Inari’s Gift

Cera found herself regularly turning as the pull shifted directions, but she paid no mind to it, trusting that Inari wouldn’t lead her wrong after all this.  Eventually, her ears flicked back as she heard a howl incredibly close by; luckily, it was upwind, in the direction she had been traveling before a pull had made her turn.  Smiling at her thoughts being correct that she was being kept safe, she nodded respectfully in the direction of the wolf before continuing onward.

After about an hour and a half of brisk walking, she exited the forest near a cottage.  Since the pull carried her straight toward it, she sighed, not particularly wanting what came next.  She circled around to the door, sighing yet again as the pull spun with her movements and led directly toward it.

After a few moments of hugging her tail again to relax, she glanced down and brushed off her clothing, removing the bits of leaves and twigs that had found their way onto them, then faced the door, finding it quite large with her new size, and took a deep breath.

“You can do this, err, Cera…” she muttered to herself before hesitatingly stepping forward and knocking on the door, then immediately pulling back a few steps again.

As she waited, her thoughts spun incredibly quickly, courtesy of alterations she had made to her mind in her prior life.  Within seconds, she had decided on brutal honesty, and not hiding anything, as Inari had implied that whoever was inside was trustworthy.

The door opened, and an elderly man peered down at her, pausing for a moment before squinting and frowning at her.

“Who…  Cera?  Is that really you?  You look… very different from when you left, but I remember that face,” he stammered out before pausing a moment and then continuing, “Come in; it’s too cold to keep the door open!”

Cera nodded as the man turned and gestured inside, following him into his home.  He closed the door and directed her to a seat by the fire.

As she sat down, she yelped, managing to also bite her tongue with her new fangs.  She then found herself partially standing up and pulling her tail to the side before carefully sitting down again, leaning at an angle.  The man looked at her strangely, but she simply shook her head.  She was going to explain soon enough, after all, hopefully without those fangs messing with her pronunciation.

“It’s a bit complicated…  Inari sent me to meet with you, but I’m not the Cera you seem to have known,” she began as she tried to piece together what order she should bring things up in.

“You see, Cera wanted to leave this world because of the state it was in, and Inari accepted her spirit while her body lay in magical rest.  I was a mage in another world, and wanted to look like… well, this.  Inari offered me Cera’s body, with her permission.  In exchange, I am to help Inari regain power here, once I can,” she continued, watching the man’s eyes widen in surprise.

“And since Cera decided she wanted to start over rather than have this body back, Inari allowed me to make some changes so I’d more completely enjoy the body I ended up in,” she finished, leaning back to listen to the man’s response.

After a while, he shook his head and replied, “That is quite the story.  So, if you are not the person I knew, then who are you?  Why are you here?  Actually, hold on a moment.”

The man then muttered for a moment before Cera’s mana shifted, and he requested, “Please repeat your story again.”

Cera chuckled and grabbed her twitching tail and pulled it into her lap, beginning to stroke it before responding, “Let me guess, truth spell?”

Without waiting for an answer, she began her story over again from the beginning, adding in a bit more, “As I said, I was a mage in another world.  I hope to become a mage again in this one.  And as I am restarting my life, I have chosen to take Cera’s name, again, with her permission.  And I believe Inari sent me here to see if you could help me.  I know nothing of this world, nor can I use magic yet, though I did figure out how to manipulate mana quite quickly.”

The old man shook his head in surprise as Cera continued throughout her story.  Once she finished, he paused for several moments before sighing.

“I must say I am surprised, and saddened.  Cera was a good friend of mine, and I felt like I failed her when she decided to leave and said she probably wouldn’t see me again.  And now you’ve come, and as you suspected, I used magic to verify your words,” the man said slowly before sighing again.

Cera’s ears folded down, and she sadly remarked, “I’m sorry if I brought you pain by appearing before you.  I had no idea about your history.”

In return, the man shook his head before responding, “It is fine...  I will get over it in time.  At any rate, you said Inari sent you here, so I suppose I should consider helping you as a task from my master.  It will take a while to adjust to you looking like the person I once knew…”

After another pause, he stood and gestured for her to follow, leading her to a very dusty room, and stated, “This used to be Cera’s room for when she stopped by.  I just kind of let it sit once she said she wouldn’t be back.  If you clean it up, you can live here for a time, and I will attempt to teach you what I can.”

As Cera looked into the room, she instinctively raised her tail further from the ground, trying to keep it from getting dusty.  Feeling it move, she jumped somewhat and looked backward before laughing.

“I swear, this body may be just what I wanted, but it is going to take getting used to.  I was human until today,” she remarked as she looked at her wonderful, fluffy tail before pulling it close and hugging it.

“I’m actually kind of surprised that my tail isn’t dirty and didn’t pick up any twigs or the like while I walked here, honestly,” she continued, looking at it more closely.

The old man chuckled before he spoke, “I always thought that Cera’s tail had a mind of its own. What, with how it could keep itself clear of anything.”

He sighed again before stating, “At any rate, I should probably introduce myself properly.  My name is Falron, cast out of my clan for the evils of using magic.  Fortunately, I found a village that tolerates me, which is near my home here.”

“So…  If you are new to this body and this world, I don’t suppose you have access to your natural abilities, do you?  Or rather, know how to use them,” Falron inquired as he led Cera back to where they were speaking before.

