Chapter 6: The First Student / Apprentice Wizard

「Wel...come back, sensei.」

When I touched down at the forest entrance, Ai ran up to me with her face brimming with joy.

「I’m back. You shouldn’t be out here—stay in the forest.」
「She wouldn’t take no for an answer about greeting you. We’re technically just barely inside the forest, so it’s fine.」

Nina appeared from behind Ai and let out an exasperated sigh.

This world is full of dangerous animals.
Armored Bears aren’t all that common, but both the forest and the grasslands have plenty of beasts that look like they could swallow someone Ai’s size whole.

If we’re inside the forest, Nina can use her power to steer clear of danger, but being this close to the border between forest and grassland makes me worry. Still—

「Was... was that bad, sensei?」
「No, not at all. Thanks for coming to meet me.」

When I see Ai looking so downcast, I can’t bring myself to be strict and end up letting it slide.
Then Ai beams and wraps her arms around the tip of my snout.

「“Oyabaka,” wasn’t it? That’s what you call this, right?」

Nina snorted, teasing.
I only let that slip once, and she remembered it well.

What she’s speaking—and what I drilled into Ai—is Japanese, not Elvish.
When I set out to teach language to Ai, who had none, I hesitated a bit over which one to use.
If I chose Japanese, I’d have to have Nina learn it too.

Even with that downside, I decided to teach Japanese.
Elvish and Japanese differ by orders of magnitude in vocabulary size.

Elvish is simple, and compared to Japanese its range of expression is extremely narrow.
For example, there isn’t even a word that means “language.” They don’t know other tongues.
There’s no “magic” or “school,” and not even “Elf” or “human.”
In a state like that, there’s no way to run a school.

Up to now I’d been substituting Japanese whenever Elvish lacked a word, but then I realized it’d be quicker to have them learn Japanese itself. Fortunately, the grammars of Japanese and Elvish are quite similar, so as long as they learn the vocabulary, we can manage.
It also helped that I was born before the so‑called “machine translator generation,” and I’d studied foreign languages when I was young.

So I drilled Japanese into the two of them, and while they still speak a bit brokenly, lately they’ve finally gotten to where everyday conversation isn’t a problem. It didn’t click in a few days like when I learned Elvish, but after a few months of teaching, both of them are learning at a phenomenal pace.

「Nina-san. Sensei is not stupid.」

Ai puffed out her cheeks in a show of anger.
To think that the girl who once trembled in terror has grown this attached in just a few months.

「Oh, he’s pretty “something,” all right.」

Nina, meanwhile, was the same as ever.
Though that in its own way makes me think she’s fond of me too.

「What does that “something” mean?」
「Okay, okay—no fighting. Let’s have lunch.」

Saying that, I lifted the creel tucked in my forelegs.
A dragon’s forelegs are surprisingly dexterous, but not enough to weave a creel.
Nina had made this one for me.

「All right, let’s head back home.」

I nudged the two of them forward and set us on the path to our home.

Yes. The days of living with the treetops as our roof were over.
Crude as it was, we now had a house.

Not far from the forest entrance, nestled among sparse trees, it stood.
A simple but sturdy house, framed in wood. It wouldn’t collapse even if I went inside.
Judging from my mother, a dragon never stops growing, so I’ll probably be too big someday, but for now—about a size bigger than a horse—I can move around without much trouble.

And that’s not all.
We even had wooden furniture, and I’d tried making a few pieces of pottery.
With practiced ease, Nina took out some unglazed pots, and Ai set plates on the table.

What a civilized sight.
It was unthinkable progress from the days we roasted deer whole and ate under the open sky.

「All right, grill them.」
「Got it.」

I lightly breathed flame over the fish skewered on branches. Early on I made charcoal lumps more than a few times, and almost burned down the house we’d finally built, but I’ve gotten the hang of it now.
In no time the fish sizzled to a perfect roast, and a savory aroma filled the house.
Nina sprinkled salt taken from a jar—sea salt we’d made by drawing seawater and evaporating it with fire.

「All right then.」
「Shall we?」
「Okay.」

“Itadakimasu,” we said in unison.
Pinching up the skewer with my fingertips and setting it on the tip of my tongue, I scraped the flesh off and popped the whole fish into my mouth. As I bit down, just the right amount of fat oozed out, the salt mingling with it to spread an indescribable savor through my mouth.

