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Mirror, Mirror...

Both a Little Scared

Updated July 28th, 2012

I admitted it freely: I had a lot to learn still. In the months - or however long it was - that I was in the time bubble, I really only learned how to keep myself safe and change into one form on my own. I was still completely unfamiliar with the whole new world that I was now in. It was a roller coaster of a magic carpet ride where all I could do was hang on for dear life.

"You also learned to make clothing for yourself," Shadow observed.

"Yeah. I was hoping it would take a while longer," Robin said with a small pout. She glanced up sharply at my confused look. I had to get used to the fact that even though Shad was the only one who could read my mind, other magic users were still very aware of their surroundings. "The clothing you make as part of your form is you, so when I sense you, I see your clothing."

I was no less confused for a short time after that, but she didn't explain further, so I thought on it. Finally it made sense. "Normal clothing is invisible to magic senses," I murmured. She nodded with a sly grin. I made a face. "Is every wizard a voyeur?"

"Oh no. You're just a looker, kiddo," she said defensively. The griffiness shot a glare at her. "Well... Okay, yes, most are after a while," she admitted sheepishly. "But with hundreds of years to live, it's better than the alternatives of becoming bad. It doesn't hurt anybody and it's technically positive energy." She looked off to the side briefly. "And you are a looker," she muttered under her breath.

I chortled. Just another thing on the list of things to get used to.

"Also remember that I don't have to touch your normal clothing, or anything else outside the magic world," Shad told me, "but I do have to touch your formed clothing, because I touch you and it's part of you. That same applies to a lot of magic situations."

The griffiness gave me a measured look. "If he's going to hide from us under formed clothing, he should work on it better. This stuff has no seams and doesn't really look right."

I blinked and looked down at my own clothing. She was right. The first attempt I had made was much worse, but this still didn't look quite right. I realized that I had never seen seamless pants before except spandex, and this was definitely not spandex.

"It takes some getting used to," Shad told me comfortingly. "It took you time to learn a form on your own because you had to get the details of the form down before you could make it look right. The same applies to the clothing you form. Until you have the details down, it's not easy to get it right. We'll work on it next, unless you want to make these two girls happy by wearing normal world clothing."

Honestly, it didn't matter to me anymore if they saw. That was an odd realization to make, but after months in the time bubble with nothing on, modesty was quite out the door. That wasn't Shad tweaking my thoughts either. But it did make sense to learn to make passable clothing. If I was going to change forms, regular clothing wouldn't change with me, but the clothing I formed as part of my form would.

Ashley patted my shoulder lightly with her massive paw. "You have a capable famulus to train you the basics, so I'll check on you later. When you're ready to come meet the fold, let me know."

Robin looked at the griffin. "I live close by, I'll help keep an eye on him also. He can protect himself now, but I know a lot of things will still be curious. The dangerous ones shouldn't be an issue, but the friendly ones are more likely to approach him. Especially after what happened with his famulus."

"Oh? What happened?" Ashley asked curiously.

"Er, sorry, not my place to say," Robin murmured. She shot me a look, "Best for you not to say too much either."

"True," Shadow said sullenly. She rubbed up against my leg. "It's a little scary, but I'm sure we'll make it through."

I nodded, starting to relax on my own at the idea of having a griffin in my apartment. "You know I'll do the best I can, Shadow."

Ashley changed back into human form. "I'll leave you all be, then. Just will-summon me if you need my attention."

"Will summon?"

"I'll explain it later," Shad said.

"I've got all the info I need," Robin said with a shrug. "I'll definitely need to consult with gramps on it. But I'll see you soon too, kay?"

I nodded. It looked like I was going to be all alone with my famulus here again soon. The suspicion was correct, as both women bid me farewell and departed.

"So what now?" I asked, closing the door behind them and flopping on the couch.

Shad jumped onto my lap in small feline form and turned in a circle. Then she stepped off onto the couch and turned into a huge panther, the couch creaking as she... wait... he... spun around again and draped his forepaws across my lap. "Well, you know what I really want," he said with a sly grin. "But I'm still behaving for you," he exclaimed cheerily. "I think we should work on your clothing really quick. You have work in a night or two and with things potentially wanting to say hi, it'll be better if you are in formed clothing. It allows more flexibility in case of an emergency."

I jumped. I had completely forgotten about work. All the time in the bubble had no outside world to worry about, but now the bubble was down and the real world was rearing its ugly head. Not that work was bad, but still, I was not used to it again quite yet.

