Patty Liu - Silent Reflections

Melody squinted at the small writing in the spell book. She poured a little bit of that and a little bit of this and a pinch of seeds into a small bowl and mixed it up with a wooden spoon. The mixture smelled awful and she wrinkled her nose at it. Her white dove cooed in the corner on its stand.

"I guess he doesn't like the smell, either," Melody chuckled to herself. Now, if she could get this spell to work on her dove, then she would try the spell that she had already prepared to destroy the Fourth Kingdom. "Now, Dovey, once I feed you some of these seeds, you will be able to speak. Then you can tell me all about how awful I am for feeding you these nasty things."

Melody added another touch of greenish liquid and mixed again. If this spell works, the spell in the purple bottle on the table will work too, Melody thought. The purple bottle was the key to her revenge. If she poured the liquid over the Fourth Kingdom on her map, the kingdom would slowly rot as the map deteriorated. Crops will fail, farm animals will die, and disease will fall upon the kingdom and it will be destroyed!

Melody chuckled to herself and walked towards her pet dove. She grabbed it and held the wings gently to its body so it wouldn't fly away. She took some seeds onto her finger and fed it to the dove and the unknowing dove gobbled all the seeds up into his little beak. Melody smiled and stroked the dove gently, waiting for something to happen.

Then the dove went berserk and started struggling in Melody's hands. It got loose and started flying all over the place. It knocked over bottles and potions on the shelves and flapped around the room aimlessly. Melody quickly shut all the windows so it wouldn't fly away. She turned around and saw the dove knock over her precious purple bottle onto the map and another green miscellaneous bottle next to it. The two liquids mixed and began hissing and white wispy smoke began drifting up towards the ceiling.

"Oh, suck an elf! Look what you've done, you damn bird!"

Melody quickly tried to wipe up the mess but she noticed that the liquid had gathered all around the Sixth Kingdom on the map and the entire kingdom began to glow with an outer lining that lined the borders of the kingdom. She couldn't wipe it away either. She had no idea what she had just done. She quickly rolled up the map and put it away. She'd figure out what she had done later. She must clean up the mess.

The dove had settled down onto its perch and was cooing softly to itself. It had spilled the seed mixture onto the floor and Melody bent down to wipe it up when she saw herself in the puddle, bending over next to the table. She looked up and looked down again. She looked at the dove and the dove looked at her. She looked at the puddle and she saw herself again. She was looking through the eyes of the dove.

"Well, that's not exactly what I was aiming for, but this will do nicely too."