First||Previous Part Twenty-One “Thank you, Shan.” I take his offered hand, as he’d rose to his feet. They’re a snug fit, but comfortable, and hold up to a double pirouette while still keeping traction. “The other boots weren’t that expensive, you didn’t have to tear your skin off.” “Accessing my hoard is troublesome these days.” He tics his head toward what looks like an access road a hundred yards away, and starts walking, with my in tow. “Wait, dragons actually have hoards of treasure? You’ve got a pile of gold coins somewhere that you nap on.” The response is an eye roll so dismissive of my assumption I want to take him to every nightclub’s Goth night in the City. I shrug. “Went with silver instead? Platinum?” I move up alongside him. “Diamonds and pearls?” He stops. “You had best not be mocking me.” “For?” He doesn’t respond, just resumes walking. “Wait, I know we both just had a near-death experience, but why do you think I’m mocking…” I smirk. “Wait, is it actually a pile of diamonds and pearls? That’s so… Prince.” His eyes blaze with sudden anger. “Don’t you dare think to mock-“ “Hold on, are you actually a fan of Prince?” His voice thunders across the field, likely ripples the lake. “His art was the only treasure that made this world worthy of existing!” I stop myself. Blinking a few seconds. “Well, yeah. I mean, let’s not forget Bowie, but I’m definitely not anti-Prince. Just surprised that uh, you’d be into his music.” “I am surprised as well, though it is because you are not more shaken by a ‘near-death experience’ as you put it.” “Shan?” I haven’t moved yet. “So much has happened that I’m moving into being numb. That a dragon would be into Prince is practically the only thing that could surprise me into feeling something, right now. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re going to do. I want to track down that other necromancer, as much out of self-defense as getting justice for the woman he murdered. That’s my goal, and we’re out in the boonies with no car and no phone, and no offense, but I’m not really up to flying back to the City.” He stops, then turns. “So we drive.” “I don’t have a car, and I’m not going to steal one. If the police have my phone, stealing a car would make it less believable that I didn’t kill anyone.” He exhales hard through gritted teeth. “You are a sorcerer. Conjure an automobile.” “…huh?” “Create one from…” He makes air quotes, and seems as disgusted by them as me. “Thin air.” “That’d be pretty handy if I knew how to do that, but, I don’t, so I can’t.” He spits acid onto the grass, which understandably melts and burns and smokes. “How did you learn magic?” “I have a… friend. He knows the magic words, I figure out the pronunciation, and it works. I remember a couple, but lately…” All of the words that came so easily. Shadows, come to me! All of that, it’s nothing like what Pumpkin has taught me. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or how I can do it, and if I wasn’t using it to save my own life I’d be terrified. Well, I am, but like I mentioned, I’m slipping into numb. “But lately?” He prods, literally pokes me, his voice softer, almost showing concern. “I’m doing stuff that’s way beyond raising a spirit or washing a sink full of dishes. When you were in the lake, I… I think I called the shadows to me. I was moving so fast, and I reached you, and I think I commanded you to be human, so I could get you out of the water. I don’t know those words, Shan.” I shake my head quickly. “I was never taught them.” My throat tightens with stress, the numbness fading so panic can take its place, wanting to run, to hide, cower, but it’s through a filter. I know I feel this way but… I also know that I know, and that’s all the distance my sanity needs to keep on an even keel. It’s like a gentle pulse in the back of my brain that this is all normal, that it will pass, that I’ll be okay. And I know this sense of calm isn’t me.

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