Narcolepsy, birthdays, and the who the internet has made writing awesome.

So I went to bed last night at about 2 then woke up at about 5.

PM.

Yep I slept about 15 hours. I had woken up a few times, and thought about getting up, but couldn't coax myself to do it, and eventually fell back to sleep. I only woke up again when my wife came home from work and woke me up, and at first I thought, wow, maybe  it's not as late as I thought. Then she told me what time it was, and I thought I was only asleep for 3 hours or so? Then she really told me. It totally explained why my mouth was so dry. So that was kinda wierd, I'd slept through most of my birthday.

Anyway, I wanted to talk briefly about how the internet is wonderful for writers. When I wanted to find out where my main character would go college, I checked the internet. When I needed some locations like a self storage park, I checked the internet. I even got street level views, which really helped, which is how I knew that the storage park has a concrete lot, rather than a gravel one.

And I'll try to post links and pics in future updates, but for now, I can't keep going, I'm basically only able to see out of one eye right now, and it's making typing this a real chore, but I wanted to update you guys.

Thanks for Reading!

Magic World (working title): Chapter 6

Hey everybody.

Well the only reason to talk about my eyes anymore is to count how many days I've had issues with them. So anyway, here's the chapter, have fun!

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Thanks for Reading!

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Chapter 6:

"I think I need to sit down," said Davin, a little weakly. He looked around, but only say the blackened charred remains of the explosion that he had just witnessed, which only made him feel more dazed and weak at the knees. He ended up sinking to the floor sitting Indian style with his elbows  on his knees, and his head in his hands.

He fell back on his meditation, an old wizarding standby. If you find you can't concentrate on a spell, fall back on your breathing, and order your thoughts.

He heard them talking around him as, in his head he sorted through his thoughts.

"Poor sod, can't handle the pressures..."

"You're not gonna puke are you sweetie...?"

"Hang on, maybe there's something on WebMD about how to treat shock..."

"Great, our Wizard turns out to have a weak stomach..."

"No. Wait." This last was Robert. Davin was a little surprised to hear this, he'd been unable to get any kind of read on Robert. "He's just processing. Filtering the information"

And this was true, though Davin didn't know how it was that Robert knew it. He was picking away at the events of his day, in his mind, going back over details, and looking for information from his mental archives, trying to make sense of what he had just seen, and what he had been through. It wasn't a bomb, this hadn't been a terrorist attack, it had been an assault. or theft, gone wrong. But that didn't feel right either. The response had been disproportional somehow. It reminded him of seeing mercenaries on TV. But who in Terre Haute could afford mercenaries? And who would actually use them?

And here was another mind twist: Newton's Battery was real. This opened the door to so many other possibilities... and there had been two of them. Until... But now it all made sense. The formulas started forming in his mind. He instinctively reached for this smartphone and opened MForm, his formula creation app, and started typing in variables. But then he had to stop and think for a moment. He had a large part of the picture. But he was missing some vital pieces.

He stood up, and found that the rest of them were still talking, while he hadn't noticed. Except for Robert none of them seemed to have noticed that he'd gotten up. Robert made the slightest nod, then turned back to the conversation, his expression remaining unreadable.

"...but we still don't know where to start," Rachele was saying.

"I still think it was that creepoid at the club. The way was harassing that poor girl Pearl..." Miranda held out her left hand and smacked it with her right, as if smacking someone in the face.

"But that makes no sense," said Bernard. "I've tangled with quite a few thugs, even driven a few of them around. These wankers were NOT street thugs. I'm thinking military training"

"And then there's Celia Fry," said Gary.

Rachele nodded. "The art house dealer. But I'm not sure how she fits into this."

"Well, I just found out she just posted on her twitter feed about a famous art piece called the Jewel of the Winter Queen, which floats in the air, almost like magic."

"Oh, that's GOT to be it!" said Miranda bouncing enthusiastically. 

"That's what I said!" Gary was quivering.

Rachele nodded. "That's a start. We know WHERE it is, now we just have to figure out WHAT it is."

"I think I can help with that now," said Davin and they all turned, noticing him for the first time. Miranda and Gary smiled, and Bernard looked at him with an eyebrow raised and a look of grudging respect.

