Valentines

"Charlie, I totally should get a date on Valentine’s Day," Jay shouts as he barrels into hotel room, barely avoiding tripping over our bags on the floor.

He grins, bouncing from foot to foot as I stare at him. “A date. With something human?”

"I dunno. But! there is this saying that love is blind and and and I am blind so that means I should get a date."

"That isn’t quite how it works, kiddo."

"Oh. But — but I might have looked into getting chocolates already!"

"No flowers?"

"I think you’d like chocolates more."

I blink. “Jay, I am almost ten years older than you, you are not human and eleven —.”

He scowls behind his shades. “I know all that but I kind of want to give you a gift and were friends and! you are totally my best friend and sometimes friends need more that just hugs, even if they are Jay hugs.”

"Jay. I don’t ever need more than that from you."

"Uhm. You might?"

"I might." I close my eyes. "What happened?"

"I might have kinda yelled at a really mean police officer who tried to shoot me and all ran away."

"A police officer tried to shoot you."

"I’m fine though and —."

"Pack. Now. This is going to be more than chocolates."

"Okay," he says. "But —."

"But?"

"I was going to get you the chocolates before all this, Charlie!"

I let out a breath and walk over, giving Jay a hug. “I know. It’ll be okay.”

"But —."

"You’re a Jaysaurus so it will be fine."

He grins hugely and goes back to packing.

A day in Jay's blog

Long Distance

Fact: it is 3:33 a.m. 

Fact: knowing that the Internet is a living creature and not something from Outside the universe makes me trust it even less.
Fact: I don’t trust cell phones for many reasons; their internet connection is only part of that.

My cell phone is ringing, though I never turn it on. I’m used to that: anyone who truly needs to reach a wandering magician will get through to me, and Jay tends to call me regardless of whether I actually have a phone or not. Having a phone ring inside your head and then an eleven year old kid who isn’t human happily telling you about his day means I tend to keep it near me now. This time it reaches a sixth ring without going to the machine, dialling from a 1-877 number. I stare at the phone, which at least rings a little softer. I am almost tempted to take it into the second bedroom of the house that decided to let a magician stay in it, but siccing Dana on a solicitor would be rather cruel – and not just because she is a fae.

I pick the phone up on the eighth ring. “Hello?”

“Oh, hello! This is Carol, calling to see if you have considered a free trial of –.”

“How did you get this number?”

“Sir, please calm down. May I remind you that this call may be recorded for quality–.”

“This phone is warded.” I thread power into my voice. “How did you get this number?”

“I – I – I need to get my manager,” she whispers.

I blink, staring down at the phone. It tries to play hold music, then settles on silence. I have no idea what she was even trying to sell, or even who she is working for. Magic answers need as much as desire, and I use the pause and then hold back a gasp with an effort. Dana is a focus, but only one of many. So many people in the world, anger at solicitors a haze of terrible desire, the rage so potent that I acted without thought.

I close my eyes for a moment, whisper words of focus, and ward myself against my own magic. It is about as uncomfortable as it sounds, but it makes some distance, clears my thoughts a little.

“This is Skip, manager for Hidalgo Holdings Ltd,” a man’s voice says. “How can I help you?”

“I doubt you can.” I keep my voice as even as I can. “Even my mother cannot call my phone if I don’t desire it: what are you selling?”

“We sell subscriptions to various magazines, free trials that –.”

“What are you selling?” I ask again, and this time let a little of the magic into my voice.

“I – information. Information about you. What magazines you want to buy are passed on to our suppliers, along with your line as an active line with a receptive caller, our call list bought by other companies from us in a – I’m not supposed to be telling you this, sir.”

“I imagine not. I would like to speak to Carol again. Please.”

The please has a power all its own, which is good because I don’t trust myself to use more of my magic. Not given what it is saturated with at the moment. “H-hello,” she says, her voice cracking a little.

“I did not mean to scare you or to wound.” It is a gift as much as curse to speak truths that cannot be ignored.

“Well, it happens often enough,” she says, her laugh weak and fragile.

“Yes. Yes, it does,” I whisper, and I can feel the anger building in the magic, pressing against me inside and out. “Mere understanding will not destroy this anger, Carol. Where would you desire hate, if you could?”

“Lawyers,” she says, and there is anger in her own voice, and old hurt under it. I don’t get her story. I can’t do that and hold this anger back, not right now.

