Dear Brother Vosser,
The journey to School with Beff has been very long. It is only now after these weeks on the road with the wizard escorting us that we have arrived and I have acquired the materials to write you. I do not know how long the mail itself will take to reach home, which is why I address this missive to you instead of to our royal father. Of course if he lives still you should without hesitation share on its contents with him, but it eases my mind to be more sure that the name I have in mind while I write is the same as the one who will read it first.
Beff is an agreeable companion. You will remember I was motivated most chiefly by the desire to travel and see more of the world than our little kingdom, but I am also amenable as most of our kin are not to approaching human beings closely, and closely indeed have I got! I am perpetually aboard her person, in her pocket or riding her shoulder or in her hands. My fur has never been sleeker, as she pets it constantly to preen every hair into place, and she has taken to feeding me directly from her fingertips pieces of whatever she is eating, which is an impressively rich experience by comparison to the grains and vegetables we have historically enjoyed. I do not, unfortunately, know by name what you would be negotiating for with the Tillers to receive similar fare.
I have only the most rudimentary vocal communication with Beff. I can recognize her rendering of my name and vice-versa, and a handful of other words and gestures are understood one way or the other, but the availability of paper is key to my correspondence with her as much as with you! I believe (though in my infacility with the language cannot be certain) that Beff sought paper from the escorting wizard, during our journey, but that he refused her. I have no guesses why. I saw him writing for his own purposes often enough. With his toad familiar I have no rapport at all. I am not even sure the toad can write. How can they have come to any arrangement, I wonder!
At any rate, we have arrived at the School. Brother, it is so much larger than the House as to be a different kind of thing altogether. The House, the Barn, and the Silo would all three fit many times over into the School. Parts of it are impossible to see, because they are buried in clouds. Yes, clouds! It is shaped like the Silo but so colossal that if you filled it with grain it would multiply our people a hundredfold or more! The rooms inside it are grand also but more of a kind with the rooms of the House. Beff has a room to share with me. I have not seen many other rooms of the School thus far but will write more when I have the opportunity.
Your loving sister, Reeinuchu
Dear Mother and Father,
I am at School now. Princess Reeinuchu is being a very good Familiar to me and it is a comfort to have her with me so far from Home. She is writing a Letter also, please make sure it makes it to the Rats. I do not know yet much about what it will be like doing School. The Wizard did not tell me very much. He is not a Teacher. I am very tired from the long Trip and will sleep now. Another Letter will happen next Week.
Love Beff
Dear Brother Vosser,
I am in some haste to write this to you, and am doing so without the benefit of your own letter. I am in complete transports. There are books here. The Tiller family has three, but I have never inspected one up close; I am sure you remember our reading lessons included nothing of the kind. This School has hundreds. Maybe hundreds of hundreds! Beff is going to learn magic from some books and does not begrudge me the chance to look at them. At points she has wanted me to turn the pages for her, as some of her introductory exercises involve her hands. So far she cannot produce any magic that I can detect, but she and her instructors seem satisfied with her progress.
I have met three other familiars so far. There is a cat, or at least that's what I think the beast is. This one did not make any attempts on my life, though I didn't invite it to, and stayed quite close to Beff. What a fearsome thing! I am so glad that our people's relationship with the Tillers has kept them out of our territory these many generations. It would leave your whiskers trembling for days. The other two familiars are a crow - also dangerous, but not so intimidating simply to look at - and a rabbit, quite harmless provided we don't need to compete for burrow space, and we do not. None of them speak to me. Hopefully we will have time to learn one another's languages. If I come by any intelligence on the nature of cats and crows and other fearsome things I will be sure to relate it to you.
There are more students roomed near Beff and I, who do not have their own familiars yet, though I do not know whether I should expect that they will acquire them or not. They are overseen by a human with very strict opinions about where everyone should be at all times. Beff has been punished for infractions four times already and my pleading in her defense did not appear to make the slightest impression on her minder. It is a somewhat oppressive environment, but perhaps it is necessary to learn magic.
Your loving sister, Reeinuchu
Dear Mother and Father,
I am doing good enough at the Magic but I am having to be a Grown Up who never plays very quickly now for I am always studying or confined to my Room. I think I will have to try to teach Princess Reeinuchu to play Checkers. I do not have a Checkers board but I have a lot of paper for writing notes and spell pieces and can write a Checkers board too. It will be Crumpled pieces versus Folded ones I guess. But what if Reeinuchu doesn't like Checkers? Then what can we do if there is no going outside to dig and wander in it? Once I have my first Spell I will be allowed out. There are a lot of Mana Ooze creatures around the School because of all the Magic done here. I have to be able to turn them Inside Out before it is safe to go anywhere without a real wizard so that is the first thing to learn. But I do not know how long it will be before I can turn magic inside out. And there are many parts of the School that have no Oozes at all but that students are not allowed in alone either lest we damage the Books or write Rude Words on the Furniture.
