“It appears,” I told the curtain, “that there’s something I’m not asking, and I’m not known for… not asking questions,” the awkward double-negative made me stumble, “therefore it is something that is hidden from me and yet in enough plain sight that I’ve been asked this a few times.” The run-on sentence somehow didn’t bother me at all.<\/p>\n
The curtain did not feel like answering me, but while it knew which way the wind was blowing; it didn’t throw caution into it.<\/p>\n
I sat on the bed, and grabbed the first graphic novel on top of the stack. I opened it but I wasn’t actually reading it. I realized that after a few minutes of turning pages and having no idea what was going on, and it wasn’t even penned by Moore or Morrison. I sighed and put it back on the pile, closing my eyes and flopping backwards.<\/p>\n
I had to get right back up as the phone rang, or at least get into that weird contortion one uses to access their pocket.<\/p>\n
“Hey, Ed.”<\/p>\n
“Pumpkin or pecan?” he asked, without preamble.<\/p>\n
“Pecan,” I said, immediately. “Pumpkin is a vegetable. Well, it’s a berry, but squash is always included in the mixed vegetable of the day with your entr\u00e9e, so it’s practically healthy. Pecan, on the other hand, is almost never served in any kind of healthy way. Therefore, if you’re going to make a choice, and it’s a dessert, you ought to make the choice that’s not cheating yourself.”<\/p>\n
“Wow. You sound like you’ve thought this through,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I also think that the texture of pumpkin pie is gross. The flavour is basically alright, given that I like the spices that go into it, so I’ll take it in ice cream, but pie? Ick. Please don’t tell me this is a condom taste test thing.”<\/p>\n
“Uh, no,” he said. “Why would I even?”<\/p>\n
“I’ve had a weird night.”<\/p>\n
“You? A weird night?” he chuckled. “What, the guy I know who is co-habitating with multiple creatures from dimensions with no name, who lives off the money from Russian sorcerers because he went all mitochondrial in one, who helped stake a vamp in the early morning only to have her join you eating apple crisps, that guy, has had a weird night? What do you do, get a job at a bank?”<\/p>\n
“Got exhausted, got hibachi, turned into a dragon, kissed a boy who turned out to be a girl who turned out to be a boy, and yeah, I liked it, um, texted the Questor, got into a philosophical conversation with a wizard, and had some really strange dreams. Not in that order. But yeah, getting a job at a bank might be weird. I’d have to wear a tie and I think all the ones I have are genre.”<\/p>\n
“I followed you until you said something about Dragons. Then things got weird.”<\/p>\n
“See? What did I tell you?” I almost chuckled.<\/p>\n
“Only you could take weird and turn it into weird. It’s like a topological experiment with the idea of strange. Are you sure you don’t have odd as some kind of power?”<\/p>\n
I thought about it for a moment. “No. Although I thought Gambit was a cheap rip-off of Longshot in the X-men,” I said.<\/p>\n
He chortled. “Tell me about this Dragon bit. I think anything that gets a capital letter like that might be a priority.”<\/p>\n
“Well, I turned into a lower-case dragon,” I said. “Was turned into. Oh, it’s…” I sighed. “I’m still processing. Do you have a few, or do I need to order pecan in a hurry?”<\/p>\n
“Mom works in mysterious ways – I just got a post-it note airplane that said, ‘Nevermind, he wants pecan.'” I could hear him settling down in the background. “Shoot.”<\/p>\n
“Bang,” I replied, automatically. I sighed again. “I don’t know, bro. You know how things are in books? It wasn’t like that. There was no wing flappy-flappy, like that bird game on the phone. I didn’t… I didn’t like not having a choice.”<\/p>\n
“What, you wanted the ‘flappy-flappy’?” he asked.<\/p>\n
“No, I didn’t like not having a choice. In any of it. I mean, I would have been lost and probably plummeted into something if I’d had to actually fly, but, see,” I trailed off for a moment, “lower-case ‘d’ meant that I was somehow attuned to Peredur. Like he was the master and I was just riding in the back of this dragon’s brain. I mean, forget the pain – that’s somewhere beyond words – I… hey, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I didn’t transform, maybe he drove the dragon into me. Kind of ‘Dragon and the George’-esque.”<\/p>\n
“‘Of course evil is a-foot! Evil doesn’t have wings!’ I may be mis-remembering the quote, but I get you. Sounds particularly unpleasant either way. So, maybe this is something we can use? You were some kind of lesser dragon, lower-case. Or did Peredur include the submission it as part of the spell? Or did you eat some bad ravioli? I told you it was past the expiration date,” he said, kind of jokingly.<\/p>\n
“You don’t believe me?” I asked, appalled. I probably sounded a tad bit whiny, too.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot to comprehend. I know Zach came home exhausted. Some days it’s easier to believe than others, to be honest. I just think about bugs, but you guys get into cosmology and all of this deep Reality stuff. It’s worse than when Zach is just thinking about columns of numbers.” He chuckled a little. “You can’t hear me shrug, but I guess I neither believe nor disbelieve this stuff anymore. I just take it for what I’ve lived, you know?” He took a breath. “Let me put it this way: I believe you. I believe in you, and I believe that what you’re saying is what you’ve experienced, and just because I’ve never been turned into anything, and I expect I never will, doesn’t mean I don’t believe that you were. It just means I’m missing the frame of reference.”<\/p>\n
I guess I felt a little better with his explanation, but I wasn’t going to say it aloud. “Thanks, man. I kind of wish I didn’t have a frame of reference for all this. I’d rather just punch in, work at the bank, punch out, go home, vegetate in front of the computer, and play games now and then. Oh, and maybe work a girl in once in a while.”<\/p>\n
