- Every day felt the same. They had for what felt like so long now that Theo didn't see his life as monotonous anymore, even if that was its very definition. Maybe it was because his waking hours had been one lengthy stretch of white noise since that night a week and a half ago. It was difficult to pick out any single source of tedium when everything just went on and on and on. He couldn't even call it depression, not really. He was simply existing, feeling neither positive nor negative about what the future might hold.
He had given up on the whole warging thing. It had been the silly fantasy of a desperate man, and that wasn't him, especially not here. Not today.
"Not in this world," he told himself.
Against his wishes, the dreams began that night. They were low dreams, damp and cold and full of dirt, and they felt invasive, as if by dreaming them he was waking something up. He tried to stop sleeping as much as he was accustomed to in order to keep his mind tired and quiet when he did, but when staying up for an entire day and night made no perceptible difference in his alertness, Theo gave up and went back to his usual eight hours. ******** magic. ******** whatever was sneaking into his mind and taking over his thoughts. ******** this town.
march 16
- When he saw the skunk for the first time in the flesh (or at least the first time that he could recall), he knew it was the animal in his brain. First of all, he had never just seen a skunk lounging around in the open before, and this one was doing just that. It was sitting on the sod across the parking lot from his door, and by the time he noticed it was there, it was already staring at him. It leaned forward on one forepaw and sniffed at the air, and even though he was pretty sure it was too far away to smell him, he got the impression it could anyway.
He stared back, uncomfortably captivated, and moments before he decided to shoo the creature off, it trundled away on its own.
march 20
- The dreams grew exponentially more difficult to ignore every night after that until Theodore's lack of sleep began to take its toll. He became increasingly seething and grouchy—more like he used to be—until finally his boss sent him home from the garage after he smacked the flat of his palm against the hood of a misbehaving car. A small thing, but one he wouldn't have done had he been in his right mind.
When he reached his apartment, the skunk was waiting for him.
"No," he muttered the moment he saw it. "I don't want you here. I don't know what you think this is, but you're wrong. You screwed it up. You picked the wrong person. Go back in the woods and dig around or whatever and leave me alone." He drew in a breath, but finding himself at the end of his tirade, he let it out again in a sigh. "I just want to rest, man, you know?"
The creature sniffed up at him, its bearing comfortable and curious and clearly not leaving, and when Theo realized he was starting to smile, that the thing was cute and harmless and wahwahweewah his chest flared with a bright burst of anger.
"Go!" He brought his foot down hard, nearly crushing its plume of a tail with his pristine boot. There was a strange, echoing no no no sorry sorry fuzzy sorry in his head that was more feeling than words, and then that part of his mind was silent, disturbingly so after its two week cacophony. Theo's anger sputtered and died, a familiar chill settling in his heart.
march 28
- It got worse after that, not because of the dreams this time, but quite possibly due to their lack. Theo slept through the night without any difficulty at all, but during the day he was listless and melancholy, too disinterested to carry on a conversation with a customer, let alone slap the hood of their luxury vehicle.
He began to think about the reality of the situation, how in all the months he'd been here he hadn't come across any stigma stronger than his own. How he'd been relatively safe in both this world and the other, with only one exception. How he was a grown-a** man who could do with a little excitement. Not too much, but just enough to stop thinking of himself as a monster.
He went to the library after a midday shift, headed straight to the reference section, and opened the first S encyclopedia he found, paging through until he reached the bit about what skunks ate. Twenty minutes later, Theo emerged from the nearest grocery store, a bag full of various nuts and berries swinging at his side. He packed some into a mug back home, far more than the skunk could consume in one sitting, and jammed it into the dirt five or six feet past the start of the stand of trees that separated the back of his apartment complex from the property behind it.
An offering. They couldn't be friends, but maybe he didn't mind being friends.
february 23
- The diner kept him working late, cleaning up after a pack of five-year-olds had scattered an entire apple pie across the linoleum. All of his instincts told him he should have been pissed, but Theo was amused instead, even delighted to be scrubbing sugary fruit bits out of the cracks in the floor. Kids had never been his thing, messes either, but today he was feeling something vague and wistful that made the world feel warmer than it was.