Princess Reeinuchu has again wrote a letter to her brother. I am not reading them because that would be Rude but please give her letter to the Rats. I have not seen any other familiars writing any letters. Maybe Rats have the cunningest hands.
Love, Beff
Dear Brother Vosser,
I have finally received your first letter! What a tremendously slow way for messages to go is this one, though the distance is so great I suppose it is a miracle anything can get from the one place to the other at all.
As you say, the other familiars might possibly be dumb animals. I cannot rule it out, as they are either that or else they are illiterates whose way of speaking is totally beyond me. They are tame for their Wizards, and will run little errands not unlike my page-turning at a command, but might as well have no intellectual lives at all. They are not practicing their letters as they might if they were new to the idea. I do not even see them read. It is disturbing! I am agreeable enough to be Beff's companion but to have no other society at all does chafe.
Beff's first act of Wizardry is to be a bit of magic that works on magic. Apparently just as when the Tillers thresh a field for the bulk of the grain, they leave bits behind that we are welcome to, Wizards doing their various work will leave bits of magic behind that the students are welcome to, except that the magic can move about on its own and might do us harm if not approached just so. Beff is going to learn how to hunt and claim her own magic as it oozes about, and then she will be free to move about more of the Tower and its surrounds, and she will have enough magic from these gleanings to do more Spellwork. I do not know what the next lesson is after this.
It has indeed occurred to me that I may outlive you and all our siblings, if I am gaining more than merely travel and friendship from my nearness to an incipient wizard. This is the impression I have from hearing the others talk about their familiars, that if they begin very dim at least they will have long lives in which to learn more. If you think it is best I will renounce my claim to the throne that it may continue down your line hence, as I do not think I could readily be both Familiar and Queen. But since it is so important to Beff, I should very much prefer to remain formally a Princess in good standing.
Your loving sister, Reeinuchu
Dear Mother and Father and everybody,
I've learned to catch a mana ooze! I don't know if catch is a good word for the thing, because I do not have it in a jar after, or a basket, or a bucket, and instead it bursts like a bubble. But it leaves a bit of itself behind and that I do have, but not in any thing, just in my Wizardness. It is a peculiar sensation, like when you are not hungry at all and then you have a bite of fresh hot bread with butter on it and then all at once you are much hungrier though by rights you should be less. I am allowed to go hunting for oozes with all the other students who have this trick now, and there are often quite a lot of them right after the Wizards have done a big bit of Spellwork. They do so many things like bringing rain and taming fire and pulling water up from the ground without having to dig or build anything. Also they can see far away! They can do almost all their magic from right here, where all the mana is, by seeing far away while they do it; and it was very lucky that the Wizard who found me happened to be traveling.
I will learn to do little Hedge Spells next. I am allowed all the books with green binding provided someone is looking over at me to be sure I am good to the books, and they have lots of different ones. I am still deciding which would be the nicest to have. I would ask you what you thought but by the time your letter makes it back to the Tower I will already have learned one or two or maybe three! Maybe I will tell you some I do Not want to learn very early and you can tell me what I should do for my fifth or sixth Spell. There is one for making things different colors. The teachers use it for writing on the walls. There is one to look far away but the version in green binding does not last very long, only a blink. There is one for letting me see things Princess Reeinuchu sees but that seems rude! Sometimes she is writing private letters! I would have to talk to her about it. There is one for blighting weeds but I do not think I will go home very soon to be able to use it on our vegetables. It will have to wait until I am good enough at looking far away. There is one that makes there be two books where there used to be only one book but then neither book is all the way real, and if you tear a page, even a little bit, then the spell is over and you have one book with a torn page somewhere in between the two. The library books are like this. There is one for finding the mana oozes but there are always a lot of them in the dry creekbed whenever I go hunting so far so I do not mean to learn it first. I think it is for wizards going looking for oozes that have got farther away from the tower and must be caught before they meet somebody who is not a wizard. They're not too fast but they are a little hard to see, and could hurt somebody, if they snuck up.
There are more but my hand is tired. I am getting so much practice reading and writing, but I think I decided: the very first Hedge Spell I will learn is one that will let me write without my hands!
Love, Beff
My King,
Congratulations on your coronation. I regret that I could not be there for our dear father's funeral. I know your reign will be as prosperous and blessed as was his, and will see about asking Beff to send a parcel of some kind of appropriate coronation gift, belatedly though it will arrive.
Beff is enclosing some exotic foods that will travel acceptably. The blue package is for you to disburse as you please and the red for the Tillers.
