My head was spinning. All of the plans to use makeup to obscure the changes that had happened really went out the door when my friends showed up at that same door. A part of me thinks that I should have checked to see who it was before opening the door, but if I knew it was them I wouldn’t exactly have been able to turn them away or manage a decent application of makeup in time. 

Well, they didn’t say anything so maybe it would be okay? They were shocked at my outfit, but they didn’t seem to react more than that. Though at this point, should I even bother wearing any makeup? If they’ve already seen me bare faced then it kind of defeats the purpose. Well, I can decide later. For now there is a very distracting werewolf who is looking at me with an inspecting gaze.

“So those were the friends that you had been talking about.” Liz stated while looking at me. “I didn’t expect to smell magic on them.”

The blush on my cheeks drained away and then took a little bit of extra color with it. What? Why would any of my friends smell like magic?

“Wha?” I asked ineloquently. Brain was going very fast but mouth was not able to process.

“Your friends. They had a lingering smell of magic on them. Odds are one of them is a magic user, or at the very least they have been in contact with something or someone that has magic. It was a bit too evenly spread amongst all of them for me to pin down who, but one of them had a bit more magic on them than the others. Whoever that is, they may be using spells on or close enough to the rest of them for the traces of magic to stick around.” Liz listed calmly, as if my best friends hadn’t just gotten a whole lot more wrapped up into this whole magic thing than I thought.

“What…” I mumbled. “But… How?” I still wasn’t quite able to formulate my thoughts properly with far too much on my mind. 

“I’m not sure.” Liz replied to my poorly asked question. “That does mean that if one of them is a magic user that they are likely to be able to pin down the fact that you can use magic too. They probably couldn’t figure out what type you were, and likely wouldn’t do anything even if they knew, but you should expect that one of them might approach you or us if they know that we are also supernatural.”

I feel dizzy. Slumping against the door now and slowly sliding down to the floor I ended up seated with my legs tucked into my arms in front of me. One of my friends might be magical? They might be using magic on my other friends? What does this mean? Are they going to become hostile if they find out what I am now? Oh fuck, things just got so much more complicated that it hurts.

“Hey,” came a calm voice directly in front of me. Liz had crouched down to near my level and was looking at me worriedly. “It’s going to be okay. Odds are, even if one of your friends is a magic user they won’t do anything bad. Most magic users keep to themselves. If anything, they might just ask about what happened that gave you magic if they knew you didn’t have it before. And you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. Neither will I. Things will be okay.”

Would they be? It was hard to believe that things could be okay. No matter how this pans out, I still have to live knowing that my friends are mixed up in something magical and I may never know what that is. How could I just go to work knowing that my friends aren’t who I thought they were? Are they even my friends, or-

“Sam.” Liz addressed me more forcefully and reassuringly gripped my hand where it rested on my knee, which drew my eyes up to meet her intense and yet caring gaze. “Thinking about it this much isn’t going to do you any good. We don’t have nearly enough information to know anything for sure. What we do know is that you have me here to keep you safe. Whatever happens, I’m here.”

Liz’s hand firmly held over mine coupled with the way she looked at me while talking me down did a great deal at leveling out my anxiety. I took a few slow, deep breaths. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Liz’s scent filtering through my mind brought me the rest of the way down.

“Okay…” I said with some more confidence after a couple minutes. “Okay, I think I’m alright now.”

Her lips turning up in a smile really made my heart do a couple flips when she was this close to me and still gripping my hand. “Atta girl.”

And so we came full circle, right back to blushing at Liz again. 

She didn’t linger much longer though. She stood up and let go, making me keenly aware of how cold the back of my hand was now without her touch. Then she held her hand out to me where I sat on the floor.

My eloquence was utterly lacking in this moment, so I stuck with just taking her hand and standing up. Her smile turned up a little as I stood in front of her. Pretty close to me at that. I returned the smile, albeit awkwardly.

“Your friends should still be your friends. Humanoid supernaturals are non-hostile in all but the most extreme circumstances. If they are your friend while they have magic then they will likely stay your friend if you have magic too. You might even grow closer over some mutual ground.” Explained Liz, clinically destroying my brain’s attempts at overthinking. 

I sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s just a whole lot all at once, ya know?”

“Trust me, I know all too well.” Liz said reassuringly while smiling a little wider.

“Oh?” I inquired with a slight tilt of my head. I was pretty curious what she meant by that. Her parents were both supernatural, so I would have just thought that she always knew.

“They didn’t tell me until I was 15.” Liz began with some minor annoyance. I assume she was referring to her parents. “I understand why they did it, but it made my life growing up really tough at times.” 

Liz looked off to the side with a difficult expression, then turned back to me and smiled again. “That’s all behind me now, but I was really angry at the time that they didn’t trust me til I was in highschool. So, the moral of the story is that I can relate. I had my whole worldview turned upside down going into freshman year of highschool. That was… interesting.”

Oof, thoughts of freshman year were not good. For a lot of reasons. If I also had to adjust to knowing that magic existed at the time, would that have made it better or worse? I probably would have ‘accidentally’ magically turned myself into a girl just to ‘try it out’ or something. Oh, what a poor egg I was. At best, that could be really good. At worst… that could be a really rough ride through high school.

“Based on that face, I think you get the idea.” Liz said with slightly restrained amusement. “Anyways, let’s go sit down.”

I blushed a little bit at how hard I must have been cringing, but didn’t argue. Liz led the way over to the couch where I curled up in one of the corners with my legs under me while hugging my favorite throw pillow. Meanwhile, Liz sat down on the other side with her arms resting on the back of the cushions. I had to be careful not to let my eyes wander, because her open posture and relaxed outfit did an amazing job of showing off a few key things. 

Abs. Check. Biceps. Check. Cleavage. Check. Distinct bulge in her sweatpants… Definitely Check.

“I’m pretty sure the valedictorian in my graduating class was a vampire.” Liz stated out of the blue, snapping me out of my state of trying very hard not to ogle Liz.

Okay, so vampires exist. That’s a good distraction. Can’t say I’m really surprised at this point though. “Did they dress in all black and avoid sunlight?” I asked uncertainly, not sure if I could expect vampires to be the same as they were in the myths. A Were sure wasn’t, as far as I’ve seen anyway.

Giggling, Liz answered, “Nah, he was on the football team and loved the outdoors. Pretty sure his favorite color was green.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, looking comfy and giving me a sideways glance. I took the opportunity to figure out something that her response made me curious about instead of thinking too hard on how powerful Liz’s side eye was. “So, vampires don’t get hurt by sunlight?”

“I was really hoping you would ask that.” Liz said smugly. “As a matter of fact, no they don’t. Not any more than an average person anyway. Their sunburns heal a lot faster than an average person even.” She leaned a little bit further back into the sofa and let her knees rest a bit further apart. Her tank top rode up a little higher as well, revealing more of her toned stomach.

“The reason that the sunlight myth exists is because of one specific vampire. A certain Count that everyone knows vaguely of. He was so proud of his porcelain skin that he refused to ever be under the sun.” She laughed again. “According to my dad, the Count was hosting a party with a bunch of other supernatural guests present and someone got the bright idea to prank the Count by opening his ye olde blackout curtains.” Liz lost herself in laughter before picking back up again a few seconds later. “The Count freaked the hell out. Dived under a tablecloth like the sun was out to kill him and had his servants escort the prankster out of his party. Since then, supernatural folks have never let him live it down. At some point that information got into the hands of the general public and got misinterpreted like an old game of messengers. That’s their version of telephone that I just made up.”

I blinked a few times in confusion and awe. “Wow…” I said, definitely at the story and not how watching Liz’s eyes while she tells a story makes my heart flutter.

“Right?” Liz exclaimed as she turned towards me with a wide smile. “One of the most identifying features of vampires in folklore is entirely based on one guy who is a little overly particular. And everyone in the supernatural community knows it and teases him about it. It’s great.”

‘Infectious’ would be the word I would use to describe Liz right now. She was just so… exuberant? I don’t really know what word to use there, but she is just so lively and expressive. She makes me want to listen to her tell more stories while I cozy up with a blanket and some hot tea. I couldn’t quite get the thought of having Liz join me under said blanket out of my head.

