@Cinnabar
"Tilly? Barnabus? Briar? Come on, where are you?"
Caliope bit her lip as she picked her way through the underbrush of the forest, peering around desperately for her three missing charges. The bonded group had been out with her shopping in the market, but a stray carriage horse had spooked the little creatures and before she'd really had time to react they'd been off, darting for the safety of her cottage.
Only the little dears seemed to have gotten a bit turned around, because the faint trail she'd been following had veered into the woods just outside town. Gods, it was like a nightmare; all of the huge Niahi woods to search for three little teacup dragons.
"Barney! Come on, come on out loves, let's go home!" she called, growing more desperate by the minute.
She was so driven to distraction that she almost walked face first into a massive tree-- some sort of ash-- only managing to catch herself when she saw the telltale spark of magic glittering around the edges of the trunk.
"Oh!" Startled, the hedgewitch drew up short, tilting her head at the tree. It was...odd. Not like any magic she'd seen before. Subtle, almost like it was woven into the fabric of the tree itself.
Exactly the kind of thing that might attract some young, curious teacup dragons.
Brow setting into a determined frown, Cali reached out-- and drew her hand back with a sharp hiss as the magic crackled at her touch. A barrier.
Well. She was having precisely
none of that. If her dragons were on the other side of that barrier, so was getting through. One way or another.
While she wasn't
particularly gifted in magic, she didn't need to be to simply through raw power at the thing. Which she did. And again. And again, and again, and again, each time her magic drawing a sound like a chiming gong as it struck the barrier, though she paid it no mind.