Who are you when you're alone?

1: magician

To be a wandering magician is to court danger, sometimes even without realizing it. A magician survives by knowing more than others do, more even than by magic or because of the talents that make one a magician. I’m always wary of what happens because of Jay: he’s eleven from far Outside the universe and his desire for adventures possibly eclipses his talent for making bindings. Which is why I’m always caution when he suggests thing, waiting to see how the universe shapes itself away from them or how Jay bends everything toward himself without even realizing it.

Charlie is human, a god-eater with a god inside her, but still human. We have both spent so long being and dealing with Jay that sometimes I forget how dangerous she can be, also unknowing. She suggests Chinese, which includes fortune cookies. Jay is naturally all about the buffet and cookies as part of that, happily eating enough for six adults. I catch up on mundane things with Charlie – she’s pestering me to watch more TV that is just TV, to find outlets where I can just be me.

I remind her of what happened when she got Jay to watch Star Wars, and get a middle finger in reply. I grin, open my fortune cookie without even thinking. I have been a magician for over ten years, which is why the grin holds when I reach the fortune.

Charlie has known me for five. “Magician?” she says quietly.

“Nothing. I think.” I pocket the fortune, ask if she can keep an eye on Jay, walk outside. ‘Who are you when you’re alone?’ the fortune asked. It is at least not a weaponized koan. I have no idea what fortune Charlie or Jay have, and odds are Jay would notice if I tried to remove or change theirs. And have questions. I leave them to their own fortunes and wander side roads of the town. A broken drain here, a piece of missing pavement there, a lost ant needing help over here. I reach out with the magic, gently push things back in place as I walk. A house missing the owners is tagged for Jay to visit, an argument in another gently lessened as I pull some of the anger, giving it to another person who can never hold anger as long as they should.

I am alone, and I and the magic both answer the fortune: I am the wandering magician, no matter if I am alone or with others. Charlie keeps wanting me to do normal things, but I don’t think I have that normal in me anyone. The magic needs to be used as much as I need to use it. For every great and terrible thing I have done – and there have been too many of those by far – it is the small magics I enjoy. The little miracles no one notices. The gentle touches to the skin of the world to soothe things.

I am no longer certain I could stop doing that, stop being that, even if I tried. It’s no longer merely duty, it was never honour. Who am I when I’m alone? Always the same as I’ve ever been. Moving in the darkness, though never away from the sun. I carry the magic, it carries me. It’s enough. Enough is more than most people get.

2: Charlie

I watch the magician walk outside, feel the distance between us. Sometimes he has to do just – go, though not in ways that break bindings with Jay. (Never that, not ever again.) Jay is getting more food and people are staring but also not noticing on some level. He hides that he’s not human, and it works even when he does things humans don’t do. I tell him I’m going out for a walk and he just nods. Trusting me, taking me at my word since that’s what Jay does. The fortune cookie crumbles in my hand without my noticing the fortune a single question: ‘Who are you when you’re alone?’

Alone. I haven’t been alone, not often. There’s the god inside me, but it’s hard to know where it ends and I begin anymore. Mostly, I don’t think about that. I’m not a magician, but I have some power, and more skill than others like me do. I can drain gods of energy to temper them, destroy those who try and be more than a god can be. I’m not bound anywhere, not beholden to any law. It makes me useful, and useful seldom gets time to be alone before others seek you out. Wanting things, needing even more than they want.

I’d like to think I’m still the Charlie I was before I met the magician. The goth girl who could pretend the world was normal, who thought the darkness was safer than the light. Now I know that different isn’t the same as safe. Nowhere is safe, not really. And every week, every month, everything I learn and am takes me further from the normal world. College? University? Even the wandering magician has given up flat-out suggesting I consider that.

Jay is from far Outside the universe, and he passes for human better than I do some days. I try not to think about it. It’s too easy to get angry. Even alone, I’m too quick to give into darkness. Where do I end? Where do I begin? Even alone, I have no way of knowing. Even alone, I’m never free from the choices I’ve made. I light a cigarette. Sometimes it helps. On the bad days, I don’t think this was my fate. On the bad days, I think the wandering magician made me into a god eater and bound the god inside me to protect the world from me.

I’ve never told him that. I have no idea what he’d say.

I have no idea if I ever mean it.

3: Jay

Charlie and Honcho leave the buffet, which means even more food for a Jay so I have third helpings of sixth helping and maybe sneak a few more plates when no one is looking cuz I’m kind of maybe hungry a lot! After, they lock the kitchen up and I know Charlie and Honcho would be cross-face if I did bindings to sneak into the back to get more food even if I only got one fortune cookie and I have lots of jaysome fortunes. So I open it, and read it and it’s pretty confusling for a Jay.

“Who are you when you’re alone?”

I scratch my head, and turn to find me sitting across the table. Mostly, older-me doesn’t visit much and I’m not allowed to think about why. There’s sadness in his eyes jaysome doesn’t hide, part of him that’s so away from me I’m not sure how to get there at all.

“I’m Jay,” I say happily.

“I know.” And I’m really good at sounding dry like Honcho when I’m fifteen. Older me reaches out a hand, reads the fortune as well. “I try and keep an eye on you, just as you come into the future to visit me sometimes.”

“Uh-huh! I am pretty jaysome at that but! it kinda means the fortune makes no sense cuz I’m not alone?!”

“You are sometimes. There are whole days I never look back on, at any age. Sometimes out of a sense of deep embarrassment.”

I stick my tongue out at me. “You should come by more often, since Charlie and Honcho don’t see you much and –.”

And things go funny. I think I learn something, but older-me does a binding so I forget it. I think maybe he has to do that a lot, which is why he doesn’t visit much?

He stands. He moves away from me like I’m some kind of sun. “There are –.” He is silent. The silence isn’t jaysome. “I should go. I just wanted you to know it all turns out all right.”

“Oooh! That means I can sneak into the kitchen and have a snack?”

“No. I meant, more in general. But there are times you are alone, and you can think about that.”

And he’s gone, and no one noticed him. I head outside. Sometimes future-me gets pretty weirdy. Who am I when I’m alone? I’m a Jay who is jaysome and nothing changes that!