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Image Credit: Modified from Quizilla.Teennick.com - Eden. ~Landing

Author's Note: There is no connection between the novel by Harlan Ellison and my story except perhaps that we both just chose something simple that describes the story. :)

This is a fan fiction, the Whateleyverse and all canon characters are the property of their respective writers. If you find your life being depicted in this story you it is purely accidental and you have a hell of a lot more to worry about than suing me. No canon characters have been hurt in the writing of this story...yet.

Many thanks to GinnCaster5 for the editing help, without Ginn this story would probably be unreadable. And to Pmanpman and Rozarius for their read through.

This is a Whateley Academy fan fiction story, you can find the Whateley stories at http://www.crystalhall.org/ I highly recommend them. ~Landing

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Chapter 10
 

“My book,” Cardshark said in a sad tone.

“Sorry,” I said a little muzzily. I was still a bit out of it and shook my head to bring the world back into focus. “Is it badly damaged?”

Cardshark tried to pick up her book, but the leather-bound volume was frozen to the table. She put on a lighthearted tone that I thought was a little forced and said, “Oh, don’t worry too much; it’s a tough old book, and a few char spots and water marks won’t hurt it too badly. I’ll just get Steelfist to bring up a blow-dryer when he comes to administer the mental tests. I think we’re done testing your magic. I’ll leave it for the experts at Whateley to figure out.”

I felt bad for damaging her book; despite what she might say, I could see I did a number on it. But even that feeling of guilt couldn’t completely override a feeling of contentment that seemed to suffuse my body. It was almost like the feeling I would get after a really good run.

“We’ll pay for any damage she might have done,” put in my mother with a resigned sigh, like she wanted to be annoyed with me but knew it wasn’t my fault.

“No really, don’t worry about it. It was just a basic magical primer. It’s no big deal.”

“What happened anyway?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Like I said, I don’t know much about runic magic. I had expected you to maybe be able to read it or recognize it somehow. I wasn’t expecting what we got.” She shook her head. “That will teach me not to trifle with forces beyond my ken,” she sighed and went to the phone hanging on one wall to get in touch with Steelfist.

“Hey Steely, Eden is ready for the written tests. Yeah. And I need you to bring up a blow-dryer. Why do you have to assume it was an accident? Okay, yes it was, but there’s no reason to just assume it like that! Fine, I’ll see you in a few.”

Steelfist arrived, blow-dryer in hand, a few minutes later. He was obviously trying hard not to laugh at Cardshark’s predicament, and after giving her the blow-dryer had my mother, Harvard and I follow him out of the room.

Out in the hallway Steelfist dropped all attempts to hide amusement and I looked at him questioningly. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh you would have to know our Cardshark, there have been more mishaps in that lab than I care to count. It’s gotten to be a bit of a running joke, and with her being one of the youngest and newest on the team, it’s my job to tease her mercilessly.”

“Well, this time it was my fault, so I guess you don’t need to tease her about it,” I said.

“You’re taking all the fun out of this, you know. Come on, let’s get you started on those tests.”

The next few hours weren’t all that interesting. Steelfist took me into a small room and put me through a number of tests, some verbal, some written, all boring. It turned out I didn’t gain any great mental abilities along with the magic, which was slightly disappointing. It would have been cool to suddenly be super smart, but then, with my luck, I would have ended up with a giant, pulsing forehead as well, so it was probably all for the best. It did turn out that my score for spatial abilities went down when compared to tests I had taken previously for school. Steelfist seemed very interested in this and muttered something about neurological differences in gender.

I had been putting it off long enough. Since this was the last of the tests, I knew I had to decide if I was going to meet with Kent or not. As far as I could tell, both options sucked. Either I meet with Kent and risk the chance he wasn’t the guy I thought he was, or I don’t meet with him and probably regret it for the rest of my life. I could have agonized about it for an hour, but since I didn’t have the time, I decided to use the method that had never failed me in hard situations, Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. After the obligatory toe catching and extortion, I ended up with the left hand, representing meet him, as the winner, and I only had to cheat a little bit at the end to get it that way.