This time, Cera remembered to shift her tail out of the way when sitting down before she shook her head and replied, “No, I’m afraid not.  I’ve only been here for a few hours.  Just long enough to get used to moving in this body, figure out basic movement of mana, walk here, and then our talk up until now.”

Falron shook his head in surprise before remarking, “I suppose you really must have been a skilled mage to pick up how to use mana that quickly.  Normally, it takes at least a month for someone to feel it without help, even if they’ve been taught what to do.”

Cera laughed in response before saying, “I certainly like to think I was, though many would disagree because I didn’t show off.  I hope I can become a great mage here as well.”

Falron smiled at her confident statement before standing and moving toward another doorway, stating, “I’m certain you must be hungry, and I was about to make dinner before you arrived.  I hope you aren’t too picky.”

Hearing this, Cera frowned.  She certainly had been extremely picky in her prior life, after all.  But at the same time, she was incredibly hungry, now that her attention had been brought to it.

Seeing her frown, Falron sighed before asking, “Is rice with vegetables acceptable to you?”

“In my last life, I ate a fair amount of rice, though I didn’t much like vegetables.  I’ll try eating almost anything, though; I might like more things now.  I didn’t have much sense of taste back then, so it was more about texture than anything else,” Cera replied with a half-hearted smile, worried that she might be wrong about liking more things.

With a nod, Falron turned back around and went into the kitchen, leaving Cera sitting alone beside the fire.  Wanting to be somewhat productive, she looked around before finding a broom and duster in a small cubby near the front door.

Broom and duster in hand, she returned to what would be her room.  Cera spent some time brushing the dust off of everything and onto the floor, making even more of a mess down there, then set the duster down and began sweeping the dust toward the door.

Partway through, Falron peeked his head into the room and, upon seeing her, remarked, “Food is done.  I see you’ve already started cleaning up; I’m glad to see that.”

Cera promptly leaned the broom against the wall, then grabbed the duster to put it away before she followed Falron back to the fireplace, where he pulled out two small folding tables for them.  After setting them up, he vanished into the kitchen for a moment before bringing out two steaming bowls of rice and some spoons.

“Thank you for making food for me, Falron,” Cera said as she leaned forward to look at the rice.

Within were the mentioned vegetables, which she had hated in her prior life.  She was very tempted to push them to the side, but instead made sure her spoonful of rice included some before eating.

“It’s better than I expected, given my past dislike of these,” she said before having another spoonful.

Instead of replying, Falron simply nodded to her as he quietly ate his own meal.

Some time later, the two had both finished, and Cera followed Falron as he took the bowls to the kitchen.  Unlike her prior world, it appeared there was no running water, and Falron instead had a bucket that he filled with water from an indoor well.

“I’ll watch this time, I’ve always had more advanced… everything, really.  But I’ll help out in the future!” Cera exclaimed.

After a few minutes of watching how dishes were washed without running water, Cera returned to her new room and continued cleaning it.  A while later, she swept a large pile of dust into the living room before turning and moving it toward the front door.

Seeing her actions, Falron stood from his place by the fire and walked over to hold the door open for her as she brushed the dust outside.

“There, now that is dealt with,” Cera stated as Falron closed the door again, and she put the broom away.

Falron promptly remarked, “Thank you for not just brushing it into a corner or something; I like to try to keep this place tidy.”

Cera nodded in response before saying, “I never cleaned often in my old world, but I’ve always tried to keep things from getting dirty, and to clean properly when I did actually do it.”

After a pause, she continued, “I’m not going to accidentally explode myself or set something on fire if I just practice moving my mana around, will I?  I figure that I’m too awake to sleep, likely due to this body being in a magical sleep for so long.  Instead of doing nothing, I’d like to improve my skills.”

Falron shook his head with a chuckle before replying, “No, just moving mana around without intent is safe enough.  I suppose your immediate desire to practice the beginnings of magic means you are a bit obsessed with it, am I right?”

Cera laughed before nodding and stating, “In my prior life, it wasn’t unheard of for me to spend all day working with magic.  It was, in fact, quite common for well over a decade.  This time around, however, I think I’ll accept that others have a point and study existing magic rather than ignoring it all and experimenting on my own exclusively.”

“Experimenting on your own?  Exclusively?  Did you have a death wish?!” Falron exclaimed in shock, eyes wide as he gazed at Cera.

With another laugh, Cera remarked, “Oh, I certainly did a number on myself, many times over.  I was lucky enough to have others willing to put me back together in the beginning.  In time, I learned to protect myself from my experiments, while eventually finding how to do many supposedly impossible things.”

She smiled before continuing, “I expect to do that here as well, but this time, I’ll learn from others before I try to find my own way.  I’ve had enough exploding and the like already.”

Falron shook his head before replying, “Well, I think it is too late for me to be thinking about these kinds of things.  I’m going to bed.  Don’t try to do anything with your mana except move it around, okay?  And keep an eye on the fire.  It is fine if it goes out, just make sure none of the embers pop out.”

After Cera nodded and stated her agreement, he headed into another room and closed the door.  For her part, Cera leaned back in her chair, pulled her tail into her lap, and closed her eyes, feeling for the mana within once again.  A few moments later, she opened her eyes, having a firm grasp on the feeling, and began absent-mindedly stroking her tail.

This time, she thought, I won’t form the same bad habits as before.

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