“The myths aren’t all bogus though. For one, a Were does in fact usually need the full moon to fully shift into their aspect unless they are particularly powerful. Silver doesn’t do anything though, so don’t worry about that.”

“Alright…” I mumbled while feeling a bit swept away.

“That brings us to our next topic.” Liz declared. “Your training.”

I blinked away my distractedness, realizing that this was going to be a more serious discussion now. “Yeah, we were going to be doing something with that today. Where do we start?”

Liz sat up and returned to a more neutral seating position rather than the more relaxed way she had been sitting. “We start with mana. Everyone has some of it, and you have a whole lot more of it than you did before. The average, mundane person has what I like to call ‘ambient mana’ where mana does exist in them but is pretty much formless and can’t really be used for much both due to the state and the miniscule amount. That is the baseline for living things. Living things have to have at least that level of mana, otherwise they aren’t alive anymore. Keep in mind though that an object can have similar mana properties but not necessarily be alive most of the time.” 

Squinting at that last part I parroted, “Most of the time?”

“Yeah,” Liz confirmed. “Rarely an inanimate object can gain or be given life. A prime example is golems, but they come with another caveat of basically functioning like primitive computers a lot of the time unless they accidentally gain sentience. So, whether you call that life or not is a pretty heavy debate.”

Okay, that does sound really heavy. I don’t really have anything to do with that right now, so I can’t really even decide where I fall on that topic. Maybe that will come up someday though, so I suppose it’s good to know of. 

“Back to mana though,” Liz continued. “Going up the ladder of mana from basic life can be a bit tricky because there are so many different types of mana and types of people and creatures that it’s hardly even worth trying to learn them all for most people. Mages have a mana core within their body that contains the mana. Vampires store mana in their heart and circulate it through their blood. And, more relevantly, a Were’s entire body is their mana vessel. Unlike a mundane person, the mana is much denser. A Were is so saturated with mana all of the time that it can be hard for a Were to hide from things that track mana. A mage keeps theirs secured within their core, yet a Were has it in their blood, sweat, and tears.”

A part of me felt uneasy about that. “Does that mean that we could be in danger?”

Liz shook her head confidently. “No, not anymore than anyone else. People with magic aren’t that different from people without. Most people just want to live their own lives. They may be selfish at times, but instances of violence are few and far between on the grand scale. It is a good thing to know though in case of emergencies. It may be better to flee instead of trying to hide if you know that your pursuer can track your mana.”

I was still a bit unsettled at that, but an ‘in case of emergencies’ briefing usually doesn’t do anything because most people don’t need it. But the ones that do… No, let’s not think about that. I nodded with an ‘okay’ said to Liz.

“Anyway, Weres have their own type of mana affinity that uses the moon as a medium. Specifically, starlight. The moon acts as a focus for all the stars in the sky and Weres can gather that energy by bathing themselves under the night sky. Our sun is also a star and provides a huge amount of the energy that we use, but direct sunlight doesn’t work since it’s undiluted and it doesn’t have the moon as a focus. When the moon is out during the day it isn’t really helpful since it’s mostly drowned out by the sun.”

Liz shrugged as if this was all normal, which I guess it was for her. “That’s the basic knowledge stuff. Next comes some practical exercises. We’re gonna work on meditating so you can learn to feel your mana.”

There wasn’t much I had to say on the matter and Liz was taking the lead pretty confidently. I mostly calmly listened as she described the thought process of being able to feel your mana all throughout your body, while occasionally getting distracted by a tangent. Or by Liz.

And that was how we spent the next while, with me practicing meditation until it got late enough to start working on dinner.

MegaSuperKami

We're back! And with a nice variety of things happening! Some lore/info dumping from Liz with some interesting anecdotes, some Liz being distracting to poor Sam, and some more intrigue!

I'm very excited to be back to working on this. I hope you enjoyed this continuance of Sam and Liz's story as much as I do!

Until next time, have a haxidosical day!