A Word in the Breeze

Imagine Dragons

When you imagine magic, what do you imagine?

Imagine a blond teenage boy sitting in his backyard, with a loose silver bracelet around his right wrist.

Imagine his eyebrows furrowed in concentration over pale blue eyes.

Imagine him pouring coloured powder through his palm into a flask of water while muttering a foreign language spell.

And when you imagine magic, imagine the puff of purple smoke erupting from the potion as the charm completes, his triumphant smile showing crooked teeth, and bounding into the kitchen to share the news.

Imagine a sunny day in Woodville, where the Draught of the Dragon was successfully brewed. . . with one significant flaw, only the wizard doesn't know it yet.

Imagine a pair of innocent grey eyes, watching this scene from the bushes. A young boy, spying. He didn't imagine any of it.

~

"Don't be annoying, Corrie!" Roscoe warned, walking ahead through the tall grass.

He and his tousle haired little brother were walking through the forest – two black haired wanderers – him armed with arrows, and his brother with nothing but his school bag.

He was very reluctantly letting Corrie tag along on his hunt.

How he was going to focus on bird calls while his brother chatted away, he didn't know.

"I'm telling you, I saw it with my own two eyes!" Corrie ran to keep up. He wore a green shirt over dirty, supposedly white pants. He was far too young to come along hunting with his older brother, but today he'd snuck out. Roscoe was not impressed.

"Who told you to go spying at the Razzers' house anyways? You're not allowed this far from home, and you are going to be in big trouble once mum finds out you skipped the school camp!"

"The camp's boring!" his brother insisted. "I had to skip it, or else Jimmy'd gnaw my ear off with his chattering!"

Which was a bit ironic coming from Corrie, because he himself could gnaw anyone's brain off when he was in the mood. Right now, for example.

"But when I got into the forest, away from the school crowd, I followed this weird smell of – kind of burning cotton candy? It was weird. And I found out, it was coming from the Razzers'! And you know the skinny newspaper boy, Zeff Razzer? Well, he was in the garden, brewing a magical potion!"

A silence followed this excited declaration as Roscoe thought about this, broken only by the crunching of grass as they strode deeper into the forest.

"How do you know it was a magic potion?" he asked.

"Because he was saying a spell, of course! And using strange coloured sand, and there was purple smoke! You can always recognise magic by coloured smoke!"

Roscoe's lips thinned. He'd heard rumours about magic in Woodville, and they weren't very good. He knew wizards would do anything to keep themselves secret, in case regular people like him decided to take advantage of their skills. He also knew wizards could not be trusted.

He stopped in his tracks. Corrie bumped into him.

But there was a third set of footsteps crunching to a halt behind them.