“So are the sandwiches magic?”

Mia’s laughter squeaked out of her around her overly full mouth. She took a moment to make some room in her mouth, then said ”Obviously! mmmm! Deep magic of the old world here! Pumpernickle and fairy dust!” She took another bite and presumably continued extolling her sandwich’s magic, but I couldn’t make out the specifics.

I threw my napkin at her. She picked it up from where it fluttered down and tapped it to each corner of her mouth. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and looked at me.

“Max, I’m just as curious as you. That’s why we’re here. We’ve obviously got to figure this biz out.” She paused and her eyes turned cold. “The future of mankind depends on it,” she ended that declaration with a smarmy grin.

As much as I usually appreciated Mia’s limitless supply of nonchalance, I responded by splaying my fingers towards her, and shaking my hands with the growing sense of awe I had at what we were doing. I said, “Dude! It really might!”

Mia arched an eyebrow and put her index finger to her lips thoughtfully.

“You’re impossible,” I said.

She raised the finger from her lips into the air instructively and imitated Uncle Vlad’s sage voice, “No, nothing is impossible.” She bounced back to her normal chirpy soprano, “At least, that’s the plan. Let’s look at the diagram again!”

Mia found the diagram on her uncle’s desk, a ratty piece of yellowed parchment covered in grey circles and lines intersecting them at strange angles. She said that when she looks at it for long enough, the circles started to move.

“It’s not like a magic eye puzzle.” I snickered at that. “I don’t blur my eyes, or try to look past it. It’s more like I’m following the curves with my eyes and following them builds momentum or something. It makes me want to not stop looking at it.”

“How long were you looking at it before Ava landed the first time?”

“I don’t really know; it’s like I was in a trance. I was staring at it, then I looked up and Ava was there and I wasn’t even scared. When I looked at her, I could see an afterimage of the diagram in my vision, but different. Um, more 3-D. I knew that she was curious about me and didn’t want to hurt me. I asked her what her name was--I can’t really remember if I did it out loud or not. That’s when she cried out. I didn’t understand the cry exactly, but I knew she wanted to be my friend. She let me pet her for a second and then she took off. Then I went home. It couldn’t have been that long because I wasn’t late for dinner. I think it was faster the next time, when you were there. Maybe.”

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“Okay I’ll try again.”

I took a deep breath. Mia pointed to the place that she started following the lines, a place near where the most circles intersected. I shook my head. “Is it supposed to give me a headache?”

“It didn’t give me one!” she grimaced. “Oh, Max, I hope I’m not the only one of us that can do this!”

“Ok I have an idea. Why did you start from here the first time?”

“Oh, well, it seems like the middle. It seems like the most is going on there.”

“Well, to me, this part seems more interesting.” I pointed to a place where there were no circles and the most lines were intersecting.

Mia wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

“Yes, so why don’t you let me see if I can trance it up from here.”

She gave me two thumbs up and I stared at the pattern.

“You should cross your legs. And control your breathing.”

“I seem to remember that you didn’t call Ava until I stopped BOTHERING you!” I gave her a pointed look.

She tucked her head into her shoulder like she was embarrassed, but she was smiling. I crossed my freaking legs and breathed.

I could immediately tell that my idea was a good one. The lines I was staring at didn’t exactly glisten, but they started to feel more and more alive the longer I stared. I was reminded of my biology textbook’s description of xylem and phloem, the way plants carried water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves.

I heard Mia breathe in, and I looked up at her, then followed her eyes to my left hand, the one not holding the diagram, which was sitting on the log between us. Just beyond my middle finger was a little purple flower.

“Was that flower there a second ago?” I asked.

Mia shook her head, but it wasn’t necessary. I could still see the lines I had been staring at a moment ago evanescing in front of my vision, like the way tetris pieces did when I played for too long. They weren’t exactly the same as in the diagram, but they warped around the flower, some lines tracing the edge of the delicate little stem and some blossoming out from… well, the blossom.

I looked away from the flower and spotted a sapling that I assumed was there when we arrived. I concentrated on it, the lines in my vision warped around it, and the little tree grew before my eyes. Leaves unfurled, and the branches all grew longer.

“Mia, are you seeing this?”

“Yes, my fellow druid.”

I squealed a little, “Oh my god, we are druids aren’t we?”

And then we laughed until the lines faded from my vision. The tree had grown another two feet, maybe doubling in size and in number of leaves.

I sighed, this time from electric satisfaction, then asked “Do you have another sandwich?”

Mia picked the purple flower, smelled it, and put it in her hair. She smiled broadly and said, “Of course, I know what a pig you are.”