"Don't worry," Shad said, rubbing his cheek against my tummy. "We're so linked that I can help you there even." He looked up at me and grinned. But then his ears set to the side a little and I could tell he wasn't completely happy despite the huge smile across his maw. He caught my look and looked down at my lap, focusing suddenly and very intently on grooming his paw.

That didn't fool me. I could sense the worry in his mind. "What's wrong?" I asked softly.

"Noffing," he muttered around a lick, focusing even more intently on grooming his toes and trying to push my awareness out of his mind.

I frowned and reached down to catch his chin, forcing him to look up at me. "Shutting me out doesn't change the fact that something is wrong," I told him, gently chucking his chin. "Something has you worried."

He looked down briefly, then sighed. "Sorry... I won't shut you out, but I'd rather not talk about it right now." He let me back in. It was obvious he was worried and he was trying hard not to be. But while our link allowed him to read my mind freely if I didn't lock him out, I could only sense him at the surface except when he directly chose to share more with me. I could at least tell that he didn't want to be worried, which was both good and bad. The fact that he was unable to stop from worrying was the bad part.

"Let's work on my forming clothing," I said as cheerily as I could. I hoped maybe I could distract him from his concern.

He nodded and smiled up at me, craning his neck up to give my face a lick. "Yeah, this stuff looks halfway okay from a distance, but anybody who actually looks at it close up will really wonder." He got off my lap to allow me to stand.

We spent about two hours with me inspecting clothing details on regular clothing and getting my mind wrapped around the tiny intricacies. Then after each part, I'd work on making my formed clothing in a similar or identical fashion. Shad was very happy with my learning skills and the speed I got concepts down. I personally thought that if this wasn't so absolutely insane, I'd probably learn faster. I'd always been quick at picking up new concepts.

Finally he was satisfied with the level of detail in my clothing and nodded, putting his paws up on my shoulders so he could look me in the eye. "Now for the next part that's important," he said sagely. A female, humanoid Shad formed behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, unbuckling and unfastening my pants. "We need to try to take them off and have you maintain their existence when we do."

I jumped slightly and pulled away from her just a little, but she tugged me back at the same time as her male feral form pushed my shoulders back to keep me there. I gulped and nodded.

"See? There's a problem already," she said. "Since the clothes are a part of you, you left them attached to you." She tried to slip her finger under my waistband to show me, making me jump as her fingertip dug into me. My clothing, though loose in some places as it should be, was physically attached to me.

We worked on it together for a few minutes. It was the oddest endeavor I had undertaken thus far. But soon I nodded and she reached around me again. This time the pants unfastened and fell to my ankles without a problem, my boxers shortly following them. I felt slightly guilty. I could tell how much she wanted to grope me, but she was still behaving.

She lifted my shirt off over my head and it came away from me properly. Then before she took it fully off my wrists, she paused. "Ready?" I nodded and focused on the shirt for this first time, intent on getting it right. She lifted the shirt away from my hands.

A sensation of vertigo struck with such intensity that I nearly fell over. I felt her quelch it as best she could. The fact that she still had to catch me physically showed just how strong the issue was. She could completely block the pain of having my throat ripped out, but she couldn't fully block this. Serious business!

I came back about my wits and realized I was sitting cross legged on the ground. A panther was curled behind me to hold me up, while the original one was still supporting my shoulders. "What happened?" I asked, shaking my head wearily.

"You didn't deal with the divisive situation well," she said behind me. "You did better than most do on their first try though." I asked about it. "Well, you see how I am two cats now?" I nodded. "That's a division. I need to be aware of both of myselves as separate entities. Though they're both me, they need to be able to operate independently and simultaneously."

I patted his foreleg in front of me and nodded. "That was... wow... Okay. Yeah." I felt slightly less-fluent in speech than normal at the moment.

"The first time is always the worst by a huge factor," he said. "Always best to do it with a non-living split off so you don't need to deal with two sets of senses and motor coordination and such. Now, let's try again. It should hopefully be okay this time with me helping you."

The panther behind me changed to a humanoid cat again and helped me stand. I took a deep breath and re-formed my clothing. After that last one almost made me feel sick, I was not looking forward to this.

She took ahold of my shirt and lifted it off my head. I could feel her help me focus as it reached my hands. Then she lifted it off my hands.