I thank her and hang up, putting the phone back. “Not all lawyers are terrible, as not all politicians are monsters,” I say quietly to what waits in the world around me. “But there are monsters worthy of your fear, monsters that deserve the kind of rage that could tear worlds apart. In time, I will need this anger. For now, I would like to place it somewhere where it can do no harm at all. For your sakes as much as my own.”

I gather the anger with my magic, pull all the hate inside. I’m not enough to hold it all without being consumed; I am not sure even the fae are. So I close my eyes and place it the only place I can think of, and far away Jay stirs slightly and goes back to sleep, unaware of what I have placed inside him for future need.

I left him and Charlie with a promise not to use him, and I am already breaking it. Knowing he will forgive me does not make it better at all. I close my eyes, fall back asleep, and welcome the ugly dreams that will result from my failure.

So, so very much not canon :)

"Oh, man! He looks really sad inside and out!"

Reynard Fox spun to face the doorway, a deep growl filling the room. Boy didn’t stir from his sleep on the cot.

The boy standing in the doorway looked human: young, with the white cane of the blind and a huge innocent grin that put even Boy’s to shame. “Hi!”

"This is not your place," the fox said, and his voice was low and hard, full of more than teeth.

"But he’s really sad and I totally have hugs to give!"

"Hugs," the fox said, as though he had misheard words though Reynard Fox has never done so.

"Yup! My name is Jay and —."

"You have other names as well."

"Well, I am a Jaysaurus and also Jaysome!"

"You do not belong here."

"But he is really sad-face and I’m all kinds of good at hugging! Please?"

The fox sighed. “You’re not going to go away, are you?”

"I’m really good at not going away."

"I shall endeavour to pretend that made sense." The fox stepped aside to let Jay hug the sleeping form of Boy. Boy whimpered in pain, almost waking as Jay sprang back in shock.

"He is still sad?" Jay demanded.

"You are, perhaps, kin to the Wasting. All you did was wound him."

Boy blinked. “You knew I’d hurt him?!” His eyes narrowed behind dark glasses. “You are not a very nice fox.”

"I am what I must be. As you may someday be what you must as well." Reynard Fox smiled, a barring of teeth. "You will go now."

"You made me hurt your friend," Jay said, and his voice contained harmonics nothing human could hear.

"Consider it a lesson cheaply given."

"Fine. But you do mean tricks and I don’t like you so you are never coming to my home!"

Jay vanished and Reynard Fox stretched slowly, then paused, shocked enough to speak aloud. “He barred me from an entire universe? What kind of creature can —.”

"Mr. Fox?" Boy said sleepily.

"It is nothing. Rest."

And Boy fell back into sleep without any nightmares at all for the rest of the night. The fox did not sleep at all.

Charlie post on tumblr..

Things we did today.

• had breakfast (pancakes at a waffle house)
• Chatted with a lonely ghost in a park, which Jay able to get close and not destroy the ghost. For which he was terribly proud of himself since we still have no idea why ghosts are exorcised just by Jay walking through them.
• Had a snowball fight, which Jay let me win. I pointed that out, he claimed he hadn't, I said I had seen him drop a snowball at which point he flung himself into my for a hug and cried without tears at trying to lie even if it would make me feel better.
• I dumped a snowball down his coat in response. he spent a good half hour sulking at my 'cheating'.
• Found a rabbit that had died in a trap. I broke the trap open (eating the state of it being locked) and Jay tried to somehow bind the rabbit back into life, but it doesn't seem possible. I stopped him from trying a third time and used my nature to call up the god of rabbits, who agreed to restore the rabbit to life in exchange for a future favour -- from Jay. He, of course, said yes.
• (I'm trying not to think too hard about what the god of rabbit could want; gods can restore the dead, but the cost is an astronomical amount of their power -- to say nothing of the continued cost in keeping the miracle active. Jay, as always, trusts too damn easily.)
• We had lunch as fast food while driving to another town. I checked Jay's tumblr twice for him to make sure everything was OK. I am definitely not going to try this method again, but I think I got through to him about pushing bindings too far on others. Always hard to know how much of this is Jay understanding things vs. not wanting to make his friend (me) mad with him.
• Got a message from a fae about some rogue gremlins who were hiding in an autobody shop doing anti-gremlin acts. Keep machines live past their prime, keep them working when they're broken. Break entropy enough in an area and they'd tear open a hole in the universe and let something from Outside in past the usual safeguards and protections (which include immigration policies, I've been told.) We dealt with them easily enough, though I have no idea what their end goal was.
• Pizza for supper, I read Jay part of a book and he listened to the radio after.
• A good day, all told.
  

