July: A Kind Of Magic

I look out from my garden, watching the world go by in the dying light. I hear Diego as he talks to Mia, returning home from the church and his duties as a good Jacoban as he has every week since he was fourteen.

Well, except for that short stint in the middle. That was an odd conversation.

He brushes the dirt off his trousers as he mutters, “Thank you for being there with me.”

“Hey, no problem,” she replies, affable as ever. “That’s what I promised to do, remember? Though I’ve got to ask… why didn’t you let go of my hand? I thought it was supposed to be private.”

My ears prick up like Asgore’s always used to when he’d heard a strange sound or an offer of walkies. This is new.

“It is,” Diego answers. “But I thought my wife should know what I’ve been up to. Besides, we know the Watcher doesn’t mind, hey?”

Even I emit a low chuckle at that one. As a nominal Peteran, I’m inclined to agree. Of course, as a nominal Peteran I’d rather they stayed entirely out of my business. Anything more than a cursory acknowledgement of the supernatural’s liable to get you sucked to death by leeches or running scared because your ancestors’ calendars stopped working. Give me good old-fashioned rationality any day. Science gave me my future, my children, in some ways even my wife. After all, we surely would have drifted apart had it not been for our shared education at Camford.

As if on cue (no, I won’t use the other proverb), said wife opens the front door and slinks over to me.

“Hey, handsome.”

“Hey, beautiful.”

“Simoleon for your thoughts?”

“Just an appreciation for the sciences… and how they led me to you.”

“Milesy, we both know I hooked you in with magic. One bat of the eyelashes and you were head over heels.” She waves her hand at me and shouts “AMORE!”

“Oh, my love,” I groan, pretending to faint. “How could I ever survive without you?”

“You’d find someone,” she – Dollie, who understands in a way others never have – says, rather naively in my opinion.

I snort, perhaps a little too derisively. “It’d take a spell or five to find someone like you.”

Or a miracle, I say to myself with an amused smile. Funny how things work like that. I never thought any daughter of mine would go down that route, but here we are.

Aha. And here she is. “Hey, Rissy. Good date?”

“Yeah. It was wonderful, thanks.”

I can’t help but be reminded of myself at her age. Formerly shy and quiet, coaxed out of my shell by a significant life event… questioning everything I ever knew. I’ve never been into “reality” shows, but I watched every episode of Jetset that season. I saw the “please, I know you’re there”s and the “I miss Charlie”s and my daughter growing up seemingly overnight and it was so good. Her transformation could, in my opinion, even be seen as a miracle.

You know what? A cursory acknowledgement of the supernatural’s all I need.

I’ve got all the magic I could ever want right here.

533 words – 6 images

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