"Are you feeling better?" asked Miranda as if trying to be careful of his delicate sensibilities. Davin sighed and smirked wryly at her.

"Okay." Rachele frowned at him as if eager to get back to work, and get the job done. "So? Tell us."

"So first of all, Newton's Battery is a Legend-"

"We know that part," said Rachele slightly impatiently. "W-"

"Meaning," Davin interrupted back, "...that most of the information we know about it comes only from those legends. But I've been able to extrapolate a bit more since seeing the video you showed me." He held up his smartphone and looked at it, trying to wrap his head around the idea, even now. Then he closed his eyes as he spoke again, trying to visualize what he was describing. "According to legend the Battery was a tool for storing vast amounts of energy, but could only be accessed by magic. So the energy could only be used for magical manipulations. But nobody seemed to know how it worked, or how floated, or why it was so cold. Everyone thought that the cold and floating were a feature, but I think now in fact they were a side effect."  He struggled for a moment to find his words. "Okay: So imagine a spring. when you push it in you get potential energy. You let it go you release the energy. Well I think this is similar. There's I'd have to do some research into the exact chemistry, but I think there's a chemical inside that when the energy is absorbed turns solid. Not only that, I think it bleeds away it's kinetic energy and heat energy so all you're left with is pure potential." He took a deep breath, eyes still closed, and went on. "The kinetic energy of molecules moving is directed downward, and has just enough force to overcome gravity, like a ball that, when thrown straight up in the air, hits it's zenith, then just hangs there, never coming down. The heat is just enough to keep the outside surface from developing a layer of ice a few feet thick, but not enough to negate the cold all together." Now he was coming to the point he wasn't going to like. "I think your friend's was a somewhat less efficient design though, because if the stories are true, if the real one had gone off like that.... Terre Haute would be a hole in the face of Indiana."

He opened his eyes. They were all looking at him again. He wished they wouldn't, and he glanced away.

"Right," said Rachele. "Crazy super bomb potential, in the hands of someone with his very own mercenary group. Great. Now we just need to figure out who has it, where they've got it, and how we can get it back."

"Well as a native of Terra Haute, some of the things you've said so far kind of ring a few bells, but  I might know more if I knew more about what was going on here," said Davin. "And while we're on the subject, like... who ARE you people? If you're not with the cops, how are you allowed to be here at the scene of a... a... whatever this is? Terrorist attack, or accident or crime? Murder? I mean I can help you, sure but I think it would help if I had a little... er... background?"

Rachele sighed deeply. "I've told you all you need to know, but if you can tell us-"

"No," said Robert simply. "I told you. We can trust him."

Rachele glared back at him for a moment, then nodded and gestured as if to say, 'all yours then.'

Robert turned to look at Davin, and suddenly his whole demeanor changed. "Well start with, you might know me better as Richard G Dean." And suddenly one of the most famous Self-Help gurus the world had known since Tony Robbins, stood in front of him. It was so obvious that Davin had a hard time believing that he hadn't seen it before.

Richard smiled, acknowledging the recognition, a stark contrast to the nearly oblivious personality he'd had before, Richard was vibrant, and alive and charismatic. He grinned as he spoke offhandedly. "Well then. As Robert's not exactly the best at telling stories, we'll have to get along without him for the moment, and talk about how I - we - got into this mess."

********************************** Chapter 7

Magic World (working title): Chapter 5

Hey, what's going on?

Okay, so my eyes are feeling better as I write this which is Saturday night, but I'll be posting it on Monday, and probably writing another post tomorrow to post Tuesday. I've been trying to keep ahead.

So let me know how you think it's going so far. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for reading.

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Chapter 5:

So, Davin explained what Magic was.

He'd was assigned this task, to write a paper, by his professor on the first day of class along with everyone else. He'd explained later to Davin that the task was meant to "take everyone down a peg," as everyone had a lot of arrogant preconceived notions about magic, how it worked, and what exactly it was. No one ever got it right, not even Davin, but this was because nobody really knew exactly what magic was.

