Welcome back, my darling readers! Did you enjoy the festive season? I do hope so. I had a wonderful time and was thoroughly spoiled by both Mummy and Grandmama. They went all out this year, and I didn't quite know what to think. I was very happy but just a little overwhelmed by it all. But as you know, good things never last, and I find myself in a New Year funk with them having left yesterday. The apartment is too quiet without theirs and Tabitha's excessive and noisy holiday exuberance.
So, what to do about it, I hear you ask? You all know as well as I do that I need to find something to satisfy our pernickety Editors. They just have to insist on making us think about the things we find unpleasant, don't they? Including our dreaded "New Year Resolutions". The only resolution I currently have is to not put laxatives in Kitten's next cup of milk this month. But never mind. As I said, I was extremely lucky with my gifts this Christmas and one such present is proving to be very useful indeed.
My dear Grandmama is very aware of my fascination for the Ancient Worlds as she is the one that gifted me with the History bug as a child. She encouraged me to read and learn as much as I could about where magic came from and how it grew to be what it is today. Something that I will be eternally grateful for now is that I am required to find scintillating spells for you all every month.
So to get to the point. She gave me a set of very old and totally unique leather-bound diaries that she had found in some tomb somewhere on her travels in Sorrento, Italy. I was over the moon with them and quickly dived into them, only to find the thoughts and recollections of the most fascinating individual. His name was printed on the front of the largest one, and from what I can make out from his handwriting, it was something like Micus Andrettus. The small scrawls at the bottom of the first page indicate that he wrote this particular diary sometime in AD 62. I have been totally engrossed in his story ever since.
He tells us of his position as a butler of sorts to Emperor Nero in Rome and gives us many accounts of the beastly things that evil man committed during his reign. Why is this important, I hear you ask? Well, I will tell you.
From what I have read so far, it seems that Micus was deeply and passionately in love with Nero's wife Octavia. He never told anyone, of course, but when Nero had her executed for some horrible fictitious reason, the poor man was utterly heartbroken. He left Nero's service and moved to live in a quiet villa in the Roman countryside. While there trying to get a rein on his grief, he stumbled across a spell that he later calls the " Positivum Navitas Charm". From what I can make out from his sorrowful scribblings, he invented the spell to make his hurt feelings easier to bear. Whether it worked properly for a sufficient amount of time, I don't know, as I have not read that far yet. But I am dying to find out.
He writes that he managed to use this spell non-verbally, and it appeared to work fairly easily within a few tries at the pronunciation. He notes that extra emphasis needs to be placed on the hard N sound at the beginning of the second word in the incantation too. Which is helpful as that is unusual in most Latin-based spells that I know of. He writes it as poz-it-iVUM NAV-it-as, so hopefully, it's difficult to mix it up too much. The Positivum Navitas Charm loosely translates to "Positive Energy", so that will give you an idea of what it is meant to do. He then goes on to describe the wand movement as a clockwise circle around the crown of his head, which seems logical to me as it is intended to change the way your brain thinks. It also seems like there is no light colour to note when casting this spell.
Now that is all I can decipher as yet, and I strongly suggest that you do not try this spell yourselves without a capable healer on hand. Who knows what could happen if it were to go wrong? I personally do not want to be responsible for St Mungo's being overwhelmed with new patients. It does give us hope that grief could be softened in the future, though. I fully intend to pass these diaries on to my Healer friend Aiden when I have finished them. They may just prove priceless to his research in that field. I know he is going to appreciate my resolution to behave myself and be useful. At least for a while.
So until next time, dear readers, be well and don't let the need to write silly resolutions get the better of you! - Nikita