- Charlie

Meeting Friends

This is Charlie. I keep a diary, sometimes just to remind myself that my life really is as weird as I think it is. I saw that Jay posted his view of an encounter a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d add mine. Jay still doesn’t know what we really ran into, or why it shocked me as much as it did. I haven’t called the magician to ask him about this, mostly because I think I won’t like his response. Right. Here begins the entry; I try to write them in present tense even though I’m writing after it happens, since that helps me recall everything better. Personal choice. Deal with it.

*

Almost two feet of snow have been dumped on the town we’re in, but it’s not actually cold. Dress warmly and keep away from the more bitter winds and you’re mostly fine. Nothing has turned to slush, there are kids with the second of a probably few days off school having snowball fights and building snowmen and we’re still in that part of small-town American where parents actually let their kids play outside.

It’s a lot rarer to find than you’d think, and probably would be almost unheard of if most people knew the kinds of entities humanity shares the world with. The kid beside me being one: Jay looks to be eleven, but is from far Outside the universe. He senses everything in terms of bindings, at levels even magicians consider impossible to detect but to Jay it’s as easy as breathing. Also as easy is hiding his nature so he appears to be a normal human kid despite being quite tough. That he is unable to see for the foreseeable future (owing to being used to stop something really nasty from happening) hasn’t phased him in the slightest. Which probably says all you need to know about him.

“Charlie,” he says, not quite bouncing through snow over to me from across the road. He’s using his white cane because humans would pay too attention to him otherwise, and dark glasses because his eyes are full of falling stars and fractured light – which would cause people do more than just stare at him. He offers up a huge, happy grin that is entirely Jay and also sets my Jay-sense to tingling.

The huger the grin, the more dangerous the fallout might be. “Kiddo.”

“I’ve been making secret friends today,” he says proudly.

“With rocks or snow?” I try, because one never knows with Jay. He once spent an afternoon making friends with every atom inside a piece of lego.

“Nope, people. The human kind.” And he moves, quicker than humans can – his other trick – and then grins even wider up at me, radiating pride. If Geiger counters for pride existed, Jay would make them explode. Not that his pride was for him, mostly for what he did for others and to help them. “Your left pocket,” he says when I don’t move, poking it with his cane and practically dancing from foot to foot.

I reach in cautiously, expecting to find a snowball, gremlin, or some small animal Jay has decided should be kept warm. Instead I pull out two new twenty dollar bills. I look at them, then down at Jay. “Can I ask where you got this money?”

“I did a favour for the fae last night when you were sleeping and they paid me in cash and I’m all using it to make friends!”

“You don’t make friends with money, Jay.”

“I know that, Charlie. I mean that I make them all happy and they never know it was me because I’m totally a Jay-boss!”

“Reverse pickpocketing.”

“I listened to videos on YouTube and they were helpful so I get to pass that on and help people. It doesn’t take much money to make a person a little happy; sometimes it’s even better thana hug, which is pretty weird.”

“Well, it is better than other things you could be doing,” I say, and he just sticks his tongue out at me at that, then reaches up with his right mitten and grabs my hand, tugging me toward the proper downtown core of the town and telling me he also made a new friend and then about the eight people he’s all helped this morning. It occurs to me that he did the reverse pickpocketing while wearing the mittens, but I decide not to wonder too deeply about that.

I’ve spent my morning migrating gods to new businesses from old or failing ones and generally put the word out that there is a god-eater active in the world again and gods wishing to abuse their powers had best not do so. It’s been pretty easy work: most gods are small and most of those are wise enough not to attract untoward attention. Mostly because powerful gods tend to cannibalize smaller ones. I don’t really know that much about gods: magicians have few dealing with them save to destroy them if they need to, though Jay claims that the gods are part of a network of energy holding the bedrock of the world together.

All I know is gods make themselves when needed, adding energy and strength to a business, home, whatever the location is. As that expands, the power of the god can well, but most gods can only expand so far and few can move from their place of birth without a god-eater helping them. I destroy dangerous gods, I help the others migrate. It’s a learning curve all around, since most gods aren’t that old and no one seems to know what really happened to the order that used to train god-eaters.

I’m busy thinking about such things as Jay drags me to the back alley behind the downtown McDonalds. “I made a new friend, who is all surprised I saw him because humans can’t see him!”

