00:000:00:09:59
00:000:00:09:58
00:000:00:09:57
Ten minutes. Six hundred seconds. Only a handful of moments until midnight. Nearly sixteen years of his life all led to this. Mal bit his tongue as he watched the seconds click down. They were moving more slowly than ever before, he was sure. It would be Christmas before they reached zero and he would have long since gone insane. He gripped the edge of his comforter, the thick blanket shaking violently in his hands as he desperately hung on to it. He couldn’t keep still. His fingers ached from clenching his fists. He glanced at the countdown again.
00:000:00:09:50
00:000:00:09:49
00:000:00:09:48
Seven seconds? How the hell was that fair? Mal tried to focus his thoughts. He knew his Ichor would be three or less. It was inevitable. Not once in the last sixteen years had he ever been able to reach the magic that he knew lay just beyond his grasp. That was okay. The Institute only required a three for acceptance. He would just have to take an entrance exam, like any Eten that wanted to attend. If he had less than three Ichor he could always boost it with the Spell. That was what the spell was for, after all. Helping those who couldn't touch magic naturally touch magic.
That left the mental stats. He needed a five in each in order to meet the minimum standards of the Institute. That would be tougher. Each point in a facet symbolized an exponential increase in ability. It was why Rudy’s five Power, five Alacrity and six Ichor was so unheard of, even if all his mental magical facets were the human average of three. Mal was pretty sure he wouldn’t be average, but even if he only had four in each facet, getting to five would still be doable. It would only take time. Adrien got two points in four months of hard work. Each point was more difficult to get, so maybe a year to get the four he might need? Mal could do that. He checked the clock again.
00:000:00:09:00
00:000:00:08:59
00:000:00:08:58
Mal’s good ears picked up a bustle of movement outside his door. His sister and mother, he was sure of it. His father would be in bed until someone forced him to get out of it. The man slept like a rock. He could hear the urgent whispering of quiet voices in the hall, focusing on them in a desperate need to distract himself.
“Did you get the soda he likes?” It was Ophi’s voice. It was tinged with barely suppressed excitement.
“I couldn’t find it. You don’t think he’ll mind?” His mother was speaking in the Eten language. She did it reflexively when she was nervous, stressed, or…other things. Mal shuddered as he remembered the things his sharp ears sometimes picked up. Best not to think about that. Ever.
“He won’t. Either he’ll be so happy he won’t care or so depressed it won’t make a difference.”
“Ophinala! Don’t say that. Of course he is going to be happy.”
“Mom, you're speaking in the Eten language.”
“Shit. You don’t think he heard?” Eeleei was still speaking in the Eten language.
“He hears a lot. Do you have the cake ready? I don’t see it.”
“I left it in the kitchen. I don’t want to hold it for ten minutes and I’m not leaving it on the floor.”
“What if you need to change what it says?”
“Of course I’m not going to have to change it! Cake is a happy food. If it said anything besides ‘Congratulations’ it would look like we didn’t believe in him.”
“Really? If someone said congratulations to me right after a big disappointment I would be more depressed.”
There was a long pause.
“Do you think we should remove the words?”
Mal stopped listening in on his mother and sister. Their conversation was not helping his nerves. His eyes flicked again to the corner of his vision.
00:000:00:08:09
00:000:00:08:08
00:000:00:08:07
A minute okay. That was good. The talking had distracted him for almost a minute. Only four hundred and eighty seconds now. Mal counted to sixty in his head and checked the clock again.
00:000:00:07:47
Dammit.
He reached a shaking hand to his bedside table where his phone lay. Maybe some browsing would help him clear his thoughts. He pawed at his phone and with a nervous jerk of his hand sent it bouncing across the carpet. Dammit. He probably wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway. His hands were shaking too much.
Outside his door he heard a muffled yelp. What was that? His sister, it sounded like. Oh god, Ophi was going to integrate before him. She was going to be the first ever person to integrate early. That was it. Her countdown was switched with his. He checked again.
00:000:00:07:42
FIVE SECONDS? Mal shut his eyes. No. It was fine. She probably stubbed a toe or something. He could hear her whispering still. No way she would be that quiet upon integration. Mal opened his eyes, checked the clock and closed them again. He needed a distraction. What did he like? Sports? No, that was Rudy’s thing. Girls? No, well yes, but that was also Rudy’s thing. Magic? Magic! He liked magic.