“That’s the spirit. Throw out your bodyguards and tell them you’re going muggle. Oh, and buy a, `No Dragons allowed,’ mat for your door.”<\/p>\n
“I’d have to custom order, and if I’m doing that I might have to list a few more things besides Dragons. Then it starts getting too small to read, and besides, a door mat is meant to be stepped on, not acknowledged. Maybe one of those demon traps Zach goes on about with that show he loves?”<\/p>\n
“Demons, now? I thought they were too religious to exist.”<\/p>\n
“It’s complicated,” I said. I sighed yet again. “I don’t like ‘it depends,’ when it comes to consent, I guess. It’s not that I’m owed something no one else is, or that `consent’ is some kind of magic word, but since when did I become a chew-toy for magical creatures? Or maybe not a chew-toy. Maybe a door mat. I’m in control here. I decide whether they’re in or they’re out.”<\/p>\n
“Heidi Klum just got to announce it. Maybe you need to stop looking pretty and find the right judges,” he teased.<\/p>\n
“I just looked up that show because I wanted to know who Tim Gunn was and why he was meme-worthy,” I explained. “And, of course, cute models.”<\/p>\n
“Cute Tim Gunn,” he countered. “But I think you’ve got something there. Can’t you lock Peredur out?”<\/p>\n
“Oh, I’ve thought about it. Trust me, I have.” I wasn’t going to say that Peredur scared me. It didn’t sound right. “It was different than all those times when he thought he was doing me a favor. He said it was penance.”<\/p>\n
“Penance? What, he’s taking confession now? You really aren’t all that naughty, you know.” He was teasing.<\/p>\n
“Stop thinking about school boys,” I teased right back, then went back to serious. “No, for… her. Naul.”<\/p>\n
“What do you owe her? Didn’t she hurt you enough?” Ed was more indignant than I think I’d ever heard him.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t owe her anything. She was beyond description. Being in the presence of Dragons is awesome, in the way the word means. Full of awe. Terrific, full of terror. It’s kind of like,” I grasped for an analogy or something, “It’s kind of like a piece of unexpected art that moves you in a way you didn’t expect, that you didn’t anticipate needing and yet at the same time knocks you off balance and makes you uncomfortable.”<\/p>\n
“You were in the hospital. You could have died.” Ed’s voice was flat.<\/p>\n
“This is too much like talking about our feelings,” I said. “I feel like I should be sipping a mocha at some fancy coffee shop with my pinky out,” I groused. “I’m just off-balance. It’s like, I dance on the edge of this secret world, right? Well, I don’t dance. I mosey, maybe. Anyway, we all have our niches. I can hold my own in a conversation about sports, barely. It’s like statistics have their own occult significance, and they’re full of superstitions, and even in speaking this sentence I magically transform it into something I comprehend in my own little sphere of existence. It’s like you making analogies based on bugs all the time. Which you don’t, thankfully, because we all wince and start feeling itchy, but seeing a Dragon is probably the closest I’ll ever get to acknowledging the presence of a God. I don’t worship it, but Peredur and the thing last night made me feel like I was supposed to, and I can’t abide slavery.”<\/p>\n
Ed was quiet. “You need to talk to someone for real, bro. Someone with faith. I don’t…” he drifted off. “Look, I believe what I believe, and I don’t think I’d equate religion with slavery. I can see why you would, but for some people it’s the opposite. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion are historically quite significant.”<\/p>\n
“That makes sense, but no one wants to be forced into believing something they don’t,” I grumbled.<\/p>\n
Ed chuckled. “I don’t think they can, E. You can do it to yourself. You can try to wish yourself something you aren’t all you want, but you are you. You are the youest you can be, if I can paraphrase that other Doctor.”<\/p>\n
“I don’t think Doctor Seuss had a TARDIS.” I mulled on that. “On second thought… but that’s a digression. I am not sure that magic can’t do that. What’s a magical compulsion? Sure, ‘Command’ spells aren’t supposed to make you do something you wouldn’t do in the core of your soul in games, but that’s games. That’s not real.”<\/p>\n
“Magic isn’t real,” he said, and I could imagine him saying it with that straight face you get before you crack up laughing.<\/p>\n
I started laughing. “Okay, good point.”<\/p>\n
“Seriously, I can’t say I’ve experienced what you have. I merely glanced into the Abyss and that was enough for me – I didn’t want to hang around and study it. Memory has a lot to say about what we forget, and how we repair our brains is important. You need some brain work.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t say I’d prescribe it on a regular basis, but for you, I recommend a night of debauchery. Make sure you lock out all of your ex-s phone numbers, first. That said, I happen to have a whole day of total food porn planned for Thursday.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, your mom’s cooking does tend to make me feel guilty and want to close my door and take a shower afterwards,” I grinned. “So, what you’re saying is that I need to talk to a psychologist who is cued into the magic scene?”<\/p>\n
“Or a rabbi, or something. Are there wizard shrinks?”<\/p>\n
“No, no, no wizards. They can be good to talk with, but they just bend your mind into pretzels. In a figurative sense, I hope. I don’t feel like I want to be dipped in cheese.”<\/p>\n
“Bro, I think I can safely say that that’s not a common sensation,” he laughed. “You good?”<\/p>\n
“I’m good.” We got off the phone and I stared at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
Magical psychologist… like a court astronomer. I had an idea…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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