Evanescence 23

Chapter 23

It’s been a long day and everything since I had started to practice in earnest. Shaun had retreated to his workshop where he was doing Artifice and while I was curious I was too busy trying to get a better grip on myself and my magic.

I had made some water bottles up and a jug of lemonade and a few peanut butter sandwiches and went out into one of the fields and sat with a blanket.

I need to touch my other selves most of them had been magic-users of some kind before I had been and I actually don’t try to bring Antonia up first but Kara.

The Norse-witch, the element user because she had been the most effective self that I had against Shea.

I get ready and sink into meditation and reach inside myself and open up the way.

“Magic is life and life is magic.”
“What was once shall be once again.”
“Energy is life and life is magic.”
“Magic is energy and it just changes forms.”
“Life changes forms.”

It’s not a spell or even a mantra it’s me adlibbing stuff that I know are fundamental stuff about like magic and physics even because while magic and science is sort of incompatible it works too at the same time?

It’s more to lull myself into this state where I’m sort of letting Kara be me? And me be her more that usual. Like I’m imprinting her as the new template for me like an avatar in a video game.

The first thing I notice is the sensations, smells are way different because she’s. I…we’ve never been across the Atlantic. A lot of the scents of nature are new to us; our clothes are next, so light and sheer. I had only a few dresses of Nilelander cottons but these were so very fine and nice.

This bra thing, we had similar things, mine was a leather vestette I preferred. This thing called a sports bra comes to mind.

“Pfft…there will be time enough to dress in that Raine, you need exercise.”

It’s most odd talking to myself like that. Unsettling knowing that I feel like I’m Kara but knowing that I am long dead and gone. That I’m really this girl and that I’m teaching me?

See very odd and unsettling.

Enough woolgathering Kara… Ragnarock comes.

I start with the elements and how to touch them as I know how. I have an affinity for wind but I can use all of them. An affinity is just that a like and preference and a talent for one thing over another.

For me the first thing is to gather you essence…essence like for greater spells not mana and meditate and breathe.

With each breath I fill my lungs with essence and then with the breaths that follow I filter out the things in the air that is not the true element’s essence. It’s slow going this time, slower still because she is not truly me but we get there where the filtered out natural energies of wind are racing though my blood, her blood and we feel it in our hair, we move and we sway to it’s rhythm and we get lost with the breathing of the world.

To know air like this intimately you learn to shape it and to control it. To get that feeling of air in your soul then to reach out with your mana into that feeling and to infuse that gust with your will…and like the wind it’s just as fleeting.

Her high is my high as I cut loose and I have the floodgates of her powers open to me and I wrap us in winds and I lift us off of our seat and a dozen feet into the air and I swirl and storm of flowers around us.

I love the flower swarm spell it just does that make the petals swirl and swirl around us I did this for Lita….she love this and I’m crying at the memory and Raine not me reaches out and she uses a light spell making some change to it I do not know and instead of the ball of light there it’s Lita and home and my memories…I watch and cry and touch and never thought that I’d see then never like this…it’s a precious gift to see them.

I’m more than happy despite my dark past to share the happy things really and truly with the new me and if they mean more and more to Raine then maybe they’ll live on even more.

We rest and calm ourselves and the rest if training her…to feel the air but to extend herself into it. Feel the flutter of wings bee or bird and to know them. I teach her to pull air with her powers together and compress it. I learn things that she knows bit of about physics? It seems a roman or a greek word but these things about weighs of pressure seem sound.

We learn things…I learn, we learn this science thing and we fine tune my shield of air. Mine would slow things very much with condensed air and now it is solid between layers of condensed air and something she calls micro-eddy’s that spin the incoming things off course…deflects them.

By the time we are done for the day I cannot stay Raine’s head is filled with so many things I do not know of and had I remained I do not know…plus there was her and this Shaun.

I am not ready for my remaining soul to touch his like a lovers…I retreat inside to my sisters…

……………………………………….so like I said a long day. With Kara gone for now I head back to the farm and am mulling over ideas. Air, earth, fire, water…I need her help to touch these right and then I really need to get some serious work done on my studies.

I’m getting why old time mages and witches had labs and grimoires, notebooks because good magic is partway base on science.

I mean I can make simple holograms because I’m a geek and I get how to reform the ball of light to have pixels.

Oh…and I just figured out how to sort of do other things…not too…But I really slacked in high school and didn’t take physics or chemistry so I need to learn those. I mean just with my discovery channel scientific knowledge my brain can’t turn off.

I make myself stop and go help Shaun’s dad in the greenhouses and get some baskets of stuff picked for supper. Mostly stuff for the salads and stuff but he grows all sorts of veggies and heirloom stuff too all organic and everything her and with the soft mellow tunes he’s got in the background I’m mellowing out.

There’s nothing like picking and munching as you pick on stuff while Leonard Cohen’s droning in the way that he does. I’ll admit I like the song “Bird on a wire.”

I go and help Mandy (That’s Shaun’s mom.) with supper and just relax and we actually talk about what happened with me out in the field today and Mandy gets me some lotion to put on because I was out there for most of the day and I got a healthy sunburn.

Supper’s cooking and I see Shaun come in and he’s covered in dirt but like that grey dirt like from metal and carbon and stuff. He looks tired too. I get him a drink of iced tea and he drains it and he takes it slower with the second one that I pour him.

“Tired?”

“Yeah but it was a good day.” He smiles at me.

I like the way that he smiles at me.

“Artifice is dirty work.”

“That’s more the trial and error stuff, lots of carbon from the flashes and snaps.”

“Flashes and snaps?”

“Electricity?”

“Oh yeah I can see that.”

“Yeah, I’m….going to take a shower.”

“Want me to wash your back?”