Mal went over what his mother taught him. All one hundred and thirty six basic forms. The weave for lighting a fire. Wait. What was it again? Oh no. He was going to integrate with the Spell and he didn’t even know how to start a fire. Mal tried to make the forms with his hands but he could barely control his fingers, his muscles locking up and moving in little bursts and twitches. For a moment he just stared at his shaking hands watching his pathetic attempts to move through spell forms he couldn’t even remember. His eyes flicked to the right hand corner of his vision.
00:000:00:00:12
When did that happen? What was going on? He was too scared to blink.
00:000:00:00:10
00:000:00:00:09
00:000:00:00:08
Why was it taking so long again? Seven minutes had just disappeared! Now it was moving more slowly than ever before
00:000:00:00:07
00:000:00:00:06
He could hear his heart pounding in his chest. It was so loud it drowned out the sounds of his sister’s whispering. Of his father’s grumpy protestations as his mother woke him up.
00:000:00:00:05
00:000:00:00:04
00:000:00:00:03
Mal couldn't do it. He couldn’t watch. He wasn’t going to look. Ever. He would pretend to be the first human or part human since integration not to integrate.
00:000:00:00:02
00:000:00:00:01
Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god
00:000:00:00:00
The clock winked out of existence like it had never been there in the first place. Nothing else happened. Mal didn’t feel any different. He patted himself up and down his body. Yeah, definitely didn’t feel any different. But he had integrated. Probably. How was he supposed to see his facets?
There was no new light in his vision, nothing to indicate he could do anything out of the ordinary. He tried commanding the facets to show up. Nothing. He tried looking to the corner of his vision where the clock had been only seconds ago. Nothing. What the hell? He wanted-
A series of lines illuminated his vision. There they were. His future in a few short words, floating in front of his face. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t do it.
He looked. Only at the first line.
Physical
Power - 2
Oh no. Mal felt his heart sink. Worse than he feared. Much worse. He shut his eyes. No. He could do this. It was only a few words. Power wasn’t a hard and fast requirement to be a mage. Professor Pewter was world renowned, even by Etens, and he only had Power of three.
Which was still higher than two.
Mal opened his eyes again. The list of his facets had disappeared. He willed them up again. Looking fully this time.
Physical
Power - 2
Output of magical energy by the body
Alacrity - 5
Fluidity of magic within the body
Ichor - 3
Magical integration of the body
Mental
Focus - 7
Ability to bring forth magic
Perseverance - 7
Ability to structure magic
Resolution - 7
Ability to maintain magic
All facets are abstractions, in place to allow specific assignment of growth and accelerate humanity’s ability to interact with magic.
Available points: 1
That was it.
Mal read and reread his facets. It was much better than he hoped, but still worse than he feared. His eyes could barely go a second without flicking to the two in Power. It was abysmal. He had heard of people having two in a facet before, or even lower, but that was almost always in members of the older generations. People who had been born and grown old even before the Merge occurred.
But on the other hand…his eyes returned to the bottom half of the floating words. Sevens in all his metal facets upon integration. That was truly unheard of, even among the part humans that stayed hidden until integration. Vampires, werewolves, half-Etens and everything else. Granted there was a much smaller sample size of those, especially those that went public with their facets.
His eyes found their way to the very bottom of the text.
Available points: 1
Mal knew what that meant. Everyone alive knew what that meant. But he had never heard of it happening upon integration before. Points were another magical abstraction, and perhaps the most impressive thing about the Spell. Somehow, the mysterious weavers had figured out how to capture magical progress and bottle it, maintaining it in the ether to be assigned to a facet at will. Whoever designed the weave was capable beyond genius. They figured out not only how the body interacted with magic, but also the mind, quantified it, and made it so anyone could interact with those systems at will. Now, for those who were at least part human, any magical progress made was captured and redistributed into the appropriate areas as needed.
It was such an impressive feat that some people theorized it was a weave performed by the Etens themselves for the sole purpose of demonstrating their dominance over magic.
And Mal was sitting on a little bit of that mind boggling magic without having done anything at all. He looked again to his Power. A point there would do him a lot of good. He almost assigned the point, but stopped himself. A point in Power would do a lot of good, but a point in one of his mental facets would do so much more.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Mal stared at his facets, frozen with indecision until sounds coming from outside his door snapped him out of his daze.
“My watch says it’s five past twelve,” he heard his mother whisper, “It could be fast though. What does your countdown say, Ophinala?”