“Mom, I’ve decided I’m going to see him,” I told my mother.

She let out a breath, in either acceptance or disappointment-I couldn’t tell which, before turning to Steelfist, who was just saving the results of my testing on a computer.

“Um, Steelfist, would it be alright if Eden and I waited somewhere private for Kent to show up?” asked my mother.

Steelfist nodded soberly and showed us to a well appointed conference room done up in a business casual style. I had to wonder what Steelfist thought of this whole situation he was being witness to. He probably thought it came straight out of a soap opera, either that or out of Jerry Springer. ‘Transsexuals who want to meet with their long lost father who abandoned them at birth! With paternity tests! Today, on the Jerry Springer show!’ I snorted, yeah that was about the state of it.

Once Steelfist left, quietly closing the door behind him, my mother turned to me, a serious expression on her face. “Eden, I know you have decided to do this and I won’t interfere, but I want you to be careful. I don’t want you to let this man hurt you like he did to me. He can be a very charming person; don’t get your hopes to high about him.”

What could I say to that? I just nodded my head and sat down in one of the chairs. Mom kept on her feet, probably too nervous or upset to sit down. She always paced at home too when something was wrong.

I was nervous about meeting with Kent again. What were you supposed to say to the guy that suddenly turned out to be your father? So you’re the guy that impregnated my mother, nice to meet you? Hey! I have your nose? I snorted with discomfort. Not that I could have his nose anymore anyway.

The door across the room opened, and I turned to look at it. My mother stopped her pacing and did likewise. Kent stood there, looking rather nervous and uncomfortable. His eyes darted from me to my mother and back again before he finally said something.

“Eden, it’s good to see you again. I’m glad you let me talk to you. I know this can’t be easy for you.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, unsure of what to say. A few seconds went by in silence before I finally got my voice to work again.

“Nah, it’s not that bad. I talk to guys who turn out to be my long lost father all the time. You should have seen the last one, he had a breathing problem and kept saying ‘search your feelings, you know it to be true’.”

Kent smiled at my weak joke, and I felt the tension ease some. “So what do we do now?” I asked him.

“I’m not sure, I don’t…there is so much I wanted to say, but I can’t remember any of it now.”

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” I said, trying to think of something to talk about. “Uh, what were you and the Sergeant talking about? That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“No, it’s no secret. We were discussing the events from yesterday and what the two of us had managed to find out. A bit of intelligence sharing.”

That stirred my interest. “What did y’all find out?”

“Not as much as I would have liked. It seems that the cult first sprung up in New England about twenty or twenty-five years ago. They kept a real low profile for that kind of group, so it’s hard to tell exactly. They started really attracting attention about five years ago when they went on a killing spree. There were thirty-two deaths that the authorities are sure they had a hand in. Most of the victims were… altered in horrible ways. The sergeant thinks they were perfecting the ritual they used on you. If that is the case, you have no idea how lucky you were to survive it.” He looked slightly green. “The remains of the victims usually had to be destroyed and anything they might have contacted sealed up at ARC. Sometimes it was hard for the authorities to know if what they were destroying was truly dead or not.”

I swallowed hard, glad for the first time that I was just changed into a girl; the thought of what might have happened…well, I was going to try and not think those thoughts. I wanted to be able to sleep tonight.

“Anyways, the whole thing was thought to have been shut down last year when STAR League executed a raid on their compound. It looks like it wasn’t as successful as was thought.”

We both mulled that over in silence for a moment until Mom interrupted it.

“Eden, we need to leave pretty soon if we are going to beat the traffic,” my mother reminded me.

“But…”

“What if I drive Eden home? That will give us a chance to talk on the way,” said Kent.

“I don’t think…”

“You can follow right behind us; Eden won’t be out of your sight.”