“Sure…”

We head off down to his basement and we slip into the shower together and at first it’s just that washing the day off of us but then I just really need to kiss him and to feel Shaun.

Being Kara was a learning experience but it also has left me with this sort of needing to feel like me feeling and one of the ways that I feel the most like me is when Shaun and I are making love.

I won’t go into the details of us and our lovemaking because well it’s us and I’ve said it before. It is good and we take it slow and it is exactly what we needed and both wanted. Well that and the nice little forty minute nap we had afterwards with him holding me.

Supper was good with grilled pork chops and a big salad and a plate of tomatoes sliced thin with olive oil and all the trimmings and steamed green beans.

Jill shows up for supper alone and I’m feeling more settled now with her and the whole thing between her and the me that used to be her lover. She’s freshly showered and she looks not tired but her eyes are overly bright and there’s the scent of strange magic all over her.

We’re outside having a coffee and sort of her beckoning for me to join her and we both light up.

“What’s up, you smell funny.”

“Smell funny?”

“You’ve got this really strange power coming off of you.”

“You can tell that?” she gives me this look. It’s that spy with a blown cover kind of look.

I nod and drink some coffee.

“I had to report in. The Ashe being here and Sloan plus the whole thing with Shea and then that demon dust up down town….They wanted to know.”

“Who?”

“My bosses Raine, they’d still want to talk to you but there’s something else going on and it’s big.”

“Big?”

“Really big, it has to do with Asmodeus.”

“Okay what…?”

She looks hesitant. “Jill, you might as well tell me what’s going on I’ll find out sooner or later.”

“There’s this group…called the Templars and it seems that they’ve been allied with him as their like new messiah. They made a bio-weapon and it is a magical virus that attacks Were’s.”

“Like a military grade bio-weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Okay…that’s not good…right?”

“No, not since the Were’s have found out and this small time Were clan queen has gone off the reservation and raised an army and has the samples of the weapon.”

“And that’s bad.”

“Yeah….there’s rules Raine, the old blood ancient humans made pacts with the fae to be taught to become one with the souls of animals. The fae needed forces to fight the threats of the demons and the vampires and the humans needed protection so the first Were’s were created.”

“Okay.” I take another drink.

“Well this queen has broken the laws that keep the balance of power in check with the Were’s and she’s really getting considered dangerous.”

I see HER there. I hold my hand up for Jill to stop.

~So? ~ I ask mentally to HER.

~The Were’s are human touched and the fae don’t really like or trust humanity for well they’re humanity. ~

I nod I’ll fully admit we’re one messed up and shitty species if you look at all the negatives. Jill’s looking at me and she’s looking at her watch spelled do-dad and still looks confused the she looks at me with her wrist tilted.

I pull the power that’s usually on the surface of myself in and under my skin like I’m confining it to just my nervous system. I basically turned off my wireless and am running on a closed system. Jill frowns looking at it them me.

I turn to look at Her again.

~So this girl got frisky with the rules and that’s why the supernatural oldies are up in arms? ~

~Basically yes and by the nature of Were-pack magic she’s getting stronger and stronger and she’s gaining allies. ~

~Allies? ~

~The Native American clan packs. The see her way of seeing pack and family in the same way. ~

~So, she’s really looking down the barrel of being a serious Were-Queen? ~

~Yes, And she was the one that found out the whole threat of the virus to begin with and had made her own army and crossed from here into Canada and took the threat out here.~

~So what is she going to do with it, the virus and the power? ~

~I’m not a mind reader but she’s sent an ally here. ~

~Here? ~

~Well they’re on their way here. ~

~Okay, so how will I know them? ~

~Oh well he’s and elf and he’s traveling with an earthbound angel. ~

I stop and take a drag then a drink of my coffee and sigh. ~Its starting isn’t it? ~

~Yes.~

~Okay…can you tell me who this Queen is? ~

~Parker, Stevie Parker. She lives in Moon bay up in Maine. ~

~Okay…~

~Okay? ~

I look at HER. ~I at least have an idea of what to do and where to start. ~

SHE looks at me. ~Good.~ then she smiles and fades out for now.

I turn and look at Jill.

“I’ll talk to Parker once I talk to her people after they get here.”

“What! what the hell Raine!” she actually steps up to me like she might try to shake the information out of me. I stare back. “What? I found out.”

“How? That’s top secret information.”

“So is a lot of things when you think about it Jill, you’re top secret remember.”

“I’m government sanctioned Raine you’re a civilian.”

“No I’m not Jill; I haven’t been a civilian in a long long time.”

I move past her and head inside. She doesn’t like that but she doesn’t stop me. “They really want to talk to you Raine.”

“Okay but after we get done what we have to get done tonight.”

“And what’s that?”

“We have to keep mom and Alecia from killing the brother of the vampire they dusted last night…he works for Michel.”

“Who the hell is Michel?”

“The guy who sent Shea.”

“And how the hell do you know this stuff!” she’s following me professionally pissed off and I head down stairs. “Shaun! We gotta go and track mom down she’s not answering her phone…”

“Yeah…be right there, it’s getting close to sunset.”

“What the hell happens at sunset?” Jill asks but she’s out of her jeans and getting dressed into combats and getting her stuff.

Shaun gets his coat and his satchel? And he deadpans. “Alecia turns into a pumpkin.”

I do a clothing spell right there and then and reshape the fibres and some free matter that can be mage spun into sports underwear and a long coat and hoody and black jeans look that’s actually a lot like “Rogue’s” look from the first part of the x-men movie.

Jill’s staring at me and I smile and look at her. “We’ll take your truck.”

She nods but she looks lost…

Like when she first took the big lesbian step and was with me.

Dammit…I really want to kiss her again.