With one thing and another, the weirdest moment was knocking on the door.  You wouldn’t have been able to tell his house from any others on the street, really.   They had a dog and some cats, two children, and a ton of books, most of them familiar to me.  

Dinner smelled good.  I’d eaten lunch on the road at some chain restaurant that masqueraded as a truck stop.  After some texting with my sister, of all people, I bought a couple of small gift cards on the way just so I didn’t arrive empty handed.  (It was an etiquette question.  She seemed the most likely to know about such things, plus, I owed her an update from our Mother.)

The Questor and I were in his kitchen where he was putting together a plate for his wife.  “I think the real difference between you and `the heavy hitters,’ as you put it, is a lot more idiosyncratic than you think.”  He and I had been bantering about just what it was I did.

“As in?” I munched on a carrot.  I can’t do the “What’s Up, Doc?” joke because, well, wrong role.

“Dear, explain to E what you were saying about instinct,” he crossed into the living room with the plate, bringing her some dinner.

She put down the book she was writing in, and thanked him.  “Oh, that.  It’s kind of silly, really.  My instincts have been trained in magic.  Rather than react in the traditional fight or flight, I’ve got both of those triggered to the esoteric.  If I hear a noise in the dark, I raise a ward first rather than think about getting out of bed to check it out physically. ”

“I thought they expanded fight or flight,” the Questor noted.

“Abuse of psychological theory aside,” I quickly interrupted, “a wizard is someone who basically eats, drinks, and sleeps magic?”

“Don’t ask about the mystery meat,” the Questor’s wife grinned.

“It’s chicken,” the Questor, who had done the cooking, quickly added.

“Or tastes like it,” his wife raised an eyebrow.

I glanced at my plate.

“That’s half of magic right there.  Psychology.  Do you trust me?  I have raised the possibilities, see, that maybe it isn’t chicken.  Maybe it’s dog.  I have opened up chance, and now that there’s more chance to play with, I can influence it with Will.  You’re going to taste it and try to remember that it’s chicken, pitting your Will against mine, right?”

I said nothing, because she was exactly right.

The Questor grinned.  “You’re the one who came to eat with wizards.”

“It’s fine, it’s chicken,” she said, grinning.  “No, really, as much as we’d like to think instinct is drilled into us so that we can handle sabretooth’d tigers and the like, the truth is we have the intellect to train our reflexes.  One of my mentors does a lot of talking on his blog on how to link the need to do the unpleasant things in our life to the survival instincts.  It means you exercise because your life depends on it, and your brain understands that because your body starts to panic a little.  Your brain wasn’t otherwise convinced it was a good idea because your brain wants to settle and conserve all that lovely potential energy you absorbed in things like fats and sugars for when you need it.  Like for when you’re being chased by that tiger.”  She ate a bite of chicken.  “Which some of my friends could arrange the illusion of if you needed a little adrenaline to start that exercise program, but it violates one of the laws of magic, I’m sure.”

I eyed her askance.  “Laws of magic?  Like sympathy?”

“Hah!” she laughed.  “No, I think every wizard writes up their own idiosyncratic list.  I was thinking the law of showing off always costs more energy than you expected.  It might be just mine.”  She smiled.  “Although there are rules.”

“Different than laws?”  It was good chicken.  Basic, some broccoli with cheese, some macaroni & cheese, a little barbecue sauce, nothing fancy, but a good home-cooked meal.  The Questor was seemingly addicted to a particular cherry-flavoured cola, so I had a cup of that with ice.

“Yeah.  And some of the rules are idiosyncratic, too, but I think all of us have rules.  We wouldn’t be ourselves if we broke them.”  She paused, considering.  “Some of them are awkward, too, like the fellow in Seattle who has to speak Truth if approached with a Question.  Almost as inconvenient as the husband’s little gift.”

“I can imagine,” I decided.

“Yeah, I try never to ask where I left my keys for fear that my destiny is to strike down the Goblin King first.”

We both laughed.  The Questor didn’t seem to find it as funny, but he gave a wry smile anyway.

Her daughter interrupted then, some matter of a disparity in the amount of chocolate milk between her and her brother’s cups that was resolved with a warning and an offer of more milk (but no more chocolate.)

“So, I am guessing you have a question to ask me?” the Questor said, between bites.

“Uh, in your official capacity.  I can wait until tomorrow or something.  You’re off-duty right now, I hope.”

“I try not to take my work home with me,” he agreed with a grin. “It’s actually a lot less automatic than she makes it sound – that whole thing about wizards eating, sleeping, and breathing magic.  She’s a wizard when she gets gas for her car, or when we go grocery shopping, or watching the kids at the park.  She just gets a little more gravitas when she says, `You shall not pass.’  But usually she’s saying that while we’re playing Monopoly and I’m closer to winning than she is.”

We laughed.  It was easy to do here, and they weren’t the kinds of wizards I’d been used to… more working-class wizards in some ways.  They had some art up here and there, but the couches looked used, the carpet had its share of spills, the bookcases were overflowing, but it was nice.