The Isle of Magic

by SwordTune

Sap of Life

"Kith sap is dangerous in the clutches of the other kingdoms. They will birth more young, control more monsters, and sway the lesser clans to follow their rule."

~ King Dessable II

Drip drip drip.

Silic watched as another droplet of sap slid off the branch of a kith and rolled off the waxy leaves. It was from the kith that all things on the island came to life, and as a Cultivator, it was his sworn duty to protect the trees that lived in the Sand Kingdom.

He hung a basket on his hoof and reached out. The sand below him, inanimate as sand normally was, came to life. The magic within him shaped the sand, adding it to his body until his foreleg reached out and hung the basket just below the kith sap.

And he did so again, all day. Three hundred kith, give or take, that was his charge. In a single day, the lord's collectors would expect three baskets from Silic's grove. He always managed to meet his quota, even after skimming a little bit of sap for himself before the collectors arrived.

Yesterday had been one of the few times it actually rained in the Kingdom of Sand, so the kith gave exceptional amounts of sap. Silic placed the lids over his baskets as the sun dropped from its peak, making sure all three were filled to the brim.

He had finished early, as much as he wanted to get a head start on tomorrow's work today, it was dangerous to take too much from the kith. The trees never said it, but they were intelligent, and the magic in their sap had always cursed those who they deemed too greedy.

With hours to spare, he figured he could finally fix up the fences around the grove. He retreated, then, to his home to fetch his hammer and nails. It was the skull of a giant that he lived in, one of the many remnants of an ancient era, long before the kingdoms had formed.

Most of it had sunken into the sand, but he could still walk through its eye socket to the back of the skull, where he put his cultivating tools and bedroll. Knives and spears were laid out in the sand, tools for cutting sap nodes off of trees. The nodes were often massive clumps of sap that had dried somehow within the tree, swelling up its formidable bark.

The tools were cut from crystals and were the sharpest blades that Sandmolds had ever made. But they still struggled to break the bark of the kith. Only the bark sickened by swelling sap nodes were thin enough for the tools to cut.

Silic paused for a moment. He knew every bit of sand in his home, but there was a patch of shimmering copper dust on the ground that he knew wasn't there when he left in the morning.

"Cupine, if you're still in here, please don't do what you did last time." He looked around. One of the clans that lived outside the borders of the Kingdom of Sand was the Coppercasts. Their kind came from the caves in the Copper Mountain, the only one of its kind on the Isle. Their bodies were a lot like the Sandmolds, except made from copper dust instead of sand.

Silic paced around his house until he reached the farthest end of the skull. The little bag he put there to store his personal vials of kith sap was opened, with half of its contents opened and emptied.

He sighed, understanding why his "friend" had taken from him, despite how much he was looking forward to having some sap for dinner.

At the very least, the Kingdom of Sand's deserts were fertile land waiting for some black water to drink. But the Copper Mountain was a harsh place to live according to all the accounts. Their soil was filled with rocks and gravel and was equally as dry as the land within the kingdom.

Their kith were sparse and yielded almost no sap, making them completely dependent on the kingdom's exports. In return, they traded any copper ore they didn't need for making more of their kind.

Silic turned back and grabbed his crystal knife, absorbing the tool into his body. Dried kith sap was useless on its own, but mixed in a solution of fresh sap and black water he could make a decent watered-down version of the pure thing.

He found the nearest tree and circled around it, looking for bumps in its bark. Then he circled a second, and a third. Sap nodes were rare, but with a grove of three hundred Silic knew he would find one.

It was the tenth tree. Reshaping himself, Silic slithered up the side of the tree like a snake, except leaving a trail of sand all over its bark as he went. A small lump had formed at the base of where a branch split from the trunk. Just underneath the thick, black bark of the tree, he could see the red hue of the dried sap, blocking nutrients to the area around it, making the tree sick.

He set himself to work as naturally as a grindhound chewing up stone. He cut carefully, making sure as to not hurt the tree. Slowly his knife broke through the bark, cracking the clump of sap underneath. Cutting around was a little easier as the node opened up, but nonetheless, it took almost an hour to get the whole thing removed. Once freed, a hardened chunk of sap the size of his head tumbled down to the ground and into the clutches of a familiar Coppercast.

