The idea of going to an APA school was giving me some seriously bad vibes. Maybe it was just anxiety, maybe there was a bit of substance to my feelings. Either way, while we waited for the word on what the next years of my life would look like, I was crushed under a giant fucking boulder labelled ‘homework’.
All of us Spiritborn at South Concord High got hit with that particular brick. I think the school realised we were going to be leaving soon, and they wanted to stuff as much knowledge as they could into our brains before they lost the chance. The worst part was, our grades were still going to matter when we moved schools. That much was clear from the start. We weren’t being sent to some mythical place where shit like math, English, and science stopped existing. It was just that they weren’t as much of a deal as… whatever they were going to teach us about magic.
Whatever happened, I for sure wasn’t going to go without having read more of the journal. Especially since I’d recently unlocked another section in it.
Isabet was, I decided, the fucking coolest woman who ever lived. There were massive gaps in time where she didn’t write, but when she did, it was incredible. She fought in battles, she conducted daring raids on APA-precursor organisations, and she researched ancient myths.
One section had me deeply invested. She wrote about how she met a small contingent of elves — or at least she was describing elves. The short, slender, pointy-eared folk had helped her develop the gesture-based spells she could cast with the gauntlets. The best part was that she described the gestures needed to perform the spell. My annoying ancestors rarely did that, because they'd actually passed the knowledge down by training their kids. So, all that knowledge ended with Granddad.
The spell that Isabet had learned from the elves was… a little intense. If what she described was accurate, it was a, ‘to whom it may concern’, blast of heat. Except, the elves realised that with enough mana channeled into it from the gauntlets themselves, the intensity of the blaze could be focused. Obviously, I couldn’t test it in my room. I liked my stuff, and I wanted it all to stay un-charred.
There was something magic related I could test in the comfort of my room. Specifically, that it seemed I could instinctually cast gesture spells without my gauntlets. It happened just once, but… something about how the torc transformation worked made me think there was more to magic than having the power available and making the correct gestures.
Rocking back on my chair, I inspected my fingers. They were long, at least compared to my body, and had a bit of muscle to them. Well, as far as fingers could get muscle.
Twisting my fingers into the correct positions, I jerked my arm like my sleeve was caught and I wanted it to fall back down. Nothing happened. The magic I could feel inside me didn't even twitch.
Okay.
I tried again, except this time I visualised the spell I was casting as it would manifest. I felt it try to cast, but it sort of unravelled and fell through my fingers.
Gotta concentrate, I guess? This time, I really, really concentrated on how the spell should form, and what it felt like at each step of the process. It was a process I didn’t fully understand, and there was no way I’d be able to actually describe what was happening, but on an instinctual level, I got it.
The spell ignited, weaving into a shield… until I lost the slightest bit of concentration and it spun out of control like an F1 car with only three wheels. I lurched in a breath at the same time as I gasped, and tried to leap away from my own hand, expecting some sort of backlash. Instead, there was a little puff of purple smoke.
Great. I was on my ass on the floor, and my room smelled like cheap air freshener.
I let my head fall back onto the carpet with a groan. Phew. My brain felt… a little fuzzy. Like, it just wasn’t meant to do any of the shit I just tried to put it through.
Well… I knew it was possible, just extremely hard unless I was acting with instinct and adrenaline galloping through me. I guess this was why they had schools to teach this stuff? Plus, supposedly us Spiritborn weren’t the greatest at controlling the power that we naturally produced and hoarded in our bodies like chipmunks saving nuts for later.
I guess I should read a little more, until dinner was ready. Hauling myself to my feet, I flopped back into my chair and began to turn the pages on the book. I was quite grateful I didn’t need the gauntlets in full armour mode to understand the words on the page. Just the torc seemed to do the trick.
An hour later, when I felt the telltale itch of boredom — because doing any one thing for too long would drive me absolutely and nowadays sometimes literally up the wall — I stopped my reading and headed to the bathroom. We had two bathrooms in the house, one downstairs, and one upstairs. The upstairs one’s door was opposite Saoirse’s door, which was right beside mine.
When I came out again, I noticed that her door was ajar, and through the tiny crack, I saw her form curled into a ball on her bed. Wha…
Apprehensively, I rapped lightly on the door. “Saoirse?”
Her tail flopped once in a sort of aborted wag, then fell to hang off the side of the bed.
Pushing through, I closed the door gently, ears twisting slightly to focus on her. “You okay?”
Her tail swished back and forth lethargically in response.
I crossed the room to her bed and sat down beside her. She didn't have a lot going on in the room, besides her desk, her little Chromebook, and a sprig of some herb she had in a little vase.
Her face was hidden in her knees, but it didn't do much to muffle her sniffles. My heart began to slowly ache in sympathy.
Reaching out, I ran my hand over the top of her head, smoothing down the wild dark red frizz. The ache in my chest got deeper, more insistent. This spirit girl was so… so good, so vibrant — she made everyone's day more fun just by being there. But she was also a person, not just a sweet little dispenser of sass.