It was... well... weird. Almost like a snapping sensation as my will tried to keep it "connected" to me, but then she nudged my will and let it drop away instead. I didn't get dizzy or sick this time at all, though I could tell she was blocking a tiny bit that I would have experienced otherwise. I was definitely disoriented though.

"Focus on your physical body for a moment," she said, nudging my mind that way. It helped. She very slowly guided me into my magical awareness of the shirt. It was... well, it was technically a part of me. It wasn't "dead", per se, since I wasn't technically actually alive. The issue was that now instead of having one solid magical sense viewpoint of the surroundings, I had two.

I mean, really, the shirt had no eyes, so it wasn't like I was seeing things. No nerves, so no touch or smell. But I didn't realize before now just how much she had been honing my magical senses when we were in the time bubble. It was a shock. Slowly fading, but still a shock.

With a small twist of my will, I cut off my magical senses. It wasn't something that came naturally, and the jump from both Shad's forms showed me that my action utterly shocked her. But for me, it was as if I had just gone numb. I could see, I could taste, smell, hear, feel... but these were nothing compared to what I had just blinded myself to. The world went unreal to me.

That in and of itself was a shocking realization. I didn't feel like I did before I ever found the mirror at the yard sale. I felt less. Much less.

I felt her arms slip under my armpits again as I slumped, letting my magical sense reopen and gathering in the world around me. My breath came out in a woosh. I didn't realize I had been holding it. I gasped for air for a moment, though only out of instinct. She let me down to the ground carefully and this time I curled my knees up to my chest and hugged them.

"You're a sorcerer," she said softly, stroking my hair. "You've had the extra senses for all the time you've been alive, even if you didn't realize it. Closing your senses like that would be like... wow..." She hugged me and rocked me softly, trying to console me. Even with her comforting closeness, my mind was racing around in indecipherable circles for what seemed like hours. When I finally took another deep breath and got my mind to slow down and relax, it had only been a few minutes, but good lord, that was bad.

One of the thoughts that had been flitting in the noise in my mind suddenly pushed itself forward. I shuddered, hugging my knees closer to myself. She was keeping my mind from shutting down, but I still had to work this out on my own.

"I never knew my mother or father," I whispered. "The first thing I remember at all was being found in the park when I was three. I went through centers and homes and such, but..." I shivered. "They talked in private sometimes. I went through a lot of medical stuff for a while and then it stopped. I thought they were worried about me, and I just wanted to be more normal. I didn't tell them that, but I was happy when they stopped taking me to doctors a little while after."

I had flashbacks suddenly. Sleeping in my room while I could barely hear low voices outside the door. The tests were all wrong. The machines had to be working, but they didn't work for me. They had no idea what to make of it, so they wanted to try more tests.

Then my foster keepers at the time getting upset when they wanted to cart me off to a facility. I remembered them shouting at the men, chasing them out of the house. They thought I was asleep, but the shouting woke me up. I cried that night. I wasn't right. I was broken. I just wished with all my heart that I would be normal and my foster family wouldn't have to shout, and the doctors could stop poking me.

I went to the doctors again the next day, and they still poked me, but they were different this time. They were... well... happy with the results. They got lots of them together and talked about all the little numbers and squiggles on the screens and on the papers. Within a week, they were all happy and I only had to go back a few more times after that. It was much better.

I snapped back to reality. Shad was behind me in a humanoid form, her legs around mine and hugging me tightly, her chin resting on my shoulder. A panther form of her was in front of me, female now, staring into my face intently. "I..." I swallowed hard, my throat dry. "What am I?"

"You're you," she said in front of me while her form behind me licked my ear softly. "You're a sorcerer, and you're you."

A sorcerer. I was made entirely of magic. I was... "I'm... I'm not even slightly human, am I?" I asked in a tiny voice. She didn't have to answer. I didn't give her a chance. It was a statement I just made, not a question. I didn't have a mother or a father. I was never born. The squiggles on the paper... DNA testing. They didn't find any at first. My blood cell counts were... well... wrong. Everything about the four year old I was, was fake. I was magic. I was nothing but magic energy in the shape of a human, and not doing a good job of it at first.

I felt empty. I felt like my whole life was a sham. I was not even human. I was not even a perso...

"NO!" she barked at me. That jerked me out of my self-pity. "You are YOU." She squeezed me tightly from behind while continuing to speak in her feral form in front of me. "What is a human anyway? A chunk of meat and bones with a soul. Mages, warlocks, necromancers... all bags of meat. Humans and animals and trees and rocks too. You are magic, but you have a soul."

