Magic

We had finally moved from our parents’ house. It was the longest time we had spent washing, re-washing, disgusted ourselves, from dirt and dust the previous building owners left. Painting, decorating, I let my sister chose it all because she had an eye for those things. Sighing, sweating and then, we finally had ourselves a home where we could settle in.

My sister was odd. She new that we could take something weak and make it great again, Phoenix from its ashes.

I’ve always been the one that felt it, how different we were. This was my kind of magic.

I’ve met Fred, my sister’s new boss. She also had this magic of connecting bonds between people, and she was ugly good at this. Other than he seemed cool, this Fred really made an impression on me. Left something suspiciously growing more, as I would wonder from him.

My sister worked in his teacup shop, just beneath our appartement. Nice little teapots with cute tiny leaks on the beaks. Really, leave if you’re tired of hearing me telling you how odd are these things.

Fred was a smiling guy. Always hooked with this particular smile. It suited him perfectly but, he leaked quite something. As he humanized, into the shape of his very flesh, a pixie or something far more curious. In fact, it was his eyes. The eyes are always what betrays us. I can see a soul behind someone’s eyes. Maybe its why I can’t stand some people stare for too long...

It’s kinda heavy sometimes, a soul.

My sister would work part time. Being free was an item that we couldn’t spare.

I too was free. Willingly working my way through my writings. I always loved the fact that I’m living of what I’m built. It never stops to keep me fed.

We had a feast. Roasts and patties deliciously surrounded by our copious hunger. So succulent was the sheep, but I still feel sorry for it... The way we live leaves a wrongfully right end that doesn’t justify the means. Though, even knowing that, it still tasted kind of great. My sister, she was the one that brought us to enjoy this meal together. She had invited some of her friends and Fred.

Later on, some of us had dessert and tea into the living room. The others giggling from a really funny story, I guessed, in the kitchen.

Fred, my sister and I, were cozy-ing-ly talking about nothing and myths, life purpose, and quiche.

I’m not one to care that much about saying something strange. Otherwise, what would be the point of freedom. Because I know most people tend to avoid strange talks, I first hesitated to humor Fred with my awkward thoughts. Not for long though, I’m too honest.

“Fred, are you a mage or something?” said I, jokingly, but a cold silence kind of lingered too long into the quiet pause we both marked from Fred’s sudden change of eyes.

Our conversation took back its flow as Fred regained his smile and exclaimed himself with a cheerful innocent laugh. Unwillingly, I could feel truths exuding from those uncomfortable moments slipping, that we had all forgotten so quickly. I think Fred knew it from my eyes too.

After a while, he excuse himself and went to the bathroom. He made some time to come back, so we started playing cards without him.

When he rejoined us, his look wasn’t joyfully blessing the room as before, and he was holding some sort of wand to his hand. Pointing it directly to our blood shells. He started with my sister, waving some kind of undistinguishable willpower, which seemed to petrify her straight as an arrow. Then her friend and again the one aside... I thought I was going to suffer the same fate when he resisted his own urge to deal with all of us.

He threw lightning looks at me for a second and then said, “How could you possibly know about me?”

As I said before, I’m not one to be shaken that much by stranger things so I just replied as if everything was the purest normality, “I don’t know, Fred. You just seem like an odd person...”

His eyebrows arched asking me without speaking what I meant.

“Well, I always felt what people truly are and you... you are different. It’s like the homeless I gave money to eat last week. I knew by the moment my fingers dropped the coins into her hands that she wouldn’t use them to eat. She had this look only shattered people have. When you seek through the well of their iris, for a second you can see it, you can feel this person’s very soul.”

I suppose it sort of hit him when I told him this because he wasn’t so much annoyed anymore, only passively frozen into his own mind. He shook his head as to come back to reality once again, and after walking straight over me, he placed his wand inside my palms asking me to use it.

“How do I use this?” I said.

“Just feel it... like you told me you do,” he replied.

So I waved my intent to deliver my sister and it did. I set her friends free too, and it did. Unrolling sophisticated painted papers on the walls from a single whip, dressing divine curtains dancing at the windows, blooming roots flowering to become tall trees from our floor, gleaming glowing stars, sharpening their sparkles from the cosmos of our ceiling. We would enjoy whatever we wanted, it just did it all.

The next morning I woke up like this was Christmas except that, then, it wasn’t anymore. It was drastically deceiving. I didn’t even know how I skipped last night from today that I knew why... some things must have to stay secret. I didn’t bother my sister. I knew she had forgot. She would have told me otherwise or, at least, would have looked at me in a weird way.

Weeks had passed when I was walking into the street. I came aside of an old beggar who smiled and blinked at me for a second. Feeling familiar, I looked back, turned my head over a pile of empty, from which the old beggar had mysteriously left.

It was the day I’ve learned that magic wasn’t about making things appear to us, it’s about how, in such a sudden short matter of time, it could just disappear...