Carrot and Stick: How to Practice Responsible Witchcraft in a High-Crime Neighborhood - Chapter IX

Chapter IX

Short chappy! Also, we hit 20K words!~

Carrot made it home around noon-ish. She might have hoped to spend more time with Mister Silas learning magic, but he had been almost nodding off on his chair after two hours, and so she had bundled him up in even more blankets and tucked him in bed. 

She didn’t need her new friend and magic teacher getting properly sick. He did tell her to show up again tomorrow at noon to start their search for the stray daemons across the city. He didn’t seem so sure that she could sense them, but, well... she could.

For example, as she entered her home and called out a lot “Hi mom! I’m home!” she could tell that there was just a smidgen of daemon energy in the house.

Smiling, Carrot gave her mom a big hug, grabbed a snack from the fridge--they had pudding cups!--and then slipped into her room.

There had been a birdcage up in one corner, hanging from a small hook in the ceiling. She’d found it on the side of the road one day while slipping through one of the nicer parts of down, and had repainted it in the apartment’s backyard with some help from Mister Johnson who was a painter by trade.

Anyway, the nice, all-white birdcage had served as a repository for a small fraction of her plushie collection.

Right now, those plushies were kind of scattered on her bed, and the birdcage was on her desk. Next to it was her old laptop, sitting upside-down with its screen open up against a stack of textbooks.

Within the cage was a big, rather chubby, bat, one wrapped up in a dozen bandages.

She may have been breaking a few itty-bitty rules. A little bit. Technically. Sorta? 

First, Mister Silas hadn’t explicitly told her not to save the bat daemon, so really, she was just being a good neighbour with it. What kind of person wouldn’t pick up a poor, injured animal to nurse them back to good health? The bat was wrapped in a layer of gauze from the first aid kit in the bathroom, bundling it up and making it look like the world’s smallest, cutest mummy. 

Second, the apartment had a strict no-pets rules. She knew, because she’d written to the company that ran the apartment once a week, to the point where they’d kindly asked her to stop sending them letters. 

Technically, this bat wasn’t a pet. In fact, since it was a daemon and could talk, that made treating it like a pet some sort of crime. Probably. So obviously it was just a stranger she had invited into her home and had tried to help through a tough time.

At worst, this was subletting.

“Hi, Bat... hmm... we really do need to find you a proper name,” she said.

The laptop was making a bit of noise as a show played on it. Carrot tilted her head to see, since the show was, like the laptop, upside-down. It seemed like the auto-play had done its job correctly.

Smiling, she trundled off onto her bed and flopped onto it to eat her pudding. That bat turned its little head to eye her, but then dismissed whatever she was doing to continue watching the show on the laptop.

Aww, it was shy! She held off on giggling, because she had the impression that the bat was rather proud.

So, instead, she started to practice her magic. Sensei---no, he didn’t like that name. Teacher? Professor? Oh, that had a nice ring to it. Professor Switchbranch had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she kinda sucked lemons at magic.

Well, he’d been a little nicer than that. Apparently she had huge reserves but very little control, and she was worried that he was right. So far, a lot of her spellcasting had been... wishy?

She’d take a huuuuge heap of magic, let it all out, then squeeze it super tight while wanting something a lot, and then poof it would kinda-sorta work, a little. Even to her inexpert eye, that had felt wasteful. 

No, if she had a constant stream of daemons to pull magic from with Rite of Dark Purification, then it would be fine, but they weren’t that common. And when she’d developed actual spells, with like, incantations and gestures and mostly practice, the amount of magical energy they used was way lower.

So Silas’ was probably right that she was very inefficient, but it just wasn’t something she had ever really concerned herself over. Not until now. Kinda funny how it took someone pointing out the problem for her to really notice it. But now that she had, she would do something about it!

“Why doesn’t the red one simply eat the others?” the bat muttered.

Carrot looked up. She couldn’t stop the grin on her face. “You mean... Elmo? Because the others are his friends.”

“Hmph.”

