Chapter 8: The Fifteenth Birthday. Edited*

When Alice returned, the table was already set and as she sat down she formulated the same answer she gave every time her mother asked this question "A spell that makes you happy." The words came out of her mouth as if there could be no other answer.

Not even honey was as sweet as the sincerity Ana could feel from her daughter. "Come on, Alice, what if you really had a connection with the Akash, awakened a grimoire, and then got some strange power. Is there really nothing you would like?" On this occasion, with the date so close, she decided to insist a little more. 

No matter how much Alice liked these stories, she was sensible enough not to get too excited. The world and adventure might be interesting, but her life in the countryside was more than enough for her. Alice thought a little more at her mother's insistence, giving in to her instincts to make her happy and allowing herself to dream a little about the subject.

She replied, "I would like a spell that would allow me to meet a fairy tale being." Although for herself, the young woman thought more about stories referring to the dark ages, and not so much about forest fairies and dragons. With a combination of longing, admiration, and curiosity shining within Alice's eyes as she recalled a certain scene, she knew that confessing which story she was referring to might only worry her mother and cause more questions on the subject, since the dark ages were not a part of history that normal people would decide willingly to think about.  So she just continued to eat.

As she thought of all those magical creatures that appeared in the stories Ana used to read to her daughter when she was younger and couldn't read on her own, a question was formulated on her lips. "What fairy tale creature would you like, maybe a dragon?"

Although she tried to hide it from the rest of the village, her mother knew it well. Alice's curiosity ranged from the extremely dangerous chimeras to the peaceful, but not very social, elves. For all kinds of beings and magical events. Such tastes betrayed how much the girl was interested in magic and how much she was excited about the possibility of experiencing it.

With her cheeks bulging and her mouth full of her mother's rich stew, Alice just shook her head repeatedly. After swallowing. "Mom, dragons are extremely dangerous, destroying entire kingdoms and kidnapping princesses, I definitely don't want to meet a dragon."

Ana looked surprised for a moment, and then laughed. Certainly, dragons were too dangerous, everyone knew that. However, the part about kidnapping princesses was probably something that only appeared in fairy tales, although Ana did not intend to correct her daughter. "Then why not a fairy or some other less dangerous magical creature?" Ana waited patiently.

"Mom, there are no magical creatures that are not dangerous," Alice tried to reprimand her mother, although with her mouth full of stew it was difficult to take her seriously. "Unless you are a powerful wizard, with an incredible understanding of the Arkana, you should not associate with too many magical creatures, and even they are very cautious." 

Alice spoke with the tone that a teacher would use to educate a group of children, elaborating more and more on a subject that she herself barely understood. Really, Alice had not had much contact with the subject, beyond the occasional storyteller, so she said were more assumptions and conjectures, not to mention that that last part of what she said did not sound very common. 

"They are different from forest animals, and even those, although friendly, become dangerous." She concluded with her sermon, as if it were the most interesting subject in the world. For her, it was, although she was very good at pretending it was not, in public. 

The notion of a powerful magician was too abstract, there was no way to have an idea of what would constitute a being worthy of such a title. Not only had Alice had almost no contact with the concepts of the Arkana, even less was her experience interacting with magicians, even if they were minor. As far as she knew, she had never even witnessed a magician, far or near.

For her, any wizard was powerful both for lack of parameters and a personal rule for safety, and the same was true for magical creatures. Alice could be naïve in many ways, but her personal integrity was not something to play with. It's not that she's ever really worried about being hurt by a forest animal, but in her experience, a frightened deer, though majestic, could become dangerous if it ran towards you. 

Going back to her mother's question, which was what triggered this chain of reasoning in Alice's mind and the derailment of the conversation. With the purest of desires, Alice allowed herself to express the illusion that the idea caused her, it was with her mother after all and there was no space where she felt more confident about allowing herself to be herself.

"I have read in the books that there are many creatures capable of working miracles and healing people, I would like to interact with something that will help us, not only you and me, but the whole village." She explained excitedly.

"How wonderful would it be to have a way to prevent a repeat of what happened two winters ago? When people got sick, the clergyman who healed us all said that the one he used was called a little miracle. Something like that was just small." One could see in Alice's eyes how excited she was to be able to help others with something even more meaningful, she believed that no matter how much she had done with the special herbs and harvest, it wasn't enough. 

"I think what I would really like is something that allows me to be able to help a lot of people, to be useful on a larger scale." Alice couldn't have a more serious face as she formulated those words, staring at her plate and not swallowing another bite. Although anyone who knew her would understand that such a spell would be the most appropriate to represent her essence. Ana herself was not even surprised by her daughter's reasons.