“About the same. He definitely integrated.”
“Maybe he is actually asleep?”
“Are you kidding, Eeleei? There’s no way.” This was his father’s voice, “He’s probably still looking over his facets. I know I did when the integration first happened. Give him time.”
“It’s definitely bad news,” Ophi said, “If it was good we would hear him shouting for joy.”
“Maybe he is asleep.” His mother had switched to the Eten language again. “I’ll get the ice cream.”
“Mom! Ice cream is a sad food. I thought you didn’t want him to think we don’t believe in him?”
His sister and his mother both began jabbering in the Eten language and Mal let their voices fade into the background. Maybe he would pretend to be asleep the rest of the night. It would serve them right, talking outside his door and disturbing him like this. Integration was supposed to be a big deal.
Mal climbed out of bed, moving to his door in the dark. His hands had finally stopped shaking, he noticed, as he reached for the door. He flung it open, trying his best to wear an upset expression on his face. “I’m trying to sleep, do you mind?” Mal filled his voice with as much false grumpiness as he could. It wasn’t convincing, even to him.
“Mal!” Ophi jumped as soon as she saw him. She wrapped her arms around him in a big hug. Unsurprisingly, his distraught facade did not fool her. “Happy birthday, Mal!”
“Happy sixteenth, son.”
“Happy birthday, Malenthiar,” his mother smiled, “We have cake.”
Mal looked at his father, who was in an old tee-shirt and sweatpants. He was holding a round chocolate cake that said ‘Congratulations!’ on it in big, white frosting letters. His mother was wearing a sunny floral print dress and doing a poor job of hiding a bucket of ice cream behind her back. Ophi had decided to go for a mix of the two and had a dress on over a pair of pajama bottoms. A stack of bowls and plates were on the floor along with an assortment of utensils.
Mal continued to gaze at them until the silence became awkward. Ophi pulled herself out of the hug. “Mal…”
“What?”
She frowned at him, crossing her arms. “How was it? Was it bad? Is that why you’re not telling us?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell us your facet scores Mal so we can all go to bed,” his father yawned, “Some of us have to be up tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.” Mal felt awkward with his family standing around, paying him so much attention. Ophi was jittering with almost as much excitement as he had been just a few minutes prior. His mother had a soft, encouraging smile on her face, but she hadn’t spoken in English when she congratulated him. Only his father looked normal, unable to stifle another yawn as he patiently waited for Mal’s reveal. “I don’t know where to start though.”
“With Power, obviously!” Ophi said, bouncing on her toes. “Mine’s going to be way higher than yours, I know it.” Mal scowled at her. She was definitely right.
“Power,” Mal said, drawing out the word, “Is two.”
“Oh no!” Eeleei gasped and tore the lid off the ice cream, scooping it quickly into a bowl. “I knew something was wrong, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it-”
“Honey, you haven’t heard the rest yet, and nobody can understand you.” Oscar said.
“Yes, we can,” Mal and Ophi said together.
“Well I can’t, and that’s what counts.” Oscar grinned, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. “What are the rest of your facets at, Mal?”
“Alacrity is five,” Mal said.
“Five? That’s the same as Rudolf!” Ophi never called Rudy, Rudy.
Mal’s mother froze mid scoop, her eyes moving between the ice cream and the cake. “Five is very good.”
“Ichor is three, but I think we all knew that already,” Mal continued.
Eeleei nodded to herself and continued to scoop the ice cream.
“Mom, stop! We haven’t even heard the mental facets yet. You know they are going to be good.” Ophi turned back to Mal, “What was Focus?”
“All three mental facets are the same,” Mal said, unable to hide his grin.
Ophi noticed immediately. “They’re good?”
Mal nodded.
“How good?” His mother had stopped scooping. “Good for humans or Etens? Four, five?”
Mal shook his head.
“Six?” Ophi’s squealed, her eyes bulging.
Mal grinned, “Seven.”
“AHHHH!” Ophi jumped a foot in the air in excitement, her arms flying with energy. She landed on Mal, knocking him to the floor with a full body hug. A second later she was on her feet again, still shouting.
“Seven, that’s-” Eeleei blinked and frowned as her daughter ran screeching down the hall. “Ophinala what are you doing? You’re going to wake the neighbors!” His mother stomped down the hall after her, leaving the desserts behind.
Mal picked up a bowl of ice cream and a spoon, digging into the meal happily.
