Saoirse did not like learning to be civilised. She huffed and whined, complained and tried to trick us into thinking she wasn't doing anything wrong. Usually, she was doing something wrong — causing mischief. However… she mellowed out a lot after two, then three weeks passed.
I could not say the same about the world at large. Like, holy moly. Spirits were popping up all over the damn world, sometimes in storms like the one where I broke my leg, and sometimes just randomly, like Saoirse. The storms almost always dropped hostile spirits, and any time one passed through, warning sirens went off, telling everyone to stay indoors.
Those alarms were also probably helpful for all the newly made superheroes who were popping up like weeds across most of the world. I was lucky that I couldn't go out… because way too many of those supers were ending up as lessons for those that survived. I was almost one of them. It was pretty fucking sobering — or at least, I assumed it was, since I'd never been drunk.
Meanwhile, the White House was flailing around like a drunk, divorced dad, blaming everyone but themselves for the situation. Without meaningful leadership from the top, and with Congress and the Senate moving slow as all fuck, it was a free for all. Every state was reacting differently.
The national guard was called in pretty quickly in Texas, but a band of shadow-monster things started hunting any soldiers who were in groups less than ten. Thankfully, in my state, Maine, the governor accepted the help that the DHS offered to all states — a specialised task-force of rapid responders and an attached mage from the APA.
The Arcane Practitioners Association was actually being helpful for once, which shocked me so bad I thought I'd licked a power line. It was crazy, and honestly infuriating, to watch their mages going out of their way to save people while in the past, they watched us suffer. I didn't trust them. They were up to something.
Basically, the world was still desperately trying to cling to what it thought of as normal. Normal was driving me up the wall.
When another Monday rolled around, and I stumbled out of bed at 10 in the morning, I was feeling grumpier than usual. Eva hadn't been responding to my messages very quickly, so when I sent her a little hugging gif on Discord, I didn't expect a reply, and pocketed my phone immediately.
Then I trudged out of my room, and immediately walked into Saoirse, who was waiting right on the other side.
“Gah!” I squeaked, stumbling backwards. I barely managed to catch myself with my crutch. “Why were you like, making out with my door?”
“I wasn't! I was waiting,” she said happily.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Then why were you so close to it?”
She sniffed the air, then smiled at me. “I wanted to see what you were like!”
“What?” It was way too early— shit, it wasn't even early. Well, I'd only just woken up and I wasn't interested in dealing with fox mischief.
She leaned in. “You should go to the toilet.”
Go to the toilet? Wh— oh. Oh. That’s what was happening? My heart skipped a beat as panic set in instantly. The damn fox could smell my period. I. Was. Mortified.
That was how I ended up talking to mum for an hour before breakfast.
I blew out a long breath, staring at the floor, but not seeing it. “This sucks. I don't want this.”
“I know, little Tia,” she sighed, giving my back a gentle rub. “I don't think many of us do… but, that's life.”
Pouting, I began to tangle my fingers together. “It hurts.”
“Well, how about we go downstairs and get you some breakfast? Pancakes, maybe? You can take some painkillers with the food,” she said, with a little chuckle.
I eyed her. “Bacon?”
“Absolutely,” she said, pulling me into a hug. “Do you need me to go over anything from this chat again, before we go?”
“No! No, thank you. Nope. I'm good,” I said quickly, hobbling my way to my feet.
With a laugh, mum offered me my crutch, and I took it reluctantly. I hated the damn thing.
Also, I hated the fucking stairs. I used to run up them on all fours, and now here I was carefully inching my way down them.
Saoirse's voice greeted us before we made it into the kitchen, which connected from there to the dining room, then into the living room. I didn't really consider them separate rooms, but they did have the impression of walls around the border of each.
“It doesn't make any sense,” said the spirit girl. “If they do not have any foxes, or don't even report about us, then why have they taken our name? The things they say, too! If I could, I'd push them down every flight of stairs in the whole world.”
“That would kill them, Saoirse,” dad said mildly.
She grunted, then grinned up at us as we entered. “Exactly!”
“Vicious,” I said, matching her smile. “I'll help you.”
“I'm not paying for bail,” he gave Saoirse a look. “For either of you.”
“We'll rob a bank first,” she decided, after taking a second to think — a highly unusual activity for her. “Then, we'll have money for bail. We'll need a plan to flee the country, though…”
Dad rolled his eyes, but there was a teeny tiny smile at the corner of his lips. I think he secretly enjoyed Saoirse's chaos.