But Davin's paper was filled with a humility, and passion, and depth of understanding that it almost bordered on poetry. It made you think about your life, and your choices, and your own sense of purpose. You began to appreciate how deep the subject was, and how ingrained it was in the universe. So the professor had read it to the class. There was no applause at the end, just a gentle murmur, which made Davin a little uncomfortable, thinking no one had liked it. But after class 3 girls had come up to him at different times, and hugged him, and thanked him. One said that after hearing that she was dropping magic and taking up philosophy, and that she had only taken magical engineering because that's what her parents had expected of her, but choosing for herself, she'd said, "was a kind of magic in itself." It made Davin a little uncomfortable but happy all the same.

Davin himself had read the paper in front of each class at the beginning of each new semester, and now he knew it so well, that he could recite it by heart.

So he explained it to this small group as well, and this time was free to add a few things that he had heard of, or learned about during the class. It took about 15 minutes all told. As he spoke the demeanor of each person began to change in subtle and/or not so subtle ways.

Rachele's eyes narrowed, and her features began to tighten, and she folded her arms across her chest.

Gary had been looking at his computer, glancing occasionally at Davin, but after a few minutes he was looking only at Davin, with a sort of glazed look on his face, mouth hanging slightly open.

Bernard was working on the car, but his activity slowed, and he sat on the edge of the hood, his head tilted sideways, and his mouth hanging open.

Miranda was bouncing slightly at first, then slowed, and eventually stopped her mouth making an almost perfect "O."

Robert made almost no change in expression but something relaxed ever so slightly around his eyes, which started losing focus just slightly.

Finally Davin's speech wound down. "Um. Any questions?" he asked.

"No, uh... That sounds about right," said Gary. "A bit more... flowery ...than the Wikipedia description, but..."

Davin nodded. "The entry needed to be more simplified for the Wiki. Just the facts."

Gary looked at Davin and back at his screen, muttering, "You wrote the..."

Miranda looked like she was in a daze, staring straight ahead as she said, in a tiny little voice, "I think I need a towel." It took Davin a second to work this out, but then he flushed even more than he had yet. He wondered if she would ever say anything that wouldn't make him blush.

"Is all that true?" asked Bernard. Davin shrugged a little self consciously, and Bernard nodded.

Rachele was looking at Robert. "You know who he sounds like?"

Robert nodded.

"And?'

"He's sincere." Roberts voice, which Davin was hearing for the first time, sounded as flat and forgettable as the rest of him. "He believes what he's saying."

"So we can trust him?"

"I would."

Rachele nodded. She stood up and walked over to Davin. "Okay then. So you know what your talking about when it comes to magic. The reason I called you was that I-" she paused and glanced around, "WE... need some information about something. Some kind of artifact."

Davin frowned at her. "Like a magic artifact? Most artifacts that were used for magic no longer have enough magic in them to actually DO anything."

Rachele nodded. "Yeah. But this one seems like it was made to last for a while. It was a cube, about 5 inches to a side, jet black, except for the frost. Supposedly it was my by Is-"

"Sir Isaac Freaking Newton. You're talking about Newton's Battery." He chuckled a little. "And here I thought you were serious." He looked around at their faces. None of them were laughing. "You are kidding right? Newton's battery is a myth. A fantasy."

Gary and Bernard looked at each other as if confirming something, and Miranda looked disgustedly at them.

"I mean nobody's ever seen anything like that which fits the description. Besides, it was said that Newton's floated about 4 feet off the ground, which is... uheh... Impossible. He smirked."

They all looked at each other for a moment. Then Rachele pulled a smartphone out of her back pocket, and cued up a video, and turned it to show Davin. It showed two identical cubes floating diagonally, about 4 feet off the ground. The person taking the video sounded very excited, but the sound was a bit muted.