“You can’t see,” I say dryly.

“Well, yes, but I all noticed weird bindings and it’s a new friend,” he says as if that makes it all okay. I refrain from pointing out that Jay would probably react the same if he ran into Cthulhu. Mostly because I don’t want to learn that Lovecraft wasn’t making shit up. He continues to pull incessantly, holding my hand tightly and we move past the dumpster.

The creature behind the dumpster is almost as big as it the dumpster, all dark brown fur, a long trunk, wide eyes. No ears, a pointed tail. I say several words they probably wouldn’t even air on Sesame Street Uncut. “Snuffleupagus?”

“You know him?” Jay asks excitedly. “I know he’s big, but he told me he doesn’t want to eat people at all!”

“Humans do not see me.” The voice is deep and gravelly, not like on the TV.

“Jay isn’t human. He’s helping me see you,” I say, and my voice is almost even, definitely from shock. “Jay, is Mister – is he an Outsider?”

“Nope! Nor a monster,” Jay adds. “He is really cuddly though! He feels like warm laundry.”

“Of course you hugged him.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “Ah. What do you want?” I ask it. Thinking of the creature as an it helps.

“Birds.”

Or it did for a few seconds. “What?”

“Birds taste very good. Feathers. Bones. Muscle.” It smiles, and the teeth are many but not as sharp as I was imagining. “I clean the feathers off with my snout, snuffle them up and eat the rest. There are not many birds in the winter.”

“No, no there aren’t. You can read, yes?”

“A is for...”

“Right Okay,” I cut it off, certain I don’t want to hear this creatures alphabet song. “There is restaurant down the street, KFC. Kentucky Fried Chicken makes chicken. You could sneak in there and eat chicken as long as you don’t eat too much. Or perhaps just all the chicken people throw away into the dumpster?”

“I can do a binding for that,” Jay says, and the creature goes still a moment, and then inclines its head in a nod to Jay.

I have far too many questions. I’m not about to ask any of them. I just smile at it and pull Jay away, and head back toward the hotel. “Jay. You’re sure that wasn’t a creature from Outside the universe?”

“Yup. You knew him, so he is a friend?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what I know.” I let go of Jay’s hand and just walk. Part of me wants to know if he has run into creatures like this before, or to ask if he can find out what they really are. The rest of me decides it might be best if I left some things as mysteries. If only for my sanity.

Snow Trouble

“We have a problem.”

I glance up from the map I’m browsing, letting my magic feel out places where a magician might be needed. The map is too full for my liking. “This town is under four feet of snow that is refusing to listen to my suggestions that it might consider melting faster and we’re going to have to be very creative to help people from starving to death in their homes soon and you are saying we have a problem.”

“Yes,” Dana says simply.

I’m starting to suspect that the fae are immune to sarcasm. “Explain?”

“You have had dealings with bigfoot before.”

“Not many, but yes. I once hunted one who had gone mad through Yellowstone. As I understand it they mostly keep to themselves.”

“Normally, yes. But this has been a cold winter, with little food. They can change under such conditions.”

“And become mass murderers?”

“Yeti, yes.”

I wonder if this is how Charlie feels when she is talking to me all the time. “There are fewer Yeti sightings –.”

“There are none; they leave no survivors. A bigfoot can turn into one due to temperature and shortage of other animals for food – in which case it throws caution to the wind and goes after humans, magician.”

I fold the map up properly, a talent owing as much to my magic as anything else. “They kill deer and bear mostly, if I recall correctly. Why should killing humans change their nature?”

“They see humans as almost civilized. It would be like humans being forced to kill their cats, dogs: their pets, and how it would break them psychologically. Most recover, but some never do and convince themselves that humans are the best and only source of food. It never ends well,” the fae says, since she has very much mastered the art of understatement.

I sigh and walk over to the door, giving it a shove; the snow on the other side of the cabin Dana and I are squatting in doesn’t move, doesn’t even want to. Snow listens, as it turns out: global warming means the death of true winter, and it is holding onto this storm for as long as it can. I’d find it funny if it was funny at all, but it does mean I can use magic in other ways. I touch the world and the door becomes a doorway to the world on top of the snow.

Dana follows me silently; she doesn’t sink into the snow at all. I have no idea if that is fae glamour or that nature doesn’t much care for the fae. I don’t because the snow knows if I do sink into the snow I’ll have reason to melt it away with easy magics. Most of the homes the locals know are inhabited at least have doorways freed, crude paths made through the snow that are one-vehicle wide. A lot of people have moved into the local hotel, bringing gas for the generator and food.

