Ok I am going to say some things before you read this. If you have problems with grammar and spelling I will put my email up and you send me an edited version with the proper grammar and spelling I am dyslectic and am writing this more for my enjoyment. Though if you have any idea on where to go from here or a view on the story and world so far feel free to share.
sakura.strife(a)ymaildotcom

The owl sitting on the desk in the large room stared at the old man seated at the desk. The man’s white hair reached the floor and fanned out across it so far that it would still have reached the ground if he were standing. His equally white beard was just as long.

The snow white owl’s eyes shone with more intelligence than an owl’s eyes should , a fact proven when it spoke. “Master are you sure of this? You could live another thousand years if you do not do this, Master. Come on surely your life is not so trivial.”

“My dear Archimedes, I have been alive for 1,477 years give or take. That is more than anyone, even you my old friend, has ever lived. I have gotten to the point that the boredom alone has gotten to me. I do not have the drive to live anymore.”

“How can you lose your drive to live my master, for you are the strongest and wisest of all wizards, the great and powerful Merlin?”

“Archimedes, there are 2,340,000,000 people in the world give or take a few, with at least 25% capable of using the talent for magic. True, most of the people would be lucky to be able to light a candle. But I still should have 585,000,000 people coming to me to try and learn to use their powers. However I have not had a student in so long that magic has become a myth to the world. If with my death the world would remember magic and start to use it once more I shall die happy.”

“I see that you have made up your mind, my master, and I shall follow you anywhere, even to the void that is death.”

With that, Merlin moved his hands in a complex gesture and all over the world his face appeared on any surface that could hold an image. His words became whatever the person could understand so that there were no language or understanding issues.

“Hello world. My name is Merlin, and I am a wizard. That you have given up on magic and have instead gone only after that which follows the path of technology, has brought me much sadness. About 585,000,000 people on this plant have the gift of magic. I am placing a curse on the world, so that those who have the gift of magic can no longer hide it.

Some people’s magic will be to become werewolves. Others will be able to turn into cats. Both will have complete control over their animal forms. Still more will have their eyes opened to the two main types of witchcraft or wizardry. The first is earth magic, which uses potions to do what needs to be done. The second uses ley lines, the power of the very earth to do things. There will also be elves and pixies, though I am going to be nice to the pixies and let them be full human sized “

His image grew and glowed, as his sonorous words burst out, “SO LET WHAT I HAVE SAID BE!”

And all that Merlin said came to be. About 25% of the world population gained strange eyes. The werewolves eyes became golden. The pixies eyes lost the black from the pupil and became a “hot” color. The pupils of the cat shifters eyes became cat shaped, with vertical pupils. The pupils of the witches eyes became a triangle pointing down if they were earth witches, a triangle pointed up for a ley line witch or a star if they could use both powers. The strongest of the witches had a circle around the star being able to use both of the forms of magic in the same spell. If one of the were-animal people had kids with a none were their kids would get the ears and tail of that animal.

Each different type of magic user had a different sleep regimen though they all needed eight hours. The pixies and elves sleep for four hours between eight and two both morning and afternoon. The werewolves sleep mostly in the day as do the witches. The Nekomori which is what the people who turn into cats became called had the worst situation, sleeping one hour out of every three.

My eyes shot open, though that is what happens when you have to sleep using a sleep potion to get more than an hour of sleep at one time. I jumped out of my bed seeing all the boxes around my room. I got ready for school, putting on my special pants that had a whole for my tail. That was not the only odd thing about me I had cat ears and cat eyes, as well as the mentioned tail. I also have a triangle pointing down in my eyes. I am part Nekomori which is a cat person and part earth witch, which means that I can do at least 300 potions. That is why I am called a witch, even though I am male. The coven that controls all magic users is mostly female, since females tends to the stronger with magic. They were the ones who decided whether ones powers made someone a wizard or a witch. They believed in equal rights, to the point that both male and females had the same requirements for the titles.

My dad just had got a job at the college in this town so our family got the pleasure of moving over 500 miles in the middle of the school year. And to top it off is the next day would be my sixteenth birthday, which for any blessed one is a BIG birthday. Well for anyone it is big one because that is the birthday that your true nature will fully manifest itself. Tomorrow three things could happen. First, I could stay the same. Second, I could gain more power, or third, I could lose all my power. It has been known for people to go from a blessed one to a norm on the blessing day most everyone calls the sixteenth birthday, well at least in a ‘blessed’ family. Most of the norms still call us the cursed.