After a moment the camera turned and showed the doors of a storage unit - this storage unit Davin realized - opening, and men with guns running in. There was gunfire, and the camera fell to the ground pointing at the ceiling. There was shouting for a moment, then the camera was picked up, and a finger touched the lens, by accident it would seem. Whoever was holding the camera, their hands were shaking, and they tried to point it at the place where the the two cubes were floating. It showed looking at the cubes - Davin realized then that they were somewhat different now, one was darker and blacker than the other, which had a much thicker layer of frost. One of the gunmen was pointing to the frost covered one, and another man snapped a case around it, and walked toward the entrance to the unit. The other men were looking at the other cube in apparent interest, spinning it with their fingers, when one noticed a slight opening, and reached down for a screwdriver. The camera operator seemed to shout something at them, but one of the gunmen ran over, out of the camera's sight, and the angle tilted slightly as if someone had grappled the person holding it. The man with the screwdriver laughed and joked with the person holding the cameraman, and casually stuck the screwdriver into the cube, and gave it a twist. At first nothing happened, and the man looked a little frustrated, then he grabbed the cube, and twisted the screwdriver with more force. Then the screen went white for a moment.

Everyone was silent. Then Rachele said "The Micro SD card was small enough to escape the blast unharmed. Otherwise the result is what you see here. So, what do you think now?"

********************************** Chapter 6

Stealing the pony, and being awesome.

Hey guys.

So I didn't write a blog post yesterday, as I was kinda totally out of it from my eyes which were really itchy and stuff, and today I'm very dizzy, disoriented, and my eyes are still itchy and stuff, but I though I had to share this, and give my thoughts.

See this to me is great. The guy who had the pony he made stolen didn't get all pissed and start freaking out, and they guy who stole it didn't freak out and get all defensive, or try to deny it, he just admitted it, helped get it down the stairs and home and even had a funny story to tell about the whole thing.

This is great. I wish more people in America were like this. But it's not enough to wish, which is why I'm putting out this call. People: be more responsible. If you do something wrong, take responsibility and make it right. No matter what the cost.

And if you find someone who has wronged you, and they're trying to be cool about it, don't give them a hard time. They're trying to do the right thing. Anyone can make a mistake but it takes a bigger man/woman to admit his/her mistakes, and an even bigger man/woman to forgive them.

In other words, be excellent to each other. And party on dudes.

Pixar's rules of storytelling.

Hey guys.

Thanks to my brother for sending me this link. It's really made me think about my characters, and who they are, and about why stories are interesting, and I think these are things I have tried to keep in the back of my mind, but don't usually think about normally.

Anyway, I am having issues with with my eyes, hay fever still. But I went to the doctor and got drops finally, and now I can kinda see without getting a headache. And I changed from a drug that's like Claratin to one that's like Allegra, at the doctors request. Overall, I'm hoping it works, I'm still feeling some irritation, but I think things are getting better.

With that in mind, I'm going to highlight some of my favorite of the Pixar rules, and how I think it applies to the Magic World story. It's useful to me, and hopefully entertaining to you.

I'll be paraphrasing these here, but here we go.

#1 You admire a character more for trying, than for succeeding.
Davin is a success at the things he has the most experience with, which is magic. However as the story progresses, we'll see him being afraid or nervous of situations, but he'll have to try anyway. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how he performs.

#6 Challenge your character with the exact opposite of what they're comfortable with.
Robert and Miranda are pretty much complete opposites, and I'm really thinking about having their intro stories cross paths, just to see how they'll react.

#10 Deconstruct your favorite stories, and understand why you like them, because that's something that's in you.
Oh yeah. I find myself using stuff from my favorite stories all the time. Stuff from Dresden, Harry Potter, Fullmetal Alchemist, and other fantasy stories, but also things like Leverage, The A-Team, Firefly. Stuff like that. I identify with a number of things in these stories, like the person gifted in one area having to face challenges they aren't prepared for. Or helping the underdog. Or being the underdog, and depending on your friends and your team to get the job done.  I'm thinking that my "Team" should have a failure prior to learning to work together. Even that comes from some of my favorite stories.

#11 Ideas can never be complete until you put them to paper.
I've had a lot of ideas. But they're only thoughts in my head until I type them out or write them down. That's the whole purpose of this blog, and why I've been working so hard to make sure I never miss a day.

