Morning. I woke before the sun and practiced magic alone in the courtyard. Not combat magic, not healing. Transmutation. I pulled the spell tight around myself and became a chicken. Small. Feathered. Ground-bound. A world of scratching and pecking and the eternal question: is this food? I spent an hour in that form, wandering the grass, letting Belesh approach me. She was confused at first—I smelled like her, moved like her, but something was wrong. She circled me twice, head tilted, one eye watching. Then she pecked my wing and walked away. I did not enter her mind. But I understood something. To be a chicken is to be alert. Always watching. Always ready. The world is full of things that want to eat you or step on you or steal your grain. There is no philosophy, no midwifery, no silence of the soul. There is only now and next. I shifted back to my human shape, dusted feathers from my robes, and found my friends watching me from the doorway. They did not ask. Perhaps they have learned not to. Only asked if I am coming with them to meet the leshies. Tradition in Seven Weavers is clear: leshies are left alone. They are creatures of the wild forest, sacred in their distance. Midwives forbid interaction. Respect means staying away. And the leshies, for their part, have never seemed to want otherwise. Magaambya is different. Here, leshies walk the halls, tend the gardens, and apparently compete in tournaments. My friends insisted we introduce ourselves before the festival. It is wise, they said. Courteous. I went. But my unease was a pebble in my shoe. The leshies were… quirky. Small bodies of bark and leaf and mushroom, their faces surprisingly expressive, their voices rustling like wind through dry grass. They welcomed us with blunt curiosity and a complete lack of social pretense. One asked if I was edible. Another offered me a dead beetle as a gift. They are not so different from anyone else, I realized. They simply have fewer lies. The tournament is a big deal to them. Their eyes gleamed when we said we might participate. This is not a game to the leshies. It is a proving ground, a celebration, a chance to show what they are made of. I found myself respecting their intensity. We asked about the gremlins. The leshies exchanged glances—a rustle of leaves, a shift of branches. Then one of them produced a leaf. Large, broad, unremarkable at first glance. They turned it over. The underside was moving. A swarm of insects, crawling in a pattern that was not random. I watched for a long moment, my Weaver’s eyes tracing the flow. The insects moved like ink being drawn by an invisible quill. Like a rune. Alive. Shifting. But deliberate. This is not natural. Gremlins are known to communicate with insects, to tame them in ways that should not be possible. This leaf is a message. Or a weapon. Or a map. I do not know which. I might be overthinking it. But the gremlins are not simply angry. They are organized.
Ixy spoke of betting on the tournament. A scheme. Odds and coins and wagers. I did not understand. Not the words—I understood the words. But the concept. The excitement. The idea of turning competition into currency. In my village, we do not gamble. We do not bet on births or harvests or the success of a healing. Such things are disrespectful to the spirits who decide outcomes. For a moment, I felt utterly lost. These people—my friends, my fellow students—they live in a world I do not fully share. They laugh at things I find strange. They scheme over things I find sacred. Do I belong here? The question passed through me like a chill wind. Then I remembered the leaf. The swarm. The gremlins moving with purpose. The Silent Chord waiting, patient and mute, for answers I have not yet found. I am not here to gamble. I am not here to fit in. I am here because something is wrong, and we are one of the few who can see it. I will participate. Not for glory. Not for coin. Because the leshies take it seriously, and the gremlins may use it as cover, and I need to understand what is happening in this place. Also, my friends need a fourth team member. I am not eager to fight, maybe I am secretly hoping that I won’t have to. I still feel a slight pain in my bones from my fall.
Belesh Note: She has forgiven me for pretending to be a chicken. She sat on my foot while I wrote this. I think she knows I am trying.