When I was four, I really didn't think much of the magic tutor my mother chose for me, I just shrugged it off with a smile and agreed to it. Of course, I had to ask my mom why she couldn't teach me, but she just shook her head with a demure smile and said that she would tell me when I was older.

At the time, Papa was far too busy with his business to really do anything but nod at any request Mother made, even if he did disapprove of me getting involved with magic—after all, he was thinking of how he was going to get me to squeeze out a male heir, even back then. I might not have been really aware of it, but later on I would recall all of the talks of proper suitors and marriage arrangements and go on to destroy a few things.

It was a sunny day in the summer when my tutor showed up and I was stunned into a quiet stupor.

It had started out normal, but of course, I was four, and completely excited that my momma thought I was mature enough to start learning magic! I bounced around the house in my pink dress, scaring the daylights out of all of the housekeepers, making them think I was going to rip my dress. More than once I had spooked a servant or two and heard them squawking behind me as I raced around another corner.

I had finally settled in my toy room—a large space lined with shelves that overflowed with toys and dollies, and frilly pink curtains and equally pastel pink walls. The suns rays were streaming in through the windows, casting everything in a warm yellow light. I had been playing with little figurines Mother had made me of Aquarius and Cancer, a music lacrima playing a soft lullaby in the background.

Cancer was just about to dive at Aquarius to cut her pretty long hair when a maid came to fetch me. I nearly took off ahead of her, if it wasn't for the grip she caught on the back of my dress, frog marching me to the foyer. But not even the demeaning way she escorted me could reign in my excitement; I was honestly going to learn magic!

The hallways of our mansion seemed to triple in length with how long we were taking, and I cursed Papa for having such a huge house! Then we made that final turn and I thought a million things. Would my tutor be nice? Would they teach me super cool magic? Would I be able to join a guild one day? What kind of magic was I going to learn? Fire? Ice Make? Re-equip? Thunder?

It was just endless question upon endless question!

My thoughts at that point floated back down to earth once my hyperactive mind registered the fact that there were two people waiting in the foyer.

My mother stood perfectly straight, her hair straw yellow hair, so much like my own, done up, in a big red dress with a frilly high collar and a daisy's stem weaved into her bun. Her eyes twinkled, a warm chocolate brown. At the time, Mother was perfectly fine to me, but now that I'm older, I remember the little details, how even back then she seemed a bit ill. How her cheeks were a bit sallow, the dark smudges under his eyes, her thinning frame. I suppose in hindsight, that was why she didn't really teach me magic herself.

Next to her, stood who I thought was my tutor.

All that my mind registered at that point was, "She's scary."

Had I ever informed her what I first thought she would have burst out laughing then bumped my head with her fist.

She stood tall, wearing a green top that buttoned over her large breasts but then opened up right beneath them and exposed her midriff and flopped around down to the tops of her hips, where a pair of dark gray pants started and then tied off below her knees.

She had pale orange hair that shone like moonlight, and large amber eyes set in a black sclera. But her most stunning feature of all was the spattered, scale-like pattern all over her body and the black lines that went right down the middle of her eyes. The room seemed to shift around her, drawing all the energy in towards her. She was dark, she was powerful, and she was dangerous, that much was for certain.

"Lucy!" called Mother, and then turned to me, beckoning me forward. At this point, my future teacher turned to me and flashed a grin at me, revealing pointy canines that promised pain to anyone who wandered to close to her face. "Come here and meet your new tutor!"

I glanced hesitantly at my mother, my bangs flopping over one of my eyes. As I walked forward, I brushed them away. My small heels clicked loudly in the foyer, almost echoing. When I was about a meter away from the lady, I looked up at her with a grin.

"Hello, my name is Lucy Heartfilia!" I said while giving a curtsy, just how Mother had taught me.

The lady's grin widened and she said in a low, sultry growl, "Hey, Lucy, my name is Stelliana. I'm your new teacher!"

I never suspected anything, Stelliana was just Stelliana.

When she took me out for our first lesson, I learned that she was proficient in Celestial Magic of all kinds: Celestial Body Magic, Celestial Spirit Summoning and a couple more things that I didn't even know the meaning of.

When we said goodbye to my mother, I felt a surge of melancholy rip through me as I trudged behind my teacher. Sure, earlier I had felt excitement at the idea of learning magic, but once Stelliana told me that it wasn't safe for Mother to watch, I got a bit scared and sad that she wouldn't be there to cheer me on. Mother had been with me through everything, from silly deportment classes to ball room dancing. She had held my hand when on a trip through the town a few village boys had teased me and my gap toothed smile. Mother had been such a constant fixture in my life and all of my milestones, that I was distraught at the idea that she couldn't be there for me for what would arguably be the biggest milestone of my life.