#19 Coincidence should be a foil, not a crutch.
Oh yeah. Deus ex Machina is the worst storytelling tool ever. If your characters aren't able to use their own skills to out of their predicament, the either you're not telling the story right, or you're not fully plumbing the depths of your characters abilities. You make something up if you have to. You scrape them against the walls if it comes to it. And if that STILL doesn't work, make sure your character has friends. That's not cheating, that's just good planning. 

There's more of course but... eh. I'm ready for a shower, a warm compress, and more eye drops.

Comments and suggestions welcomed, as per usual.

Thanks for reading!

Magic World (working title): Chapter 4

Today wasn't my best day ever, with hay fever, and my eyes feeling like they're on fire. If this seems a little lackluster, let me know, I may have to re-write parts of it. 

Comments and suggestions yada yada. 

Thanks for Reading.

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Chapter 4:

The smoke smell continued to get stronger as Davin and Rachele continued through the gravel of the storage park. It was mostly woody smoke, but underneath there was something else, familiar, but Davin couldn't quite identify it. It was... bitter... tangy? He didn't have the words to describe it, it was a very chemical smell.

They turned the corner into a row of storage units and Davin saw it. One of the storage units, and large portions of the ones surrounding it, was blackened and hollowed. Scorched. The gravel and the walls of the surrounding area had been blackened as well, in a pattern that looked like a perfect circle. 

A blast radius. 

Then he. Noticed the yellow police tape. "Are y... you aren't... uh..."

"You have a hard time using your words sometimes don't you?" She smirked at him over her shoulder. "No we're not cops."

"We?"

Rachele shook her head "Apparently," she said with mock enthusiasm, "I get to babysit a whole posse of amateurs. And they just won't shut up."

 Davin could hear them now, the voices coming from inside, a cacophony of cross purposes. The Sun has gone down behind the storage units, so they stood in shadow and look into the burned out unit. The inside of the unit was lit with floor based flood lamps. Inside was a very strange assortment of people. 

The first one to stand out was the orc with the East London accent the Davin recognized as being similar to the character Mickey from Doctor Who. He was fixing old English looking car half of which also looked like it had been damaged by whatever blast had blackened the rest of the area . 

He was arguing with a gnome who was sitting behind ... Some kind of portable computer networking station the likes of which Davin had never seen. 

They were both being shouted down buy a cute looking half elf with pink pig tails , wearing a tank top the bore the legend "Ryne City Rollers" who was covered in equal measure by tattoos and bruises and wore skates draped over her shoulders and a pair of guns in shoulder holsters under each arm. 

But then realized he was wrong to think of her as the last since he has almost missed the tall thin man standing in the corner wearing an impeccably fitted black suit. He found it was hard to judge exactly what the man looked like. His face seemed almost entirely forgettable and placid. It was a little unnerving. 

Davin couldn't tell what it was they were arguing about, but it seemed as though the argument had been happening for a while, and it was getting heated.

"No dude! Even his contemporaries said it wasn't real, just a fantasy, like the Easter Bunny, or Santa, or a secret ending to Lost where all the crazy island shit is explained," said the gnome typing away at his keyboard. "Just something to tell the grandkids when you start getting older, like 'Hey kids guess what I saw!?'"

The pink haired girl retorted, "Well of course they did, because it was HID-DEN, just like your tiny little-"

"It's hard to keep somfin' like that dat hidden for quite that long love. People tend to get in everywhere and root things out." The voice came from under the hood of the car. "Someone would have heard of it by now."

"Sure!" she flounced in a satirical bimbo pose. "Even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were found thousands of years after the bible was written, you can't hide something for THAT long."

"Not out in the open like that, you'd-" the orc was cut off abruptly.

"It's just a piece of ART-WORK handed down through the generations, and sold to a collector about five years ago or so to pay for some greedy little trust fund brats new camero." The gnome was pointing to his screen, turning it to the others. "Here it is on his Facebook page. 'Bought by Art' it says."

"Exactly," agreed the Orc who was walking around the car. "It's just a gimmick. Conspiracy nut-jobs and crackpots from all over the world have examined the damed thing."

"Well then they didn't know they were doing!" the girl was smiling, obviously enjoying the debate. "Obviously Raul though it meant something."

