Julie gave me the pointer.
Said it’d make me look “professorial.”
Hazel snorted and called it a wizard wand for introverts.
But Thorn?
Thorn just nodded when I told him.
Like heknewI was ready—even when I didn’t.
I tap the tip of the stick against the top of the wooden sign I carved myself:
"Eco-Magical Restoration: Theory and Practice"
“Okay,” I start, voice barely above a whisper. “Um. Welcome to day one of the new curriculum.”
A few students look up from their notebooks.
One’s chewing on a pencil. Another’s halfway asleep.
Typical.
I inhale.
“You’re gonna get dirty,” I say. “And tired. And sometimes frustrated because magic doesn’t always behave the way you expect it to.”
A few heads perk up.
“But,” I continue, gripping the pointer tighter, “if you let it… the Grove will teach you. About plants, yes—but also about memory. And trust. And healing.”
I see it in their faces—how the mood shifts.
Slow.
Real.
Behind me, vines sway gently, reacting to my words like punctuation. The petals near the boundary path flutter as if nodding along.
I smile, just barely.
“Today, we’ll be tracing soil memory signatures and mapping residual enchantment flow through the moss bed. Tomorrow we start hybrid propagation.”
Hazel, sitting crisscrossed on the ground with her toad in her lap, grins wide. “And when do we raise a moss golem?”
I blink. “Hopefully never.”
Some of the kids laugh. A few scribble notes like I just revealed a hidden unit.
After class, Julie stops me by the tool shed.
“You were great.”
I blush, kicking a root with the toe of my boot. “I mumbled half of it.”
“They leaned in,” she says. “That’s what matters.”
I nod, swallowing the knot in my throat.
