Slick stared at his hand for the millionth time, trying to focus on what Aera was telling him.

Feel it. It will feel like what matters most to you - like music, like Alice’s smile. That warmth in your heart, make it move to your will.

Aera was smiling patiently at him, making his body all warm and tingly in weird ways, like she always did for his magic training. It was a weird feeling. Like a cross between a bunch of different feelings.

Like waking up from a dream, and not knowing what was real. Like having been sitting too long, and just needing to get up and run. Like trying to hold in laughter when someone’s told a good joke and you ain’t supposed to laugh. Like trying to tell his dad to stop drinking, and just wishing with all his heart that his dad would finally come back, like when he was a kid. Like the moment when he’d first held Alice’s hand.

So many feelings at once. But all the same feeling, filling every inch of his body.

Let your heart love the very air, for it is what carries your music. Decide that the air loves you, too, and that it will move to your will.

It made no sense. But somehow, this time, as memories and feelings swept over him, it kind of did make sense. Like when he made a song - he wanted the audience to feel what he felt. He put those emotions onto paper; why couldn’t he put it into the air?

A breaking sensation filled him, like when finally giving in to the need to cry, and it all comes out. That feeling flowed, faster and faster, like his very life was pouring out of him.

Aera was smiling brighter at him, but he ignored her for now.

The air above his hand was alive, somehow. He could see it… sort of. He felt it, really, like it was a part of his own body. He tried to move, and…

“You did it!” Aera said, the disconcertingly perfect whites of her teeth showing in her smile. “Congratulations!”

The air was twisting in a little cyclone in his hand. He couldn’t see it with his eyes, but his hand felt the air moving.

A strange sort of fatigue washed over him, like the crash that follows an adrenaline rush. The air stopped moving.

“It worked,” he said, still staring in astonishment.

“It did,” she agreed. “Try again!”

That strange fatigue washed away, as she made his body all intense feeling again.

Excitement bubbled up in him. He could do magic! Real magic! He tried to focus on moving the air, but it was hard. That humming intensity in his body seemed to soak up his excitement, and it felt almost like electricity was crackling over his skin.

He glanced up at Aera, making sure he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Her smile had turned mischievous, and her eyes were twinkling with amusement, but she still looked encouraging. He figured her being amused was no reason to stop, so he focused again.

The intensity was driving him nuts, but he couldn’t hold back his excitement. He was going to do it again, and absolutely nothing was going to…

BOOM!

Aera was giggling, and he looked around in confusion, as the huge gust of wind tore through the house, slamming doors.

“Slick?!” Lou called out from upstairs. “Are you okay?”

“It’s great, sis!” he said. “I did it! I did magic!”

“Swell,” she said. “Could you try not slamming the doors?”

Aera giggled at him again, and he gave her a look. Then he looked back at his hand.

He suddenly realized how much more aware of his hand he was. It had always been there, but now it was somehow more there. Like it existed more than it had before. He could see it, or feel it, or something.

Aera leaned in closer, looking at his hand intently. She looked excited - an expression usually reserved for her garden.

“It makes sense now,” Slick said, still focusing on his hand. “I think. Maybe.”

“That feeling,” she said, her soft voice sounding unusually intense, “Spread it! Push it to me! Feel me!”

He looked at her in confusion. He didn’t know how to control it, or spread it. How would he even start to move it towards…

Oh.

He looked in surprise as it just moved. He thought about moving it towards her, and it just did. He had to want it, but that was easy.

In just a few seconds, he was aware of her, like he’d been aware of his hand. Only something was different.

“Your neck,” he said, staring at the… thing… beneath her clothes. “There ain’t no word for that… what is that?”

Another light giggle emerged from her as her smile grew.

“It is my language spell,” she said, pulling a little necklace up from under her dress. “I didn’t want to lose it again, like I did with Kito, so I put it in here. It has several people’s understanding of English, and I can also learn new words with it!”

Those words didn’t matter almost at all to him.

So that’s what magic looks like.

It was real in different ways than the normal world. It extended in directions, in dimensions, that the physical world didn’t have. His brain was balking at trying to understand this thing that he could perceive from above, below, inside, outside, and from the sides, all at once.

“As for words,” Aera went on, as though oblivious to his distraction, “When using languages that have no words for the heart of magic, we mostly use words related to sight. You might say my necklace is ‘glowing,’ for instance.”