"Maybe," said the gnome. "But I have no way of figuring that out. How do you even going about the process of making something like that?"

Rachele stepped into the floodlights at that moment, and Davin followed her closely. "Now that is a good question," she said. "So lets see if our new friend can't give us the answer."

The all stopped talking and looked at Rachele, then at Davin. 

The pink haired girl bounced over and said, "Ooo, Rachele! You've brought me a new toy!" 

Davin felt his face go very red, and she giggled. 

"'Oo's this den?" The orc looked him up and down.

Rachele nodded, and said, "Everybody, this is Davin Quickly, TA to professor Merriwether, who just went in vacation to Tahiti. Davin, this is Miranda," she gestured to the pink haird girl, "Bernard," to the Orc, "and Gary." to the gnome. "It's probably best for you if you don't know their last names right now." She paused and added. "Oh yeah, and Bob." She gestured vaguely in the direction of the thin man, who Davin realized for the first time was an elf. His hair his his ears very neatly. 

"It's Robert actually, but your attempt to goad me is not un-noticed." He gave a small polite smile, and nodded in greeting to Davin, then his face melted back into a passive mask, and it was like he was gone again.

'That is so creepy,' thought Davin.

Gary the Gnome was whining now. "A Teachers Aid? That won't be nearly good enough, the complexity of something this is astounding! Not to mention it was probably conceived of by a crazy person." The others all stopped and glared at him, but he just waved them off. "Oh, you know what I mean. He believed this ...THING... was real! That's like believing in little green men, or the stupid Bengal Tiger Cave."

Davin looked at Gary. "Oh dude, A or H?"

Gary looked mildly offended. "For the Horde!"

"Lok'tar Ogar bro. Zul'jin?"

"Illidan. PVP." Gary was grinning now. 

"Sweet, I've got a sevent-fi-"

"Well this is all very touching," said Rachele, "But we've got to move on now. You two can speak your secret little love language later. Right now we've got some work to do." 

"Hang on," said Gary. "He might know his Wow lingo, but that doesn't mean he knows about magic, or at least not on the level we need. Raul was..." he stopped for a moment, and looked like he wasn't going to continue when Miranda stepped in. 

"So? Why not just test him or something?"

They looked around at each other. Robert did not look at anyone, and Rachele just sighed and rolled her eyes.

Davin nodded too. "That should be fine, I should be able to tell you just about anything you'd like to know."

Miranda smiled at him, and Davin felt himself blush again. 

"Okay," she said. "How about if we start off with an easy one and see how it goes from there. Besides I've always wanted to know the answer to this question."

Davin nodded. 

"So. What is Magic exactly?"

Davin paused a moment taking that in. Then he chuckled a little and  started grinning. "Oh my. Miranda is it? That's one hell of a question.  I thought you said you wanted to start simple?"

********************************* Chapter 5

Magic World (working title): Chapter 3

Short Chapter this time guys. I think this particular cutoff point works though so I don't feel too bad. I'm a bit clueless when it comes to pacing though so I'm just moving how it feels right.
Comments suggestions, proofreading, grammar checking, all welcomed.

Thanks for reading.

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Chapter 3:

There are a few things that people aren't prepared for when they drive a classic car, mostly anything made before the early eighties or so. The first is the weight. Modern cars are made from mostly fiberglass or other synthetic materials placed over a frame of aluminum or other such lightweight material. Older cars are made from Steel. On top of Steel. And the engines are made from steel.  Actually the frame of the Stingray was also a fiberglass compound, but the rest was Steel. This gives older cars a weight  and inertia that most people aren't ready for if they haven't driven one before.

The second thing most people aren't prepared for is the lack of: power steering, hydraulic brakes, power windows, power seats, CD players, power wing mirrors, and sometimes you're lucky if the speedometer and tachometer are lighted. Modern conveniences are modern. If you don't know how to get by without them, you better learn, and quick, because of the third thing.

