Richard fluttered in place for a while, scratching his chin, probably trying to think of some other way of getting some more “dreamstate powder” to keep this charade with the football team going until the weekend, while Gary kept watching the cheerleaders-turned-football-players as they practiced their tackles.
Richard spoke up again. “Okay, how about if I traded you for-”
“Nope.” Gary muttered, not waiting to find out the other side of the offer. “You want more of that powder, you can harvest it yourself.”
“Aw come on, man!” Richard waved his tiny arms around. “You know there isn’t a fairy ring around here for miles!”
“Not my problem.” Gary said. “I’m not gonna let your mistake make me miss a minute of hot amazons slamming into each other.”
Richard shook his head. “You really need to get yourself a real fairy girlfriend, man. Nobody’s gonna take you seriously if you end up falling for some human chick. Or worse, a human chick you turned into a big bear-person.”
“It’s not like any other fairies have come back here yet!” Gary huffed.
Richard crossed his arms. “Not my problem.”
Gary cocked an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure it IS a problem for you. Even if you’re not looking for romance, or are fine just being friends with humans instead of other fairies, if we had more fairies living together here, we could get a few fairy rings going and have more material for pranking.”
“…I guess…” Richard mumbled, before the two flew over to a different part of the field to get a better view.
“I just don’t get fairy humor.” Flynn whispered to me.
“What’s not to get?” I asked.
“I mean, what they did was kinda based on the coach’s words and all, but why anthros? Not that I’m complaining about having a few more, mind you, but...”
“Eh, Fairies see things way different from most. Who’s to say why they did it?” A part of me wondered if it related to my writing that they knew what kinds of pranks I’d like. Maybe they were leaning into my fondness for furries, assuming the RealiTome itself wasn’t.
Flynn shrugged. “I guess, Mistress. I just hope that the team and cheerleaders, or worse, their parents, don’t complain too much when this gets out, since it looks like the faries aren’t gonna turn them back right away.”
Since it looked like their pranks were done for now, I decided to get going and find something else to do. I didn’t have much homework to take care of that evening, so there was still plenty of time to kill before I’d have to call it a night. I could squeeze in a little more time with this book.
Plus the fairies’ conversation had put another idea in my head. Even if I wouldn’t see the results of it before I’d reset things at the end of the day, I still wanted to have a few more fairies on campus, and I knew just where to start looking.
The campus library wasn’t the biggest library I’d been to, but it wasn’t the smallest, either. Most of the books were, obviously, more focused on academics than the fiction I’d regularly dug into back home, but it was still a great place to just quietly chill out and read, whether it was for school, or for pleasure. And because of that, my friend Cecilia Brook spent a lot of time there whether she had homework or not.
Flynn and I quietly entered the library. Its walls were a pale blue, the metal shelves were painted a bland beige, about the same color as the floor tiles. There wasn’t a lot in the way of decoration, either. I guess it kept things from being too visually noisy, but it wasn’t my style. Not a lot of people were immediately visible from the front entrance. There was a man behind the counter, a couple guys in the engineering program sitting around one table, looking up the best material to make their semester’s project out of, while another table had a couple girls looking into some computer science books. No sign of Cecilia at first, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t here.
Flynn and I split up to look for her, in the areas further back, but as I stepped through the aisles, I felt like this place could probably stand to get a little magical makeover as well. I took out the tome, and started writing.
“West River University’s library consists of the bottom two floors of a wizard’s tower, open for use to the student body. In addition to the academic books, research paper and newspaper archives, and a small selection of fiction expected of a university library, the library also holds books on magic, spells, and mythical creatures. The head librarian is the wizard himself, a weasel anthro, who volunteered the library to the university to help promote the education of future generations.”
