Loren woke up to the sound of the alarm on his phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous slab of electronics. Fumbling as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he'd liked five years ago, he finally found the little aluminum tablet. Fingers flailed, trying to get it to stop as he tried to get lucky—

The alarm stopped and he let out a sigh of relief as he turned over again, pulling his thin sheet of a blanket over him as he tried to get a few more minutes of sleep.

At least, that was the plan. Now that he was awake, however, the lingering smell of baby cologne was filling his nose and he could hear the telltale sounds coming from a pair of earphones, indistinct and but definitely in the otherwise completely silent room. Moaning, he pulled his pillow over his head, determined to nap some more…

His phone rang again, the second alarm he'd set for ten minutes later. He'd been able to nap too long for it to have been the snooze. Groaning, he fumbled around again—

There was a click and a clatter, and the room was filled with the words of a popular love song from ten years ago as it began to play. "—this world, so full of fear, we find ourselves—"

With a groan, Loren reluctantly pulled his head out from under his pillow to glare at the little FM radio on the table. It was a small thing, with little analog dials to tune the signal instead of buttons and digital displays. The radio was plugged into a little power bank, one of the models that was specifically meant to be rechargeable by a Flame mage—technically any battery could be recharged by Flame, but this one was built to be heat resistant and could better withstand amateurish handling—which also had a small solar panel plugged into it. The basic little radio used so little power that he could afford to leave it on all day when he was out of the apartment, especially since Sara mostly listened to it with a pair of earphones.

At the moment, the earphones had been pulled out of the jack, and the little speakers were playing as loudly as they could.

Sighing, Loren reluctantly pushed himself to sit up, blinking as he rubbed his eyes. The light of the city coming in through the windows illuminated his room enough that he could see the room. His computer was still on the dining table next to the annoyingly load radio. "I'm up, I'm up," he muttered, rubbing at his eyes. "Ugh… good morning, Sara."

"… good morning…"

He jumped slightly in surprise at the whisper in his ear, instinctively turning towards it, but there was nothing there. Still, she was probably there, so… "'Morning, Sara," he repeated, rubbing at his eyes. Reluctantly resigning himself to having to be awake now, he called Flame from his soul, letting it spread. His body temperature rose as he did, and he felt energized and awake, even if he didn't want to be. Grumbling, Loren slid off the bed and gathered his Flame into his hand, holding it up. A little tongue of fire flickered on his fingertip before a cold breeze blew over the extremity and a pressure wrapped around his palm. He squeezed gently, and the pressure replied.

Walking slowly so that he wouldn't leave Sara behind—she could probably keep up, but he didn't want to be rude—Loren went to the kitchen counter and grabbed a beeswax candy from the little jar he kept there. Popping it into his mouth, he felt it start to melt and become runny as he chewed, releasing the taste of honey impregnating the wax. His Flame began to consume the wax to fuel the magic he was imbuing into Sara as he pulled back one of the chairs on the table and sat down as he continued to hold a hand he couldn't see.

Focusing on his other hand, Loren summoned a ghostlight Flame there. While they still needed a ghost candle if they wanted to have an extended conversation, he'd been able to analyze them enough that he could at least make a light that would let him see her… most of the time. It was a matter of mixing Light and Change, using the latter on the former so the photons generated would reflect off spiritforms, and he was still getting used to putting them together.

Sara flickered into view, floating in the air in front of him and both hands clasped around his, a relieved look on her face. Fortunately, she'd remembered to wear a shirt this time, or rather, a shirt had become part of the way her spiritform was arranged. In the Flame's ghostlight, the upper-right edge of her form was faded from sight, but he was getting used to how she looked like she wasn't completely rendered in.

The two of the just sat there, simply holding hands—an immature part of his mind that sounded like Harmony was screaming 'LEWD!'—as Loren gave Sara a tactile sensation. Even when she coalesced her spiritform enough to be able to grip and even move physical objects—like pulling earphones out of a radio's jack—she'd told him that it didn't really feel like anything save something hard. There was no softness, no fuzzy, just hard solids. He could feel her gently stroking and kneading his skin, felt the fine hairs on his knuckles and the back of his hand flicking back and forth.

He sat there, letting her touch him. Despite the strangeness of being touched by cold fingers, it was a comforting sensation. He didn't glance around or act like he was waiting for her to be done. He just sat there and waited, letting himself wake up as he kept an eye on the light coming through the windows.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Eventually, Sara let go, giving him an apologetic smile. She looked satisfied, even as she rubbed her fingertips against each other.

Still, Loren had to ask, even if only to make conversation. "You good?"

Sara nodded.

"All right. You pick what perfume you want me to leave for you while I take a bath."

Another nod.

Despite knowing it wouldn't stop her, he waited until he was in the bathroom and the door was closed before he started taking off his clothes. It was the principle of the thing, after all.

Now, burn bath or water bath?

