009-Soil, feather and leaf

Soil from the earth, given by the mother of all;

Feather that never fall, granted by fatherly heaven;

Leaf from a tree, the symbol of life

They see all they show, they show all they seen

Murmuring the spell, Nonoth summoned Azurite and lit up the soil, feather and leaf lying in the magic circle in front of her.

It was a complicated and rarely used tracking spell called relivio. Nonoth got it from an old witch who was so old that she constantly forgot where everything was so she put her cabin under this spell all the time.

It re-creates the image of a place for the last 24 hours so you could see where what you are looking for went. Normally witches only need something that's been in contact with what they are looking for and track them with a simpler spell through this media. This spell is for when there is no such thing, such as in this case, where Nonoth didn't have anything of Mal.

You need some soil, feathers and leaves from the place where what you are tracking was. The tricky part is the Unfallen Feather, because it needs to be a feather dropped from the sky but never hit the ground. Meaning, you have to wait there to catch one. Some witches would throw a feather into the air with magic and catch it, or trick a bird near the place and then hit them so they would drop some feathers. But the feather coming by different methods would influence the magic differently. The best are still the ones birds dropped naturally.

When you got the feather, then you can choose the soil and leaf. The location of the soil, the feather and the leaf would create a triangle, and anything happened in the last 24 hours within that triangle would show again in your magic circle.

The quality of the materials, the time and the magic power of a witch all take their fair share in the outcome. Luckily Azurite was powerful enough to make up for all the other materials disadvantage. Azurite had been the most powerful magic that Nonoth has met after she left The Cloud.

Controlling Azurite, Nonoth changes the image in the magic circle and located her and Mal drinking the drugged Ravenlick pretty easily. After they fell asleep on the floor, two men came for them. They seemed to be under command of another man sitting a few tables away, having a drink with the owner of the tavern, Lily.

"I knew she was in on it! She's definitely not my mother!" Nonoth thought to herself when she saw the woman sit on the table of the man in command, and watched Nonoth and Mal been taken away with a smile.

The two men took them away from the back door, but they dropped something right at the door when they were going through.

"Holy the unspeakable!" Nonoth exclaimed. She was upset when no one on the cloud would speak of her mother's name, so she made that her own version of "heavenly father".

The thing they dropped, was the dirty rag Nonoth put over Mal with a disguise spell. The spell extinguished after Nonoth blacked out, so they must had thought it was just a piece of dirty rag and threw it away!

But where could Nonoth find that rag now?! It's already half day passed! The happiness of finding this lead quickly faded away. Nonoth sat again in front of the magic circle, holding her head in her hands with her elbows on her legs.

Just at this moment, a face in the image almost overlapped the reality. Nonoth jumped up at it when she thought the boy in the image was breaking the wall between the two and three-dimensional world, but she realized after one second that it was not the case.

The boy WAS standing right behind the image, not too far away from her.

"Hey, stop!" Nonoth shouted when the boy turned and ran the moment Nonoth noticed him. She would have lost him if he got into the maze-like alleyways so she added: "The magic fire will..."

The boy stopped instantly when she said the magic fire with fear, even though Nonoth was just gonna say "will track you down". If she could do that she wouldn't be sitting here in stress would she? Obviously that boy didn't know that but she decided to not clarify the confusion thinking the fear in him might work for her.

"You saw what happened, didn't you?" Nonoth tried to show some prestige through her voice, which obviously achieved the effect she wanted...and more. The boy shook his head immediately, but then suddenly stopped and changed into a very hesitated nodding.

"Which is it?!" Nonoth held her breath in the effort of holding back a wry face to maintain the seriousness. Weak at the knees, the boy fell and sat on the ground at this final straw.

"Okay, listen," Nonoth gave up the dominating act and softened her voice, it was really not her style.

"The little mummy they took away is my friend. He's just a little boy, like you. Could you help me find him?" The softened voice was working well because the boy seemed relaxed a bit now.

"I really don't know..." He said.

"Okay... but do you where that rag is? The rag in the... well... magic circle?" Nonoth didn't even know whether he saw what was going on, or whether he even noticed that rag the night before, and her fear came true when they boy stuttered: "What... what rag?"

"The rag they took off from Mal and throw away, I think I might be able to track him with that."

"They clean the tavern every morning, I don't think anyone would save a rag from the trash..." The boy replied.

Of course. It was just a piece of old rag they found by the side of the road. Nonoth only needed some cloth to cast a disguise spell on. The chance of finding that rag just might be a bit harder than getting that unfallen feather.

Nonoth signed with resighment: "You are right... But they took an unconscious mummy away, SOMEONE must have seen them!"

"I'm sorry, I don't know where they went..." The boy muttered, but just when Nonoth turned to leave, she heard the boy saying: "But I have something from the man who took him."