It has been two days of deep snows. No one is worried yet, but they are getting there. There is only so much food and no one expects everyone to be rational about this – which, perhaps, is part of the problem. I wrap sunlight on snow about me as a form of invisibility; Dana uses a glamour and is gone from even my senses, so I just settle on walking the edges of the town, turning the anger of people into more heat in fires and furnaces. Helping hold things together as best I can.

The weak howl of a wolf cub pulls me the west end of the town, though not in time to stop the bigfoot from butchering it: head torn off, body ripped open and gutted. The cub had been running, but not fast enough in the end for her to escape. The bigfoot has pale fur: not yet snow-coloured, still with faint traces of brown. The overall result is an eight foot tall monster that looks like a walking pee stain in snow; I decide to keep that observation entirely to myself.

“Magician,” it growls. “This is not your affair.”

“That is true, but you are hardly going to stop at a wolf cub, are you?”

“I am hunger; hunger is primal, and your magic cannot touch that.”

Magic occupies a hazy place between need and want, between desire and force. It does not mean I can’t act, merely that the action will demand a price down the road that I will not be able to avoid paying. And some prices have proved far too dear over the years. I smile, and the bigfoot hesitates at the boundaries of the town over what it sees in my smile.

“How long have you chased the wolf cub when you could have found easier food elsewhere?” I ask, having no need to put power into my words; it is a gift and curse both to be able to speak and compel truth that cannot be ignored.

“Some hours,” it admits. “The cub was practise for other game.”

“She was so tired I barely heard her howl for help, and her spirit has gone from this place as wolves well understand the cycle of being and of eating. But even so, this was not hunger. This was murder, and I am not about to let it stand.”

The bigfoot is on top of the snow in moments, hurling toward me in a blur of teeth and claws.

“Dana?” I don’t move, but the bigfoot slams into snow and sinks deep to my left, having been tricked by glamour.

Dana speaks words I don’t know and the bigfoot shudders at them as she opens a door to some other place. The fae castles, I assume, and judgement.”

“Dana?”

“I am busy, magician.”

“How long as it been since it snowed at the castles?”

Dana pauses, then is visible beside me, her smile slow and appreciative. “A long time.”

The bigfoot is pulled through to the other side and we spend two hours after speaking to the storm, which slowly shifts course and power to blow snow somewhere almost outside the universe.

“I did not know you were going to use yourself as bait,” Dana says as we finish sending the snow that would have gone to another place.

“Bigfoot are fast and this one knew too much about magic for my liking. I am glad you realized what I was doing.”

“Who says I did?” But the fae smiles slightly as we head back toward the cabin we’re staying in.

I consider texts I’ve got from Jay and crouch, making a snowball and throwing it. It passes through Dana and hits merely snow; I barely have time to dive to the left as two snowballs sail through the air where I had been standing.

We throw snow with power and skill, dodging and weaving along snowbanks and the rooftops of homes, and I have imagine that the spirit of a wolf cub is bounding along beside us and would have loved to play if the world had not been other than it is.  

Boy & Fox: Scene 1.

Perhaps all anyone needed to know about Oak Shade Street was that the city had cut down every oak tree on it over a decade ago. The street was the usual near-downtown litter of apartment buildings designed by paint-by-numbers systems in a fight to see which one could be the drabbest along with two-decade old homes that apartment developers circled hungrily. Not every yard was unkempt but that was pretty much the way to bet. The street ended at Oak Park which boasted a small copse of birch trees that local lore called a corpse of trees. At least three bodies had been buried in it in a single decade. though people always claimed it was more even as they fought attempts to have it bulldozed down.

The street had lost their oak trees, but were determined to lose nothing else.

The playground was a rusted out shell no one has used since a pedophile moved into the neighbourhood – even if it had been a couple of neighbourhoods away, never proved and the bearded man had left after having his house spray-painted twice. Some stories claimed he moved to a bigger city and became a department store Santa Claus, but that is hardly a surprise. It is the nature of stories to grow with the telling, and like rivers stories tend to grow crooked and follow the path of least resistance. Everyone knew the park was a bad place and no one had to say why any longer.