It was somewhere in my melodramatic thoughts that a hand landed on my head with a thunk that reverberated down to my ears. My head snapped up and saw the grinning face of my teacher, teeth agleam.

"Cheer up, Lu-tan!" she said, her eyes crinkling in a smile.

I couldn't help it, something about her smile made me want to smile too. So I wiped whatever tears were coming down my face and nodded as we continued our trek up into the mountains of the family estate through the foliage and buzz of bugs.

The seventh of July wasn't really a great day for me. I remember that we had been having a weeklong finishing camp, and that I wasn't to go home for that reason. July sixth she had patted my hair and handed me a rock. I puzzled over it for a few seconds and cocked an eyebrow when Stelliana showed me that she had one in her hand as well. What could have been significant about a rock? It was grey and pockmarked with holes and dirt, looking out of place in my palm. I turned my questioning gaze to my tutor.

She gave me one of her ferocious grins and said, "Lu-tan, this rock is part of a planet, a celestial entity, eating it gives a wizard like you great power, it refuels you."

At that point, my little ten-year-old mind was going haywire, "But, Stelliana, it's a rock! Won't my teeth break on it?"

At that point, she bit her lip, her eyes bulging, then rocked backwards and burst out into a bellowing laugh, pounding the earth with her fist and holding her stomach as she rolled around in mirth.

I might have felt sorry for the earth if it weren't for the irritation that coursed through my body.

I closed my eyes and waited.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Then I burst, "ALRIGHT, THAT'S ENOUGH! WHAT STUPID COMMENT DID I MAKE THIS TIME?"

Stelliana froze at that point then looked at me.

She grinned and rolled her eyes at me, then took a giant bite out of the rock, opened her mouth and gave a slight burp. It was in the moment in which she clenched her fist and bopped it into the ground that I felt the outrageous surge in magical energy that I figured out what had happened.

The earth cracked and crumbled beneath her fist, creating a huge fissure in the ground that a cloud of dust floating around.

Clicking things together, I opened my mouth and let the dust enter it, and felt a tiny fluttering in my body when it touched the moist surface of my tongue. It wasn't disgusting, as I would've expected dust to taste. But it wasn't necessarily tasty either. The feeling though, that feeling of magic flickering inside of my body is what made the dust seem that much more appealing to me, seemed to make it seem like some foreign delicacy steeped in the yummiest sauce on the planet. I then looked at the rock that Stelliana was holding hungrily and took a huge bite out of it just like her.

Father didn't really like that new preference. The next day, when I woke up and pushed away breakfast then asked the cook to bring me the nearest potted plant, I about gave my father a heart attack. It really didn't compare half as much as the look on his face when I scooped the gritty dirt of the plant –which was dripping from being watered that morning—opened my mouth wide and took a giant lick of it. Just like before, the feeling was intoxicating, and I felt like I was for all the world eating my favorite meal with the benefits of a swell in my magic.

When I finished my 'meal,' I gave my dad a black-toothed grin and asked him why he looked so funny. His face having slowly turned red and then a funny purple shade, a vein throbbing to life in his forehead.

I never heard the end of that; mother and father had a huge argument that day about Stelliana and how they were going to fire her. Or rather, how father wanted Stelliana fired and Mother thought that she was the best tutor in all of Fiore—how I would have nothing but the best and how well my studies had been advancing under her tutelage.

When Mother and Father took to their screaming matches, I would quietly duck out and find my tutor. She would glance at my with sympathetic eyes and set me to work quickly, and I threw myself, even as a child, into my training with a reckless abandon that would shape my magic for the rest of my life.

Looking back, I must have been dense to not see it. Stelliana taught me everything she could and taught me the names of all her moves. For six years, I had been taught moves that clearly yelled what she was, but I never asked why. I had never bothered to question why she called out Dragon related things in her moves—I just acted the part of a brainless sheep and followed everything she taught me. A perfect student who didn't question her teacher.

It was on the seventh of July, in the year X777, she disappeared.

I was ten.

The day after she confessed to me exactly what type of magic she had taught me and told me what she was, Stelliana had disappeared.

I had learned Celestial Dragon Slayer Magic.

Stelliana the Celestial Dragon.

AN: Editing for details, spelling errors and style seeing as I wrote this years ago.

[Edited May 17, 2014]