It’s real… all of it, the magic, the whole other world, the little girl… even the planet I now own… It was a crazy thought, if he told anyone they’d either call him crazy or think it’s some sort of joke.

What do I do now… He didn’t believe it, fuck, he didn’t want to believe it. But the cold, hard facts were laid right before his eyes. After weeks of trying to remember the exercise he finally got it down, of course the fact that the little girl burned it into his memory help a ton.

I can still feel the sensation of her poking me… Whatever the little girl did to him, he was grateful for it in the end.

Now’s not the time to be thinking about that… the day’s almost over and this is the last day i’ll be teaching these kids… The kids he were talking about was actually a bunch of third graders who were currently stuffing their faces full of fresh pizza. He decided to do something special for the kids sense he wouldn’t be seeing them anymore.

“Alright class, your parents will be here to pick you up in a couple of minutes, go clean yourself and be ready for when they get here.” They already knew I was retiring but they were still to little to know what that meant.

I don’t blame them, I can barely even remember the time I was three… Teaching was something he really enjoyed, and now that he was retiring early he felt an odd feeling of regret.

It’s for the best anyways, I don’t think I’d be able to handle two lives while keeping them apart…He had thought long and hard about it and eventually came to the decision. Plus, living a normal life is impossible now…

He had already said his goodbyes to his fellow coworkers so when all the kids were picked up he grabbed the last box of his things and drove off.

Over the next couple of weeks he spent all his time meditating, his mana capacity, as he gotten to calling it had almost doubled in size and his speed at gathering mana was quickly increasing.

Today was just like any other day, he sat down in his backyard and just lost himself in the meditation but sometime around noon something happened.

He had started experimenting with his mana, sending it throughout his body and even outside, but any attempts at controlling his mana outside his body failed spectacularly.

And this was one of his failed experiments, as he was releasing a steady stream of mana into a cloud around his fist something changed, and before he knew it their was a small pearl like object resting in his palm.

What… just happened… He stared at it for a couple minutes in confusion. He wanted to see how tuff the thing was so he tapped it against the ground, but that wasn’t the best idea.

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It lasted only three taps before it burst with a strong blast of mana. The mist of mana that had formed the thing was released again but he had lost his connection to it entirely.

“What the-“ He went to go grab the mist but almost as if it had a mind of it’s own it avoided his grasp over and over.

The damn thing made him run all over his backyard running into things and even made him stub his toe. When he finally grabbed the mana like mist it released a small giggling sound.

“The hell…” It wiggled in his grasp trying to get out before freezing. He leaned closer to get a better look at the thing.

“What… are you…” The mist sudden grew a pair of hazy eyes that completely threw him off. It blinked over and over looking around the place like a curious

The thing only giggled some more before jumping into his shirt. He was freaked out at first but after it did nothing and just staying inside his shirt he slowly calmed down.

I have no clue if this is a good thing… or bad… To mentally tired to do anything else he stopped meditating for the day and finally did what he was hesitating to do for weeks.

Texting Matt to meet up, if he couldn’t ask questions from the little girl then why not the next best thing.

***

“So you finally reached out, i’ve been waiting forever, what took you so long.” Matt looked slightly annoyed but grinned when he saw my unamused look.

We were at a café that was pretty empty, a good spot to talk.

“Look, I know you have a lot of questions, and I’d love to answer them for you but i’ll only be able to answer questions about magic.” When he saw my questioning glare he relented. “We can’t talk about the, you know what, on this side.”

“Fine, but you will answer my questions, first one, how long have you known about the, you know what?”

“I’ve only known about that for more then half a year, but I’ve known about magic my whole life.” He had a distant look in his eyes before he focused back on the conversation. “Magic on this side is a lot harder to come by for reasons I don’t know so don’t ask.”

“Okay, then tell me how to sense mana, the little girl said I can’t access the gate until I can sense mana.”

“That’s an easy one, just focus your mana onto your senses, for now I’d recommend your sight and as you learn more you can upgrade more of your senses.”

That… actually makes sense… that opens up a lot of possibilities, what else could you upgrade with mana… “Next question, lately gathering mana has gotten… harder, why is that?” After his new little buddy came into the picture the mana around his house has gotten, scarce.

“That’s normal, if you gather too much mana in one area without letting it recharge then you basically damaging said area, but there are ways to counteract said thing from happening.”

“And what would those be?” It felt like Matt was messing with him on purpose.

“First, you need to know that every living thing has a small amount of mana, they expend this mana throughout the day only to generate more while resting. One way would be to cultivate around well travels places, or, what most of us do, is cultivate around nature, as a living thing they too produce and release small amounts of mana but on a large scale.”

It was all very informative but their was one problem with them. “The first option is out of the question, I don’t want to travel to crowded places, and the second one is more manageable but i’m guess parks won’t really work, meaning i’ll have to leave the city and go to the country side or something.”

“Your right about the parks, they’ll work but their too small to last that long, and over cultivating the mana in those areas will lead to their death.”

We kept on talking, him answering all of the questions I could think of. Apparently mana is a lot more mysterious then I believed, even the ‘magic community’ Matt talked about was only a couple decades old.

“One more question… before I sent you the text something happened, I was experimenting with mana and… this happened.” I showed him a picture of little buddy, as I had started to call it and Matt just looked confused and shocked.

“I’m gonna be totally honest with you Kent… I don’t know what that is, is looks like some type of spirit but not of a type I’ve seen before…” Matt looked pretty shook and the conversation only lasted a couple more minutes before he left with a goodbye.

I learned a good amount of information, like how theirs a magic community full of mages, a way to sense, or should I say see mana and… He drove back home only to see little buddy resting on the counter top. Whatever you are… Matt seemed to think your pretty rare, maybe even one of a kind…