I still felt the creeping doubt. Did I? Was I anything?

"You do!!" she insisted. "Famuli don't even really work on the same concept as souls in this world do, but you recognize me as a person. If I don't have anything that really counts as a soul and I'm a person, then you can be no less."

But if everything had a soul, what differentiated between a human and a dog, or a tree? Just the shape of the meat or wood. I wasn't even meat or wood. I could be a human SHAPE... or a shirt...

I jumped as huge paws caught either side of my face. She was still in a feral panther form in front of me, but now she was sitting on her haunches so her forelegs were free. "I am less than you. If you deny that you're a person, you deny I'm a person too." It almost got me out of my blue funk.

Her claws clenched, pricking the back of my head and neck, and I jolted into looking her in the eyes again. Golden eyes. They drew me in through the shadows of her fur and I found myself falling into them mentally. I focused on them, feeling her other body behind me as I slouched lightly against her. I was afraid. I feared myself in a way that not even she could just block or turn off like a switch.

"When you died, I was afraid," she murmured. "When you gave yourself to me, I was afraid. A famulus has feelings. We can feel fear, and pleasure, and pain, and happiness. We can't feel love. Despite this, I love you. That makes me afraid. But I wouldn't give it up for anything. Not even being released back to my own world."

She lurched forward and kissed me. The strangeness of being kissed by a feral panther was... well... completely lost. It was her. No matter what she was, it was her. Through our link, I could feel her fear. But I could feel her love. Like the gold of her eyes, it drew me in even deeper. It warmed me. It comforted me. It drove away the darkness and the fear I felt and brought forth my love for her instead.

Without a thought at all of it being odd, I embraced her and pulled her closer, returning the kiss with a loving passion that tore the doubts and fears out by their roots and incinerated them in an instant. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I reluctantly broke off the kiss and held her close, her chin resting on my other shoulder.

"We're both a little scared," I murmured, rubbing her shoulders. "But you're right. You love me, and I love you. You've got an emotion you shouldn't even be capable of, and you like it. You're a person. I'm a person..." I gave her a tight squeeze, not at all afraid of hurting her massive, powerful form. "We can both be scared, but we have each other. We can get through this together."

"We can," she said with a deep purr.

My mind was still working furiously, but now it wasn't on a downward spiral. It was some effort, but she read my intent and helped when I drew her body closer as I thought, unaware of my desires. "I'm... I'm not human, but that's okay..." I said slowly. "With everything I've seen so far, thinking as a human just restricts me."

I took a deep breath and stroked the back of her head. "I've lived as a human all my life. I need to work away from that. I need to embrace what I am." I buried my face into the warm coat on her neck. "Embrace what you are..." Tears formed in my eyes again, but I was not afraid or upset. I was happy.

Then my desires came more to the forefront of my mind. I had her straddling my lap, held so warm and close. The formed pants were long gone, vanished sometime in my lost thinking. My subconscious had betrayed me long ago, and my body was now doing the same.

She was a panther. She was a four on the floor, huge claws, crushing jaws, lithe, black panther. This same form had been an instant away from being the end of me, only scant days ago in this world's time. The same days ago, the position I was in now would have brought a pale wash to my face and a fear and sickness to my heart. Now it felt so right, I didn't even have any concerns for her to quash.

I could feel her mind. Her deep purr as well. Several of my sentences ago, she stopped listening, quite distracted by the hardness poking her haunches. She was aware of my attention on this now too, her purr deepening in response as she gave a delightful squirm that did nothing but entice my body further. She wanted it, I could tell, but she was still behaving.

"I want to," I said, my voice muffled in her lush fur.

"Are you sure you're ready?" she asked. Her voice was tinged with a small bit of concern, but laced with a deep, sultry, encouraging purr.

It took realizing that I was not human. It took the discovery and acceptance that I was never born. But I was ready. "I want you more than anything I have ever wanted before," I said with nearly a growl in my voice. A tiny whine of pleasure, more mental than physical yet, escaped her lips as the purr grew deeper.

The humanoid copy of her behind me vanished and I carefully laid back so I had more room to move. Her forepaws wrapped around me, unwilling to let me go, and she followed me, though my tight hold would not have let her do otherwise. Her hips tilted just enough and I lodged against her. Why had I waited so long? Why did I let me stop my own self before?