I looked at my mom hopefully. She seemed indecisive, torn between conflicting emotions, but finally she nodded her assent. “Eden, if at any time you want to get back in the car with me, have Kent pull over and I’ll get you,” she gave Kent a hard look. “You make sure nothing happens.”

We were mostly silent as the four of us made our way to the parking garage. Mom was unhappy, I could tell. I’m not sure what dad said to get her on board with the idea of me having contact with Kent, but I could tell she still didn’t like it. Kent seemed to be as nervous as I was. The ice that had been broken when we met thirty minutes ago seemed to have reformed. Harvard seemed to be the only one that was okay. He trotted along at my side, occasionally taking in the surroundings or sniffing at the ground.

When we got to the garage, Kent pressed the remote for his car and a cherry red convertible of some kind chirped merrily back at him. Mom stopped and gave me a quick but hard hug.

“I’ll be right behind you if you need me,” she said.

“Right mom, I’ll be okay,” I suddenly felt very unsure of the whole situation. Did I really want to go for a three hour drive with a man I hardly knew, even if he was my real father? I thought about telling mom I had changed my mind and I would be going back with her, but I took hold of my resolve. I wasn’t going to run away from this, even if that was what I really wanted to do deep down.

I turned to Kent and gave him a weak smile. “I call shotgun.”

He smiled tentatively back. “Good, because there aren’t any other seats anyway.”

-Where will I sit?- asked Harvard suspiciously.

“You’re going to have to ride home with mom big guy,” I told him while I fondled his ears.

-I’m supposed to be with you,- he said sternly.

I guess the ear rub didn’t do the trick. “Listen buddy, there is no room for you, so you are going to have to ride with mom; there is no way around this and you won’t be that far from me.”

-I don’t like…- Harvard started to say before suddenly stopping, or at least I think he stopped. For a moment, I thought I heard him say further or something. But it had been barely a whisper, and the voice hadn’t been quite right.

***...wher...athe...elp...***

There it was again, words just almost on the threshold of hearing in my mind.

-Right, I’ll see you later then!- said Harvard quickly before hurriedly trotting off to my mom’s SUV.

Okay, that was weird. I shook my head. My whole life was weird; my dog acting strange should be the least of my worries. I turned my attention back to Kent.

“Uh, nice car,” I said as I slid into the passenger side, the soft leather of the seats seeming to mold itself to my body.

“It’s not mine; I just rented it when I landed at Hobby airport. It’s the newest Ferrari. You, uh, like cars then?” asked Kent as he, with a soft roar, started the engine.

“No, not all that much.” It had always been Brook who liked cars. As far as I was concerned, as long as it wasn’t a piece of shit and could get you from one place to another, they were all pretty much the same.

“Oh. Uh hey, I have something I want to give you!” Kent awkwardly reached into his pocket and brought out a rounded rectangular case and handed it to me.

I examined it for a moment before figuring out how to open it. Inside was a pair of thin, black-rimmed glasses. “Uh, I don’t really need glasses; my eyes are just fine,” I told him, a little puzzled by the gift.

“These are special glasses; here let me show you,” he reached over and plucked the glasses out of their case before he put them on himself. “Notice anything different?”

It took me a moment to figure it out. “Your eyes! They stopped glowing!” And they had; his normally golden glowing eyes looked, well, not really normal, the color wasn’t something you would come across every day, but they at least didn’t shout ‘hey I’m a freak!’ as loud as they could.

“Right, since we both seem to have the same problem I thought they might be helpful for you,” he said as he handed the glasses back to me.

“Thanks!” I said as I placed them on my own face and turned down the car visor to see how they looked. They weren’t that bad; they made my new features look slightly more intelligent. Though, just like with Kent, there was no disguising the fact that my copper eyes weren’t part of the standard model.

“The glasses are an old pair of mine. I haven’t had a chance yet to order one’s for you from the devisor that makes them and, uh, I kind of wanted you to have something that was connected to me.”

