As I walk past the two trees, several senses practically scream at me about sudden changes. The first I fully realise is that mana is a denser, and moving from elsewhere and past the trees. “What the…”

“What did you find?”

“…the magnetic poles are reversed… But the mana, you should’ve been able to sense that, right? There’s more of it here, and it’s moving towards those trees.”

The uncomfortable boy has recovered, and yells “I told you it started there!” as he and the girl catches up to us. Seeing that, the rest of the group files into the… portal, for lack of a better term. I mean, that’s the original meaning of the word, but still.

“Hey, could you lift us up above the trees?”

“Oh yeah, good idea, then we don’t have to walk so far.”

So this isn’t quite what they meant to show? I grab them all, and we rise up, past the tops of the trees. We stop for a moment as I look around, and my surprise causes three girlish screams before I catch them.

“Ah, sorry about that, holding this many people is a bit tough. But… tell me what you know about this place.”

Turns out, that’s not much, but as far as they can tell this is another world, or at least somewhere else on the planet. There’s no cellphone reception if you move away form the ‘portal’ and they had a camera drone fly around without seeing any sign of people. They did however, find (and it’s hard to miss) a flying island.

“How did you even find this place?” Those two trees are pretty specific, so…

Everyone looks at one of the boys, who look embarrassedly to the ground, “By accident…”

Why does he look so embarrassed at that? “But how?”

“I… accidentally went in here and then… I got lost, and walked over there, so I had to follow my footprints back.”

“Oh. Well, this is certainly interesting. Have you told anyone else?”

Negatives all around. “All right. Think about whether you should. Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna mark this place so that I can find it later, and then I’ll check that flying island.”

“Can I come?” one of them asks, and soon it becomes clear that all of them wants to see what’s there.

“I should check if there’s bad stuff or something without carrying anyone first, and to begin with it might be too high for that.”

I shapeshift to oohs and aahs, then take to the skies. It doesn’t take me long to notice that it is both further away and bigger than I expected, and I must be several hundred meters into the air as I pass over it. It’s pretty flat, though with a upwards slope towards the middle, and the entire thing is as wide as a football field is long. Are american football fields as long? They’re shorter, right? Hm, I should look that up.

I fly over the entire diameter of the roughly circular ‘island’ and wonder how it stays up here before landing near the edge. There is some magic going on here, but I don’t think what I can sense shouldn’t be powerful enough to hold all of this in the air.

I peek down just to make sure, before smashing off a head-sized portion of the cold dirt, which seems to hang in the air for just a moment before plummeting down. Interesting… So the magic connects it and holds it together, maybe? But what keeps it up here? Is there some sort of core? Oh, what if there’s some kinda lifticite or suspendium or whatever crystal…

Before I dig into it I should probably tell the others about what I’ve found, though. I hop over to the edge in their direction and wave a wing at them, shouting that it seems safe. I can’t really hear their reply, but it doesn’t matter as I locate the center of the island and prepare to dig.

Actually, that’s kinda rude, maybe I should go down and talk to them…

I land and describe what I found, then disappoint them by saying there’s no way I can safely carry them up there, or more importantly, back down.

“But can’t you just shapeshift us to bird or something?”

“Well, yes, I could, but I don’t have time to teach you how to fly, and also that costs money.”

“But we showed you this place,” “Yeah!” “isn’t that enough?”

“You have a point, but I still don’t have time. Tell you what, though, I’m probably coming back here later, with proper preparation and stuff. Like a rope to hang off the side there. When I do that I’ll give you guys a discount on a service of your choice, related to flying?”

They all seem pretty happy at this, though one of them apparently enter business mode: “Any flying service?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“How big of a discount?”

“I dunno, depends on the service. More if you all choose the same thing, maybe twenty percent off the basic pack?”

Miss business looks at the others, and mister queasy pipes up: “What about the full package?”

“That’s, lemme think, shapeshifting, basic and advanced flight, basic flight magic and more magic-assisted flight techniques, plus a birdkin tunic and a small flight-friendly bag…”

“Wow, that’s a lot!”

“Yeah, it is. I could give you a twenty percent off of that. And… another ten percent if you buy the tunic and upgrades, and yet another if we combine the advanced tutoring stuff with sightseeing around Iceland with you as guides and maybe some exploration around this place.”

“Forty percent off everything?”

“Yep, and for fairness sake I’ll just say that you save nothing on buying something you otherwise would not. Ah, but the bag and tunic upgrades are not services, so full price for those. You just have to choose which ones. Also, you need permission from your parents. Since accidents could happen I need to have the paperwork in order, you see.”

“Woah that’s-”

“Accidents? Like crashing into the ground?”

I nod, and he continues “Has that happened? Has someone crash landed?”

“A couple times. Well, one person landed in a tree. They were fine, just a bruised ego. There was also a person had to go to the doctor after crashing into a house. For the record, they weren’t shapeshifted or flying or anything, just ran right into it, so I'm not entirely sure how that happened.”

We share laugh at that, before I suggest they talk about what they want as I check out the island properly. The local density of mana makes my effective range shorter, the mana-laden flying dirt pile even moreso.

If I can’t remotely sense it, I’ll just have to dig, and so I go to work heating the snow uptop as well as a rapidly growing tunnel towards the center. After a good few minutes, I have three separate shafts leading to a little tunnel network, and finally understand how it works.

It took embarrassingly long to notice that as I dig through the soil here, these little clumps and grains fall up. I think I would’ve preferred if I didn’t notice by inhaling one through my nose. Yeach. I hope those aren’t toxic.

