Story: Middle Part 6
[[Continuity Note: I think we shall erase the last paragraph or so...
just pretend they don't exist and go from ... actually I'll leave it,
it's crap, but I can't do any better at the moment]]
"Yeah, um," Alf looked at the girl.
"Jessica," she provided.
"Yeah, Jessica said something about my family."
"Yes," Mr Aldus responded. "There are fifteen magical families in the
world. Each family is quite large and has a number of streams, so by
family I don't mean immediate family, I mean family trees, although we
are all related and in turn all of us descend from Cornucopia the
First. The fact of the matter is, no matter how we trace it, you don't
descend from any of these fifteen families, in even the most unmagical
of ways."
"Oh," Alf frowned.
"Show him the book," Mrs Aldus commanded.
"Yes dear," Mr Aldus responded, lifting a finger and beckoning an unseen
object. A large heavy, leather bound book that you'd expect a magical
family to own came flying in. It settled onto the coffee table and
opened to a specific page. "This," Mr Aldus began, indicating for Alf
to come closer and look at it. Alf did so, kneeling before the
parchment pages. "This is the magically updating record of every single
magic user in the world. Or at least, it's supposed to be. You'll find
that your name is missing."
Alf leant forward, fingers daring to touch the fine papers of the tome.
The names were conveniently listed in alphabetical order by birth year.
Alf easily flipped to the year he wanted (he had a suspicion the book
knew and was just humouring him by letting him turn the pages) and drew
a finger down the list. "Not here."
"And if you check this year," Jessica paused as the pages flipped to the
appropriate one near the end of the book. "You'll see that you're not
listed there either."
"How odd," Alf commented, idly wondering why he was such a freak. He
couldn't even be normal in a freakish way. Or should that have been
freakish in a normal way... probably the latter.
"It just so happens that the very fact that you've come into your powers
at this time is actually going to throw a huge spanner into the works of
a recent political movement."
"Oh," Alf commented this time idly wondering why he had to be such a
freak that he screwed up an entire political system. "Hang on, there's
magical politics?"
"Of course. Every society needs a ruling body to stop us from drowning
in anarchy. Except in the case of communism, which we found didn't
quite work a number of times. You'll note which years these are because
they're the ones that caused major worldwide chaos. Oops."
"What my husband is trying to say," Mrs Aldus interjected. "Is that our
society is governed by the magical council. It's an elected council of
course, with a single member representing each family, with each family
nominating their representative. We don't let them get away with
everything, but they do decide what it is that we actually vote upon so
that we can move forward, united. And it very often comes to pass that
the movements put forward by the council are passed by the general
population."
"And the political movement that I've thrown the big spanner into the
works of is?" Alf queried.
"The magical council has long been considering the, assimilation, I
guess you could call it, of the magical community with the community at
large."
"But aren't you already part of the community at large?"
"More like having our magical abilities come out to the community at
large," Mr Aldus rephrased.
"So where do I come in?"
"The reason why this movement has come about in recent years is because
of the shrinking magical population in relation to the global population
of all people. We're losing the extent of control we have over what
happens. Magical people are supposed to guide regular people to lead
prosperous lives."
"Don't people do that anyway?" Alf interjected.
"Well yes, but with our help. You wouldn't know about that." Mr Aldus
sat back in his armchair.
"And of course, they need our help less these days, now that science and
technology are evolving so that we no longer need to do what we
traditionally did," Mrs Aldus added.
"The point is that you, being a magic user from a non family, well, it
seems to signify that magic is evolving and manifesting itself so that
we won't need to become more vocal about who we are and what people
should do. And when we go to the council meeting next Friday you'll be
able to fully understand the situation."
"Uh, council meeting?"
"Dear," Mrs Aldus looked at her husband. "It is customary to ask
someone before determining where they'll be going."
"Sorry darling," Mr Aldus returned. There was something strange about
the way they spoke to each other. From any other couple, it would have
been condescension, but between the Alduses, it seemed as though it was
truly love. "Alf, would you like to accompany us to a council meeting
next Friday."
The greater portion of Alf's brain was screaming 'NOOO!!!' at the top of
its lungs. Sadly, the smaller part of Alf's brain was much stronger and
wrestled the larger part quiet. "That would be Friday after school,
correct?"
"Of course," Mrs Aldus smiled. "It's actually close to midnight on
Friday, and we'll be going to Switzerland so it will actually be Friday
morning when we get there."
Now that was going to be confusing. "I'll just have to ask my parents,
and they'll probably want to talk to you about it before they let me go."
"Not a problem," Mr Aldus said with a smile behind his bushy moustache.
Meeting members of a council would definitely be the most daunting thing
Alf did in the next week.
[[End scene.]]
posted by Cedric @ 7:15 pm
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