It was dark by the time he made it home. He was about halfway between the edge of the front parking lot and his actual apartment when he heard a bit of a scuffle coming from up ahead. Or maybe it was to his left? Theo paused, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temple to try and quell his disorientation, an effort he realized was probably dangerous when he figured out the scuffling was the sound of a burgeoning fight. It was also distinctly to his left now, and he headed that way as carefully as possible.
There was a person on the ground, the glowing tattoos crawling up their forearms faintly illuminating the two figures who stood over her. They seemed drunk or high or some other brand of recreationally impaired that he had never tried, and while it was rare for Theo to wish he had a cell phone or any other modern, fancy waste of time, he did now, if only so that he might take video evidence of what he was about to jump into.
"Hey!"
They turned slowly, the one on the right all smiles. "Hey yourself. Come to see the freak?"
"We heard how much everyone in this town loves all of this..." The second man kicked a bit of loose parking lot gravel at their victim. "...magical s**t. It's unnatural."
Theo shook his head with a snort of amusement he didn't feel. "What business is it of yours? Just leave her alone."
"Says who?"
He should have anticipated there would be more of them. Theo stepped forward, closer to the woman and the original pair, his mind processing his situation in blurry streaks. He was magical s**t. Surely he could do something about this. Theo tried to expand his brain somehow, to reach like some X-Man awakening their powers in a time of need, but there was no epic crash of lightning or the crackle of a blazing inferno. There was only that vague sense of separation in his head again that made him feel a little like he was going to puke.
I need somebody to help us, he thought, feeling as close to a complete idiot as one could when surrounded by four people who were looking for a fight. Theo crouched and held up his hands in a vague approximation of every staged brawl he had ever seen, and just before the tension rose to heights that almost had him jumping the gun and striking the first blow, something answered his call.
A dark shape flew in from above, landing on one of the thug's heads and scrambling around. Theo registered fur, a buzzing bark, a pair of sparkling, mischievous eyes staring into his own, and then it was gone. Thankfully, the men went with it, leaving their own yelps and panicked giggling behind them. The figure on the ground wasted no time rising to its feet—her feet—and moving to stand by his side.
"That was... was that you?" She had a faint english accent, and between that, her tattoos, and her haircut, she reminded Theo of a pixie out of an urban fantasy.
"I don't know. I mean... I asked for help and that happened." He didn't dwell on it in amazement or try to make excuses. "We should get somewhere lighter."
"Yeah, sure." She led him across the lot and under a streetlight, nearer to the front office. It was closed, but the pretense of safety still grew the closer they got. "I want to thank you, even if you don't know what you did."
"It was nothing. You would have done the same, right?"
"Well," she said, glancing at her tattoos as they started to fade. "Probably not."
"Still... it was nothing. You're okay?"
She nodded. "They just knocked me down. Do you know what that thing was you summoned?"
He thought of Gloom, as well as the shiny little eyes he'd been drawn to in the scuffle, and reached the conclusion that he was just as lost as he had been five minutes ago. "No. A friend, maybe?"
The woman chuckled. "Yes, I think so." She reached out and lightly clasped his forearm. "Be careful."
"Shouldn't I be saying that to you?"
She shook her head. "Once this ink fades, I'm just me again. Even though this city seems nice enough, you'll always be magical and there'll always be those who mean magical people harm."
Theo frowned. Or rather his eyes lost their curiosity and spark, and he deadpanned, "Fair."
"Oh, don't pout. I only want you to be careful."
"Yeah, sure." He forced his expression back to indifferent. "You too, like I said." It had been a momentary loss of good sense to consider that there might be a place in the magical world for him in the first place. "I should get home. You'll be all right?"
"Yes." She held out her hand. "Cheryl."
He shook. "Theodore."
As they parted ways, a creature watched from the bushes, its simple mind preoccupied with thoughts of the fuzzy sad human in the hat who had asked for his help.