I lay down beside her, putting her head near my stomach because of the way she was curled up. With insistent little nudges and noises, I coaxed her to snuggle in against my chest. The tips of her ears were dangerously close to plumbing the depths of my nostrils, but I just shifted my head when it got too tickly. Finally, I curled my tail around and flopped it down to cover her legs where her denim shorts left them bare. Her tail immediately returned the favour, so that we were a nice, cosy little bundle of fox.
“What's wrong?” I asked in a whisper.
Her hand snaked out and wrapped around my waist, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “It's so hard. You humans are insane. It's too much. There's too much.”
“Yeah, no lie,” I said. “Which part, specifically, are you talking about?”
“School work,” she said, leaning her head back so I could see her blubbery pout. “There's no fun. It's only learn, learn, learn. No wonder you do awful things to each other.”
“And spirits don't?” I asked, ears angling back defensively. My voice was gentle, but I realised my mistake instantly. Don't argue with people when they're upset. It's stupid.
“Spirits just act on their drive,” she said with a tiny growl. “I am much smarter than stupid ones, so I can feel many things, enjoy other pleasures, feel other pains. I don't need to fulfill my drive much. The stupid ones, they are closer to their drive. They are hunger, so they seek to feed. They are hate, so they seek to kill. They are simple, and their motivations for doing bad things are simple. Humans are… smart enough to know better.”
She wasn't wrong, but I could've pointed out how the gods themselves had thrown temper tantrums that killed countless innocent people. They were definitely smart enough to know better. But… what would be the point? She needed affection, not my reactionary defense of the indefensible.
“You aren't wrong,” I sighed, finally. “I'm not sure the school work will go away, though. You kinda need it to function on the Earth that humans have built.”
“It's gross, I hate it,” she grumbled, flopping her tail dramatically against my leg.
I giggled. “Me too.”
She held my gaze for a second, making sure I wasn't messing with her, then smiled slightly. “I want stuff.”
“Stuff?” I asked. Stuff was a very very broad term.
“You have so many things in your room — shiny things, colourful things, art things, useful things. I want things,” she said, her expression becoming determined.
I snorted, but reached out to scratch behind her ear as compensation for my tiny laugh at her expense. “Okay. I don't get much of an allowance…”
“Buying things is stupid,” she growled.
A sly, knowing smile spread across my lips. “So… you want to steal things?”
Her eyes lit up, and she squeaked breathlessly, “Yes!”
I licked my lips and looked towards her window, where the sun was just beginning to set on our backyard. “Okay… how about we go steal you some stuff, then? Only from people or businesses who deserve it, though! We're not going to steal anything from anyone who can't afford to replace what we stole.”
She was bolt upright, kneeling in front of me in the blink of an eye. “Now? Now, now, now?”
Sitting up, I pulled her into a hug and laughed. “No, after dinner, when my parents won't be looking for us.”
She pouted like she really wanted to argue, but sighed and nodded. “That makes sense…”
After the sun had set, and dinner was consumed, Saoirse and I each made separate excuses to lock ourselves in our rooms. Then, with me as Gauntlette, and her as my sassy little fox friend, we stole out into the overgrown verge behind our house.
It was a clear night, and the moon was just past full, so we could see easily enough. I fiddled with the shitty snowboarding goggles around my neck, trying to make it comfortable to have them there. I wasn't going to deal with windburn sucking my eyeballs dry again.
“Okay, where do we hit first?” Saoirse asked, her snout swivelling and eyes narrowed. “Which sucker are we gonna rob blind?”
“We're not stealing anyone's eyes, Saoir— Huh… we're going to need a name for your alter ego,” I said.
Her little foxy eyes went wide with excitement. “I get an alter ego?! Oh man… what to choose? Silver eyes? No, I have those in my person form, too. Oh… Dark Foxfire! Urgh… no, I can hear how that sounds.”
“We're going to go steal things, so how about Pilfer?” I asked, then gestured to her body. “Speaking of how you look — you should change your fur colour. It's the same as your human mode so…”
“Pilfer!” She squeaked excitedly, and began bounding around through the overgrown weeds and rusting debris. “Pilfer, Pilfer! I love it. Oh, it's so good — it's perfect. Oh and my fur…”
Her fur became a gorgeous, silky black. “That better?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “Alright, Pilfer. We should probably figure out how to range further than usual, though. Don't want to steal things near where we live.”
Her snout bobbed up and down as she nodded. “Good point, good point. A good heist is about getting away as much as it is about getting the goods.”
Looking up into the sky, I considered our options. I could fly us somewhere, but my range was limited to a couple of miles before I had to stop.
“We need a way to go much further than I can fly us,” I stated, ears twitching as I considered the problem.
Saoirse nodded again. “Yes… hmm…”
Her little foxy brain was hard at work for almost a minute, when she blurted, “Oh! The leylines! It's super dangerous if you're not careful, but… we're both full Spirits, even if you're a mortal who was converted. We could ride the leylines!”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “What happens if we're not careful?”
“You go pop,” she giggled. “But! It'll be fine! We're basically drowning ourselves in mana while we go, so… gotta empty yourself as much as possible, then leave when you get full! It's simple if you're not stupid.”
This sounded like something only stupid people would do… but hey, if it got the job done… right?