I put on a necklace that had a wooden cat’s eye on it. As soon as the wooden part touched my skin, the cherry blossom pink fur on my tail, eyes, and ear turned to a forest green. This charm also helps me deal with bright light, since too much direct light can give a Nekomori a headache. If I was not a earth witch I would have to wear sunglasses and put up with my pink fur since this charm at a charm shop would run around $500 and I would have to pay about $50 a week to get the charm renewed. Me, I just have to put three drops of my blood on it and it is back to full strength. My dad told me that if I still need to maintain the green fur after tomorrow, he would teach me how to make it tso I will only need to renew it once a year. One like that would run you around $3,000, plus $500 each year to renew it.

In the long run it costs you less money to use the weekly charm, but who has $3,000 to shell out. My dad said it is a pain to get them that at the shop and to have to go back to get it renewed, However he said that he would not show me how to do it that way until we knew if I would need it any longer I just got to the point that I could cast the weekly renewal spell as it is. At my old school I had been stuck with the pink fur and wearing sunglasses.

I finished getting ready by putting on my tee shirt, putting three rings on each hand, some of them being wooden while the others are silver. Then I placed a wooden arm guard around my left forearm, then went to the circle on my floor, I extended one of my claws. One of the gifts of being Nekomori is that I have claws that I can retract on my hands. I sliced the claw across my palm on my other hand and watched as it sealed itself as soon as my claw went past that point. I sprinkled the blood that came out on the ground in the circle. The circle glowed and I disappeared to reappear in the kitchen in front of my mother and father.

My mother is a full blood Nekomori. The only thing that is out of place about her are cherry blossom colored cat eyes. She can transform just her ears and tail to cat as well as have the claws as well, but she fits in with the norms more in than I do, since she can get a lot closer to human form than I can.

My father is a witch with stars in his eyes. That means that he is both a ley line witch and an earth witch. Though he cannot do any of the biggest and most powerful spells that use both at the same time, the most powerful witches can do both at the same time. The only ones to ever have the circle so far have been female. My dad teaches magic. Even though I could lose my powers tomorrow, he was the one that helped me master as many of the potions as I have.

Each witch has a grimoire. All magic users under the age of 16 have a starter one with just 75 pages in it so that we can have at least some idea of powers they are not linked to us like the ones that we might get when we turn sixteen. The temp one will display up to 150 spells in it depending on your pre age 16 skill level. Mine was going in the same order as my father’s earth magic to where he let me practice and master the potions until I can now stir around 400 potions.

Do not get me wrong. I cannot do them from memory, but I can still do them from the recipes. If I keep my powers I will be starting off with four hundred potions instead of thr hundred fifty which most would start with. While I have had power since birth, my current grimoire is blank until I touch it. When I get the new one that will link with me tomorrow, if I do not lose my powers that is, it will not keep going blank when I do not hold it. Only those I permit to open it will be able to see them, and they will only be able to see the spells and potions I want them to see. The covent makes them that way.

“Do I really have to go to school?” I asked my parents. “What if they put me in advanced gym due to being a Nekomori, or put me in a magic class to learn about potions and such?”

“You know they would not do that. Today you're just going to school get your ‘Normal Schedule’ which will have only the academic classes. You're acting like they have never had a person come right before their sixteenth birthday before. They know what they are doing with the schedule. It will be set up in such a way that they can either put special classes where you would have an elective and your advanced gym, or have a normal elective and a normal gym class. Not only is it better for you to go to school so you are not moping around the house, it is VERY rare for a child of two blessed ones to not stay blessed.”

“I am still scared. I would rather not be wasting what little time I may have with the power to invoke potions or turning into a cat stuck in a school. I just do not know what I will do if I lose my powers and become a norm.”

“No matter what, we will love you,” my parents said at the same time.

“Sure, you will love the first person in either of your family without any powers since Merlin blessed the world?”

“Powers mean nothing. Do not get me wrong. It will hard, but we will still love you. The worst being a norm means is that you will lose about 400 years from your life expectancy if Merlin’s books that came around can be trusted and all the other info in the books tells the truth.”

“Yeah, it is rare that my great, great, great, great grandparents look like they can be my parents.”

I finished eating, still in a crappy mood. The last thing that I wanted to do was go to school. I knew logically that chances were I would either stay the same or maybe be able to use ley lines. But I was still scared like I told my parents. I would rather be making potions or just spending the day as a cat, since this could be my last day able to do either.