She had the impression that that was the end of the discussion, for now. Still, a whole sentence, and proof that the bat could still talk! Communication was the first step in making friends! 

Oh well, for now... magic! 

She raised a hand before her, the one not holding onto her pudding, and focused on re-creating one of her signature spells. If Silas insisted on her learning more control before teaching her more, then she’d impress him by being ten times as good by tomorrow! 

Black Petal Thorns was a simple spell. It made a thorn, which was kind of a strange, slightly lumpy ‘blade’ of magic, with a bunch more magic packed into the small stem of the spell. That was where all the instruction bits were. To tell the spell where to go and how to fly and such.

She was afraid that her magical instructions were kind of... spaghetti code, but that was okay for now. 

Carrot wiggled her hand and dismissed the thorn, aware that the bat had been eyeing it. He was probably worried. Silly bat! Her mom had made a household rule which was no casting in the house. Technically, since she was just forming the spell and not casting it, she was okay! 

Anyway, Carrot started over again. She went slow. 

Rather than just use lots of energy and will to smooth out the mistakes, she did it bit by bit. She could kind of tell when something was off or wouldn’t work, though a lot of that was instinct. This bit was too scrungely, or that part too warpled. 

She didn’t have the words for it, but she knew that she was making mistakes. Usually, they wouldn’t matter, because she’d just shove enough magic in to make it work anyway. She bet that Silas had like, entire textbooks explaining how to best make each part, but since she didn’t, it would come down to some trial and error.

At least she had enough magic to be able to trial and error a lot. She reformed a single-leaf version of Black Petal Thorns, going very, very slowly, watching the magic take its place like watching an actual plant growing. She adjusted as she went, making some lines straighter, curving others to meet the right spots.

She was feeling a little sweaty maybe and hour later, but what was before her was... a single Black Petal. It was... different. Less stuff, fewer wasted lines. More like a sketch of her usual spell than the actual thing, but a sketch...

She loved watching Bob Ross videos. There was a site (probably a pirate site, but she couldn’t afford the non-pirate sites, and she promised herself that she’d send a letter to Mister Ross’ family one day when she was older asking for forgiveness) that had all thirty-three seasons. She’d watched them all a few times. It was good vibes, even if she had never tried painting before.

Sometimes, Mister Ross would go smack-smack with his brush, and suddenly there was a tree with a million leaves. Drawing each one would take ages. 

What she was doing now felt like that, a little? Her magic had been very... smack-smack? She’d force it, and suddenly have her petals. 

This way of doing things was more like drawing out each leaf individually.

She wasn’t sure what was better. Maybe there was a space for both? But... if she could cast this one spell with the same amount of energy, and with perfectly carved leaves, then yes, they’d each take up a lot less energy, and maybe be a lot better. She could sense that the one Petal before her was slimmer, faster, than her old ones. 

Carrot needed to head outside to practice at some point and see if she couldn’t triple cast these. She suspected that she could.

“Hmph,” the bat said.

She looked up, then grinned. “Bored?” she asked.

“You’re torturing me,” the bat replied.

It reached down with its little head, then carefully bit into a grape that was in a cup inside the birdcage. Carrot hadn’t put those there, so it was probably her mom’s doing.

“It’s not torture,” Carrot said. “I just want you to feel better, then I’ll let you go.”

“I’m fine. Let me go now... so that I can eat your... eyes and stuff.”

She giggled. Cute! He didn’t sound nearly as evil as before. Her Rite of Dark Purification had slurped out a lot of the bad vibes energy, after all. Still... “Here, let me switch it up for you. I’ll put on some... hmm, you’re not ready for that... maybe some Magic School Bus? I think there’s some episodes about bats!”

He grumbled, but didn’t complain anymore once the show started.

Carrot was going to do an indoctrination. She wasn’t sure how that worked, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t put her whole heart into it!

But first, she still had to figure out this spell. She might have shaved off a smidgeon of it, but it still felt too bloated. She could do better! 

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