Great, another awkward pause, this was getting annoying. I decided that I needed to just grab the bull by the horns and stop tip-toeing around the subject.

“Why didn’t you go after mom when she left?” There, I had asked it, there was no going back now.

Kent took a deep breath, but he must have been ready for the question because he didn’t pause before answering. “It’s because I’m not a good person, Eden. Or at least, I wasn’t. I hope I have changed since back then. When your mother left, I was sure that she would be back. When a few days went by with no sign of her, I decided I didn’t need her, that I could get any woman I wanted, and it was her loss, not mine. I wrote her off as not worth it, her… and you. I was wrong, but it took me years before I figured it out. I did need you and her. She had been the one thing that kept me from going too far, that put some restraint on me. After she left, I had none. I did whatever I wanted, whatever felt good. I did things that I’m not proud of. Hell, it would be easier to list the number of things I was proud of doing during that time than the things I wasn’t. The list would be much shorter.”

I took in what he had said. I hadn’t been sure what kind of answer I was going to get from him. I thought, or well hoped is more like it, that there was some kind of good reason for what he did. That mom had been wrong in the way she described it and Kent had some kind of secret super hero-ish reason for abandoning us, to hide us from his enemies, or to act in accordance with some ancient prophecy. I thought I might hear that he had thought I would be better off away from him and so he let mom go. I had even been prepared to hear that he and mom had broken up and it was pretty much like any of the other kids a school whose parents had split. This unvarnished account, bearing out everything that mom had told me, I wasn’t really expecting.

I didn’t know how to respond to it, being told that my real father hadn’t cared about me, that he didn’t even try to find me. Growing up, I had always had parents that I knew loved me. This was something I could always rely on, no matter what happened. In fact, I realized now that I had never really been exposed to a situation where someone I was close to just didn’t care about me. Only come to find out I had, before I was even a year old.

“Why did you change your mind about wanting anything to do with me?” I asked, holding back tears. Damn girl hormones.

“I got so low, I had to look up to see the gutter. Almost all of my friends had abandoned me, and I was on the fast track to wind up dead in some ally from an overdose of devisor drugs, and no one was going to be around that cared a damn if I did. One day, I finally realized the truth, that I wanted more from life than what I had, that I wanted to be able to meet my eyes in the mirror again. And what’s more, I realized that something was missing in my life, you.”

Damn eyes dripping all over the place. I wiped at them with the palm of my hand.

“So I got myself cleaned up, went to rehab, did the whole twelve step program. I found out that a few, not many, but a few, of the friends I had thought I lost were willing to give me a second chance. I managed to track down you and Veronica and I found out she had already moved on, got married, had another kid. I knew any chance with her was over; even if she hadn’t met your father, I had hurt her too badly to ever be taken back, but I still hoped I could get a chance to know you. I was scared though, of being rejected just like I had rejected the both of you, so I put off contacting her. Finally, a friend of mine convinced me that I had nothing to lose; I would either get a chance to see you or not. I hoped it would go well, but I knew it wasn’t too likely. I sent a letter to your mother explaining that I had changed and asking that I be given a chance,” Kent gave a rueful chuckle.

“I didn’t even get a response back. Your mother never was one to forgive, and I certainly didn’t deserve her forgiveness after what I had done. I tried contacting your father next; I had done some asking around, and he had a reputation of being a kind and compassionate man” He snorted. “He might be kind and compassionate, but when it comes to his family, your father is as fierce as any lion. He made it clear to me that I was not going to be allowed to hurt either his wife or his son again, and that if I came anywhere near them he would ‘take care’ of me. But he did leave me with a little hope; if I could prove that I had really changed, that I really wasn’t the same person I had been before, then I might just have a chance.”

“So what did you do next?” I asked.

“The only thing I could, I waited, all the while working at proving I was different. I started working on songs that had a positive message, I became a philanthropist, I even did some motivational speaking. The media declared me an inspirational figure, and I did the rounds on the talk shows; I even did Oprah. I didn’t have to worry about money; all the while I was throwing my life away, a friend was still looking out for me. Heartracer had seen to it that my money was put in trusts at the height of my fame so I couldn’t waste it all. Finally, I got the call I had been waiting for, and I came… here.”