"I see you're hard at work there, Mr Cultivator," she called out to him.

Seeing Cupine, Silic released his form and let his sand slide off the tree and pile up on the ground. He reformed in a second, wrapping his hooves around the dried sap and snatching it back.

"I have to," he grumbled, "since a certain copper pony doesn't know how to ask nicely." Silic picked his knife off the ground and sunk it into his sand, slinging the dried sap onto his back. He stretched out his sand to put a thin dome around it, holding it in place.

"You look like a camel," Cupine laughed.

Silic marched past Cupine. "It would be nice if you could visit without messing with my stuff Cupine. Just once, to change the routine."

"Don't be like that," she said, walking beside him.

He shook his head. "You can't keep doing this. Lord Gravelfort has the right to imprison any pony in his land, and he hates anything that's not a Sandmold."

Cupine rolled her eyes. "Coppercasts have traded with your kingdom for centuries. He doesn't have any reason to arrest me."

She continued to skirt around Silic's worries as they walked back to his house. Despite the close relationship between the Kingdom of Sand and its satellite clans, sentiments against peculiar or rare ponies were common. Mosslings and Ironmounds were often blamed for all manner of things, but that didn't leave Coppercasts excluded from the hatred.

Silic released the dried ball of sap from his back and rolled it into the centre of the skull. He stretched his sand from his hoof and fused it with another Cultivator tool, a flat and round clay pan. It was curved slightly and had its edged filed down, a good tool for both collecting black water and digging up dirt.

"You should head home, Cupine," he said as he left for the creek of black water that ran through the middle of his grove.

"Still trying to get rid of me?" She stuck close and bumped him. "I remember you were having a lot of fun the last time I visited."

"The last time," Silic said, a twinge of embarrassment in his voice, "you waited until after I had work to do. Rainfall finally came and I finally have the chance to finish my other chores."

The two of them came to the creek. Black water was not named for its own colour. When shallow, it looked crystal clear like all the other creeks on the Isle. It was the soil around it. Like the kith, the life magic coming from the black water had turned the dry desert earth around it fertile and dark.

The banks shimmered like the night sky with grains of sand in the black soil reflecting the sun. Even Cupine's playfulness was silenced by the awesome might of black water's magic. It gave life to the kith, and by extension, was the mother of all ponies on the Isle.

The two tread on the black soil with reverence. Not much grew in the Kingdom of Sand, but by the creek, there were small sprouts of green. They'd die in a year or two if a drought came, but for now, Silic enjoyed them.

He tenderly reached with his pan into the creek and skimmed the surface. He willed some of his sand to slither over the pan, gripping tightly to harden it into a lid.

"It sure is nice, having black water so close to your home," Cupine commented slyly.

Silic eyed her, the intricate marbles of polished glass narrowing as eyelids of sand honed in.

She caught him staring as they walked back.

"You know I know the Copper Mountain is a rough place to live," he said upfront. "But what am I supposed to do about it, move the whole creek?"

"I wasn't blaming you," she replied, her voice consciously moving away from her previous tone.

"So what were you doing?" Silic asked, his grip tightening over the pan as he spoke firmly. "What would I have to do if you were seen by Gravelfort's collectors? It doesn't take much for them to accuse any pony who isn't a Sandmold."

"Then I'll deal with it," Cupine answered confidently.

"It's not that easy." Silic shook his head and sighed. "Even if you leave safely, guards will be sent out here, collectors will be sent to keep count of every drop of kith sap, and Gravelfort will finally have a reason to cut trade ties with your clan."

Cupine hung her head and frowned, the copper dust of her face contorting downward. "Still, would it hurt so much just to share?"

Silic's pace slowed as they returned to his home. "You know I want to."

"Yeah, I know," Cupine replied.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Collector arrived as the sun crawled halfway down the horizon, a pack of gravelhounds behind him dragging a sledge constructed from relics found from the coast. Ever since the Kingdom of Water began its desperate expansion, the Sandmolds there have been fighting the Waterforms.

Every now and then, foreign artefacts washed up on the shore. Most were harvested by the Breezies that lived northeast of the Kingdom of Sand, but Sandform soldiers were usually able to bring a few pieces to sell.

