A week passed in a heartbeat. It might be considered a considerable amount of time, but I still barely managed to make contact with other inhabitants of the village other than Mirthia. Most simply shunned me while shooting hostile glances at me. Not a single one deigned to speak to me. If it hadn't been for Mirthia's company, they would most likely even have attacked me. Luckily, the tension slowly subsided and they ended up half getting used to my presence.
"Hi…" I greeted a light brown-haired cat that crossed my path.
"Hi," he answered dryly, barely looking at me.
I sighed heavily and dropped my shoulders as I walked back to Mirthia's house.
'Well, it's a pretty big breakthrough...' I thought as I watched the village from the portal of Mirthia's house.
I sat in the doorway, trying to attract as little attention as possible, looking from one side to the other at the different spots of the village. Mirthia's house was on a corner, so it was easy enough to get a global view of what was going on in the village.
'Anyway, it's not like I'm here to befriend some humanoid cats... It's not like I'm going to stay my whole life either...'
Several of those catmen walked busy with their affairs. Each cat was quite unique. Some simply had their tails and ears that differentiated them from a human, while others had long hair covering most of their body, especially males. There was a great variety of furs, from the darkest black to the brindle and the occasional completely white, but the latter were not abundant.
Some men were heading into the forest with bows on their backs. Others carried buckets full of water from a well in the middle of the village. Some of the women were hanging out their freshly washed clothes. I could even hear the screams of couples arguing without realizing that they were clearly heard from all sides. There were not many, but some children ran without concern, playing happily through the nonexistent streets of the place.
"We're not that different…" I murmured without realizing it. "If it weren't for the ears and tail, I would perfectly mistake them for mere humans."
A faint smile appeared on my face. I was feeling good in that place. Whenever I was pissed off I liked to lose myself in my personal forest, so living in the middle of one reminded me of my days wandering by the shore of that lake... Lake that for some reason I missed visiting a lot. Ironically, loitering there had become my obsession, to such an extent that not going felt like missing work.
'Can I really go back?' I thought as I lost my gaze between the tall trees that surrounded the village. Anyway, my slight smile didn't go away. On the contrary, it increased quite a bit. That place conveyed tranquility that I never felt before.
'It's not like I'm going to stay here... but I could perfectly get used to living in this place... Or maybe not ...'
There was only one thing that bothered me about the place.
'Today I even have chills.'
It had been a few days since, just when leaving Mirthia's house, I felt a cold gaze on my neck. At first, I thought it was my imagination and I did not give it the slightest importance, but after all days repeatedly feeling the same, I began to change my mind. In fact, I could swear that the feeling was growing day after day, to the point that I was beginning to be really worried. I searched several times for the origin... I was never able to find it.
"You look weird, meow. You seem scared, what is wrong with you?" Asked Mirthia, that just appeared behind me.
"Nothing, don't worry. Let's go at once."
We hurried on our way to the clearing of the sacred tree. Upon arrival, I routinely sat on the stump, looking at the huge tree in front of me.
"Good, meow. Today you will learn to properly control your mana. You may have already noticed that doesn't matter if you are able to locate your container, it is completely useless on its own. In order to use magic, you need to learn how to make mana flow through your body as easily as you breath, and then be able to channel it even out of the body."
I nodded without hesitation at her words.
"Do you remember when I showed you the mana sphere? Well, you should start by doing this," she raised her hand in front of me and created that shiny ball once more.
"Ok…"
"You just need to let the mana flow out of your body and concentrate it on top of your hand. Good luck, meow. See you later!"
As soon as she finished saying those words to me, she turned and left in a hurry, jumping between the trees and disappearing instantly from my sight.
"Hey, wait a minute! What the fuck... She really left…"
I stood in the middle of the place with an incredulous expression on my face.
'"Today you will learn"... She did not say: "Today I will teach you"... Am I supposed to manage alone? Really? Don't screw me...'
"At least give me some advice on how to do that!" I shouted in the middle of the forest, but after my voice was lost in the depths no other sound could be heard anymore.
I couldn't do much more than resign myself and get down to work. I sat in a lotus position on the same stump and raised my hand to the sky.
"Let's see… I can easily feel the energy in my body already, but…"
I frowned and began to make force towards my hand, to the point that my face turned all red, but as expected, nothing appeared.
"It's useless…"
I dropped my shoulders, dejected.
"I should have kept asking Raidha a bit more..."
I leaned back, once again losing my gaze to the sky, but I immediately shook my head and gave myself a loud and hard blow to my cheeks.
"No, no, no, this is precisely the attitude by which I decided to start learning magic. If I relapse into bad habits, I'm sure I won't get anything."
I slapped my cheeks a few more times and settled into a lotus position on the stump again.
"Let's go there…"
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes while concentrating in the same way as last time. Soon I found myself back in that dark space. I headed straight for the container and bent down to look at it closely… it was still empty.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
I was gawking at that pool while holding my chin with my right hand. I looked around me, the thin uncontrolled rivers continued to flow without order.
"How am I supposed to control this?"
I decided for the moment to put the container aside. It's not like it's going to fill up just by staring at it like an idiot, and I started walking aimlessly, following the strings.
For minutes I went from one side to the other, without finding an end to that space. I couldn't be sure if it was an infinite space or just connecting the beginning and the end, the top and the bottom. Considering that it was what should be an image of my interior, it had to be the second.
"This is a real chaotic mess…" I murmured.
The countless threads did not follow fixed patterns, they simply flowed back and forth meaninglessly, eventually swirling between them in some places. And no matter which one I chose to follow, everything pointed to the fact that he always returned to the same place.
"Stop wandering without a goal, use your head a bit," I blamed myself.
My gaze traced the energy threads once more, but suddenly something half-hidden in the dark caught my eye. At that moment all my hair stood on end.
"It can not be…"
I was paralyzed for a moment, but I quickly mustered up my courage and started walking towards that silhouette. His back was to me and he didn't seem to have noticed my presence.
"You…"
He didn't react at first, but I raised my hand and pulled his shoulder toward me. At that moment he finally turned slowly and stared at me for a moment with a sleepy face, which quickly changed to a grimace of disgust.
"What do you want now, moron?"