This is a more detailed description of the scene above and I'm redeeming it for the "You're starting to get the first sparks of your (death) magic- what does this look like, and what do you do with it?" Prompt.
Neveya hurried back to her den, holding tight onto the book she’d borrowed from the library. She’d carefully picked it up, title side down, hiding her chosen path from the town. She hoped Kieran wouldn’t tell anyone, but there’s not much she could do either way. It felt as though days passed before she finally reached her den, she almost scampered into her den, relieved she’d finally made it home. She’d tumbled into the den and landed on her back, she rested there for just a moment before getting to her feet to inspect the book she’d found in the library, its faded black cover matched her eyes almost perfectly. She began to read through the history of death magic, and what it actually meant to be a death storkie. She read about the history of the death storkies of the past, and the persecution they also often faced. In a strange way, it brought her comfort, her treatment by the town was far better than what her ancestors faced. Yet a part in her heart ached for the childhood she could have had. She shook the thought from her mind, she hadn’t started this journey to dwell on the past, she knew it was time to look to the future…
She read about the jobs that death storkies often found themselves in, finding particular success in end-of-life medicine, acting less like the malicious beast the town thought she was and more like the gentle shepherds helping lost souls to the other side…
It brought a smile to her face, knowing that she could help people with her magic. She felt as though a veil had been lifted, and she was beginning to understand herself just a little more.
Some moons passed, and she was learning more about her magic as she made her way through the book. She read about the fact that the first sparks of her magic would probably be, sensing when a creature, storkatt or otherwise, was near death… The book encouraged any reader that was trying to learn death magic, to head out into a natural landscape and “listen with their hearts.” As much as Neveya wanted to learn, she just couldn’t hear anything with her heart.
She woke up on a regular morning, aside from the fact that there was this heavy feeling hanging over her, and it seemed to point her into the woods near her den… She figured it might have something to do with her magic, she followed the feeling to a spot in the woods that she often hunted, she sniffed about in the leaf litter, hoping to find something new…
Then she smelled it, the faint scent of a mouse.
Then… the feeling disappeared and the scent did not.
She continued to follow the scent and found a mouse, she nudged it with her nose and it was stiller than the air of the forest…
She guessed she’d felt her hint of her magic’s first ability, to sense when the end of life was near… She remembered what the book had said about farewelling a spirit before one had mastered their magic. She bowed her head to the mouse’s resting place, gently touching her nose to it. Thanked the mouse’s spirit with all her heart, for the nutrients it could provide her, and finally bid it’s spirit farewell. She wasn’t sure if the mouse would understand the words she was saying, but she hoped that it would grasp her meaning.