“I thought that ice cream was a sad food,” his father observed, almost shouting to be heard over his daughter’s screaming.
“I don’t care, I like ice cream,” Mal said, grinning down the hall at his berserk sister. “So damn loud.” Mal took the cake from his father and a knife from the ground, cutting a big slice from it and adding to his bowl of ice cream. “I like cake, too.”
His mother returned with his sister under her arm, hand across her mouth. When she saw Mal eating both cake and ice cream, she dropped Ophi in an unceremonious heap. “Malenthiar, what are you doing?”
Ophi popped back up on her feet as though she hadn't been dropped at all. “I want both, too!”
Oscar just patted his son on the back as Eeleei fussed over Mal mixing happy and sad foods. “Happy birthday, son.”
----------------------------------------
Mal woke late the next morning, groggy from the sugar induced fitful sleep of the night before. He rolled out of bed, ignoring the blinking light on his phone for now. No doubt it was Adrien and Rudy demanding to know what his facet scores were. Instead, Mal had something important to do. Two important things, actually.
Mal trudged through the house still sleepy and in his pajamas. The clock on the kitchen stove said 10:23am. He had slept in, and the house was empty. That was fine. Very few schools expected anyone to show up on their sixteenth birthday and he didn’t need an audience for this anyway.
Mal wandered over to his seat at the kitchen table and performed his first bit of magic.
Mal had long since devised a way to remove the drawing of his original and first weave from the kitchen table. His mother claimed to be unable to figure it out, but that was a lie. She was proud of the paper, even if it was a blemish in her pristine kitchen. Mal’s first performed weave was going to be to undo his first created one.
Mal focused, moving his hands through the familiar forms. For the first time ever, he could feel the magic move through his body. He immediately saw that the hand movements were unnecessary. Magic didn’t care about how he moved his hands. It cared about his focus, his will. It was like an electric snake of energy, darting around into the shape he willed, forming a weave at the tip of his fingers. It was so alive, so full of life. No - it wasn’t full of life, it was life itself. Growth, renewable prosperity, all inexorably linked together in a pattern so amazing, so complex, that Mal almost lost the weave as he stared at it. It wasn’t truly visible, of course, Mal’s small manipulation of reality had nowhere near the power needed to actually be seen, but he could feel it, the same way he could feel his mother’s magic, or his sister’s, or even the bald angry man from all those years ago.
Mal’s weave took form and he brought his hand down on the old and faded sheet of paper. With a touch, the magic coursed through it, and the paper rippled, peeling off from the table for the first time in years. Mal grinned and laughed. If magic was life itself, then a successful weave was the celebration of life, in all its glory. He laughed further as sparks of pure joy danced from his fingertips with his exultation. His first weave followed by his first piece of intrinsic magic. Mal was pretty sure he would never stop smiling.
His first task done, Mal returned to his room, forming another weave, this time with his mind. It was harder, taking a surprising amount of focus to bring the magic into the familiar pattern of his first spell. He slapped the sheet of paper to his door, fusing it to the surface. Mal grinned again.
He entered his room and flopped down in the chair at his desk, opening his laptop. It was time for his second task. With shaking hands, he navigated to the Canadian Institute of Magic and Learning’s website, colloquially known as the Institute. He clicked through the site quickly, moving to the application page.
Mal imagined the process was likely similar to that of applying to a college, but with a few distinct differences. There were still the identification and contact information pages, but from there, a few differences could be noticed. The first was that nowhere in the application process did it ask for Mal’s grades. Mal was glad for this, as his grades had never been great, only ever good, with Mal coasting by on minimal study and even less interest.
Instead, the application asked for his facet scores. They would be checked more thoroughly if his application were accepted, for now it was just to make sure he met the entry requirements. Mal input his scores, staring at the two in Power with apprehension. Mal clicked continue with his eyes shut, but the website didn’t kick him out, so it was probably fine.
The next page was interesting as well, it was a family tree, with his name at the bottom. Mal entered his mother’s name into the space labeled mother, and the rest of the tree populated automatically, going much farther back than was initially requested of him. Mal blinked at the branching names on his screen. He knew that both the Canadian and American governments had taken a full history of his parents’ families upon their acceptance into the program that ultimately resulted in his birth, but he didn’t think that information was so widely disseminated.
