Finley Cai Aies Hall March 29th, 20XX

The memories of the day before flashed through my mind like a nightmare, and I had a blinding headache when I woke up. Aside from the headache, I also had an acute ache in my back that made it hard to get up.

There were a couple of windows open, so it wasn’t completely dark, but it paled when compared to the bright gold monstrosity that was the other world.

My eyes fluttered open and I tried to adjust to the new light setting but it was a difficult and painful process. While I did so, I looked around my apartment to make sure everything was okay but saw something else that put me in a foul mood. Bouncing around my room and off my furniture were those same flecks I’d seen in the otherworld. I spent a few minutes to confirm that they were, in fact, the same weird phenomenon that I’d seen in the other world.

They were less dense, carried a dull grey colour and moved with much less vigour than their other world counterparts, but they otherwise held the same qualities. They also, ‘felt’ the same, although there was a sense of dirtiness around them.

What were they anyway?

I hadn’t asked Esmeralda or Cambridge what they were, but I could put two and two together and assume that they were flecks of magic. They looked like smaller versions of what had come out of that wand and had flocked to it when I’d almost used magic before.

I slowly got up and tried to stretch out the ache in my back when a wave of intense nausea assaulted me.

It propelled me onto my feet, and I broke out into a run to the toilet.

After emptying the contents of my stomach and washing clean, I finally opened my eyes completely and tried to adjust to the sudden bright light of the bathroom. As well, I spotted a few bright flecks of gold dancing within the dull grey mass.

It was a slow process, but the longer I watched, the gold flecks increased and the fewer dull grey particles remained. As the flecks replaced themselves I felt better and the ‘dirty’ feeling slightly lifted off me.

As interesting as it was to watch, something else caught my attention. I ran over to the mirror once again and glared at the unfamiliar reflection. The same metallic hair, odd eyes and wings…. It was accurate to my memories, but it wasn’t me.

A large golden fleck danced across my vision and pulled my attention to a large chest that sat in the corner of my room. I remembered the diary and the wand and wondered if I could do anything about my appearance. Not to mention me not looking human anymore, I also wouldn’t know how to explain any of it to others.

The diary flipped open in a grand ceremony of flipping pages and settled on a blank page.

“How do I change my appearance?”

Since speaking to it had worked the last time, I figured it would work this time as well. At the same time, I felt somewhat ridiculous, standing in the middle of my apartment in a pair of giant wings, talking to a magic book. Everything felt so surreal that trying to subject normal logic just felt redundant.

The black text lazily sprawled across the page, as if it had just awoken as well.

Your previous appearance resulted from a series of spells your mother cast on you to help you adapt to the human world. You are not at the same level as your mother, so it won’t be possible to replicate it exactly, but you can achieve something similar.

“And if I have to switch back?”

If you connect the spell to a suitable item, you’ll be able to turn it ‘on’ and ‘off’ - for lack of better terms.

The diary then flipped to another page and a step by step instructional page unfolded itself. It wasn’t until later that I realized how insane it was to attempt magic by myself without supervision. And how reckless it was to follow a written guide without so much as a question. But that was later.

I adapted this from the magical theory of the witches, so it shouldn’t suffer from being cast in the human world. It should also be fine for a beginner like yourself.

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You’ll need the Wand and the locket from your mother. You will also need a lock of your hair.

Put half of the lock of hair inside the locket and pick up the wand.

Picture yourself as you wish to appear, then say “Clauditis” (this should revert you to the version you are used to)

Braid a lock of the adapted hair into the lock of your real hair.

Put them into the locket and put it on.

To revert, say “Reasare”

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I followed the instructions but went in front of the mirror before completely activating the spell.

Once again, the wand heated in my hand and the flecks of magic became agitated. Both the dull grey and golden flecks whirled into the wand in an invisible, magnetic tornado and used it as a tunnel into my body.

I paid close attention to the mirror as I felt the magic enter my body and change it, but the physical manifestation of the spell left me feeling somewhat disappointed.

Instead of the magical changing of colour I admit to having expected, the dull black hair simply grew on top of the metallic gold and kept growing until it was the same length as before. The metallic strands of hair still hung past my shoulders and weighed down the thin strands that now occupied my scalp. It was so comically underwhelming that I almost burst into laughter.

The magic left my scalp and moved down to my pupils. And while the hair had been a mundane transformation, the eyes were satisfactory enough.

My pupils, which I hadn’t been aware had enlarged, shrank into normalcy and the iris did the same. Then, like an invisible bucket of paint was being poured into my iris, a sharper blue than it had been before, flooded and completely obscured by the golden-green colour that the transformation had brought about.

My now-long hair distracted me from fully appreciating the process by swinging around my shoulders and into my field of vision. The metallic ends caught the light from the fluorescent lightbulbs and refracted light around the room.

I grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen, one of the many kitchen utensils will had stocked my kitchen with but had gone unused, and got to work on cutting the gold out of my hair.

Another pair of scissors and the knowledge to cut a few inches into the ‘real hair’ later, I’d finished the job.

A heap of bright golden thread pooled around my bathroom floor, and I got the temptation to take it to a pawnshop. I fought down the impulse but saved it carefully in the dresser behind the mirror. I wouldn’t have any answers for where I’d gotten it from, but it would be a good emergency fund. It wasn’t like I thought I’d ever need it, but it was better safe than sorry.

I walked into the kitchen intending to eat something, despite not being hungry when the time on the oven caught my eye.

For one of the first times in my life, I let out a curse and ran around the apartment to gather my school things and get out the door. In the flurry of finding out I was a prince from another world, I’d forgotten that I was still a student with responsibilities and an attendance record to keep. It wasn’t like I particularly enjoyed going to school, but I needed to graduate to keep the company.