“It’s not, though,” he said. “It’s just… there.”

She nodded. “And myself, too, correct?”

He blinked, and immediately understood what she meant. The necklace was really there, intensely so. She was also there, but it felt more… relaxed. And she was surrounded by… nothing. Even beneath her. The floor was just a different type of… nothingness.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You can see magic and life, now,” she said. “If you wish to find different words to describe it, feel free! And please share,” she added with a laugh.

He half smiled at her, and just lost himself in his new awareness.

“It’ll take time for you to make sense of what you can see,” she said. "Don't worry if it’s confusing for a while."

“I’m kind of tired,” he said after a few minutes.

More like dazed, really.

“That’s to be expected,” she said. “Even with me infusing you with extra power, there’s only so much an inexperienced soul can take. Rest. You’ll regain your strength within hours at most.”

“‘Kay,” he said, and pulled himself to his feet.

He started turning towards his room when he saw an angel.

A warm feeling flowed from her, like being a kid again and racing friends down a hill on a summer day. Her face was the same face he’d seen and kissed so many times, and yet it was there in a way he’d never seen before.

She was so beautiful. She’d always been, inside and out, but now, it was plain to see as the brunette color of her hair.

“I can do magic, Alice,” he said, smiling his traditional lopsided grin at her.

“Oh!” she said. “Really? I didn’t want to interrupt, but… can I see?”

For that angel, he’d do anything. It was somehow easy to feel that warmth inside his heart, even without Aera’s help…

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

“He’ll be alright,” I said, suppressing a chuckle, as Slick collapsed to his knees next to Alice. “He’s just dizzy and disoriented. It happens.”

“No harm done?” she asked, helping him get steady on his feet.

“None,” I assured her. “He just needs rest, and to learn his limits, that’s all. He’s a magic user, now.”

“That’s so incredible,” Alice said. “Could… I mean, I know you feel indebted to Slick and all, but I was wondering… I mean, it really worked… could you teach me?”

“We can try,” I said, smiling despite my uncertainty.

She grinned at me, then looked back at Slick when he mumbled something incoherently.

It had taken months of practice to get Slick his magic, mostly due to the fact that he’d had a hard time staying fully sober long enough to really put in the focus.

It didn’t help that he was trying to learn Aeros magic - the magic of controlled chaos, of thought, of sound, and - of course - wind. Of the six elemental types, I was only good at two - Aquas, my natural talent, and Flamus, mostly an inevitable result of living with my mother.

I had been trained in Aeros, but almost exclusively in mind magic. I’d been taught a few basic mind magic spells, in case of emergencies. Mind reading, memory wiping, that sort of thing.

Naturally, this didn’t make me the most qualified teacher for trying to figure out sound based magics.

But it wasn’t like there was anyone better around for the job.

Alice’s interest in magic was more general, though that contributed to her failure. Magic was will made manifest, which required a degree of intensity within one’s being. A shame that most of my own emotional intensity seemed to result in tears, more than anything else.

Sadly, Alice had no major drive. Her failure was all but certain. I wouldn’t give up on her, though. I expected that she’d give up after enough hours of failure.

At heart, Lou and Slick were magic users, whether or not Lou accepted it. They had the fire. Dorothy probably would have been, too, in her youth.

Alice, though...

Well, my predictions panned out. Her efforts lasted a week.

When I’d arrived in this land, I’d been a mere seventeen years old. By the time I’d first enjoyed the physical pleasures of sex with Benjamin, I was nearly nineteen.

By the time I’d turned twenty, my life had become almost staggeringly complacent.

Benjamin and I had grown quite comfortable with each other. We never had any particular intensity, but our time together was peaceful and thoroughly enjoyable. He occupied a great deal of my time and energy.

Lou and Dorothy were having an excellent time with the pawn shop. It was quite profitable, and popular, too. We were making plenty of money from the shop, such that we had no major financial concerns.

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The band wasn’t doing well, though. They’d not done well, after that first song’s popularity died off. Benjamin was fine, since he’d simply tucked the money away and lived the same as he had before, just without his job. Rick and Johnny didn’t share their details, but they had to be on the brink of financial collapse.

Slick was getting desperate. He kept trying new song ideas, and they kept on not being particularly well received. It wasn’t that they were bad, per se, but he kept on trying to share some deep message, and it seemed like what people wanted was something like Swing Boogie - something that was just plain fun.