––––––––––––––––––

Even though Harmony has said that Steve would be glad to hire him, he'd still been surprised when he'd shown up for a job interview and Steve had actually entertained the notion. He figured he'd make an honest effort at getting the job, so he'd brought up what few skills he felt he had. He knew how to mix cement and apply it, though he couldn't use it to finish walls. He'd painted walls before, and knew to scrub and sandpaper the walls and put down paper grocery bags to act as drop cloths. He knew how to use a saw, a hammer, and could nail down something, a product of a father who believed a man needed to have certain skills, and that actually knowing how to use non-electric hand tools was one of them. He could use his Flame to weld since he'd learned from Harmony's uncle, although since he could use his fingers to mold the molten metal he felt his welds turned out better than hers. And of course there'd been his alchemy knowledge.

He hadn't known the mix of Flame to get cement to cure faster, but it had been simple enough when Steve had shown the video and paper about it to him, and after he'd proven he could make it work—sand and gravel imbued with Flame, cement, water and just enough oil to act as a fuel source for the alchemy which would be consumed during the process so it wouldn't hinder the curing—Steve had hired him as a trainee.

That had been the easy part.

Unfortunately, being a trainee meant training, and Steve had certain standards for his employees. Loren had needed to attend a keres safety training course, and a keres self-defense course. The former was meant to assist in identifying the presence and influence of keres, and the latter… well, it was meant to teach him how to defend against keres, particularly manifested keres.

"A manifested keres is a lot similar to a ghost or a spirit," Harmony had explained to him. "Not all ghosts are as nice or easygoing as Sara. We once had to deal with a house that was haunted by a married couple. She killed him for abusing her, and when he'd collected enough magic to start haunting, he killed her for… well, killing him. There wasn't any negotiating with them, so we had to do a forceful exorcism."

"Wait, isn't doing stuff like that vigilant work?" he'd exclaimed.

"Yeah, but… well, sometimes we can't get out. Hence the self-defense course."

He'd given her a suspicious look. "So, we won't be expected to do the 'forceful exorcising' ourselves?"

"Of course not. At worst, we're expected to cover everyone's retreat if we get an HMS in the middle of a job"

"HMS?"

"Horror Movie Scenario."

The stare he'd given her had been, appropriately, horrified. "Harmony… answer me honestly… how many people have died working here?"

"None so far," had been the cheerful reply, which should have made him feel better, but it hadn't.

So now, as part of his work training, he was spending his mornings attending a self-defense course at the vigilant chapter building nearest Happy Homes, learning how to throw a punch at the same time he used his magic.

Loren stood in a line of other Flame mages of various ages, from a little twelve-year-old girl who was following along with happy enthusiasm to a payatin with the hairstyle of a grandmother and shook a bit with every movement, punching the air as the vigilant serving as their trainer called out the rhythm behind them. "Left! Right! Left! Right!" With each word, Loren punched with the fist while chambering the opposite fist. As he moved, Flame flowed through his arm, and he tried to time it the way they'd been taught while it was demonstrated. Heart to shoulder, from the shoulder to the wrist, from the wrist to the fist, and then have it erupt at the moment when his fist would have struck something, a directed burst that went only in one direction instead of flaring up and out the way Flame wanted to. His back leg braced him against the force of the blast, so he managed to keep his balance, stepping forward and then back to alternate which of his legs were braced.

All things considered, he thought he was doing a fairly good job. His blasts were rippling the air pretty far over the wide, shallow pool of water they were all standing along, and he thought he was getting the timing right. Along the line on either side of him, some people were doing better, others were doing worse. There were those who still kept producing bursts of Flame that puffed out bright and orange, but even they seemed to be at least getting the timing right.

He could already see how this move would be more effective if the Flame he used consisted of Energy. Electrical energy, kinetic force, or simply more directed heat… anything would be useful, theoretically, for damaging the manifested spiritform of keres as long as it was magic. Damage but not destroy. Their trainer had made it absolutely clear that they shouldn't expect to be able to significantly harm a keres, but a blast would suffice to stun, disorient or delay one long enough for them to run away and hopefully warn others of its presence.

That had been their first lesson. Everything they were learning here was supposed to be in aid of buying them time to run away because a civilian, mage or not, had no business trying to have a knockdown, drag out fight with a keres. Even vigilant Flame mages, they'd been informed, didn't take on keres alone, and not without a lot of preparation.

It was the sort of thing that Loren had heard before, usually at the tail end of a news report informing people that a keres manifestation had been dealt with by vigilants, the military, and occasionally even the police, though the latter usually had a lot of help from the former two. Just because he had magic didn't mean he was equal to the escaped evils of the world, and definitely not when those evils had taken bodily form. He wasn't Harmony, after all. He'd never dreamed of being some heroic vigilant fighting evil by moonlight and keeping people safe to walk in daylight. It wasn't in him.

That didn't mean this wasn't a skill worth having. He just wished that having his new employment require him to have it wasn't so ominous.