Mal put the slightly awkward and exposed feeling aside. The thoroughness had at least saved him a few minutes of typing out the strange names of his mother’s side of the family. He clicked through to the next page. It, too, was already filled out, but this time with his family’s medical history. That would have taken him a lot longer than a few minutes to fill out, and he was fairly sure asking for it was some sort of privacy violation. Mal clicked through the page, resisting the curious urge to look through his family’s illnesses.
The next and final page of the application was a series of questions. None were difficult, but all were opinion based essay questions.
Why do you want to learn magic?
Because it’s cool.
What would you do with a magical education?
More magic.
What is your opinion of the Merge?
Mal frowned at this one, deciding to type some blithe nonsense of it being both a blessing and a tragedy for the world of humans and Eten alike.
What is magic?”
Mal stopped for a moment on the final question. For all his previous answers, although they could be summed up in a short and pithy manner, he spent much more time on them. For this question, however, he felt there could only ever be one answer.
Life.
From there, Mal finalized his application sending it off to the interwebs with a spike on anxiety induced adrenaline. He took a deep breath and checked the time on his phone. The application took hours and his phone lock screen was filled with notifications from Adrien and Rudy. Most of the more recent ones alternated between his friends asking if he was alright, and calling him rude names for not responding.
Feeling guilty, Mal opened up the group chat, sending an apology, along with his stats. A few seconds later, his phone buzzed in his hand as someone called the chat. Mal was moving his thumb to answer it when another notification popped up on the screen.
Incoming Call: Unknown name, Unknown number
Mal picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I am Professor Daniel Pewter, calling from the Canadian Institute of Magic and Learning. Is this Malenthiar Thomas?”
Mal froze in his chair, staring blankly at the laptop screen in front of him.
“Hello, Malenthiar? Are you there?”
Mal yelped, “Yes, I am. Sorry. I am Malenthiar Thomas. Nice to meet you Professor Daniel Pewter.” Mal’s voice was high and unsteady. Why was the Professor Pewter calling him?
“Good. Good.” Professor Pewter’s voice was deep and amused. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m calling for you Malenthiar.”
“Yeah. I mean yes. Yes sir.” Mal swallowed.
“You can just call me Dan,” Professor Pewter chuckled, “No need to be nervous.”
Call him Dan? Not happening. “Yes, Professor,” Mal said.
A sigh came through the phone. “Very well. Mal, can I call you Mal?”
Mal nodded vigorously for a second before he realized the professor could not see him. He flushed. “Yes, Professor.”
“Great. Well, Mal, I’m calling because the school just received your application, and I had something like a flag on your name, so I got alerted to it.”
He had a flag on the name Malenthiar Thomas? But why? Mal’s eyes grew large. Your record has been noted. A copy of your record will be sent to Professor Pewter.
“Professor Pewter’s Puzzle Pack.” Mal breathed into the phone.
The professor laughed over the phone. “That’s exactly right! I’ve had my eye out for kindred spirits, as it were.”
“Kindred spirits?”
“Young men and women with an interest in magic and facets that are in a similar vein to my own,” Professor Pewter said, “We’re a rare breed, and I want to make sure we don’t die out.”
Mal’s mouth dropped open. Was the professor saying what he thought he was saying?
“Mal, I would like to formally invite you to the pre-entrance testing for admittance to the Canadian Institute of Magic and Learning.” Professor Pewter’s grin could be heard over the phone, “I’m sure you’re aware, but only one in ten applicants get this invitation, and many fewer than that get a call from me.” He paused for a moment. “Mal, are you there?”
“I - Yes! Yes, of course, yes! Thank you, thank you so much.” Mal gushed. His heart was pounding in his chest and rising in his throat all at once.
“You’re very welcome, Mal.” The professor laughed again. It was a good laugh, warm and rich.
“Why?” Mal blurted, closing his eyes as he nearly shouted the question, the phone gripped almost painfully in his hand, “Why call me?”
Professor Pewter paused. “Do you know how many people have completed my puzzle pack before even applying to the institute? Three. And one of them was me, so that doesn’t count. When I say we are a rare breed, I mean it, Malenthiar Thomas. I was hoping to ask you for a favor, and offer you some advice.”
“Anything,” Mal said, not bothering to think about it. If the Professor was going to make his dream come true, he could have a favor. He could have ten.
“Then they both come to this,” the grin had returned to the professor’s voice, “Lean into it.”
Lean into it?
“What?”
“Lean into it. Your facets scores are rather lopsided currently. Do not balance them out. Lean into it.”