“Girl talk is done,” mum said, clapping her hands. “I'm going to make pancakes now.”
I should've focused on the promise of a yummy breakfast, but man, hearing mum refer to me as a girl again was just…
“Mum, I don't want to be called a girl,” I said, feeling my brief good mood draining out of me like a popped cyst.
She sighed and did the thing where she pinched the bridge of her nose. I hated it. It felt so… it made it seem like I was extra stupid or something.
“Hun… you are a girl now. How much longer are you going to resist this?” She said, walking into the kitchen.
I hobbled over to the table and yanked a chair out, then sat. “I'm not— I spent the first fourteen years of my life as a boy! Now I'm just being shoved into a box labelled ‘girl’ — no choice? That's shit.”
“Tia, you are a girl now. You might not like it — I'm certainly not happy that I lost my son, but it's the truth. You don't have any choice, but that doesn't mean you can't make the best of it,” dad said, in a voice that was trying to be gentle. Trying and failing.
Picking up a coaster from the table, I held it firmly in my hand so my hands wouldn't shake as emotion charged around inside me. “I do have a choice. I could take hormones.”
“Oh, I don't like that idea,” dad said quickly — very quickly.
Mum cleared her throat and looked up from where she was retrieving ingredients. “Neither. I'm sure that… choice is right for some, but not here — not my kid.”
“I’ve seen how that turns out on TV anyway,” dad said with a shudder. “Makes me uncomfortable. Doesn't feel right.”
My breathing hitched, and I stared from one parent to the other. Wow. My parents were bigots. Great… just fucking great.
I didn't really know what to say, either. I just didn't know enough about the subject to push back, even if what they were saying felt wrong or untrue.
The silence stretched. Even Saoirse was pointedly messing around on her new phone — my dad’s big old samsung. I missed Eva. She would've said something thoughtful and just a little scolding. I just didn't have it in me right then.
After five minutes, I heard dad make a noise of confused interest. A moment later, the volume on the TV rose enough that we could hear it.
“Thank you, everyone,” said a man standing in front of a podium, wearing a very well tailored suit that looked like it was designed in the late 1800’s.
Instead of an American flag or whatever in the corner, there was a large, heavy bronze disc on the wall behind him. Engraved deep into the disc were the sword and focus motif of the APA.
“Thank you,” he said again. “After five weeks of careful deliberation, the Arcane Practitioners Association has decided to take an unprecedented step. The scale of the crisis facing our beloved planet cannot be understated, but those of us who hail from the enclaves feel that this may also be an opportunity — a chance for Humanity to step forward. With that aim fixed in our hearts, we have decided it is time to share our knowledge of magic with our newly awakened cousins. Any Spiritborn adult who had begun to manifest the ancient power of their blood, may seek further help and tutelage at any of our prestigious arcane educational institutions.”
There was a gasp from the unseen crowd of reporters behind the camera, followed by a flood of questions. They died down when the man raised a hand for silence.
“It is our hope that with our assistance, we can help these people become skilled magical practitioners — able to go out and better the world. If any of the various governmental bodies around the world wish to contract our services to help in any magical way, we would be more than willing to speak on the matter with you, too. Earth, Humanity, will make it through this. All we need to do is work together.”
“Well, it's about damn time,” Dad said, crossing his arms. “There's a magical catastrophe and they sit around on their asses for over a month.”
I didn’t bother giving any input. I just shut up and waited for the pancakes to arrive. I was actually relieved to hear what the APA’s response was, at least their public version of it. It seemed like a good one, too — giving the world the option to choose how much help they received was nice, rather than forcing it on people. However, given their history, trusting the APA was not something I’d ever be able to do.
Breakfast and some painkillers definitely helped me feel a little more human — human enough to ask if Saoirse wanted to watch another heist movie.
“Yes! Yes! Absolutely. Oh, the last one was incredible, where they tricked even the audience? It’s really quite marvelous how intricate some of the stories can be. I always just assumed that the plot of a TV show episode or a movie had to be a little predictable so that the audience could feel nice and smug about knowing what was going to happen, but then that movie tricked us, and it was fun. I never thought of the idea that being tricked could be as fun as tricking other people!” she said, immediately going into babble-mode.
I found myself smiling, despite all the awkward, weird, or otherwise unpleasant things that my life had managed to cram into this morning. “Okay, so… there’s this one movie where the heist is a little more crazy than just stealing some valuable stuff. It’s about dreams…”