Now that Beff can cast spells she is dispatched on more chores and errands. I ride in her pocket up and down the height of the Tower, sometimes peering out of windows so high that I can look down at the clouds. Beff tells me she could not climb it, even with her tremendous stride, if it were all by stair, but instead there are magical installations that can lift a passenger into the air with no effort at all. We have seen the libraries, as it turns out there are several. There are great rooms full of mirrors and crystals where Wizards look at faraway places and alter them. Beff carries messages; while there are spells for speaking to others, they interrupt like a shout does, where an apprentice standing by a door need not interrupt, so we spend a lot of time waiting by doors to hand over little notes and take their replies back. There are places it is expected many mana oozes will emerge in the aftermath of a large working, and Beff and the other students bicker over who gets to stand guard over these to get more of the precious scrap mana. There are things to do in the kitchen, to save on the expense of cooks; a spell can cook through a vat of beans large enough to hold our whole colony in an instant. There is cleaning, which is something of a disappointment, because it is not done with spells at all; it is the task of students who have come off poorly in the ooze hunts and cannot afford the casting of other chores.
Your loving sister, Reeinuchu
Dear Mother and Father and everybody,
I will ask if I can do something about the weather at home. I do not think I am learned enough yet but maybe there are extra chores I could do or something. I have not learned too many new Spells recently, as by this time I am through everything good with the green binding and now I have to learn a language full of Triangles. I will write a bit of it on the back for you to see (it means "Triangle"; only, in the Triangles language, there are different words for different kinds of Triangle, so it is a particular kind). So I certainly do not know a weather Spell myself, as it would be full of Triangles I cannot read well yet. But maybe they could decide where to work on the weather by way of me telling about your letter. It might not happen fast or I should not bother to write about it before its happening.
Princess Reeinuchu says her papa has died and there is a new Rat King who is her brother. She says she is still a Princess forever though. I hope everything is still going all right with the rats.
Love, Beff
My King,
Kindly be patient with the Tillers if they are less generous than their custom! They are ultimately at the mercy of the weather, and Beff is hard at work entreating the greater Wizards to their aid. The postage on more parcels of food would alas begin to be ruinous if it were used for staples enough to feed the whole clan rather than the occasional treat. Someone has to carry it all that way, and Beff still has not been taught where the main source of magical power is. It cannot all be oozes, because the oozes are the leftovers spilled from great workings. There is more knowledge to come and it is coming painfully slowly but we shall get there in time.
Addendum: Beff has convinced a wizard to let her observe a weather working! It will not be anywhere near our home, and will help the Tiller farm not at all; and she is to remain completely silent throughout, unmoving, watching from what is not even a particularly good spot to see; the hope is that she will learn more about what goes into such a spell, and then know better how to ask gently and respectfully for one to be aimed where she would like it. It has to be in the dead of night for some disagreeable reason, but the opportunity is too rare to decline. This letter must post now but I will let you know more in the next.
Your loving sister, Reeinuchu
Dear everybody,
I have seen a weather working now.
I do not know if I will be able to ask that one be pointed at our farm.
I don't know how to explain. I'll try to write again soon.
Beff
My King,
The wizards are not creating their mana. They are begging it off the beings who write in triangles. The Tower their silo, they are allowing the wizards the least part of their produce, for some favor or threat that I cannot yet fathom. The tendril of blinding white light that reached into the chamber from its occult direction brought rain, when directed through the lenses and etchings prepared by the wizard. But it departed before the wizard seemed through with it, and there ensued a terrible argument in that same language, aloud and by sign and writing and spell in a great storm of quarrel, and in the end there was less rain than desired. There were so many mana oozes to clean up afterwards that Beff nearly glowed with it, and brought her classmate with the silent rabbit into the chamber to take some of them, and this was only the fraction of the fraction of the power that those entities must wield.
I would not trouble such a thing lightly. And it is not light, I know; but it is at least affecting how affordable postage seems. Please find enclosed more food.
Love, Reeinuchu
Dear NVAVΔ4AMW,
I know it seems like a very small matter from the orthogonal realm, but we do actually use the mana for important things over here. The next time you cut me off in the middle of a working that I already rescheduled into the hours of human inactivity for your convenience, I'm going to start letting the oozes breed so we can do it ourselves, you see if I don't. I cannot overstate how politically popular this would make me with the other humans compared to going through you every time, and if you don't understand why we want the mana, well, I don't understand why you want all the oozes corralled, and I'll go on not understanding it till I've caught up on all the urgent spells. If you want me to abruptly remember why I should give a flying pig about the oozes breeding out of your control you will pay me back what you cheated me out of this most recent occasion and we will do the next working during the human active hours. Don't make me involve your superintendent.
Sincerely, Arcanamagister Tholl
Dear Arcanamagister Tholl,
Look, neither of us want that, and you know as well as I do that neither of us want that. You need to be more understanding that I don't live at your beck and call and may sometimes be interrupted or double-booked at moments that aren't when you would most prefer. You could always move your inactive hours to a different time if it's so troublesome to have things scheduled then and you can't stop having inactive hours. But I should be able to do twelve noon next time and spot you the extra this once. Nobody needs to talk to anybody's superintendent.
Best wishes, NVAVΔ4AMW