"Your mother…she wasn't exactly from around here."
"You mean she's a foreigner?" Sure, I was a bit surprised by the revelation, but I didn't understand why he was being so weird about it.
Dad shuffled awkwardly. "In a manner of speaking…"
"Dad, just spit it out." I didn't know why he was beating around the bush so much, it wasn't like being born in another country was some great sin or some-
"She's an alien."
"Wow Dad, how could you? The proper term is Undocumented Migrant." I joked with a laugh.
My amusement faded quickly under his thoroughly unamused stare.
"Taylor, your mother," He spoke slowly and clearly. "is literally an alien. As in not of this Earth."
"Ha! Funny! Good joke dad! Now, where is she really from? France? Oh! She's totally from Italy isn't she?"
Dad just kept staring at me. Not even a hint of a smile on his face.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling parched. "What? You're kidding right?...Dad?"
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I wish I were kiddo. You see, your Mom came from a planet called Anodyne…"
"What?" I mumbled in disbelief, more to myself than anything else. Left with no choice but to listen numbly as Dad turned my world upside down.
"Why, after all this time, why are you telling me now?"
"Your mother planned to tell you once you began puberty. She wrote all sorts of books in preparation. Primers she called them." He gestured to the sealed cardboard box at his feet. "An alien she may have been, but her love of books was very real. She had been so excited at the prospect of teaching you…" He smiled sadly at me.
"If all that is true, she had all that power, then…why is she…how could she…" I couldn't bring myself to even finish the question.
"How did she die?" I winced at his matter of fact tone, but I nodded regardless. "Her people are formless, literally energy given sentience. They can mimic other species if they wish, but those changes are always just skin deep, more like a change of clothes. But she was different, she was always so curious. So she chose a more permanent form, to truly understand what it meant to live like us. She gave herself an actual body."
He smiled softly at a memory. "You should have seen the look on her face the first time she tried food." He snorted. "Or the look on her face when she realized she had to go to the bathroom."
I couldn't help but laugh as I imagined it.
"How did you guys even meet?"
"Believe it or not, we met in a library. I was grabbing a book for a highschool summer reading essay, and I bumped into her. Quite literally I might add, she had just arrived on earth that day and apparently hadn't quite grasped the concept of personal space. She kept walking within inches of people, her argument at the time was that there was space, so why shouldn't she? She kept thinking in terms of physics, not really accounting for human error or preference. In her head, everyone would walk perfectly with zero deviation and wouldn't ever do anything non optimally."
"Long story short, she was standing way too close behind me. It ended with both of us sprawled on the ground. Now, as a teenager I was more than a bit horrified at finding myself laying on top of some random girl. I was quick to help her on her feet, apologizing the whole time." He shook his head. "And you know what she said? She just asked me where the history books were, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened."
"If I'm being honest, I'm still not sure what exactly drove me to try and befriend her. Hormones? Curiosity? Boredom? What you need to understand Taylor, is that back then? She was weird." He said it matter of factly. "She hadn't yet taken the plunge and made herself an actual body, so her emotional range and reaction to things was all over the place. Getting happy at the oddest of things, and utterly enraged at others. With everything I knew at the time, I really should have stayed away from her."
"But something about her drew me in regardless. And I am forever grateful for it. If I had stayed away, I never would have gotten to know the amazing women that was your mother. I never would have had you."
I had to swallow a lump in my throat at how warmly he was smiling at me.
"Love you dad."
"Love ya too kiddo. Now, let's see what books she packed away in here, yeah?"
/
"Ignis."
The candle didn't so much as twitch.
"Ignis!" I spoke more forcefully that time.
Still nothing.
"IGNIS!" I shouted at the candle.
Seeing no result, I slammed the spellbook shut in frustration and began pacing. I went over the steps in my head for what felt like the hundredths time.
Procure easily flammable material, check. Eat a chili pepper, check. Recite the magic spell while imagining the intended effect, double check. Yet for some stupid reason I couldn't get the candle to catch fire. It was the first spell in the damned book for crying out loud!
"Why won't you light you stupid candle!"
The candle remained unaffected by my angered tone. The wooden chair next to the table however did not share that opinion. With a whooshing sound, the entire chair was aflame. Suddenly I had a small pyre with flames tall enough to lick the ceiling in the middle of my very flammable kitchen.
It took a few seconds for me to realize what was happening, when I did, it was a bit of a scrabble to get the fire extinguisher from under the sink.
A thoroughly foamed chair and ceiling later and I was left bouncing in excitement.
I had done it. I had actually used magic, sure it wasn't exactly how I had planned, but I had done it!
I couldn't wait to tell dad! A particularly large dollop of foam fell from the ceiling with a loud plop. Or perhaps I could wait… I thought with a nervous laugh.
/
After a few weeks of practice, I could reliably light candles on command. Levitating the feather was still a bit hit or miss at the moment, but that didn't matter, not for what I needed it for anyways.
I finally had proof, and that meant I could finally tell Emma! I practically skipped up the driveway, ringing the doorbell, fighting the urge to spam the button. Idly I wondered if the phenomenon had a magical root, afterall, it couldn't be normal for every human to get the irristiable urge to push doorbells buttons.
"I'm sorry Taylor, but Emma doesn't want visitors right now."
I gaped up at Mr. Barnes, I wasn't some visitor, I was her sister! I nearly said as much, but the tense look he sent me stopped me. Biting my lip, I nodded my head and walked away stiffly.
It was fine. She didn't want to talk? She needed some space? That was fine. It was only two weeks until our first semester of Winslow started anyways. Everything was fine.
/
As I lay in bed crying, my backpack strewn forgotten by the door, it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine at all.