The closer he came to his own financial collapse - which, in his view, was relying on the pawn shop’s income - the more he sank into his alcohol and despair. Alice had halfway moved in with us during the good times. Only halfway, since apparently, living together without being married was an extreme societal faux pas. What with his decline into forgetting his problems with alcohol, Alice had stopped coming over at all.

Slick seemed to be getting an itch under his skin, a desperate push for another major hit. He even pushed me to learn the piano! Between him and Benjamin, I relented, and let them teach me.

“I need to do something to help Slick and Alice,” I said, as I rubbed the ache out of my fingers, with a touch of magic.

“Aera, you know that that’s not up to you,” Benjamin said with a smile. “Now, try that piece again, but try to go more smoothly this time.”

I huffed at him slightly and put my fingers back on the ivory keys. Fur Elise was lovely, even at the slow tempo I was playing it at.

“They love each other, though,” I said, slipping a little on one of the notes, and making Benjamin wince. “If they separate because of Slick’s self absorbed idiocy, that’d be depressing.”

“What a lovely thing to say,” Benjamin said wryly.

“It is true, though,” I said, stumbling again and sighing. “This song is really quite difficult.”

“You could try concentrating on it more,” he said.

“Bah,” I said. “All it needs is practice, not concentration. With time, it will become simple. I will merely be patient.”

He gave me a bemused smile.

“Concentrating on it really does help,” he said.

I shrugged. “Why invite frustration? Of far greater importance to me is the happiness of those I hold dear to me. Like Slick and Alice.”

He laughed, the sound broken by another wince, when I messed up an entire section.

“What Slick needs is to grow up more,” Benjamin said, his voice taking on a more serious tone. “That’s what Alice needs from him. He’s lost in childhood fantasy.”

“You think the band’s success is a fantasy?” I asked.

“It’s not about the band,” he said. “It’s about Slick. He’s tied his whole existence to the idea of being famous and rich. He’s obsessing about it instead of dealing with the fact that it’s not been happening. The band makes reasonable money, just playing at clubs. But he - and Rick and Johnny, for that matter - aren’t willing to accept that. Sometimes it’s important to think about the reality of the future, and plan accordingly.”

I caught something in his tone that made me stop and look at him. The expression on his face was quite serious.

The fact that he’d been talking about accepting the reality of the future was making me uncomfortable. He’d been bringing it up a lot lately. So I decided to focus on the song, and started over.

“So you’ve been making plans?” I asked, as casually as I could.

He was silent for a moment. I became acutely aware that no one else was in the house. My intense focus on the music actually did produce better results.

“It can be hard to plan for a future, when some things aren’t known,” he said. “But I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Have you put any thought into it?”

I shook my head and continued to concentrate.

Really, Fur Elise was a lovely song.

“You’ll be turning twenty one soon,” he said. “We’ve been together for nearly three years. I think… I think that we’re good together, Aera.”

“I think so, too,” I said.

He was silent again. I could feel nervousness start to radiate off of him, and that made me nervous in turn. My fingers slipped on the keys again.

He was watching me, weighing something in his mind. I didn’t know what to say, so I just said nothing, nervously carrying the song to its conclusion.

I could feel it pouring off of him, when he’d made some decision, and resolutely decided to carry it through.

“I’ve been hoping for quite some time that you never finish that portal of yours,” he said quietly. “I love you, Aera, and I want you to stay here. With me.”

It turns out that Fur Elise is lovely, even at an extremely slow tempo. I swallowed.

“Stay here,” I repeated.

“Is it so terrible here?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, it’s not terrible. And… and I do love you, but…”

“But the question is, do you love me enough?” he asked, and his voice caught in his throat.

“I…”

Beautiful song. Really, absolutely lovely. I could go faster. It sounded nice a little faster than I’d been playing it. Wasn’t it so pretty?

“I’m getting older, Aera,” he said, his voice low. “I know what I want my old age to look like. I want to be in my own house. I want to be surrounded by my grandchildren. I want to use my old, shaking, withered hands to teach them music. And most of all, I want a wife there with me, holding my hand into my final days.”

I was breathing faster, but my hands were starting to shake with nervousness. I started slipping up on more notes. But Benjamin didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to even hear the music.

There was only… me.

One note at a time. One moment at a time. That’s what I’d offered, back then. And he’d accepted, right?

For now, he’d said.