The third thing is the worst, and the best: Power. They did not build for efficiency when they built sports cars and muscle cars. Sure they may have had a passing nod with it, made some concession to it, after all they didn't ALL use diesel fuel, but for the most part they were built to chew through road like a fat kid through Twinkies. Most people expect to have to give a firm increasing pressure to the gas pedal and the car will sedately move along the road. If you do this with a classic muscle car you'll be out the driveway, down the road, and halfway to Route 66 before you realize you should be going the other direction.

But even with all that Davin found himself enjoying Stingray. The low hum of the idle, and the throaty growl when he gave it a good push filled him with a sense of satisfaction, and once he adapted to the gas and the steering, which was like butter at speed. He felt a little disappointed when he pulled up to the parking lot of the storage facility.

That was, until he smelled an odd smoky smell, and saw a blonde elf woman in what looked like biker leathers standing with her hands on her hips watching him approach, a frown furrowing her eyebrows, as she seemed to asses him and look back along the street he’d come down. Did she think he'd been followed?

But it gave him a chance to get good look at her. She was a little older, if she'd been a human he might have said early to mid forties, but because she was an elf, that would put her around her sixties. She wasn't extremely tall, but thin, wiry. She looked tired, not just physically, but in her soul, as if she had seen it all, and was waiting for the inevitable other shoe to drop. It gave her worry lines, but those didn't diminish the beauty that he saw there, in fact they seemed to give her character, make her more interesting.

It made him wonder what she saw when she had sized him up. A nineteen year old gangly not-quite-man with wide eyes and round cheeks?  That was how he felt sometimes. His chin was starting to square off as he lost some of the weight he'd gained in his youth, and he was even able to keep a beard, but he kept it trimmed, because it wouldn't come in right yet.

He shook his head and started getting out of the car as she started walking around it to meet him.

"Are you the guy?" she asked.

He stood up out of the car, thinking about this one. "I'm A guy..." he said dubiously.

She nodded, looking up and down at him, and tilting her head to one side. "You don't look like I expected."

"That's funny," he smirked slightly. "You look exactly like I had imagined you." This was partially true, except he had imagined her slightly younger, and probably a half-elf.

But it drew a little bit of a smile out of her. "Really. Are you sure about that?"

It was his turn to smile. "There's an old saying in Quantum Physics," he said. "The only thing we can be totally sure of... is Uncertainty."

She grinned a little wider, but it didn't seem to touch her eyes. "You're the guy. What's your name"

"Davin Quickly,"  he said starting to hold out his hand to shake. "And y-"

"Rachele Albini," she said, turning away and motioning for him to follow. "Sorry about this, but we're on the clock. What do you know about Magic?"

The question was offhand, but it was clear she didn't know what she was asking. He huffed out a breath. "Erm... statisticaly speaking? Almost nothing."

She stopped and whirled on him, her nearly black eyes piercing him. "What do you mean nothing? I thought you worked for the Professor? How can you not know anything about magic?"

He tried to take a half step back, but his feet couldn't respond so he settled for leaning away from her and holding up his hands. "I mean that the total sum we know about magic right now is estimated to be only a fraction of a percent of all there is to know. I know almost everything we've discovered so far, but compared to what there is, it's almost nothing."

She stepped up closer to him, almost chest to chest with him. She was only maybe 2 inches shorter than him. "Listen Davin. We're in kind of a tense situation here, and the last thing I need is wise-ass answers. A very good friend of mine died here less than forty-eight hours ago, and I OWE it to him to make sure that the mother-fuckers who did it end up in a jail cell or end up fertilizing his fucking grave. The Very Last Thing I need is a smart ass answer to every goddam question I ask you. Got it?"

He nodded. "It's the first thing you learn when you start studying to become a wizard. To teach humility. And they keep drilling it into you over and over, the more you learn. I'm sorry, it's practically a conditioned response."

She took a deep breath and relaxed, and looked away from him. "It's fine. Just... talk to me about this stuff as if I don't know anything about Magic, or physics, or Quantum bullshit. I just need to know what I need to know in order to get this job done. The rest is all just... background noise to someone like me."

Davin nodded. He knew what she meant. That was how he felt about sports. But he couldn't help feeling sorry for her. Where she heard background noise, he heard a symphony.

She beckoned for him to follow her into the storage park, and started walking.

****************************** Chapter 4