The sledge today was something special, a large plate of fired clay, painted over with designs of flowers and branches. The only modifications were two little holes cut out of the plate to harness the hounds. Whatever manner of creature lived beyond the ocean, Silic liked to imagine they were beings of great creative ability. Most of their artefacts never seemed to have a functional purpose, anyway. They seemed entirely devoted to art.

"News from his Lordship's castle?" Silic asked the Collector as he loaded the kith sap onto the sledge.

"Same old stuff, kid," said the old Sandform. "Gravelfort's willing to marry his son to his niece if it means he gets to keep his holdings."

"How does the boy feel about it?" he asked.

"You'll have to ask him," the Collector said. "I say he's old enough to feel urges, but he either doesn't know or doesn't care about what's right." Silic hauled the third basket of sap and helped the Collector load it onto the sledge.

"Say, you're about that age, aren't ya?" The Collector asked.

"How do you mean?"

He shrugged. "Figured you would've lost your mind by now, working this grove alone. My grandson married two years ago, about your age he is."

"Born and raised here," Silic said, looking over to his skull home. "If I'm missing out on something, I wouldn't know it."

The Collector shook his head. "Boy, you have to take a trip into town one day. Find yourself a nice girl, plenty out there want a place like what your folks gave you."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever get time off," said Silic.

The Collector nodded. Freetime was few and far between under the rule of Lord Gravelfort. He grabbed the reigns of his sledge and hopped onto the back, shaking the rope to signal his gravelhounds to start running. Silic watched him go, the sunset casting his shadow far alongside the road out of the grove.

The sky bruised as the sun slithered away, and the kith trees looked eerily down onto Silic. He remembered the stories his parents would tell him, that the kith were more than trees, but living and thinking beings who guarded all life on the Isle. A line in his face of sand drew itself into a smirk. They also told him that the kith watched over children, and punished them when they didn't do their chores.

But they were gone, ordered by the Sand King to manage his personal grove, as a reward for their years of service of Gravelfort. Silic made his way back to his skull house. It was all his after he decided to stay behind. The king hadn't asked for him and staying kept his family influential over the sap production this far away from the capital.

But the Collector had a point. When would he have a family to pass this legacy on?

"He seemed nice," Cupine said, making a sand castle in the middle of the house. "I don't see why I had to stay hidden."

Silic laughed. "Don't let that fool you. His hounds would have had you if they saw you." He sat down and helped stack up a tower. "Ponies have ways to hide their real feelings about outsiders."

"Oh? Speaking from experience?" Cupine looked at Silic. "Do you have any hidden feelings?"

The sand on his face stirred. "What do you mean?"

She crossed her forelegs. "You've been treating me like a pest all day. Didn't even give me a hug."

Silic slumped his shoulders and dissipated his sand with the rest of the ground. "We're not having this talk. You know I like you."

"Do you?" She jumped over the sand castle and into his pile of sand. "You rarely show it."

"Hey!" Silic recoiled and his sand shifted away, piling up to reform his body a safe distance away from Cupine's aggressive teasing. "That really hurt," he said, rubbing his chest. "Starting to question if you're not the one with hidden feelings."

She tilted her head. "Maybe I am. But, I can unhide them tonight, if you let me."

"Not a chance, the kith sap will be dried up and stick tomorrow," he said. "I gotta get some sleep, and you need to get going at dawn if you want to make it back to your folks tomorrow evening."

He dug out a small pit in the sand and sank himself into it, letting his body slowly release its form and turn soft. Cupine did the same, nestling up as close to Silic's back as possible.

"Maybe it's best that you sleep," she whispered. "Then you won't know all things I'm about to do."

Silic shifted away, but Cupine already had him, pouring copper dust from her foreleg over his sand pile. It didn't take long until they were completely mixed, the magic that formed their bodies merging together so that their mind and emotions were open to each other. In this embrace, they understood each other.

I hate you so much, Silic said through his magic, though it was impossible to hide the smile in his thoughts.

Cupine's emotions warmed to him. And that's what makes it fun.

Comments

[Marauder15]

Like the card game?

[Fivesilverstars]

First chapter is well written. looking forward to seeing more!

[SwordTune]

9056590
I don't know any card game by the same name.