「Delicious!」
「Hey, watch it!」
「Whoops, sorry.」

At the stray lick of flame I let slip, Nina yelled.
I can control my fire pretty well now, but sometimes a bit leaks out when I get excited.

「It just means the fish you salted is so good it makes me breathe fire.」
「Quit making things up.」

Nina puffed out her cheeks.
Watching our back-and-forth, Ai giggled.

「By the way, Ai—how’s your magic coming along?」

After the meal, as I popped into my mouth the fruit Nina had brought for dessert, I asked.
I bit into a round fruit like an apple without peeling it—the crisp crunch released a sweet-and-sour juice that flooded my mouth. It looked like an apple, but the texture was closer to a mandarin orange.
I call it a water apple.

「I’m sorry... I still can’t do it.」
「No, don’t let it trouble you.」

Seeing Ai droop, I hurried to reassure her.
Truth be told, aside from breathing fire and floating a little, I can’t do much either.
Our day-to-day life was sailing smoothly, but my magic research wasn’t advancing at all.

「I mean, you’re the only one who can breathe fire or fly, right?」

Nina’s point left me at a loss for words.
I couldn’t say I hadn’t considered that possibility.
If so, then everything I’ve had Ai try would be for nothing.

「It’s okay. I’ll do my best.」

Ai said that, so bravely.
I was grateful, and at the same time felt a twinge of guilt.

But the only thing I can give the people of this world is magic.

In the time I lived, science was so highly specialized that almost no one grasped the whole of it. Let alone recreating it from scratch without materials or infrastructure—no one could do that.

I can manage building a hut out of timber, but I don’t know how to make a furnace to smelt iron, or how to refine petroleum, or design electronic circuits, or build a quantum computer.

But magic—
When it comes to magic, I fancy I understand it better than anyone in the world.

A twentieth-century SF writer once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

If that’s true, then magic should likewise be indistinguishable from advanced technology.
As a matter of fact, the magic that lets a dragon’s huge body float lightly is indistinguishable from the anti-gravity technology developed only recently.
With magic, I should be able to advance civilization—even I can.

「This might be easier for her. Ai looks a lot like me, after all.」

Vines that had slipped in through the window coiled smoothly around the finger Nina held up.

「I don’t know... I feel like calling up fire would be easier than manipulating plants.」

On top of that, Nina can barely explain what it feels like to use her magic, which is another problem.

「What’s... a shokubutsu?」

But the two of them got snagged on something else and tilted their heads in unison.

「Trees, grass, flowers—those things.」

At that, they twisted their heads even more.

「What do you mean? Why would you call different things by the same name?」

Her question caught me flat-footed.
Right—so they don’t have the concept of a collective term yet.

「Because it’s convenient. You give a name to everything that shares the same properties or is similar. For example, beings like me and Nina and Ai, who can think and move on our own, are living things. Deer and fish are living things too. Stones and water aren’t living things—they’re matter.」

Nina nodded. Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Ai, meanwhile, wore a serious look, doing her best to chew over what I was saying.

「Then it isn’t “plants” I can move. I can’t move “trees that have shed their leaves for winter” or “branches that have been cut off.”」

What Nina rattled off were the Elvish words for types of trees.
Elvish has countless turns of phrase about plants, each with fine shades of nuance.
It’s like how Japanese has a wealth of words for different kinds of rain.

「I see. So you can only move living trees.」
「Li...ving? Trees are alive?」
「Well, duh.」

At Ai’s simple question, Nina snorted, and I nodded.

「Trees—plants—are a kind of living thing. A tree that’s dropped its leaves for winter isn’t dead... it’s more like sleeping.」
「Living... things... sho...kubutsu.」

Ai repeated my words, as if to savor them.

「In that case, are you unable to move the grasses growing out of the ground?」
「Of course not. Those don’t have bones.」

Nina said it as if it were obvious, biting into a water apple.
Bones... I sort of get what she means, but still.

「I don’t think trees have bones either, though.」
「Then what’s that stuff left after you burn them?」
「That’s charcoal.」
「Um, sensei...」

It was while we were having that kind of idle, pointless talk.

「Is... is this okay? Like this?」

In Ai’s palm, the leaves on a tree branch were twitching up and down.