Mark hung up and stared at his phone for a little while.
He had just gotten off the phone with Sally, and it had been…
It had been like talking to a stranger. All the kind words were there, and Sally was happy that he was back and healing, and that he had read her letters, but it still felt like talking to a stranger.
Mark got off of his bed, steadied himself, and walked out of his room without the use of his walker. He had surpassed the need for a walker just last week, but he still grabbed the railings on the walls and on the staircase to make it back to the dining room. Mom and Dad were still eating dinner, but they had paused while Mark had answered the phone.
Dad said, “You could have talked to her for longer. You didn’t have to come right back.”
Mark shook his head and sat down at his plate of fish and salad. “Sally didn’t have much time to talk this time. She had to... go. She was just… checking up on me.”
Mom reached out and held Mark’s wrist, saying, “I’m sorry, honey.”
Mark put on a happy face. “It’s fine.” He picked his fork back up, moving Mom’s hand away, saying, “Sally joined some organization she couldn’t tell me about but apparently it’s rather prevalent over on Daihoon. She says she looks forward to me joining her… but I think she was just being… kind.”
“You’re doing well, Mark,” Dad said. “Very well. Don’t let high expectations ground you before you even get a chance to soar.”
Mom said, “Eat your dinner, honey. You gotta build your strength back up so you can take on the Tutorial next year.”
Mom had done a 180 on her stance on the Tutorial in the last month, since it seemed to be the one thing that truly got Mark motivated. It got him motivated this time, too. But still, staring down at two massive flanks of fish, breaded and fried, and a salad that was twice the size of either Mom or Dad’s, was still intimidating. It was also a little cold, but Dad had taken a glass cover from on top of the stove and covered his plate while he was talking to Sally, so it wasn’t too much colder.
Mark dug in, Mom and Dad got back to eating, too, Dad started talking about the weather and the boat and fishing—
“And oh yeah!” Dad said, grinning. “Trace’s regrowing is going well, and he’s going to be back on the boat with us tomorrow, because tomorrow is the flyby.” He asked Mark, “You want to come out with us? See Mistress Storm and Red Thunder from the water!”
Mom scoffed, saying, “You can’t be out there for a flyby.”
Mark almost scoffed, too. “Yeah, Dad?”
“We’ll head to the haulout an hour before the flyby, of course,” Dad said, “Trace really wants to see it, though, and we’ve been out there before. So? How about it? Mark?”
Mom hummed, but there wasn’t any real disapproval to her voice.
Mark thought for a second and said, “I can’t go. Tomorrow I get to start learning how to swim again. Is Trace doing PT, too? How much of his arm and leg have regrown?”
Dad moved on in the conversation, too, saying, “They’ve got him on a full-heal plan and he’s a brawny with no lingering damage, so he can regrow pretty fast. He’s up to his knee and elbow and his liver grew back just fine.”
Mark was curious about what sorts of magics they could actually use on an Awakened person to heal them faster, but that was obviously Curtain Protocol stuff.
Dad asked Mark again, “You sure you don’t want to come?”
“I’m sure. I want to do all the aquatic therapy I can.”
Dad said, “Rest is important, too.”
Mark smiled at Dad’s care. “Those muskleaves are enough to qualify as resting and therapy on the same day, and I mean to take advantage.”
Dad accepted that.
And then Mom began, “You’re going to be at the dock before the flyby, right?”
“Of course, Donna,” Dad said, smiling softly.
“Good,” Mom said.
The conversation moved on.
Mark ate everything on his plate. He was the last to finish dinner, by far, but Mom had her glass of wine and Dad liked talking about the news and so dinner took a while, but it was nice. Mark had never wanted to get messed up like he had, but he liked his parents.
But Mark knew that if he didn’t get out there, if he didn’t take up the swords that his forebears had dropped in battle, like Addashield had said, then this sort of easy life behind the walls of Orange City was just one monster attack away from shattering. Humanity only existed because strong people were willing to put their lives on the line, to be heroes and superheroes, to protect everyone who could not protect themselves.
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Maybe it hadn’t been like that before the Reveal, before men had landed on the Moon and revealed the Demon City and shattered the Veil, but that’s how it was now. That’s how it had always been on Daihoon. In Addashield’s letter to Mark, that he had left with him the day before his 18th birthday, the archmage had hoped for Mark’s good health and good future, and to take his time to heal right before he attempted the Tutorial, because he had known that Mark was not going to stop. Mark was going to get there, and stand strong. Mark wasn’t going to disappoint Addashield, and he wasn’t going to disappoint himself.
He’d get back everything he had lost, and more.