I played one note at a time. It wasn’t working. If I didn’t think about the notes that were coming, it was shaky, broken, and not truly a melody at all.

“Aera,” he said, and my name held a wealth of meaning on his lips. “I want you to be my wife. I want you to bear my children. I want you by my side for the rest of our lives.”

Our lives. But I… I was supposed to live for hundreds of years. Did he want to live for centuries with me?

To even imagine that, I had to accept the idea of giving up ever going home. Of never seeing my little brothers again. Of never hearing my mother going on another crazy tirade about some government or other. Of never seeing my father give her that smile that made her writhe and settle down, glaring at him impudently.

Of staying in this world, that I’d been promised would attack me for my very existence. Of… what, hiding like this, for the rest of my life?

I’d stopped playing. I hadn’t realized. I looked at my fingers. They looked blurry. Oh. My face was wet.

I didn’t want to feel afraid. That’s why I’d been playing my song, one note at a time.

My hands were trembling with fear.

A warm hand grasped mine. The warmth was almost enough to drive away the fear.

Almost.

“I’m getting older, and I’m starting to run out of time,” he said. “I’ll be forty years old next year. It’s time for me to look ahead. So I need to ask.”

The room felt strangely cold. How I loathed fear.

“It doesn’t have to be now,” he said. “It doesn’t even have to be very soon. I can wait. But I have to know what my future holds, and if you’ll be in it with me.”

He took a deep breath.

“Aera, my beautiful love,” he said. “Do you love me enough? Will you be my wife?”

A wide and terrifying future loomed ahead of me. It was as dark as any childhood nightmare, and for much the same reason. It is human to fear the unknown, and how dearly I feared it.

Tears fell faster.

“I…”

How to respond? What to say? What did I even feel?

“I can’t…” I started to say, but I couldn’t even speak.

I can’t think! I can’t handle this yet! I don’t know! I want to stay, I want my family, I don’t know what I want! I can’t decide anything like this!

My throat was too tight for any of these words. Lost in my fearful uncertainty, I leapt from the piano and rushed outside to my garden.

How? How was this place, my sacred haven, still not enough? The sunlight could not warm my bones, the beauty did not reach my heart. Fear of what my future might hold… fear held the warmth back from reaching me.

I’d placed enchantments on the thorny hedge to permit Benjamin’s passage. He, and only he, was permitted into this sacred place without me around.

“I understand,” he said, from the hedge.

The heartbreak in his voice… pain joined the fear, and lashed me into silent trembling. I clung to the rosebush, the very bush we’d knelt at when I’d shared my secret with him.

The words I’d said… I can’t… he’d taken that as my answer...

“I’ve always known I’ve loved you the most,” he said, and I couldn’t breathe. “I wanted it to be enough. It’s… it’s okay, Aera. These years… they’ve been the best of my life.”

No… this sounded like a farewell…

Speak! I screamed in my head. Tell him to stay, to wait, to give you time to think!

My mouth moved against the bush, but I could make no sound.

Crushing disappointment in myself joined the fear and pain.

“I’ll always love you,” he said. “But I have to move forward with my life.”

He stood there for a moment, as though begging me with his presence to tell him to stay.

“Benjamin…” I said.

His name. Only his name. That was all I could say.

The only sound was birds chirping in a cruel mockery of this moment.

“I love you,” he said, and it sounded like he died a little with those words. “Thank you for the time we’ve had together. I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life. Goodbye, Aera.”

“No… Benjamin…” I whispered.

But it was too late. He’d slipped back through the hedge. I extended my magesense to him, politeness be damned. I cried out at the feel of his spirit. Pain. Disappointment. Resignation.

“Please…” I said to the empty garden.

But only the birds heard my plea.

The sun was setting before I had any semblance of coherent thoughts.

I’d… I’d lost him.

No.

I shook my head. That was selfish. He was not a thing to be had or lost. He was a person. And the greater truth was this.

I had hurt him.

I had hurt him, my Benjamin, because I was a coward. He, too, was shy and fearful, but he had taken every step and every sacrifice from the beginning. Asking me on dates, confessing his desire, sacrificing his cultural standards to give me pleasures, sacrificing time from the family he desired…

All for me. All because I’d been too afraid to do anything. He’d been trying to get me to look forward for months, and I’d dodged the subject, too cowardly to face the reality of my situation.

