Story: Middle Part 8
[[Continuity Note: Why, I do believe I cut out in the middle of a scene
last time. Guess where I'm picking up?]]
Jessica wouldn't be accompanying them as under eighteens were generally
not allowed to council meetings, even in the viewing gallery which was
soundproofed. That is, when there was a viewing gallery. The council
meeting changed location every time to liven it up, but mostly to avoid
calling attention to themselves in the nons world. The change in
location was always conveyed via a magical noticeboard each family had.
If they didn't have a charmed noticeboard, it was a diary or simply a
piece of paper fridge magnetted to the refrigerator as people do. But
regardless of whether you knew where you were, you could always get to
the meeting via the magic mirror.
Alf had been introduced to the magic mirror or 'mirror portal' by
Jessica on Tuesday and he was very interested in how it worked. It
looked like your average full length mirror, there were no elaborate
swirly designs and when he asked if the frame was made from the wood of
a magical tree Jessica had merely stated that there was no such thing as
a magical tree, and then gone on to define how all trees could perhaps
be thought of as 'magical'. The frame was ordinary, the glass was shiny
and it reflected what was currently in the room. If playing "which of
these things is not like the others" and choosing between the mirror, a
magic wand and a top hat he would pick the mirror as the non-magical
item. It turned out that the magic portals were a relatively new
invention of the magical folks'. Prior to its invention, the equivalent
means of transport was stepping into a pool of water. It caused people
to become very disoriented as they would step into a puddle and end up
falling feet first out of it as though they'd travelled through the
centre of the Earth (quite hilarious to watch actually when the going
and coming puddles were right next to each other). It was also
difficult to transport and it took a long time to cast the spell over it
that would allow it to transport correctly.
"So how does this thing work again?" Alf asked Mrs Aldus.
"You just say where you want to go - in our case, 'council meeting' -
and step straight through."
"And it doesn't know where I want to go automatically?" Alf asked.
Mrs Aldus smiled. "Well, it should, but sometimes what you're thinking
of isn't actually where you want to go. The mirror portals are a little
funny. They're only supposed to take you between the sixteen mirrors,
but if its not sure where you want to go, it sometimes creates a mirror
for you. Which is a bit of a nightmare because that mirror doesn't stay
long enough for you to go back."
Alf gulped. So perhaps magical travel wasn't as safe as he'd first thought.
[[And I promised that I'd go to bed now so I'm gone... despite the fact
that I'm still in the middle of a scene.]]
Story: Middle Part 7 - racking up the numbers... but not the words.
[[Continuity Note: Figure it out, moron!]]
On Friday afternoon, Alf walked home with Jessica. He and she had
become somewhat friendly in the past week. It turned out that Jessica
didn't have many friends because she couldn't share her secret with
anyone and it was quite a large one. Alf of course, had no friends
besides the best-left-forgotten Damien. As a result of their budding
friendship, Alf spent most of his afternoons with Jessica, but this
afternoon was special since that night he would be heading to
Switzerland via portal mirror.
It had only taken a few minutes for Jessica's parents to convince Alf's
that it would be perfectly safe to take Alf with them to the council
meeting. Alf suspected magical intervention of some variety, they were
usually quite overprotective of their only son. It actually took a lot
of convincing that he was okay when he walked home from school. Since
his magical revelation, he'd experienced the most freedom he'd had in
his entire life. Alf wasn't certain if his parents thought he was safer
now that he had magical powers, if they were just intimidated by
Jessica's parents (who certainly seemed to radiate a strange sort of
otherworldliness, despite their protestations that they were completely
human), or if Jessica's parents were acting unethically.
In fact, that brought up a number of thoughts. Alf had asked Jessica
one day if there was some scientific difference between people with and
without magic. Jessica stated that there wasn't, though using magic you
could discern a number of differences. She then proceeded to go into
them, but Alf ignored her, seeing with his ears shut. And the niggling
thought that maybe Jessica's parents thought they were above other
people. It seemed as though all they wanted to do was control how other
people behaved. Alf didn't express these thoughts to anyone, though.
And dimly he wondered if people had the ability to read people's minds,
and he tried not to think of these things while in Jessica's house. He
figured that that power must be nullified by distance so only thought
these things from the privacy of his wardrobe.
[[Idol, dinner sleep... man, I wanted to write more tonight... but I
have to sleep otherwise I'll never wake up tomorrow and I have an exam.]]
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.]]