She pulled her head back and her tongue softly caressed my cheek. I loved her. She was a person. She was my famulus. She was MINE... And I was hers... This was so right...

"Hey, are you in here...?" The voice came in as my front door opened and my friend walked right in. He stopped dead in his tracks.

"Oh, hey, Daniel" I heard myself say suddenly. I reoriented myself and looked down at the sandwich I was about to finish constructing on my kitchen counter. "Let me guess... Go out to eat? You always catch me right after I fixed myself something." I reeled for a moment at the sudden change.

"You okay? You look wobbly," he said as he walked into the kitchen.

"I'm... fine..." I said, not sure what happened.

He poked a finger at the sandwich. "Yeah, you'd think I time it just so I don't have to put up with you. Sure I can't convince you to grab a bite to eat and chat, and just put this in the fridge?"

I shook my head. "It'll get soggy if I leave it in the fridge."

"I'll pay for a new loaf of bread for you, you slacker. It's almost like you don't like being social," he said with a fake scowl. Then he noticed the arched-back, fluffed fur, and laid-back ears of Shad's normal-cat-sized form staring at him from the doorway. "Oh, hey, I didn't know you had a cat."

Shadow literally jumped at his comment, then relaxed. She was very unsure of herself all of a sudden.

"I just got her a few days ago," I said, still thinking furiously and trying to work out what had happened. Shadow vanished through the doorway and I could feel her concern. "She's not fond of people she doesn't know, so let her be," I said. She reappeared suddenly on the counter beside me, though to my magic senses, she was different.

"I'm not at ALL used to being visible to mortalkin when I'm not explicitly trying to be," she said with a huff, washing her paw and looking miffed. She reached out and took a swipe at the man when he moved closer, but her paw went straight through him and he didn't notice. I was smart enough to not respond to her vocally.

"Yeah. Well, seriously, come on. You've been out of touch for too long. I'll treat you to dinner. Or breakfast for you. Whatever."

"Go with him," Shad said with a distinct grumpiness. "He's not gonna give up until you do."

I nodded and sighed. "You're right. I should get out more." I smiled as best I could and wrapped the sandwich to put it in the fridge.

"Great!" he exclaimed. "I'll be in the car. Don't be long." He nodded in self-recognition and headed out of my apartment.

"Don't worry," Shad said. "I'll still be with you, though I'll be sure to not be visible." She shook her head a little. "That'll take some getting used to," she muttered. It was consoling in an odd way to see her normally impeccable feline demeanor be ruffled.

I double-checked, but I was dressed in, of all things, normal clothing. I sighed and fridged the fresh sandwich, then headed out of my apartment to meet my friend. I locked the door behind me and Shad jumped onto my shoulder outside. She didn't touch other people, but I could feel her little paws on my shoulder just fine. She didn't even touch the shirt again. I felt oddly happy with her skin against mine.

"Okay, so this trip will be a training exercise too," she said as she sat on my shoulder. I was surprised at how easily she stayed there. I could feel pressure from her weight, but she didn't ever get off balance, and she didn't have to cling with claws. "I'm just staying stationary relative to you," she explained. "I mean, if I can swipe a paw through the mortalkin, or anything else for that matter, how would I exist without falling through the world if I couldn't define what I am working relative to, like the floor. Normally I don't touch anything else at all, but you are mine, so I touch you." She licked my ear affectionately.

"Anyway, I'll be talking to you and keeping you aware of what I know as we go out. You can hear me, and I can read your mind, so you can speak to me mentally," she said as I headed to the parking lot. "You'll also need to pay attention to the normal surrounding world as if I'm not there. It's splitting your awareness. It's an important precursor to being able to have multiple instances of yourself in different places and not getting overwhelmed."

I was about to nod, but I caught myself and just thought an affirmative instead. Shad squeed gleefully. "See? You're getting it already!" She rubbed her cheek against mine and I felt happy with the accomplishment. I could get to like this kind of positive reinforcement.

My friend already had his car pulled around and I got in, but I was not much interested in his small talk as he drove. It was a bit of work to respond to it appropriately while still paying attention to Shadow, but she was right. It was only a few minutes of delayed responses and distractions before I was listening separately with both ears, so to speak.