This realization didn’t have to hurt him so. If I’d said no to a future with him ages ago, this would have been so much kinder. And if I’d been willing to talk to him about the future, as any sensible pairing did, then this…

He hadn’t dropped it on me all of a sudden. I’d given him no choice.

And it wasn’t even necessarily a no. I had no idea what my answer was. Even if I decided yes, and to go back to him, that didn’t undo the heartache of this moment.

Tears flowed again.

This pain he was suffering was utterly and completely my fault. Because I was a coward.

I looked at the sky. It was beautiful. Golden and red clouds were a powerful contrast against the azure sky.

But it was more than beauty. The setting sun… the passing of another day…

The unending march of time.

I needed to look forward, and face my future immediately. If I chose to accept Benjamin’s proposal, I would tell him as quickly as I myself knew.

The golden clouds faded to silver, and moonlight was shining on my tear stricken face.

My children. It had come down to my children.

If I stayed, I only saw two possibilities.

I tell them the truth about my heritage, and teach them magic. In so doing, I condemn them to a life of fear and hiding, like me. If I, or they, are discovered at any time, our peaceful existence ends immediately. Either we exist on the world stage in some way, which Benjamin would not be able to handle, or we are destroyed in some way, as the others had predicted.

Or I hide from them their heritage, letting the memories of my family and my world die with me. I keep magic from them, and live in hiding from my own children. Worse, I risk facing their deaths from something easily fixable, such as disease. At least in this possibility, if I am revealed, they need not necessarily suffer with me.

Though, of course, they would feel betrayed.

I felt sick. Curling into a ball, I nestled myself beneath the rosebush.

There were two truths that mattered. I would not live my life in hiding, save as a temporary measure. And I would not condemn my children to either of those fates.

The conclusion, then, was clear.

It was impossible.

Salty tears watered the rosebush as I let myself mourn the future that could never be. A peaceful life with Benjamin. Children laughing, running past, with his dark eyes. Music filling the halls.

Fatigue began to blur my thoughts as the sky began to brighten. I had… I had to do something.

On the rosebush, a strange flower was growing. Still tended, three years later, in an ongoing tribute of memory.

I plucked the purple daisy with green polkadots and cradled it like a child. My Benjamin…

Fortunately, I did not need these blurry eyes to cast my magic.

This was a difficult spell, but my parting gift deserved my best. Every cell within this flower grew still, locked within the moment. I whispered silence, silence within time itself, to its silken softness. I nearly passed out from exhaustion, but I refused to give in.

It was done.

This silly little flower would never wilt. The petals would remain as soft as the finest silks for so long as the magic held. If I’d crafted it properly, it should last at least a century - longer, if given any sort of power source.

I took it into the house, where Lou gave me a confused look. She watched in silence as I found a piece of paper, and gently burned words in flowing script onto the page.

My Benjamin,

I love you enough, but the future you desire simply cannot be. I wish that it were possible. I will never forget you, and I will forever treasure the memories. I have made this flower ever living, as a gift to you.

With all my love and aching regret,

Aera Koryn.

I folded the letter. I took another paper and used Aquas to weave it into a string, of sorts, gently binding the letter to the daisy.

“Lou,” I said, my voice barely audible.

But she was standing right next to me. Supporting me, even in her silence. Tears started welling again. The accursed things.

“Could you arrange for Benjamin to receive this?” I asked, holding up the letter.

“Sure thing, Aera,” she said, with unusual gentleness. “Are you… are you alright?”

“No,” I said, turning towards my room. “No, and I don’t believe I ever will be again.”

I wished that could have been the end. I wished time would just stop, that there were no more words, no more thoughts, no more tears.

But time doesn’t stop. It is merciless and cruel. This world, with its illusions of a happy future, was cruel. Even worse than the rampaging monsters, and oft evil gods, and frequently insane spellcasters, and all the other horrors of my world.

On some level, I knew that wasn’t true. This world was, realistically, much better for almost everyone. But my world, I’d been prepared for. My dangers, I could overcome. My family could support me with advice that made sense. It was familiar, and I’d never needed my family more than in that moment.

My brothers would tease me. My mother would hold me tight and prattle on about all the ways she’d fix things, even utterly ludicrous ones. My father would sing a little song, letting me just rest against him, content in his unending peace, reassured by his confidence.

I would see them again. I would do whatever it took to go back home. I could not remain in this world.