Lucy looked at the blue light in front of her.

It emanated from the stone, shining like rays from a tiny submerged sun. And like the sun, it pulled, as though a great weight dragged her inexorably toward it.

The light was blue in her Awareness, but it shifted and shimmered, a field of crackling power she was surprised she could approach at all.

But approach she did, and as she swam forward into the veil of light, she felt the power of it prickling at her sensitive cilia, and the thought came unbidden to her mind that she was brushing up against something ancient and majestic.

Then Rikorlak said the word ‘radiation,’ and she froze, the image in her mind suddenly shifting into something more terrifying than majestic, a snarling beast with lightning fur.

I guess radiation is pretty ancient too.

She hurriedly flicked herself backward in the water, ushering a protesting Sam back as well.

“It’s probably harmless,” Rikorlak continued, as the glow from his membrane began to fade.

But once the thought of radiation had entered Lucy’s mind, she couldn’t help but think about ionizing particles and damaged genes.

“We shouldn’t get too close,” she heard herself saying, even as she felt her body tensing to move forward of its own accord.

Why do I feel so drawn toward it? I mean, it is beautiful, but it’s not worth dying to get a closer look!

She forced herself to continue her backward trajectory, pushing her way through the water until she was past the curve of the tunnel she’d come through to get to the chamber.

Rikorlak trailed Lucy and Sam rather slowly, but if he wanted to fry his ribosomes, that was his business.

Lucy on the other hand had seen enough documentaries and read enough accounts of radiation poisoning to put some pep into the sweep of her flagellum.

Maybe where he’s from, the population evolved to harness radiation.

It was possible her own single-celled body had some natural resistance, but Lucy didn’t want to spend time basking in the pretty, possibly deadly glowing light before she figured out a way to experiment with it more safely.

Assume it’s dangerous for now; then get more information and plan.

Once around the corner and a safe distance down the tunnel, Lucy stopped to ask questions. She started with the obvious.

“What did you mean it feels magical? How can you tell?” she asked, sending off her communication molecules in an eager stream.

“It’s…uh, it’s glowing,” Rikorlak replied slowly. “And, well, I don’t know how much you know about magic, but glowing is a pretty good indicator.”

Lucy felt her membrane flush slightly.

“I don’t know anything about magic,” she said honestly. Jade had used magic in front of Lucy, but explained nothing about it.

She waited for Rikorlak to continue talking, but he floated silently until she directly asked him to explain, moving only to block Sam from wriggling back into the light-filled chamber.

“I can try,” he said finally, “but I’m not sure how much it will help.”

He stopped to gather his words.

“This is not an area of study I am well versed in, but it is well known that advanced magic is a rather private and individual discipline. Idiosyncratic, even; what works for one person may not always work for another.”

He paused again, like he was waiting to make sure she understood and accepted his caveat.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Lucy bobbed up and down eagerly, all embarrassment forgotten in the face of what might be one of the defining moments of her life.

“The sort of magic native to my species and many others was once used only for survival, but as time went on, many learned to use their natural magic for more specialized purposes.”

He works for Simon, she reminded herself. I’m not sure I want to know what ‘specialized’ means.

She could only imagine the kinds of strange and fantastical rituals he must know. Images of cobwebbed cellars and grimoires filled her mind, of candle-lit pentagrams made of bleached bones and dripping blood.

“I use my own magic primarily to debug software and design algorithms, for example.”

Lucy paused to take this in.

Right. Analytics.

“You mean…magical algorithms?” she asked hopefully, to which he shrugged.

“Sometimes. But magic isn’t always as fantastical as you might expect. I mean, sometimes it is, but…” he trailed off, swishing his fin in agitation as he struggled to explain.

“Are there any sort of basic principles?” she tried. “Or general ideas?”

After a few more moments to gather his thoughts, Rikorlak replied.

“Magic is a broad term,” he said finally, “but it’s a sort of…undifferentiated energy that has taken a specific form, if that makes sense.”

It didn’t really, but Lucy didn’t say anything, still excited to hear more.

“Different creatures make use of it in different ways. I’m not really up to date on the current theoretical understanding, but as far as I’m aware, no one knows when or how it first evolved, just that it quickly—”

“Evolved?” Lucy asked, unable to keep herself from interrupting.

Rikorlak looked uncomfortable. Sam bobbed slowly up and down in the water, probably quite confused.

“I…think so? Like I said, I never really studied it. It’s quite common in—well, not everywhere, but where I’m from at least, everyone uses magic. It’s just a part of life.”

“Can you use it now?”

He shook from side to side.

“I would need my fins, and I’m not sure it would work in this body anyway.”

Lucy pointed a questioning hand to the fin sticking out of his back.

“My dorsal fins, I mean.”

After that, Lucy realized this conversation might take a while, and the three of them were still floating in the tunnel they’d hidden from the worms in.

They were too far away now for her to actually see the glowing light, but as she stared into the darkness of the tunnel, she imagined she could still feel it, like a moth feeling the heat of a lamp.

A nice possibly radioactive lamp.

Lucy had no interest in being the moth that got zapped because it couldn’t resist the pretty light, but it was still difficult to leave it behind for now.

Reluctantly, she turned away, swimming with the others back out of the tunnel through the hole she had chipped in the stone, then gathering up worm corpses in her arms from the alcove where she'd killed them.

She badly wanted to know why Rikorlak would need dorsal fins to do data-related magic, but decided that was a question that might as well be answered in their own cave.

----------------------------------------

Back in the main chamber of their cave, Lucy listened intently to the last of Rikorlak’s winding lecture.

“Magic,” he concluded, “is what you make of it.”

Lucy considered telling him that he would make a good guru, but he had tried valiantly to explain something that wasn't easily put into words, and even if he clearly hadn’t been lying about his lack of knowledge on the theoretical side, she appreciated the fact that he was willing to teach her anything at all.

For him, magic was no big deal. For Lucy, it felt like a breakthrough waiting to happen.

“Right. One last question,” she said. “Why can’t you tell for sure if the light is magic?”

“Well,” he answered, “I’m pretty confident it’s magic of some kind. The thing is, magical energy can take all kinds of forms, so it’s not necessarily an either/or sort of situation.”

Lucy saw where this was heading.

Great. Magical radiation. Just what a single-celled organism needs to thrive.

She bobbed up and down in acknowledgement and thanks.

After their conversation, she still felt like she was missing some pieces, but she knew more than she had known before, and that was the important part. She could always ask more questions later.

Lucy went over the main points again, etching them in her memory.

One: Magic is a kind of psychically reactive energy that interacts with the physical world in various ways.

Two: The ability to use it is usually evolved, and isn’t considered strange in the wider universe.

Three: Rikorlak doesn’t have a damn clue how I can learn to use it.

The last point was her issue, of course. Hearing about it from Rikorlak was all well and good, but Lucy wanted to find a way to learn about magic on her own, rather than relying on secondhand information. She would use whatever knowledge she could gain, but eventually, she would have to get some practical experience to really wrap her head around things.

The only problem was that ‘practical experience’ would involve possibly damaging her genetic code beyond repair. And unless Lucy figured out another source, the glowing blue stone in the wall was her only access to magical energy.

Despite the danger, Lucy felt a familiar hunger burning away inside her.

She was curious. Ravenously curious. She wanted to make sense of this new phenomenon, to understand where it came from and why it worked and how it manifested in the world.

Why hadn’t magical ability evolved on Earth yet, for example? Was that tiny bit of blue light they had seen the first magical energy on the planet?

But most of all, she admitted, she was curious about one thing, in the face of which all her intellectual questions slid lightly into the background.

How do I use it?