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Chapter 9
“So... what’s the deal here?” Ingrid asked, taking a sip of her tea.
“We’re basically a massive, mixed-up family of druids from all over...and I mean all over,” Camellia replied.
“That portal downstairs goes to the homelands of all our members and back again,” Esmeralda chimed in. “Another state, another country, another plane of existence entirely, it doesn’t matter. As long as you know enough magic, and as long as you’re trustworthy, there’s a place for you here.”
“That’s the other thing I was wondering about: How do you do magic, exactly? I’ve seen Camellia do it a few times, but I don’t really get it.”
The druidesses looked at each other with an excited gleam in their eyes.
“We’d love to show ye!”
…
After giving Ingrid ample time to rest and recollect—and of course, finish her tea—the trio filed out of the quiet room, went down the corridor and carefully boarded a floating vehicle with simple controls, including pedals, four multicolored levers, a steering wheel and a stool. The body of the vehicle looked like a hollowed out brown seed with a yellow, flared cap, supported by the curved, vine-snaked columns that made up the cabin.
Ingrid saw that there were several of these vehicles docked on each floor, as many as that floor could hold without having one immediately smack into the other upon takeoff.
Camellia assumed the role of pilot, sitting on the stool and pulling two of the levers, before pressing her foot down on what Ingrid assumed was analogous to the gas pedal, and turned the steering wheel gently to the right.
Whatever she did, the seed was also descending slowly, though Ingrid still held on tight to the railing as she looked all around her, watching other pods fly up and down, falling in and out of line with one another as they reached their destinations.
“We use these so we don’t clog up the main portal just going floor to floor,” Camellia explained, turning the pod so the doorway faced the docking bay of the floor below. “It’s pretty easy to figure them out after a while. I could show you sometime!”
Ingrid looked at the older woman’s hands, marveling at the way she made it look so easy even so high up.
“I think I’d like that.”
“Ah! Here’s a spot!” The druidess said to herself as she pulled up to one of the empty docks and let Esmeralda disembark first before guiding Ingrid onto solid ground.
The rooms on this floor were more like the ones on the ground floor, except they were accompanied by mid-sized, rectangular windows. Looking inside, Ingrid saw a group of dwarves, two rows of 6, in a dance class; the leader was possessed of long blonde hair styled like Esmeralda’s, and as the dance went on they all began to glimmer with a soft white light.
“And 3 and 2 and 1 and...hands!”
The lead dwarf thrust their arms out wide, and the class copied them. At that moment the light surrounding them diffused into the room, melted into the walls, and returned in the form of innumerable flowering vines.
“Alright! Prunin’ time!”
The class collected shears from a place Ingrid couldn’t see and set to coaxing the vines out the window set into the opposite wall, before snipping them so that they were no longer tethered to the inside.
The trio moved along until they encountered another window. This time, they were watching a group of pony centaurs play polo, on an astroturf filed that seemed much bigger than should have been possible for the floor they were on...although, given that they were playing the roles of both steed and poloist, it was more like watching a game of field hockey than anything else. How they played without tangling their legs together or stepping on each other's hooves was a mystery to Ingrid.
Again, the girl saw that same soft glow that was present in the dwarves as the game went on.
One player with a clean-shaven head etched with henna tattoos and a spotted lower half, wearing a long sleeved yellow jersey, seized the ball from her blue jersey-clad opponent and knocked it down the field with her mallet. Two other blue jerseys immediately flanked her, galloping hard, trying in vain to get to it first and knock it back the other way.
“Hyah!”
With a mighty swing and immaculate follow-through, Yellow Jersey shot the ball dead center between the blue-striped conical goal posts. That must have been the winning goal, because the other yellow jersied centaurs came cantering from wherever they were on the field towards her, cheering loudly and squeezing her tight...
And releasing the glow upwards towards a ceiling that Ingrid couldn’t see.
After the jubilation ended and the teams left the field, Ingrid poked her head into the room and looked up, and sure enough, there were multicolored flowers growing on the ceiling, spreading to the upper walls, hanging down as if they were there to watch whatever match might be going on in their presence.
“Well! That was exciting!” Ingrid exclaimed, only now realizing that her heart had been pounding a mile a minute.
“Ain’t it though?” Esmeralda agreed. “These games always get so spirited, especially at the end!”
“So do you think you get how we do magic?” Camellia asked.
“...Through exertion?”
“Something like that. It’s more like the release of energy; the earth has given us the energy to live so we give that energy right back however we can.”
“Hm. But ah...are dancing and polo the only ways to do that?”
“Heavens, no! We’d be too tired to do anything before long!
Let’s go to the top floor. It’s time we showed you the library.”
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