The park the street had fought for sat empty, and the local animals migrated to it but even they stayed away from the birch trees. People who took notice of that – and there are people who notice many things, even if they do not realize they noticed them – assumed the stories they had been told were right and thought no more about it. And so the park was half-buried in fall leaves when the boy came walking out of it. The boy was bare foot and devoid of hair, his eyebrows pale suggestions, hints more than facts and he wore jeans and a t-shirt that laundromats had long ago turned a dull grey.

There was no dirt on him nor his clothing and he walked slowly, testing each step with a foot as if expecting the leaves to conceal more than earth beneath. He crouched down slowly at the edge of the trees and ran his fingers through the leaves as gingerly as one might prod broken glass and let out small, hoarse gasp of surprise when his hand came away unwounded. Something crossed his face that was far too wary to be hope and the boy stood again, turning slowly back to face the trees as though pulled by some force.

“You can remain in the world.” The voice was assured and calm, but the boy still spun about to face it, his unmarked hands raised protectively in front of himself. The speaker was a fox, though to say that says nothing at all. The fox was as red as any fox that had ever been, the fur on his feet darker than shadows. His chest was snow-white and his tail was the envy of all other foxes, and many other animals as well.

“Oh,” the boy said hoarsely, and whatever caution he carried with him was lost. The boy’s eyes widened slowly: they were the pale green of things seeping from wounds, eyes which seemed bruised, felt hollow, looked empty until he took in the fox. “Oh,” he said again, and the fox seemed to accept such statements as only his due.

The boy crouched, held out a hand toward the fox but pulled it back slower and just stared in soft silence until the fox began to feel almost uneasy; there are many things that foxes will accept, perhaps a great deal more than people do, but worship is seldom one of them. “I am called Reynard Fox,” the fox said with a smile that was all sharp teeth.

The boy said nothing.

“You may have heard of me?” the fox said.

“No? I don’t –.” The boy bit into his lower lip, slow panic building in his face.

“I trust you have a name then, boy?” Reynard Fox said.

The boy gulped, steadied himself a little. “Boy.” The word seemed to push back panic and he repeated it again in his hoarse voice.

“That is your name,” the fox enquired after a short pause, though it was well within his nature to inquire as well.

“Yes.” Boy smiled then, and the smile transformed his face; even the fox drew back from the gentleness behind it. “I was in the woods,” Boy continued, and cleared his throat, though it remained no less hoarse, “but not those woods.”

“I know; have a care, Boy. To speak of it gives it power,” the fox said. And then, because he was a fox and it may well have been true: “To not speak of it gives it more power still.”

“Oh.” Boy scratched his scalp with his left hand, pulled it away and ran both hands over his head slowly, as if it belonged to a stranger. He stared down at his hands, flexing them slowly. “Hands should have lines on them. Fingertips have whorls. Mine don’t?”

“One does not leave the Wasting and not leave some things behind,” Reynard Fox said, and the gentleness in his voice was as close as he could come to the kindness of Boy’s smile.

Boy licked his lips. “Wasting,” came out in a soft whisper, as though he was tasting it on his tongue. “I ran. I ran so far the world changed. Then I ran further still and I don’t know how. I don’t know if I ran. I don’t know if I walked. I don’t how how I made it back,” he added, softer still.

The fox merely sat, bushy tail twitching gently.

“Help?” Boy asked.

“I am Reynard Fox; it is not a safe thing to ask me for help.”

“Anything is-is better than the Wasting,” Boy got out, words falling into each other. He said nothing else, wasn’t capable of articulating more.

“There are worse things than the Wasting,” the fox said, but so soft that it is possible Boy never heard; even hearing, he would not have believed. The fox stood then, teeth and eyes bared in a smile. “Come.”

Boy trembled all over; the woods, what was beyond them – something other tugged at him, but the fox was real and kind – sharp-toothed, but Boy took that for an honest kindness. And he stood in turn. And walked one step. And then another. And each that followed was easier as they walked away from the birch trees of Oak Shade Park.

Boy came to a halt in the small parking lot at the edge of park, toes trying to dig into asphalt. “This isn’t the Wasting. This isn’t a trick,” he breathed.

“How do you know?” the fox asked, with nothing cruel behind it.

“The Wasting paves nothing over,” Boy said, and even Reynard Fox said nothing more to that.  

Facebook status updates part XXXI (Jan 2015)

Once upon a time, in a kingdom of magical dwarves, enchanted slippers and castles that could cause people to sleep a hundred years, a prince was informed that he could never be a princess.

“They say that if you want peace, you must prepare for war. What if you want war? What do you do then?”

