Mathew woke as Felicia struggled to stand up. Moving to help her stand made his legs cramp up. With a groan, he struggled to stand first. Then helped Felicia up. Hay and dirt stuck to her sides as she stood. White streaks of sweat stains marred her fine brown hair on her flanks. Her long blonde hair had several bits of hay in it. He had several bits of it stuck to places he didn't think hay should be.
Felicia turned then laughed, "Oh Mathew." She reached and pulled one or two stalks out. "I guess we didn't think this through."
"What?" Reaching down, he picked up the currycomb. "I think we need another one of these for the house."
Felicia laughed and kissed him. "You spoil me."
"Every chance I get my mate." Mathew slipped his boots on and took Felicia's hand and started heading towards the pond. As they walked down the path, he was grateful to walk naked. For certain body parts were sore. It took him three days to heal up the last time he used that spell with Felicia. Once they made the pond, he kicked off his boots and jumped into the deep end, leaving Felicia to wade in on the shallower end. After a good rinsing in the cool water, he swam over, then slipped through the breaks in the walk path to the shallow end to help Felicia rinse off.
With last dunking of herself to rinse off, she waded over to shallow end where Mathew sat on a boulder drip drying. Felicia played in the water a little longer until Mathew grabbed his boots to put them on. Once they were back at the barn Mathew gathered all his and Felicia's clothes asking her to carry the two bottles of Staggerwort back to the house.
Once inside Felicia winked and headed into the kitchen. She pulled out two large bottles of preserved chicken and a huge bag of pasta. Mathew went into the magic room and wrote his Uncle letting him know he had two full quart bottles of Staggerwort oil. Looking through the magical library he found his first-year apprentice books for Felicia, with at least eight Klatha she could through many of the spells listed in those books. He went looking for the book he wanted to review. He never thought he would have enough power to throw teleport spells. Finding the dark blue book and pulled it, Teleportation.
Mathew rearranged the front room, giving Felicia a place to stand and read. Looking at one of the side tables he noticed the straight legs, with some carefully drawn chalk lines he applied the transmorphtation spell and grew the legs another twelve inches so Felicia could use it as a lamp table. It looked a little odd with such long legs. But it held the lamp at his shoulder height and the table's surface was at a perfect height for him to stand next to.
With the front room done, he went into the kitchen to work on the dining room table. Unfortunately, he couldn't extend its legs without them sticking out since they were at an odd angle, but looking at the bench, that he pulled to the side earlier, he could transmorph its legs high enough to give Felicia a standing table to eat from. He mentally drew out how to split the solid leg and angle it to taper them outward so it would be stable two feet longer.
As he sat there Felicia watched him, she wasn't sure what he was doing until he cast the spell to transmorph the benches legs. She watched in wonder as both side legs grew nearly two feet long. It looked like the wood itself was growing at a slight angle. Just watching Mathew perform magic was fascinating and creepy. When she first met him she knew his family were mages but didn't know he was one.
Even when he got back from the city, he never performed magic, but did most things with just his hands. Watching him do it now filled her with wonder. She used to dream as a little girl that she could throw magic like the mages from years ago in her father's books on war. She knew she most likely she wouldn't have enough power to throw spells like Mathew just did; she listened to his spell and learned that for every inch of length the mage wanted to grow something; he had to calculate the one point of Klatha for every inch long, one inch wide and one-inch thick section.
Felicia was lost in the calculations when he flipped the bench over. It now stood just under chest high to him. Walking over, she gently put her hands on it, not trusting it just yet. "Mathew, that was, was just incredible!"
He leaned on the bench, now centaur table with a little more pressure than she was, "You will get there, Love."
"I will never have that much Klatha!"
Mathew didn't want to discourage her, he knew she might never have the reserves to throw a four hundred point spell like he just did, "You never know Felicia, and you might."
"Even your Uncle said Centaurs could only use the residual Klatha that they have, he never said I could grow my powers."
"No, Felicia, he did not, but he is testing you to see. And even if you can't grow your powers, we could always buy a set of bracers or a necklace with a large enough storage stone that I could recharge and you could pull the power from it."
Felicia frowned. Mathew smiled and shook his head yes, "You heard Uncle Robert say he knew a centaur that could use cantrip's?"
"Yes I did, but I didn't know what he meant. I thought he was meaning the person could use power objects like the training box?"
"Yes, and if a person can use a powered object, it also means that they can access a storage stone and use the power stored in them to power a spell, like we did yesterday." Felicia looked at Mathew, confused. "When you threw that masking spell yesterday, all I did was provided the Klatha Felicia, if you had a stone with several hundred klatha stored in it and could separate the klatha from it, there is no limit on what spell's you can throw!"
"You mean I could throw a spell just like you did? And I could...," Just then the water boiled over in the pasta pot. Both jumped up to pull it off the burner, but Felicia said, "Sit. I am making dinner and quit getting my hopes and dreams up while I am trying to make dinner. With you just walking around in your boots is distracting enough."
Mathew looked down, sure enough, both he and Felicia were still naked from this afternoon. "Your hopes and dreams love?"
"Oh Mathew, you remember what papa said about mages and magic, growing up in a centaur household. Every child growing up hearing stories told about mages and some wonderful things they can do with magic. What child do you know that didn't want to grow up finding out they could throw magic and become a powerful mage?"
Mathew laughed, "Actually a lot of them, many of my classmates at the mage academy grew up within mage families, many dreamed of becoming powerful knights and going off to fight battles in shiny plate armor, like your father."
Felicia laughed, saying, "Really?" as she dished up the chicken and pasta. She had made a yellow gravy from the chicken drippings that she ladled over the chicken dish. "It was funny that they didn't pursue their dream."
Mathew took his little bowl from Felicia's hand and set it on his table, "Well most of my classmates were not muscular like me. Most young mages I knew were shorter. I don't think many had put in a single day's worth of labor in their life. And most didn't mind the structured learning and placement process that I disagreed with. They were happy to push their skills and training with high hopes of making Grand Magnus's."