Mal called up his facets scores from the Spell, the two loomed large in his vision. “Won’t that be…” Mal didn’t want to say useless. He wasn’t useless. He let the sentence hang there, awkward as it left his mouth.
“It will make you better.” The professor’s voice was firm. “It will make some things difficult, and others near impossible, at least without help, but it will let you do things that no one else in the world can do.”
No one else in the world. The words rang in Mal’s ears. “I have a point, what should I do?”
“You have a point?” The professor sounded surprised, “That’s rare, but not unheard of. You want to know where you should allocate it, then?”
“If you don’t mind-”
“Not at all,” The professor laughed, “This ends up being half my job in the grand scheme of things. If you ask me, you have three options. The first is easiest. Do nothing. Wait until you get two more points and allocate one to each mental facet. It’s important that you keep those three balanced at all times, got that? For most mages, it isn’t important, but with your Power,” the professor paused for emphasis, “It would make things difficult. The other options are your Alacrity or your Ichor.”
“Thank you, Professor.” Mal said, his voice still high, “What, what would you do?”
“Your Alacrity is fine, for now. And your Focus, Perseverance and Resolution are fantastic, especially for someone who just went through Integration. But your Ichor is a little low. Maybe bump that one up a bit. It will help you with a lot of things, and it won't hurt with the ladies either.”
Mal felt himself flush, “Professor, I-”
“Ah! Sorry,” Professor Pewter groaned, “I wasn’t thinking. Sufficient to say it will help you with whatever type of person you are after. Ladies, gentlemen, and everything else.”
“No, Professor, I just wanted to say thank you.” Mal got out. “I really appreciate it.”
“Oh, well, no worries then, Mal.” Professor Pewter said, “The next intake exam is at the beginning of the new year. So train up and I’ll see you then.”
“Thanks again, Professor.”
“You are welcome, Mal. Congratulations. Oh, and happy birthday!” With that, the professor hung up the phone.
Mal pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it in clock. After a few moments he called up his facets and assigned his point to Ichor, ticking it up to four. He waited for something to happen, but nothing did. He didn’t feel any different. Except for disappointed.
Mal almost jumped out of his skin when his phone started buzzing again. It was his group chat. He had missed five calls from it during his talk with the professor. Mal eyed the phone suspiciously, waiting in case another strange phone call came through. When none did, he answered his friends’ call.
“Sorry guys, I just got off the phone with Professor Pewter.”
“YOU WHAT?”
----------------------------------------
Mal spent the next few hours explaining things to Adrien and Rudy, both of whom were on the call. Adrien would not stop calling him variations on the phrase, ‘lucky bastard’ as Mal explained his facet scores, his easy invitation to the assessment tests and his call with the professor, while Rudy mostly laughed and said “See, I told you you had nothing to worry about,” so often that it became suspicious. By the time he finished, his mother and sister had returned home from work and school respectively. Mal greeted them both in the kitchen.
“Malenthiar, how was your day?” His mother called out to him as he entered the kitchen, “I see you have removed your first weave from my kitchen table. Thank you for that. I hope you didn’t throw it away.”
“I stuck it to my door,” Mal said. He opened a cupboard and took out a granola bar for a snack. “My day was good.”
“Mal, don’t fill up on snacks,” Eeleei chided, “I am making you a special birthday dinner.”
“I’m not going to fill up, Mom,” Mal said, “I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch and I’m starving.”
“You didn’t eat?” Eeleei whirled on Mal, “But Earth has so much food! What were you doing all day?”
Mal shrugged, startling himself as it caused a shower of blue light to fall.
“Ooh, Mal’s using intrinsic magic now!” Ophi said. “Now we can have proper conversations!”
“Is that what you were doing, Mal?” His mother asked, “Figuring out intrinsic magic so you could talk to us? That’s very sweet, but you shouldn’t skip meals.”
“No, that came naturally,” Mal said, “I was mostly applying to the Institute and then getting invited for an assessment by Professor Pewter himself.”
“Well, that still doesn’t-” Eeleei paused, tilting her head to the side like she had just heard a strange noise. “What was that?”
“What?” Ophi was decidedly less calm, “Professor Hottie was here?”
“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Mal said. “He called me.”
“Malenthiar Thomas you tell me right now what is going on, you were invited to the Institute?”
Mal grinned as a spray of solid, orange light danced over his face from his mother’s words. It was time to have his first real Eten conversation.