The plain drywall around me bent and bulged into layers of interlocking stone, decorated with glowing runes representing arcane formulas, and dazzling, swirling star maps. Not only that, but the walls of the library spread apart, the space inside the building getting larger. The thin metal shelving around me turned to thick wood, with tiny carvings of unicorns, yokai, thunderbirds, sea monsters, and other mythical creatures etched into them. Looking up at the signs marking each section of the library, I saw a new one appear, a section on spell books. I couldn’t help but grin. If I weren’t already holding the most magical book on this campus, I’d have gone to take a look at them right away.
Instead, I poked my head out of the aisle and looked toward the counter, where the librarian was already growing light brown fur over his face. His nose turned red and became thicker, the nostrils rising up as his mouth grew out under it, forming a short, pointed muzzle, with tiny, sharp teeth. White fur grew from the front of his body from the chin down, as his clothing unraveled, then wove itself back together as a deep blue, wide-brimmed hat, and a matching cape clasped around his neck. His body seemed to get a bit longer, and his arms and legs slightly shorter, while a little tail must have grown and thumped to the floor out of sight behind the counter. I could see his hands grow a little thicker, with pink paw pads puffing up on the palms and fingers, and nails shifting into little blunted claws, his feet probably changing the same way behind the counter.
I couldn’t help giggling at the oddly cute sight, but I was caught off guard when I saw the computer that had been on the counter change color, turning a deep, transparent blue, with glowing text on its surface, any wires it had been connected to disappearing. The text changed as the weasel wizard tapped across its surface.
Even the computer had changed to a magical equivalent.
Looking around, I could see the other library computers already replaced by similar crystals. Like the changes I’d made to the gilbert center, this new library felt like a perfect mixture of modern and magical.
New memories entered my mind, this one having some serious ripple effects. The presence of a real wizard a few decades ago, at a university of all places, on top of real fairies existing, and the emergence of the giant sky fox, had led to scientific investigation into real magic. While it was still regarded with heavy skepticism, more people in the scientific community were coming to understand how it worked, even if very few could use it themselves. A few bits of tech were able to implement magic, though they were currently rare and hard to make.
It seemed like anthros were just accepted as something that just shows up in people from time to time, like freckles, while magic was in the process of being rediscovered, in this world I was reshaping. I wondered off hand if being more specific about those the next time I wrote about them could change that.
I was feeling giddy to see how these new crystal computers worked, but I had to remind myself that Flynn was still looking for Cecilia, and I’d already let myself get distracted long enough. I turned down another aisle, only to run right into Flynn.
“Oh, there you are, Mistress!” He whispered. “I found Cecilia. She’s this way.”
I nodded and followed him, writing down my entry for her as I walked. Cecilia had both enrolled in the same year, and lived a couple doors down from each other. We’d hit it off pretty quick, both of us being bookworms, and while she was more into mystery than fantasy, she still enjoyed some fairies and other mythical creatures.
“Cecilia Brook is a fairy from a powerful and influential clan of fairies, who recently started attending West River University. She’s a good friend of mine, and as such, does not try to subject me, or my friends or family, to tricks, mind-altering magic, or pranks she knows that I would dislike unless I was placed under mind control magic. Her family’s influence means other fairies are also hesitant to do the same.”
Then something else came to me. What if I let her in on this secret too? The book had given me extra memories that matched each change. Was there a way to let someone else remember how it used to be too?
I quickly jotted down the words “Cecilia Brooks is also able to remember how the world was before and after I started using the RealiTome.” I quickly looked back up as the book started glowing.
Turning the corner, I saw her, the short brunette sitting in the corner with her face in a book. Her body was quickly covered in that golden glow, and rapidly shrank, the book dropping to the ground in front of her as she became small enough to lay down on its pages. The blemishes and freckles in her skin seemed to sparkle and glitter, turning into patches of an iridescent material. Little antennae poked up through her brown hair, while her ears grew longer and pointier. Her shirt and pants turned a deep purple, becoming a dress made of flower petals, tied by a string of grass. From her back, two lavender butterfly wings unfurled, dotted with light blue speckles.
As the golden glow faded, the new fairy looked up at me.