Hidden Magic by K.D. Faerydae

and us to return to protect the cabin as them,” Ice explained.
    â€œI like it!” grinned Francis. “And I especially can’t wait for Aaron to see me when I’m in my new form. Let’s see if he wants to call me Boogly Eyes then!” Francis said, with an obvious smirk on his face. “Come on then, Ice, what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with this body-swap enchantment. Bagsy I’m the biggest one,” he said eagerly.
    â€œOkay, Francis, but I must warn you, it will take a little while for you to adapt to your new form and the enchantment will only last for twenty-four hours before we are swapped back. Oh yes and firstly, we must acquire a piece of that whose form we wish to take on. I suggest we try and pluck one of the small hairs that grow from the dragons’ ears. Due to their jumpy and nervous disposition, this will probably agitate them, so once we have managed to remove a hair from each of them, we must make a hasty retreat. We’ll meet back on the ledge to carry out the next enchantment. Okay?”
    â€œLet’s do it!” replied Francis, keen to get back to the cabin as a mighty dragon. And so the owl pair beat their wings and flew upward toward the Hudor Drakos that were now perched at the very top of the falls, sitting either side of the cascading ice like gigantic gargoyles.
    Ice went first, swooping over Irini’s head with such stealth that the dragon didn’t even notice when she plucked a hair from the top of its left ear. Francis tried to follow suit and extract a hair from Dynatos, but the male dragon’s hair was much coarser and stronger than that of the female dragon’s and as Francis frantically tugged at the hair, which was the size of a large broom’s bristle, with his beak, Dynatos became irritated, as if being troubled by a bothersome fly and he shook his head from side to side, causing Francis to grab onto the edge of Dynatos’ ear with his sharp talons. Big mistake! Dynatos let out an almighty roar and leapt headfirst from the top of the waterfall, spiralling his way down to the deep, dark water below. Francis firmly grasped the hair and with one final tug he managed to dislodge it and fly off just as Dynatos smashed into the dark water. Francis mustered up one last bit of energy and flew to the ledge where Ice was waiting. He placed the hair down beside the one that Ice had pulled from Irini. Ice then tugged a feather from her chest and then turned and tugged one from Francis.
    â€œWill you
per-lease
stop doing that!” he screeched and then the second enchantment began.
    â€œA piece of you and a piece of me united and ignited equals YOU ARE ME!”
said Ice and the dragon hair and owl feathers in front of them spontaneously combusted.
    Where am I?
Francis thought…
Am I dreaming?
He felt weightless yet somehow suppressed, floating around in a dark place full of unfamiliar and muffled sounds. He stretched out his wings and tried to fly, tried to escape this strange darkness and, as he did so, he felt himself surge upward and so he beat his wings again and again, feeling a little less suppressed each time, until the darkness gradually thinned and above him he could see a reassuring and glowing white light.
Am I dead?
he wondered.
Is this the light that everyone talks about?
Not fearing this light but instead feeling strangely drawn to it, he willingly headed toward it. As his wings reached above his head in one final push towards the light, he was able to see more clearly and he realised that these were not his wings at all, they were huge and scaly, dark grey in colour and webbed. Enchanted with his new mighty and mysterious body, he left the depths of the lake’s waters behind him and, residing in Dynatos’ body, he spiralled upwards and out of the darkness of the lake into the glowing whiteness of the Winter Forest, where Ice, now in the form of Irini, was gracefully hovering above the treetops,