With the realization, however, I start looking at the roof instead of trying to sense a crystal or something through the wall, and soon I have collected a fistful of the stuff, from the common little grains of sand to a couple pebbles.

Trying to store it in a piece of cloth proves difficult, but splitting the collection into three, uh, piles works. Some will probably leak, despite the wire wrapped around the opening, but it should be good enough.

With my bag feeling significantly lighter, I go out the quick way: By digging my way up. Around the time I sense the surface above, I also sense something reacting to my mana, so I take a detour, cautious of what it can be.

Unearthing carefully removing the soil surrounding it reveals a jagged, almost fractal structure, somewhere between teal and a light gray. Since it seems inanimate I excavate a bit more. It’s a crystal. I might as well break off a fist-sized part to study later- it also floats, and what’s more, trying to pull it with magic seems to make it stick to the roof.

Interesting as that is, grabbing it with my hand works just fine, so i put it in my bag. Only for it to fall up and out of it. Right, I’m gonna need something to weight it down if I want to put it there. But it doesn’t pull with that much force, so why…

Oooh.

Channeling mana into it makes it, err, float harder? Push upwards with more force. Does that mean that if I can create a mana void around it, it will fall like normal? So absorb mana around it like so, and, yup, that works. Doesn’t help me with storing it, though. Actually, if more mana = more lift, can this thing lift me?

I carefully control the mana until I am in range of the ground, then cut it completely as I switch to the usual force magic to land safely.

“Woah, what’s that?”

“The floaty-crystal-stick?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I found out what holds the island up. There’s these crystals which float if supplied mana, and also- actually, hold this for me. Oh, and don’t-”

He barely touches it before it shoots into the air.

“Sigh. -channel mana into it.” I finish, staring at the sky for a few moments, blinking.

“Right,” I say as I clap my wing-hands together, making an unsatisfactory sound. “Since I won’t catch up to that anyway, I’ll just show you the other stuff. The crystal I found was pretty big, but there is also this kinda dust in the soil.”

Let’s see… ah, this one. “It works the same way, but is mostly just the size of sand, so I’ll show you the two biggest ones.”

I carefully open the ‘bag’ (upside down) and cup my hand around the two pebble-sized clumps. “As you can see, they fall ‘up’. They use the mana in the air for this, which means I can make them drop by stopping them form getting enough mana to do that, or channel more mana into them to make them push stronger.”

I let the other try this, very carefully, before putting it back into the bag (which will need an anti-gravity-safe pocket or two) and going back up to see if I can’t find the flotation stick. I go up past the island and then some, but can’t see any signs of it, so either it blew to the side or something, or went far too high up.

So I get another crystal, tying this one around my waist, then go back to Iceland with with others. As expected, the upwards pull here is lower. Since I’m (trying to be) a responsible adult I take them back home too, and leave them one of the bags with small to medium ‘suspendium’ as well as a small tablet with a mana-draining enchantment and instructions on how to set up a cage for the stuff.

I might want it back later, but for now it’s collateral for the discounts they’ll get or something. As is often the case when getting sidetracked, I’m a bit late, but it’s not like I need to be home by a certain time, so it’s not like it really matters. Well, except for getting enough sleep.

The next morning I quickly do my morning routine before heading north to Leda. I am greeted by a very excited Leda, and a hesitant, but curious whelp. Leda throws me a mind bond, connecting me to the two of them.

The whelp reminds me of Leda that first time, but without her careful restrained, and with half-formed, blurry and vague concept I can hardly make sense of its thoughts.

His thoughts. “It’s a boy, huh?”

“Yes.” says her puppet, in full raptor form.

“So, what do you want to call him?”

“Too-”

“Except for ‘Toothless’.”

“Aww.”

The silence that passes tells me she hasn’t really given it any thought.

“Well, it’s not like he strictly speaking needs a name right now, but we should think about it.” I guess I can ask for suggestions when I inevitably make the vlog to introduce him. Someone oughta have something that just clicks, right?

“How old is he now?”

“Nine days!”

“Hmm, so extremely highly developed when hatching. How mobile is he? Like, can he fly and move around yet?”

Her answer to this is to poke at his mind, retrieving a memory. It’s very blurry, more a collection of disparate, scattered, and vague sensory inputs, But Leda is there and she uses magic, and he’s moving in the air?

At the moment he doesn’t seem to have really solidified enough concepts to truly communicate, even with mind magic, but at least he knows his mother. It’s interesting ｢up//skies//air//soft｣ as one thing, though, and the same is true for its opposite ｢down//ground//earth//hard｣. I guess he doesn’t really have enough experience to separate those things better?

Man, developmental psychologists would be over the moon if they could use techniques like this in their research. Actually, psychologists in general probably would. Teaching, too, and, topically, upbringing/raising a kid. I wonder if we can teach him to talk faster than a human kid would usually learn? Hm, too bad none of my family has small enough kid to test the same on.

“Speaking of flying, you know those air whales I was speaking of? I learned a useful magic from flying from them.”

I share first the usage and such of the magic, then demonstrate it to her while sharing some of my experiences and lessons in using it. She takes a moment to digest it, then launches herself into the air with a combination of that force magic.

｢{Disappointed, happy}I think I already know that, but now I can do it even better!｣ she transmits as she circles upwards. ｢{Happy, hungry, eager}BRB, hunting｣

And with that she breaks the bond, leaving me with a whelp which, influenced by his mother or not, is also hungry. And as big as me. Well, I guess I can examine him while I wait…