“You tell everyone they are living in the best country in the world. And then you sit back, and you wait.”

What the word needs in 2015: Chat and/or quiz tv shows hosted by Daleks.

We are sometimes more than our hashtags.

"I don’t need the instruction manual for our son, doctor. I just want to find the cheat codes."

Once upon a time, there was a very hungry caterpillar who grew up to become a very hungry butterfly – and that, child, is where the first dragon came from.

I am your terms, you my conditions. We are each other’s privacy statement, and we both accept cookies.

Sometimes I suspect my life is a one-man play where I'm not even the best part.

"I know you wanted a brainbox dear, but the company is sold out so we bought you a breadbox. We can store your brain in that, right? It has its own twitter account and everything."

“I love you,” he said, just when I thought he couldn’t hurt me anymore.

“Don’t you understand yet that hatred is just love with it’s back turned away?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is with us.”

"That’s the problem. What if it really is true that toddlers killed more people in this country than terrorists last year?" And we both stared down at the crib and wondered what we had brought into the world.

"I want to be you when I grow up."

"That’s nice, dear, but you should try to be yourself —."

"No, I said I want to be you." And she smiled and held up the scissors. "Mommy said you have way too much skin, Granny, so I’m going to wear some of it now."

You used to be a poem I wanted to write

Before we fell in love; now you’re only prose

'You’ve spent your time counting the stars; I spent it wanting to compare our scars.'

That’s what I told you when really all I wanted was to kiss you until our smiles matched our eyes. - post

Bobby-Joe knew that the Conspiracy was deeper than he’d ever imagined when he realized that everyone else in the organization was really a plant by the Conspiracy.

Pro-tip: when you are giddy with exhaustion and sleeping is just making you even MORE tired, do not explain it to the doctor at the clinic by saying you blame the aliens for abducting you for the past four nights.

After his sister was put in the hospital for being schitzo – the doctors used other terms, that’s the one his mom stuck with when she described her ‘failure’ to friends – William snuck into his father’s wood shop and made fake bluetooth headsets for every crazy person he could find, in the hopes that everyone would think they were talking on a phone and not lock them away.

"Only one in every hundred people is a psychopath, which means the odds are pretty good our children won't turn out like me."

You don’t buy Alpha-Getti anymore, not after it began spelling out awful secrets about your parents. You’re terrified it might reveal yours to you next time.

"The love letter you found in my suit pocket wasn't for you."

You alone know that there hasn't been a human boy born in the last five years.

You are the fire in which I burn.

Six Word Story:

I’d write six words for you.

I love the weird times when you just blank on words.

I wrote 'nest of bees' and spent almost ten seconds trying to recall the right word to use instead of nest :p

Sometimes all that is left are the things we leave behind.

"I'm sorry, but we can't enter into a relationship. I found your writing blog, and I will do many things in my life. But I'm not going to become a poem for you. Never that."

They say that you become the thing you pretend to be. And so I loved you until it worked. I swear it worked.

Do creationists believe the world is only 6000 years old because it means there is less for them to study in history class?

Christians tend to name kids after Jesus (as Joshua, sometimes, depending on country) and after Mary, various saints etc. as protection against evil spirits and so forth, historically.

I wonder if Satanists did the same thing? Luke as short for Lucifer, and so forth.

"Well, we know Beelzebub isn’t a common name, but we were going for classics…"

Today loving you feels like an act of terrorism.

Imprisoned Doorways

It’s not my fault even though it is: sometimes that’s how magic happens. I’d left Dana to pull off some CSIS hoodoo on a city bureaucracy in order to get some information she needs on possible monsters hiding here the fae need to check in on. She wanted to use her glamour or I to use magic until I pointed out that her current body did have high government clearance and she could use that. I imagine a fae glamour would work as well, but she’s not healed from near-death well enough enough two months later to waste energy.

It’s a failing of magicians that we never pass up opportunities for lessons. Which is why I ended up stopping two boys from chasing a cat by making them understand exactly how the cat felt. One ran home and told his mother, who spent half an hour hunting me down in order to bring me into their home. Despite my protests that magicians weren’t exorcists. There was desperate need in her eyes, and magic answers need.

Louisa Croix was at her wits end. She’d had two priests come by and a self-styled exorcist. Neither had helped her daughter Bethany, but it went some way to explaining why her youngest, Roger, had been tormenting a cat. Sometimes we have to lash out or be consumed by ourselves. And sometimes the only way to lash out is to make others feel the pain one feels. He was six. It didn’t excuse, even if it did explain.

