Chapter 10: Chapter 10

When I woke up, I was laying in a grove completely different to the one I had passed out in. While before, I was in a small clearing, with a few dead-looking strawberry plants in the center, and some small bushes and ferns around the edges, I was now in a utopia, an area teeming with life.

Now, The place had been completely transformed. Where before there were some trampled, dead-looking strawberry bushes, completely devoid of fruit, now, there was a huge, green, perfectly healthy bush, covered in strawberries. The trees around the edges looked as if they had gained years of life, and the entire clearing was covered in wildflowers. The local plant life was going crazy, moss covering everything it could reach, and vines dangling from each and every branch of the trees. It was truly beautiful.

“Ashley… Ashley! Thank god. I was so worried!!!” Syl’s frightened voice rang out through the quiet of the forest.

“What… What happened?” I asked.

“You were like… you had a weird look in your eyes, like some sort of instinct had awakened within you. Then you let out this big flash of light, and passed out. Everything started going crazy, the plants wouldn’t stop growing!” Syl babbled out.

“Do you… Do you think that was magic?” I hesitantly asked, a tint of fear making itself known through the quiver in my voice.

“Oh my gosh! YES! That was totally magic Ashley! If we can learn how to control it, you could totally solve our food problem! It would kind of suck if you have to pass out every time you use it though…”

“Lets just…” I said “Let's take it slow, alright? Last time I rushed into something, I ended up in a whole different world.”

“True… You met me though” Syl quipped.

“That I did… That I did”

Not eager to let the animals beat us to the fruit, and also quite hungry, we stood up and made our way over to the fruit tree, eager to get our meal in. We must have spent hours there, enjoying the simple pleasure of a good meal.

When we had eaten as much as we could, we got ready to head back. We didn’t have much stuff to carry, and by not much I mean none at all, but we both grabbed as many strawberries as we could carry, before setting off back to camp.

When we got back, the sun was starting to go down, though we probably had at least an hour or two before it truly got dark. I had been feeling strangely tired since my spectacle back over at the newly formed strawberry patch,  and was ready to get some nice, peaceful sleep. We ate a small dinner, making our way through maybe a third of the strawberries we had brought back with us, and headed to bed, for an early night in.

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“That was quite the stunt you pulled back there” a booming voice laughed, cutting through the quiet of peaceful slumber.

“What?…” I groggily murmured.

“Why back there at the strawberry patch, of course!” the voice said, and suddenly I found myself back in God's meeting room.

“We… We meet again” I remarked.

“That we do” God laughed. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting something like this when I gave you magic. Sure, I knew you would be powerful, but to grow an entire clearing as much as you did, with no training whatsoever, is mental. Absolutely mental.”

“You… Gave me magic?”

“Well duh” God laughed. “Remember when I gave you that dress, the first one? There was that ‘white mist’ I believe you called it, that floated into you. That was magic. I’m surprised it took you this long to notice, you were practically leaking raw magical energy wherever you went.”

“But then, If I was leaking this energy, why didn’t it cause the plants to grow, like in the Clearing?”

“Simple” God remarked. “In the clearing, you converted all, and I mean all, of your magical energy into growth energy. When you released it, it caused the plants to grow. You also passed out, as you used up every drop of magical energy that you could spare, without killing yourself. I keep forgetting that you are new to all this. Tell you what. When you wake up in the morning, you will find a book explaining some of this. It will be more of a general guide than anything, but I think you will find it quite helpful in the long run.”

“Thanks?...”

“Oh, and one more thing. The amount of energy you released is going to leave a mark, and a big one at that. It won’t even begin to fade for years. A magical hotspot, if you will. I intend on hiding it from the outside world, but you know where to find it, and there will always be plenty of excess energy there for big spells. It will act as a sort of reservoir, gradually collecting magical energy for anyone to use. I might even make it permanent. Mind you, there are currently much larger ones, but they are well known. Here, you would be able to do whatever you please, with no greedy eyes on you, looking to steal even a fraction of your knowledge and power.”

With that, God seemed to decide our meeting was over, and he stood up, before slowly fading away, leaving nothing in his place but some white mist that quickly dissipated. Before long, the meeting room, in all of its glory, followed behind, starting at the far end and working its way towards me. Before long, I was the only thing  in the endless abyss of nothingness, and I faded back into a dreamless sleep.