Night of Memories

To call the hotel room damaged is so great an understatement that is would be a lie. Two walls have been reduced to ash, the wallpaper on another become blades. The furnishings are simply gone, leaving bruised imprints in the air and the only remaining fixture flickers with alien light that sputters and dies. Or perhaps hides.. The ceiling is scoured by lightning, the floor half-melted and rippling.

No one has come to investigate. No one sane would even think of it.

In front of one of the demolished walls, Jay has thrown up a huge and happy grin at having totally scared Honcho with a scary face. The wandering magician asks Jay who asked me to do a scary face, asks him to leave and turns to look at me.

“You told Jay to scare me.” His calm is an iceberg.

“It’s Jay. I figured he’d do a knock-knock joke. Not, as he put it, ‘cause Honcho to do an oops’. I’ve never seen you do – that.”

“There are certain magics set aside for war. Few magicians go to war. Few learn them; fewer still use them. If you were not in the room, had I not realized that was Jay…” He adds nothing.

“Oh. Shit. This was –.”

“This wasn’t war. This was the start of a basic ward during a war, nothing else.”

I stare at him. “Where did you go to war?”

“Somewhere very far from here.”

“You never told me.”

“It was three years before we met.”

“You’d have been, what, twenty?”

“Something like that.” The words move. He doesn’t. “It was – some days I remember more of it. The time when I returned, for the final time. Tonight was... I was remembering an End. It put me in a bad place, Jay surprised me. I acted.”

“An end?”

“It wasn’t a war. You don’t call it a war when it was two seconds long.”

“Nathen.” I haven’t used his real name in weeks. I don’t. from habit as much as anything else.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not long enough.”

He nods. “I’ll get Jay to fix the apartment as best he can.”

“He can do that while we get a drink. Tea. Herbal. I listen, you talk.”

“I can’t.” The word are chipped from stone.

“Not about – where you went. Anything. Just talk. I eat gods, magician. I imagine I can eat confessions as well.”

He laughs, a short startled bark. “Talk. All right.” He pauses, Jay reappears.

Jay looks at me, and the magician. “I’ll do a fixing,” he says firmly, as Jay does, but there is a worry in the look he gives the magician’s back, and a message in the glare sent my way.

As if I can fix this. As if anyone can.

I walk out the hallway, and down the stairs with the wandering magician.

“You’re not scared of me right now. You should be,” he says.

I snort. “I’m not. I have some idea of what Jay would do if either of us were foolish right now.”

“Heh.” He smiles, slightly. We find a coffee shop, I get us tea. He talks. About travels alone. Friends and enemies. Nothing about this war. Not yet.

But I can wait. It’s part of what friendship is for.