I walked out the door and cut my right hand across the palm again. When I placed my bloody palm on the wood arm guard on my left arm the wood started to glow slightly. Then the glow surrounded me as I took to the sky, flying. I'd made this charm as well. A charm like this would run a person right around $10,000 at a magic shop, since to able to fly like this is like buying a car. Do not get me wrong, there still are cars and other tech, but they are just alongside magic. The thing is that magic is faster in a lot of cases, and if done right, safer. If I had to take the bus I would be looking at around a 20 minute commute whereas with this I get to school in around 5.

I walked into the office after stopping at a bathroom to clean my hand off. It is a good thing I regenerate thanks to being a Nekomori. Normal earth witches use diabetic lances to prick their finger and use their blood from doing so to kindle the spell. That takes too long for my liking, and is very hard to do with my regenerative power as a Nekomori. I would have to prick my finger at least three times for it to take and get my three drops of blood.

I checked in with the lady at the front desk. There was a strong smell of rosewood on her. Then I saw the arrows pointing up in her eyes. I smiled at her, now knowing that she was a witch, I can normally tell what someone is just by smell, witches smell like rosewood, pixies like cotton candy, werewolves like wolfbane and magic, Nekomori smell like catnip and magic, and the elves smell of the forest and magic.

Do not ask me what magic smells like. I cannot explain it. Me, I was told by my mom I smell very heavy of catnip and rosewood. The more you shift or use your magic the stronger you smell of what you are. This is how blessed can tell who are other blessed, though the pixies, werewolves, and Nekomori have the best noses. Some join the cops and put tracking dogs out of business in that area. After all it is easier to get info from an animal or ‘mythical creature’ if they can become human. My nose is best in my animal form, but I can still smell really well in human mode, so well I can smell a lie.

A girl of about sixteen or so came into the office about 5 minutes after I got there. At that point the one lady in a side office called us both over. She passed me my class schedule than said, “Samuel Strife please allow me to introduce to Faith Carter. She is one of the top students in the school and she has agreed to help you get used to the school. The schedule you will be following is a copy of hers anyway, other than the girl’s gym part.”

“Nice to meet you,” I told her with a smile. “It will nice to have someone help me get around the school.”
With that I took the schedule and left with Faith. We went down the hall where she led me to the locker that would be mine.

When she saw all my charms she said, “It must be nice being rich.”

“Why do you say so?”

“I’ve priced charms before and well, all the ones that I see on you, though I do not know what they do, had to be expensive. What do they do by the way?”

I pointed to the one on the necklace first, “This one makes it so I do not need sunglasses.” I pointed to the rings on my hands one by one, saying, “This one lets me make a protection circle; this one lets me hear that thoughts of animals; this one dries me off; this one lets me turn any doorway into a gate way back to my room. This one will let me speak mind to mind with my mom, and the last one with my dad. The wristband lets me fly.”

“Um that is at least $35,000 worth of charms there,” she said with a look of envy in her eyes. “Like I said, it must be nice to be from a loaded family.”

“So you are saying that you think that I spent about $35,000 on them?”

“Um, that is what I said.”

“I spent a total of $200 on them and that was for the materials that they made with. I made all but three of them myself. The other three were made by my father for me to use. The circle and the two telepathy rings were made by my father. The rest I made.”

“Shoot, you should sell them. I know a lot of girls that would pay big time for the charm to dry off. Why does a guy have that anyway?”

“Um did you not see all my fur? Also I also have hair down to my shoulder blades.”

“Good point, so how much for a drying charm?”

“It’s not for sale. I could go to jail if I sold one. Though who knows, I might lose all my powers soon anyway. Tomorrow is my blessing day.”

“Your what?” she ask looking at me weird.

“Oh shoot. The fact that you were so quick to ask for a charm made me forget you are one of the unblessed, though I think you would call it the curse day.”

“Oh, you turn sixteen tomorrow. I turn sixteen today, though since I am adopted and my adopted parents do not know my time of birth. I am stuck in school. So what is your time of birth tomorrow?”

“Noon, give or take, so I am going to get lucky and be able to miss school.”

“Lucky!”

With that we went to the first class. The day was boring as hell. All of the classes were either right where my other school had been or a few chapters behind, though I must say that I had some fun when lunch came along. I was sitting talking to Faith when all of sudden she started to glow.

Using the charm that made the protection circle I placed her in iy as magic exploded out of her as her powers unlocked. I was able to smell rosewood coming from her. When the magic cleared, I dropped the circle. Faith’s eyes had changed from blue to a bright purple, and she had stars in her eyes.

“Faith, may I welcome you to the ranks of the blessed,” I said with a smile.