He smiled warmly at me before looking up at the rearview mirror, and I felt myself smiling back. Maybe I didn’t have to feel so bad after all. Maybe this was someone I really could have a relationship with. Yes, he had abandoned me when I was young, but he seemed to be a different person now, at least I hoped he was. Mom's warning was still echoing in my mind; I knew I should probably heed her words and try to be careful. Take it slow; that’s what I told myself.

“When you came to rescue me, your guitar was playing by itself. Do you have some kind of power that allows you to do that?” I asked shifting the topic to something not as replete with emotions.

“Oh that.” He leaned forward and reached up to his neck, tapping at something I hadn’t noticed before. It was a circle of polished metal at the base of his skull. “Neural implant. I’m hooked directly to my guitar so it plays whatever is in my head. The whole thing was made by Dr. Sound, one of the original members of the Lampposts.”

I noticed Kent frown as he looked yet again in his rearview mirror. “What’s wrong? Is mom following to close?” I asked as I twisted in my seat to see behind us.

Kent stopped my turn with a quick hand to my shoulder and a quiet command. “Don’t turn around.”

“What? What is it?”

“I think we might be being tailed, hold on,” he said before he shifted gears and sped onto the off ramp at the last second.

“Of course we are being followed! My mother is supposed to be right behind us!” I said.

Kent winced, then replied back. “I mean I think someone other than Veronica is following us. She is going to tear my head off for losing her though. Call your mother and tell her what is happening. Hopefully she hasn’t called the cops to report a kidnapping yet.”

I reached into my pocket to pull out my cell phone when it started ringing. The distinctive sound of Star Wars Imperial March filled the car and I hastily pressed the answer button. With what I thought was a commendable amount of forethought, I held the phone several inches away from my ear. Both Kent and I winced in unison as my mother’s voice ripped through the air.

“What the HELL is going on! You tell Deathknell’s lily white backside to pull over so I can pick you up! When I’m through with him, he is going to wish he was facing Acidbreath again! Losing most of his skin is nothing compared to what I am going to do to him!”

“Mom! Kent thinks we are being followed; stop yelling!”

“Followed? Followed! Of course you are being followed! I’m the one following his over-tattooed ass! I’m…”

“Mom! He means someone other than you!”

The other end of the line went quiet for a moment, then my mother spoke in a controlled voice. “Put me on speaker phone.”

“That’s hardly needed with how loud you were yelling,” I grumbled.

“Ad-Eden!”

“All right, all right, I’m putting you on.”

“What did the car look like that was following you, Kent?” asked my mom.

“A white SUV; it was three cars behind us in the next lane,” Kent said.

“I see it; hold on I’m going to slow down and see if it will pass me.”

“Be careful,” warned Kent.

We held our breath as we waited for what mom would say next.

“Alright, it passed me by. It looks like a Ford Explorer. The license plate is half covered in mud; all I can see is R2.”

“Is there anything else that might be distinctive about the car?”

“It has some kind of ribbon bumper sticker on the back, one of those support our troops or live strong things.”

I felt like rolling my eyes. “So does almost every other car on the road these days,” I said. I was starting to lose the panic that Kent’s declaration that we were being followed had caused. I just couldn’t see some shadowy secret agent type driving around with a breast cancer awareness sticker or whatever on the back of his car. And besides; the SUV was supposed to be black wasn’t it?

“Does it look like he is trying to get off at the next exit?” asked Kent.

“No he’s in the far lane from it, and we’ll pass it in just a minute.”

Kent seemed to relax. “Must have just been my imagination,” he muttered. “Veronica, go ahead and get off the freeway. I’ll meet up with you on the feeder.”

“Fine, then we can pull over and Eden can ride with me.”

