"Yeah," said Taylor. "I'm all for finding more people, but we can't exactly just buy a TV commercial."
"We could do a billboard," said Beckham, looking at his sister. "Those aren't that expensive. Especially if you just want something simple."
"No..." Parker trailed off, shaking his head. "I mean, leaving aside the cost or whatever, I don't think we really want to announce ourselves like that. I remember when my sister lost her dog - we put up flyers all around town and got hundreds of phone calls. People called to report all sorts of crap, and I don't think most of them even looked at the picture of the dog. They just saw the reward, or my sister holding her dog. If we put up something that gets attention, then we just have the chore of trying to decide what attention is real in the first place. I'm not using my phone or anything for that."
"You've got a point," said Alexa. She stood up and started rummaging in the cart that had carried the girls' stuff from the jeep. "Carry on, everyone. I'll be right back."
"The phone number thing is easy enough," said Finn. He watched Alexa straighten up with several long poles. "I did some checking We can just buy a cell phone. If we pay cash and put minutes on a card, it doesn't even need to be connected to anyone's real name. We can even get a bunch of phones if we want. Setting up call forwarding and stuff is easy, so that if someone calls we all have a chance to pick up."
"Fine, that works if you want to do that," said Parker. "But there's still the problem of knowing if any given call is for real. What would we put up on the advertisement anyway? 'Can you see fog? Come learn magic?' That's just asking for problems."
"Plus," chimed in Samantha, "what happens if someone realizes what we're talking about, and they don't actually see the magic? We were all kids when this started, right? I'll bet most of us have seen a doctor about it, if only an eye guy back when we started talking about seeing mist. What if one of those doctors reads our poster and puts two and two together? Or a parent? Or whoever?"
"We don't want that to happen," said Ashleigh. "I'm sure I'm not the only 'epileptic' in the country who's actually Blue. There's probably some paper published somewhere about seeing fog being an early symptom of seizures. Or maybe something connecting it to my irregular brain activity during a seizure."
"No," said Alexa. She was passing the sharpened steel poles around to everyone. "We agreed on keeping this secret, and that's a good idea. We're not going to go public. I'd rather not get locked up in some freak show, thank you very much."
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"Which is why we're brainstorming together," said Finn.
"But we still want to be better about getting the word out," said Sarah. "If nothing else, we need something concrete in place. Things we make sure everyone knows. We don't want things to slide between the cracks - like how Ashleigh didn't get told about power sinks as a way to avoid burning himself."
"Asshole," muttered Ashleigh to Parker.
"Hey, I didn't know," said Parker, spreading his hands wide. "I'd been doing this for like a week when you saw me. It's not like there's a manual."
"I know," said Ashleigh, punching Parker softly on the shoulder.
"Which is what I want to fix," said Sarah. Alexa's chair was still blue from when it had gotten set up, and it walked over to Sarah. She took the bag of marshmallows off and carefully lanced one on the pole she'd taken from Alexa. "Maybe just a phone tree will work. Like if we run into someone, figure out what color they are and get them in touch ASAP."
"Maybe not just phones," said Alexa. She picked her chair up and carried it back to its place before sitting down again. "I mean, the rundown is good, but face-to-face is important. I mean, Ash, if Parker had told you, would that have changed much? Or would it have been better to meet with Sam or Sarah right away?"
"I'm... not sure," said Ashleigh. He sat for a minute. "If Parker told me everything, it might have helped some. It's not like it's super complicated. But it's not just knowing. This is, well, scary isn't the right word, but scary. I'm not sure if I would have gone through with anything before seeing it in action. But getting told would have been a lot better than nothing. At least I wouldn't have been quite so embarrassed seeing everything Samantha was doing."
"The word is emasculated," said Samantha, earning her an airborne marshmallow from Alexa.
"Be nice," said Parker and Jacob together.
"She's not wrong," said Ashleigh with a tight-lipped smile. "I could have done more if I'd wanted to. But I didn't want to, and maybe learning a different way would have helped."
"And let's not forget any little Reds out there," said Beckham. "Taylor and I have been lucky. There was that one little fire in the backyard, but it wouldn't have been hard to do a ton more damage than we did."
"Whats with the 'We'", said Taylor. "You're the one who set that bush on fire."
"It could have been you," said Beckham, looking away from his sister.
"But it wasn't," said Taylor. "But you do have a point, even if you comb your hair to hide it. I think Reds definitely need a face-to-face, to cut down on property damage and all."
"We certainly don't want any exploding hospital rooms," said Alexa.
"Ok," said Finn. "If I'm hearing things, we need to make sure phone numbers are shared and arrange for people to meet a mentor of their color as soon as possible. That's going to mean we need to make sure we prioritize this - be available to drop things for a bit to reach out. We also need to put together important information that everyone should hear, probably organized by color too.
"Agreed?" he asked, sitting back into his camp chair.
"Agreed," said Sarah. "And actually, I think I have an idea. I'm really not happy just waiting to trip over more magic folk, we really need to do something more active. But we don't want to go public either. But there's a way we can do both."