"Okay, so first, that annoying interruption," Shad was explaining. "That is one format that disbelief can take." I blinked. Mentally, mind you. "Remember how I said that disbelief can rip you out of the timeline and destroy you slowly if you mess with the world too much? Well, in this case, this was partway to that. Just the safe part."

I felt a chill as she continued. "Your friend here could not wrap his mortalkin mind around the idea of you making love to a panther. So that time thread was terminated and rolled to something that he could believe. It was swapped around you, so you were just put into a new situation. Oddly enough, one of his making, relatively speaking." She chortled. "Some claim that un-empowered mortalkin can't do any magic at all, yet disbelief is still possibly the most powerful form of magic out there."

She kept using that term. I inquired.

"Mortalkin? You might have heard of dragonkin, or elfkin, or whatever in various places. Mortalkin is just the kin of mortals. It's the mortal family, while dragonkin are of the dragon family, for example." She waited for me to ask, to keep the training on attention splitting going strong.

"You are not mortalkin. At least not anymore. It's funny, when you viewed yourself as human, you were mortal. If our link hadn't formed so fast, you would have died. The energy you are made of would then work for centuries or more simulating a dead human." She shuddered at the thought. "Not even sure what your soul would do." She glommed onto the crown of my head in a hug. With her love for me, she didn't like brooding on the past.

"Anyway, mages and warlocks and such are technically mortalkin too, but they are empowered by magic, so they are as close to immortal as mortalkin can be," she continued. "They learn swiftly how to prevent aging and natural death, since that much learning takes a looong time."

She was thoughtful for a moment and I was curious at her track of mind. "Oh, I just realized, it's kind of funny... If I had killed you, you technically wouldn't be dead. The physical body you were creating would be, but the magic would technically still be there to create the dead body." She giggled. "Even I find odd things in magic sometimes.

"Don't think that means you can't be destroyed though," she warned me. "I don't know of anything that can't if enough effort is made to do so." I nodded mentally. Destroyed or subjugated. That was why locking my own existence energy to my own will was so critical to learn when I was in the time bubble.

I turned my attention briefly to my conversation with Daniel. He was still in high school, but he was shockingly mature for a senior. Early birthday and all, he was already 18 and would graduate in a few months. He had decent control over his own finances and was frugal, so I was shocked that he was offering to pay for a meal for me. We had met in grade school, despite my five extra years on him. He kept in touch, and since I worked locally after graduating from college, we maintained a friendship. After my own graduation, I had always been impressed by his common sense. Especially seeing as I lacked it myself for a few years.

"Any luck with the girls?" I asked him. He was always complaining about ditzy, needy girls trying to get his attention.

"Not really," he said, wincing slightly. "Same ol', same ol'. I've lamented it often enough that you're tired of hearing it by now."

"What about that one, Sandra?"

His slight wince turned into a much bigger one and he briefly held his arm over his stomach as if pained. "I'd rather not think about her," he said sullenly.

I shrugged. I knew he liked her. He talked about her on occasion and it was easy to see he was smitten. "Tony still giving you trouble, then?"

He nodded with a sigh.

I shook my head. "High school politics can suck sometimes. Well, I wish you well regardless. It gets better when you're graduated. Unless you go to college. That's somewhat worse than high school sometimes." I wondered briefly if my new abilities would be able to help him at all, but I decided it would be a distinctly bad idea. I didn't know enough yet to not royally screw things up.

"Hey, but I have that field trip in a few days," he said, changing the subject.

"Oh, yeah, that neurosciences/psychology lab trip. You made the cut?"

He gave me a withering glance. "I'm the top student in the class. If they only took one person, I'd make the cut." He pulled into a small, local restaurant. Not super-expensive, but not cheap either. I was impressed. He must be desperate for company.

"I'm sorry I was growly at him," Shadow commented. "He feels like a very good guy for a mortalkin." Then her head snapped around and she focused on the diner. "Powerful... neutral... lostkin. Hmm. Should be safe enough." I asked what she was mumbling about, but she grinned smugly. "Gotta keep some mystery in your life while there still can be. I love the look on your face at those times."

I shrugged. I was still curious, but she wasn't going to tip me off in this case. As we got out of the car, suddenly my magical senses tingled. I focused my awareness, still unused to using them actively in my life. In the restaurant... yes... there was something magical in there. I was barely paying attention as I walked in behind Daniel. Sure, I could pay attention to Shadow and the world at the same time, but I still needed practice looking at the world through my extra sense at the same time as paying attention to the normal five.