- - - -
Mark stood on the scale and marveled how he could simply stand and not need to grip the railing.
Kevin smiled at him, saying, “You’re standing all on your own, now.”
“I know!” Mark said, grinning widely. “It’s the small things, huh!”
Kevin grinned, too, as he looked at the readout. “125! That’s pretty good! And it looks like— Stand up straight?”
Mark stood up straight as Kevin read the height scale.
“5’8. Which is...” Kevin tapped away at his pad, entering numbers, and his eyebrows scrunched. “Ah. Hmm."
Mark was already scrunching his own eyebrows. “5’8?” He looked at the scale in front of him, and yeah, maybe he was at 5’8? “I thought I was 5’7?”
A pretty fucking jacked 5’7”, too, before the coma.
Now, Mark was fine with gaining some height, but… This was a problem, right? Or maybe he was just developmentally delayed— No. Mark knew this was a problem.
Kevin hummed, then said, “Yes. You were 5’7.2”, to be exact. Hmm.”
Mark already knew what needed to happen. “They need to check me for mana impurities.”
“Yes.” Kevin poked at his screen, saying, “I’m signing you up for a scan… and that’s… Now? Ah. They have an opening in an hour. We can take you down the hall after your swimming lessons. You can use the small scanner.” He tapped a few more icons on the screen and then swiped his key card across the top of the pad before putting it into the slot on the wall, beside the scale. With a smile, Kevin said, “Let’s get you in the water!”
Mark ambled off of the scale and almost stumbled, but Kevin was there to grab him.
Soon, Mark was in the water with a bunch of grannies and old guys. Most of the old timers were wearing floaties and paddling on boards, but Mark was just moving in the water, stretching, finding out his coordination was still shot and that swimming at all was harder than it used to be. He did as much as he could.
An hour later, Mark was able to undress and dress himself now, so he did that in the locker room before rejoining Kevin for a scan on the machine.
The scanner at the physical therapy center was an older style, with a metal band that went around Mark’s head and a jacket/pant-like thing that Mark stepped into, like a onesie, that Kevin helped to close up. Kevin and the technician working the machine stepped behind a glass wall, and one flicker of light later, they came back out with a readout.
Kevin didn’t say anything as he helped Mark get out of the scanner, though he did have what appeared to be a genuine grin on his face. Mark wasn’t too worried.
But Mark still rapidly asked the other person in the room, “What’s it look like, doc?”
The technician was a woman with a badge that named her Emily.
Emily smiled softly, saying, “I’m just a scanner technician; not a doctor. However!” She handed Mark his readout. “I can read your readout. It’s not as good as a full scan, but it says you’re still baseline, so you can still take the Tutorial, and you don’t appear to be in danger of breaking baseline.”
“I still wouldn’t advise the Tutorial for a few years,” Kevin added, as he hung up the scanning suit.
Mark eagerly read the graphs and saw pretty much exactly what Emily had said, though none of the graph was exactly readable. All of it was behind Curtain Protocol, which meant unnamed, unlabeled axes and bars and readouts.
There were the six unnamed bars of the graph, along with a series of numbers which had other numbers near them. It was all obfuscated. But for Tutorial-based ease, there was a whole column of the number readout and a red line on the bar graph that told Mark what he needed to know; he was below the red warning area, and by a lot.
Most of the numbers in the number readout were all marked with a ‘negligible’.
At around 25% and 60% down the list of numbers, Mark’s numbers read something other than ‘negligible’; they read ‘acceptable’. Mark assumed that those were the parts of the scan that pinged off of his metalkinesis and healing affinities, since the readouts before his coma were all straight nothings.
The bar graph had larger bars in the second and fourth category, but those bars were still nowhere near approaching the red line. They were halfway to the red line, though. Those larger bars were twice as large as all the other bars. The only other bar that was even visible on the scale was the first bar, but that was just a bump; a fifth of the size of the second and fourth bars.
Mark didn’t know exactly what the readouts were, but he couldn’t keep his curiosity that contained. “So this height growth is in the first category and it’s some sort of brawny thing, and that’s what the first category is?”
Kevin’s face went unreadable. He lied, “I don’t know.”
Mark inwardly cursed at himself.
Don’t break Curtain Protocol, Mark!
Emily took her cue from Kevin, her face going blank, as she shrugged. “Good luck!”
Mark got scheduled for a full scan in a week, but generally…
Mark said, “I’m just worried.”
“It’s nothing to be worried about,” Kevin said. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Anyway! We’ve got an hour left. Want to go to the roof and see the flyby with everyone? It should be starting soon.”
Oh yeah! That was happening soon. Mark said, “Yeah, I do.”