I acted quickly to try and head that off. “Mom, I’m okay with Kent, I don’t need to change cars.”

“Eden, if he is going to…”

I cut in, “Mom, we are all just a little paranoid. Having run-ins with murderous cults can do that to people. Besides, if we really were being followed, wouldn’t I be safer with someone that has super powers and can defend us?”

I heard my mom sigh over the phone. “Fine, Eden, but you tell Kent that he is to call me before he does anything like this again. I’ll have my cell phone where I can get to it right away.”

After I hung up the phone with a sigh of my own, I had to wonder what Chinese guy had given me their worst curse; I couldn’t even ride home without something ‘interesting’ happening to me. Okay, it was a false alarm, but I was sure no one else at my school ever worried about being followed by mysterious cars.

“Well, where were we?” asked Kent.

“I think it’s your turn to ask a question.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Caput Mortuum.”

“What? Is that even a real color?”

~o~O~o~

Mike Harrison brooded to himself as he drove back to meet up with the others. The little freak had already gotten protection from more of its kind. Not only was it getting help from supposed ‘heroes’, the Watchers, but it was being driven around by a known supervillain. So much for the ‘heroes’ claim to be fighting against ‘bad’ supers. He knew they were all in it together; they might pretend to fight each other, but when it came down to it, they all worked together. He was glad he had been detailed to follow the freak today. Now he knew what allies the baby freak had. He had recognized Deathknell, one of the worst freaks around as far as he was concerned, what is how he was trying to corrupt today’s youth. He really hoped he would be given the chance to do him in. He had caught his nephew listening to its propaganda music at the last family reunion. He had beat that boy but good too for falling for that corruption. His weak brother had objected to his handling of the situation, but he didn’t care; he was doing right by his family and something his wimpy little brother should already have been doing.

He was still puzzled by how the target had changed from a boy freak to a girl freak, but the boss said that it happened sometimes, just another sign of their unnatural violation of the proper order of things. He had to admit that it had come out looking good no matter what it had started as, of course that was only so it could seduce honest, righteous men from their duty. He and a couple of the boys had plans for her if they got the time. They would teach her the proper place of a woman.

The boss didn’t know if it had any powers yet. When it was still a boy, it hadn’t shown any, but that might have changed when it turned into a whore. They did that sometimes. They would have to be careful when they went after it, strike when it was away from its allies, and take it down hard. He was looking forward to it.

~o~O~o~

I had been home for an hour. Kent had left soon after dropping me off, chased away by a glare from my mother, who was now busy grading papers for her class. Even Harvard had abandoned me, as soon as we got home he went into my sister's room where I wasn’t allowed to go. He was acting strange; he hardly ever wanted to be by himself. Most times he was always underfoot looking for attention. All this meant that I was left alone with pretty much nothing to do. I spent some time thinking about everything Kent and I had talked about in the car. After the little paranoia episode, we had discussed all kinds of things, mostly trying to figure out who the other was. He had told me about what it was like to be a rock star, it turned out to be a lot more work than I thought, and about his deep love for music. I had told him about growing up in Texas and about my friends at school.

The conversation had become depressing when I told him about Brook. I had admitted to him how I felt about her, something I hadn’t even told my own mom and dad. The problem was I was a girl now, so that shot to hell any chance that she would ever like me that way, even if I wasn’t going away to an Xavier’s Institute for the Weird and Freaky wannabes. Kent had tried to give me hope by suggesting that it was possible that Brook might like me even as a girl, but there was no way that was happening. Brook had never even hinted that she might like the same sex. This whole situation sucked.

