How Magic Works, The Oaxacuoia
HOW MAGIC WORKS, THE OAXACUOIA
Magic works just like chemistry, but with a different alphabet. In chemistry, individual atoms tend to have a positive or negative charge, and since opposites attract, molecules are formed. Take water as an example - H2O. A single oxygen ion typically has a strong, negative 2 electrical charge. Hydrogen atoms have a positive 1 electrical charge. They become stable when the math balances out and voila! You have water. The same works for magic but uses a different set of periodic elements that mix with sound waves to create vibrations that penetrate molecular compounds to transmute into something novel. How the elements are then transmuted before descending to the world of Magicalena is by a giant floating space caterpillar called the Oaxacuoia that is both the engine and the battery for all magic. Like how our trees breathe in carbon dioxide and water and use the energy of the sun to convert simple chemical forms into complex compounds like sugar and other carbohydrates to feed themselves, and then exhale oxygen for other life to thrive, the Oaxacuoia does that for magic.
The raw material for magic is pretty simple stuff. Even an adept wizard can hardly spell anything with it - maybe a poof of smoke or something, but that's about it. Magic needs some more elemental language with many bonds and lattice structures that are strong enough to become corporeal, but flexible enough to be diversely manipulated. This special alphabet originates in space where there is no sound and is therefore inert. It begins with just 13 letters, but through respiration has an almost infinite amount of possible combinations. The Oaxacuoia sheds these new combinations and they are eventually pulled down through Magicalena's gravity, mix with the clouds, and eventually fall on the land with snow and rain. Then, on Magicalena, where there is always sound, it's just about finding the right sounds (or vibrations) in order to make them do cool things. Magical compounds always surround the creatures there. Like anything, it takes a lot of studying, practice, and experimentation to get any good at. Becoming a wizard is the same as becoming a master at anything, you've got to put in your 10,000 hours and stay in the cognitive phase of learning. There's no coasting on magic. Some are very good at it and some can't do it at all, but everything in Magicalena is affected by it - it's in the very air they breathe.
Animals in Magicalena are sometimes much larger than anything our Earth has ever birthed because magic can do just about anything. But the biggest of all the creatures in Magicalena is magic incarnate and there is only one.
Now, it's really hard to be gigantic if you're a terrestrial animal. Even after evolving a backbone, the greater force of gravity is really a drag. The biggest amongst us on Earth had to return to the buoyancy of salt water to reach their full potential. If you were spineless, forget about it! Good luck getting any bigger than a song bird. But if you happen to figure out how to survive in the cold vacuum of space and your genome isn't marked with growth inhibitors (like most fish), then you could reach celestial sizes. The Oaxacuoia is a living space satellite floating around our interdimensional mirror planet.
Like I said, it looks like a caterpillar, although that's a bit reductionist. It's armored with a solar wind blocking carapace, studded with spiracles that transmute that raw space magic. It's roughly half the size of the moon and can be seen on cloudless nights reflecting the sun like a milky white constellation. On especially clear nights and with the help of a telescope, you can see the six true legs on its thorax and five pairs of prolegs. Why it has any legs at all is a mystery since it's floating in space, but suggests that it has terrestrial origins. The beings that have had the opportunity to see it closer have reported a vibrant, many colored, striped pattern like a monarch caterpillar, but with more colors than we have language to describe. It's probably not primordial, but there's no memory that reaches before it was there. Is it truly a caterpillar? Will it pupate someday and become something else? How much biomass does it need before it can? There are arctic woolly bears that take up to 14 years to eat enough before they can start building their cocoons because they're frozen all year except the month of June. And it's dang cold in space, and there's nothing to eat except raw magic which is infinitesimally small. How big can it even get? And will magic fade if it ever becomes a moth or butterfly?