Roger is hiding in his bedroom under the bed. He’s been crying from his experience of being a wounded cat, but his mom hasn’t noticed. Bethany is locked in their attic, as if this is a bad horror film, and she is screaming insults in a dozen languages and lies about her parents, her brother, herself, all of it broken up by harsh truths she has no way of knowing. The next door neighbours divorced over things she screamed; people have moved away.

“I had a man here,” Louisa whispers. She’s not the sort to whisper, or wasn’t until four months ago when everything in her life went wrong. “He said he was of the city, claimed to be a magician, and she said things – terrible things that drove him out the door.”

“And he never returned?”

“They were very terrible things.”

“Yes. Magicians often do terrible things, and so does everyone else in the world.” I square my shoulders and begin walking up the stairs to the attic.

There is a pause, and then Bethany’s hoarse voice is low and cruel. “Magician, wanderer, seeker after nothing because you are too scared to be sought. All you do is run away, magician, so fast and far, from love or friendship.”

“I am the wandering magician of this era; it would be foolish not to wander away from myself at times, and yet I always find my way back. Is this the best you can do?”

“Magician!” Louisa says, and somehow manages a whispered scream. “Do not do this.”

The girl upstairs laughs then. “Oh, that was just saying hello, magician. Who taught you such things, who taught you the forms of the world if not your father? Your father, who was also a magician. Your father, whom you burned to death in fire. Magic answers need, and what was your need? Could you find no other solution, or were you too scared to look for one?”

“Already at my father. I thought you would start with my mother.”

“I have wounded you,” the girl cackles.

“It is no wound I was not aware of.” I hold out a hand, and open the door. Beyond it is a small room that seems even smaller than it is, little more than a cot and trays passed through a slit in the door each morning, returned each evening. Bethany is thin, burning with energy, eyes wide and wild, hair a tangle of assumed madness.

“Magic man, charlatan, who destroys more than he can ever save –,” she taunts from the bed, legs swinging as if it was a swing.

“Be quiet.” I don’t thread power into my voice, but I draw the magic up about me, the air humming like a hive in response as I step into the room. “A doorway can lead to many places, perhaps even whatever place you are from.”

“I am from the place all monsters come from: humanity.”

I snort at that. “I can call a fae through this door, and I believe the fae take very dim views of the reputation changelings like yourself try to leave on their doorstep. I could call forth a god-eater to strip you of your power. And I can call a boy named Jay, who could bind you until there is nothing of the changeling and only the child whose life you stole away. I could destroy you,” I say quietly, and it is in my nature to speak truths that cannot be dismissed.

Bethany is still, eyes narrow and sharp. “But you have not.”

“Doing monstrous things does not have to make you into a monster. Even being monstrous things does not: imagine what you could do to destroy the hypocrisies of the mighty or heal the wounded minds of other folk? You have power only in your voice, and it would so easy to silence. Easier, still, to kill you, which is why you mingle lie and truth so others will not murder you. Because if they do, everyone else will assume the lies were true as well. You can use your power to other ends.”

The changeling blinks. “I have consumed Bethany and taken her over, and you will let this stand?”

“I could destroy you, but I cannot restore her. And yes, I tried that once before.” I step back into the doorway. “I am offering you a chance to make this mean something, Bethany.”

She considers that. “You made Roger cry.”

“I did. I am hardly perfect.” I smile, almost. “Believing such things about oneself is what makes monsters.”

“I must continue Bethany’s life, even though I consumed her.” The changeling lets out a very human bark of laughter. “Nothing is ever finished.”

“No,” I say, and I turn and leave the monster to its choice. Because nothing with my father was ever finished, even though I killed him. Because a changeling sees the past as it clings to others, and I cannot wander far enough to let mine go.

I leave her to her choice, because I cannot trust what I might do it I stayed much longer. I go down the stairs, and tell Louisa it is over, one way or another, and she has no idea what to make of that. The boy is still crying in his bedroom. I say nothing as I pass it, because there is nothing I can say that will undo my actions.

I walk out of the house, and I am almost certain the changeling is not staring down at me and smiling, knowing she won the war even though she lost every battle with me. I do not look back. I am not a boy who takes his anger out on kittens. Nor a magician who abuses the world with power. I turn my anger inward until it burns itself away.

It takes long enough to hurt, but not long enough to ever touch the deeper hurts below.