I had been resolute this morning about facing the whole ‘I-have-boobs-and-all-that-goes-with-it’ thing head on, but that was this morning. My resolve didn’t feel too strong while I was lying on my bed with nothing to do but brood. I didn’t want to be a girl! I had been happy being a boy. Okay, I wasn’t some testosterone-laden meathead who did nothing but brag about his conquests, but that didn’t mean I was okay with this. I was dreading interacting with people that didn’t know I was really a guy. My mind kept thinking about how different boys and girls were treated. Even when kids are still young, people always tell girls how pretty they are and boys how strong they are. You never hear it being said the other way. And that was just unconscious bias. I cringed at the memory of some of the things that were said in the locker room. There were some guys who didn’t even seem to think girls were really humans who could think and had feelings of their own. I regretted not having punched them in the face for their comments, but since I would probably have been handed my ass in a take-home doggie bag, it was probably for the best that I hadn’t.

Ugh, I needed to stop thinking about this stuff; it was just making me depressed. I got up off my bed where I had been staring blankly at a poster of the lead characters from Tales of the MCO, who, now that I looked more closely, seemed to be glaring at me, and decided I needed some fresh air. It was hard though; even walking down the stairs reminded me of my situation. My gait was different, my balance was different, even the way I moved was different. Stop it Adam, just don’t think about it, I told myself.

Remembering what a disaster it had been the last time I went out for a walk, I decided to stay in the backyard. I walked around aimlessly for a while, kicking up the grass clippings from yesterday before flopping down next to the big live oak tree that stood in the middle of the yard. It was one of Harvard’s favorite places to snooze when the weather was good, and I could see now why he liked it. It was cool under the tree, with the branches shifting in the breeze to dapple the ground with yellow sunlight. Harvard had cleared a spot off the usual carpet of acorns and the grass to come to that, leaving a patch of the sandy soil bare.

I had to look on the good side; it wasn’t like everything that had happened to me in the past few days had been bad. I had gained cool mutant powers after all. I mean, who hadn’t wanted to be able to do magic as a kid? Just wave your hand and bam! Ken Lancaster was a frog. It had been really cool at the Watchers headquarters today when I had made that rune work. It just felt so cool, like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I tried drawing a rune on the dirt? Did I remember what it looked like? I closed my eyes and tried to bring back the memory of how the rune had appeared. It was amazingly clear in my mind’s eye. I saw both the fire rune and the frost rune like they were right in front of me. There seemed to be an unusual depth to them in my memory, almost as if they were three dimensional. I opened my eyes and after a quick search found a stick. I should probably stick to the frost rune; I don’t want to set the yard on fire after all.

I smoothed out a spot next to me and used the end of the stick to start to sketch out what was in my mind. It was hard to describe how I drew some if it; there seemed to be lines and curves that didn’t correspond to what someone standing next to me would have seen. There was somehow more to what I did than just moving a stick around in the dirt. I felt that warmth I had felt this morning when Cardshark had taken over my body rise up in me. Then I felt something different; there was another power reaching out from what I was drawing to meet my power. The two of them spiraled together, meeting and melding into one force that flooded the rune with energy. Just as I finished the last line, the powers reached a crescendo and settled down into what I had created.

I blinked my eyes, clearing the strange vision from them and looked down at the area about a foot in diameter of frosted ice. I rapped it with a knuckle. It wasn’t just a thin layer of ice, the ground was frozen solid. I grinned to myself. This was pretty cool! I wondered if there was any way to use this to ice down a drink. I would never have to drink a hot coke again! Of course, I would have to find some way to not freeze the whole thing and have the can explode in my face.

Speaking of coke, I was kind of thirsty, so I got up, shooting my little patch of ice an appreciative glance and headed back into the house. We were almost out of coke with just two left, so I snagged one of them and poured it into a glass of ice. Yeah, I know I was just thinking about using my powers to cool the soda, but I was really thirsty and didn’t want to risk not having anything to drink. I was making my way back to my room, thinking that I might see if I could entice Harvard to join me, since he never turned down a chance to get some coke, when there was a knock on the front door. Not really thinking about it, I reached out to the door.

“I got it mom!” I absently yelled so she wouldn’t have to get up.

It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I had ever done, since when I had the door open, I was staring into the puzzled face of Brook.

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To Be Continued...