An Incongruous of Jaysome

I walk down the street slowly, ignoring every tourist trap I pass. The city is lit up about me: people hurrying, laughing, the police a gentle watching presence protecting tourists from harm. The wards that hold the city together are older and deeper than anything I’ve ever tried: at least four magicians have turned their own life energy into wards for this place. I don’t blame them.

Even here, I can’t sense Jay at all. He might be from far Outside the universe, but he is eleven still. All he has to do is offer up a huge, jaysome grin and people remember him even if he can hide his nature entirely. I ask, but no one has seen him. Sometimes I forget how good he is at that: we are bound together, from when he first entered the universe, and for the first time in ever I don’t sense those bindings at all. A part of me is missing that I didn’t even know what lost.

I find myself ashamed at how big that part was, how little I really sensed it. I give Jay space and privacy because I could use the bindings between us in terrible ways. I could draw on his power to do things even Jay has no idea he can do. Most of the time. So I keep a distance, and likely hurt him because Jay doesn’t see bindings like anyone else does. I pull out my phone, check it.

Jay hasn’t posted anything online in over 24 hours. Which is shocking given how often he posts to his tumblr, or sends messages to friends on it. Charlie had him see the Star Wars movies with her. I’ve seen them, though not near as often as Charlie has. She wanted Jay to have some more movies to watch instead of the various Jurassic ones over and over. Which I have no problem with, though I do suspect this entire issue is the universe punishing Charlie for starting Jay with the prequels instead of the original trilogy.

The fact that she agreed, seriously, when I brought that up is worrying.

I walk over one bridge, another. It’s almost half an hour before I find him sitting with his legs dangling over stone and staring at a bridge.

I walk over and just sit down beside him. He says nothing, focused on some inner space.

“The Bridge of Sighs, because you’ve been sighing a lot?” I say gently.

Jay’s head snaps toward me, eyes wide. “You found me?” he demands.

“Charlie helped, but yes. Venice is the only place we had a real vacation, so I figured you might be here. Also because of the lack of sand.”

“Oh,” he says, very softly.

“Talk to me, kiddo. Please.”

“Anakin was nice, Honcho. He was a friend to people, and then he fell in love but not and it got all weirdy and he went evil and did horrible bindings.”

I wait for Jay to add his ‘you know’. He doesn’t. “It’s just fiction, Jay. It’s not real.”

“Fiction is just a different kind of real. And sometimes it’s more real than real things cuz you can – you can say truths with fiction you can’t otherwise,” he says firmly.

He’s at least looking at me now. “But jaysome isn’t fiction.”

He sniffs. “Sometimes it feels like that. Like being too jaysome goes to the dark side! Anakin cared too much and that destroyed him!”

I reach for the bindings between us, still finding nothing. “Oh, Jay.” He goes still. “It’s an important lesson to know when to let go. This is as true for magicians as for Jay’s and everyone else. Sometimes it’s all you can do, no matter how good you are at bindings. But I think, even knowing that, that it’s better to care too much than not enough.”

“But but but I’m not jaysome when I get older and and and –.”

“Jay. Sith and jedi are invented terms. For a movie, to make money: they were short-hand terms, simplistic ideas never intended to bear the weight people put on them. Both jedi and sith are attempts to build houses on foundations that don’t exist at all. Which is one reason they are definitely very confusling I imagine.”

Jay giggles at that.

“Jedi are meant to be in harmony, perhaps, but you can’t do that and be in the world. The sith aren’t in harmony at all, as I understand it, even if they are. I don’t know Star Wars like Charlie does, or even you do, but I figure both jedi and sith are flawed expressions of a far more jaysome state.”

“Wait, wait, wait. If the sith aren’t in harmony, does that mean they’re incongruous?” Jay demands.

“I – okay, yes?”

“Then we also did a prompting, Honcho!”

I stare at Jay. “This was about a prompt?”

Jay’s eyes widen at my tone and he shakes his head quickly. “No, but I managed to do it? Like how the jedi do sith things and the sith do jedi things and –.” He pauses. “The sith use the force, but the jedi let the force use them? So so the fae are sith and magicians are jedi and a Jay is –.”

“Beyond both of those. It’s not just about being passive or active: it’s the intent more than outcomes, especially for a Jay who does many oopses and accidents and is very incongruous without ever trying.”

“I am?!”

“The hotel room was destroyed by you.” He wilts visibly. I move closes, wrap one arm about him and hug him lightly. “Everyone makes mistakes, Jay. What separates people is how they learn from that, if they do at all. Knowing you did something wrong is the first step to making it right.”

“But I haven’t done the wrong thing yet,” he whispers.

“You haven’t? How do you think Charlie is feeling right now?”

Jay stares at me in a shocked silence.

“Just because you might do some very not-jaysome things in the future doesn’t mean you don’t also do some now. It’s a difference of degree rather than kind, Jay. You can be incongruous without being incongruous because nothing emerges from a vacuum.”

“Oh. I gotta go back and say lots of apologies to Charlie!”

“And be very congruous with certain bindings?”

Jay grins, and the bindings between us exist again between moments. He lets out a huge, contented sigh and relaxes against me. “That was really hard, but I was all kinds of scared and afraid, Honcho.”

“I know. And that’s important. Bravery isn’t about not being afraid, Jay. Bravery is about being afraid and doing what is right anyway. Everyone has to take steps into the darkness sometimes, and then find it in themselves to take steps back out. Otherwise the fear of their own darkness becomes so great that they could fall into it without ever knowing they did so.”

“Oh!” And he grins hugely at that. “I never thought of it like that,” and he vanishes a moment later in a blur of energies.

I let out a sigh and stare at the bridge. I wait a minute, and then a second minute and Jay sits down beside me before the third minute elapses.

This Jay is fifteen. He doesn’t look at me, staring out at the bridge. “Venice survives far into the future because of this day, magician.”

“I was pulling a Lucas and making all that up as I went along. I have no idea if I made things worse or better.”

“Neither do I. You have some small idea of what happens to Jay; it is imperative that he – I – never knows.” He stands, swifter than Jay does, the movements eerily like my own. “And do not expect me here again, or any Jay from –.” He hesitates. “You have no concept of how much it hurts to be here. Do not expect this again.”

He is gone a moment later, faster than the Jay I know, using some method Jay has yet to discover.

I stare out at the bridge.

And I try, as hard as I can, not to think at all.