bit surprised.
“Hi! I’m Aria. What’s your name?” Aria said before he could say anything.
“Oh, uhh, my name is Lore,” he said, in an unsure, small voice.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone like you before–what are you?”
“You’ve never seen a brownie before?” he said, with hints of indignation and curiosity.
“Oh!” she said, excitedly, her face alight with recognition, “I’ve read about brownies before, but never met one! What’re you doing here? Why did you take the chair from the dining hall? I didn’t think we were allowed to do that. I got in trouble last time I tried.”
“Well,” he said, visibly relaxing, “my summoner–I’m a familiar of one of the professors here–she’s been up for three days straight working on her project and won’t go to sleep. She needs her sleep! She insists that she’ll sleep once she solves the problem she’s working on, but it’s obvious that it is taking a toll on her. She really needs to sleep. So I thought, since she won’t sleep, I would help by giving her a sleeping potion. She’ll be much more relaxed and ready to solve her problem after she sleeps!”
Something tries to click somewhere in Aria’s mind. Maybe something to do with that book? It’s probably not important, she decides. “Oh, is that what you got the chair for? You couldn’t reach the potions?”
“Yes! The sleeping potions are the dark blue ones up there on the top shelf.” he said, pointing to a shelf still way out of his reach.
She looked up and saw the potions he’s talking about. “Do you need help?”
“Yes, please,” Lore admitted, a little sheepishly.
Aria stepped up onto the chair herself, and reached as far as she could. She was barely able to grab one of the potions, and looked at it. It was a dark blue liquid that shimmered and had a slight magical glow to it inside a capped flask. Scrawled on the handwritten label was “sleep, potent.”
She handed it to Lore, who took it gratefully. “Thank you, this will help my summoner so much!”
She looked over at the portal and noticed there was no portal on the wall anymore. With a little alarm in her voice, she asked “what happened to the portal?”
“Oh, it was just a temporary spell.”
“You can make portals?” she asked, intrigued and impressed.
Lore nodded proudly.
“Wait, if you can make portals, why did you go through the trouble to open a portal to the dining room, and then drag a chair in here instead of just creating a portal to the top shelf?”
Lore looked surprised, “oh. Oh! Yeah, I guess that would have been easier,” he said, a bit embarrassed.
After a moment, Aria asked, “so–how do we get out of here, then?”
“This way!” Lore said as he walked through an open doorway. Aria followed, and Lore led them through a few rooms full of fancy glasswork clearly designed for making potions, and eventually to a door which opened magically as they approached.
Aria recognized one of the main hallways–they’re all the same and labeled clearly throughout the school. “Can you get back from here?” asked Lore.
“Yep!”
“Well, I best get this to my summoner,” Lore said, holding up the flask, “it was great meeting you!”
“Good luck! I hope she sleeps well!” Aria said.
Lore grinned and opened a portal and walked through it, disappearing to somewhere else in the school.
Aria, now on her own again, happy to have made a new friend, looked at the plaque on the wall. I’m on floor 372 corridor 8L and I need to get to floor 624 corridor 2C. I guess I’ll take the lift, it’s a bit far to walk, she thought. She made her way to the magical lift, stepped on the platform, and was greeted by a familiar magical voice “Destination?” “Floor 624 corridor 2C, please!”
The lift took only a few minutes to get her back to her floor, which she used to think about her adventure. When she got off the lift, she said goodnight to the magical voice in the lift, and then she made her way to her room. Now that she was safe in her own room, she felt exhausted from her day. She got into her nice, soft, comfy bed, happy. Before long, she drifted off to sleep.