Whatever it was seemed to be aware of my presence. It... well... it hid from my magical senses. This made me even more curious, as it was playing with me. Yes. Playing. It felt very playful. Daniel seemed to sense that I was being introspective, as he was not talking much, though he was a little concerned. I was now paying much more attention to my magical senses than the rest. Definitely somewhat zoned out as I tried to tease the mystery out.

That focus was my undoing. I jumped in shock as somebody suddenly kissed my cheek and giggled. Daniel looked curious.

"How are you doing? Long time no see!" the woman exclaimed to me. I peered at her for a moment, unable to make a connection. Then suddenly the world around me froze and she grinned. "Play along, silly," she said with a sly wink.

I cut off my protest when Shadow confirmed that it was safe and a good idea.

The world resumed motion again and I changed my expression, "Oh, hi! Where have you been?" I focused on her face finally and bit back my shock at eyes that were as amber as Shadow's often were.

"Here and there," she said, dismissing the question with a curt wave of her hand. Her attention focused on Daniel. "Who's your friend? It's rude to not introduce us." She held her hand out to Daniel. "I'm Elara, pleased to meet you even though he's missing all the social stuff."

Her eyes flashed briefly, making me jump again, but Daniel seemed to have not noticed it. Or... Not seen it as Shadow explained.

"It's almost like he's being antisocial," Elara said with a pout. "I bet you had to drag him out of his house over some sad excuse like a soggy sandwich."

My eyes widened and Daniel grinned. "You obviously know him well," he said. I was distracted as Shadow fell off my shoulder laughing. This was... weird. Daniel wasn't in on any of what was going on in the magical spectrum, while I knew enough to just be confused at not being in on what was going on either.

"Mind if I join you?" Elara asked. "I was waiting for a friend, but he never showed up." Daniel looked reluctant. I didn't blame him, he was unlikely to want to pay for a third meal. A flicker from her eyes and she tweaked his chin. "I'll pay for all of us, Daniel. I owe him at least two dinners anyway," she said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder at me.

She didn't wait for Daniel to make any realizations before simply sitting down beside me, pushing me over further on the bench seat. I caught the interesting thing and wondered if Daniel would catch the fact that she knew his name without anybody telling her, but he seemed oblivious to the fact.

Somehow both of us were herded into her ordering for us, as "she knew the best thing to get today". Somehow neither of us really objected either to the meals, or her vociferous demeanor. She was bouncy and outgoing, her peppered hair strangely not adding to her apparent age, despite the fact that she looked far too young to have any grey at all. The black and grey mixed made it look more like a very dark grey, so it wasn't a bad effect.

Despite Daniel's not wanting to talk about Sandra with me, this complete stranger had him spilling his life story in record time. I was impressed and depressed by the situation at the same time. The poor guy was too nice to be beaten up regularly like that. I really couldn't give any good advice though. He was infatuated with Sandra, and she seemed like a good person for him, but they couldn't even be Just Friends without the jock bullying him.

Elara took some time telling her own story. She couldn't tell us the details, because she was in top-secret subterfuge (as she explained in a hushed voice), but she was just finished with some work that involved getting some enemies to turn on each other and had some good time off now. She laughed then at our awed looks and waved a hand dismissively, "I jest of course. If I was really a spy or something, I couldn't even tell you that. I work with weaving and tapestries and threads and such. I just work in textiles I guess." Her grin was infectious.

It was strange. By the end of the dinner and as she was paying the bill, I felt almost giddily intoxicated. Or was that intoxicatedly giddy? I wasn't sure. Shadow was still just being smug though, so at least I gathered that this was fine.

"Do you mind if I catch a ride with you since you're taking him back to his apartment?" she asked as we walked out. "I live very close to him and it would beat waiting for the bus."

Daniel was congenial to the idea and soon we were all in his car and heading back to my apartment. When we arrived, Daniel bid us farewell. He liked to keep his schedule stable so he was in top shape for school.

Overall, it was a decent night. The dinner did help after the months of magic pills for food. They really didn't satisfy like eating did, though apparently I could easily go without eating anything at all when I was far enough removed from my human habits to not have my mind insist on thinking I needed food to survive.

I was looking forward to resuming the interrupted encounter with Shadow now that I was back home. I closed my car door and stretched, turning to give Elara another round of thanks for the meal, though I was curious where she lived, since i had never seen her before. But that curiosity could wait.

---

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