ACT ONE

sun kissed dreams


v — • the moon and back •


"We should call it wish magic."

A snort. "Don't be stupid."

"Wish magic is a perfectly respectful name for what it is!" A glare. "Oh, and what would you name it then, thee who must always know best?"

A pretentious sniff. "They're our powers."

"…I still vote wish magic."

"Well I vote powers."

"But—please?" A flutter of lashes. "Wish magic sounds so much prettier."

"It shouldn't be pretty." A sneer, but one now half hearted at best. "It's supposed to be something awe-inspiring."

"But Tom~ pretty please?"

"…" Silence. A huff of a sigh, the sound of a battle lost before it could even begin. "Magic, fine. But just magic."


She blinks, eyes wide. A surprised little noise unwittingly escapes her throat, and Tom looks back at her quickly, his dark eyes shadowed with something cloyingly reticent.

Drawing closer, like a moth to the brightest flame there ever was, Anastasia gingerly lowers herself into a hesitant squat, a bit behind Tom, gazing at them wonderingly.

"They won't hurt you." He utters, and she marvels absently at the smooth switch from—hissing—to, well, english.

"No?" She asks, more rhetorically than anything else. After all, she trusts in Tom emphatically enough to be already edging closer to the tiny snakes—tiny, but without a shadow of doubt able to strike out at any given moment—until she is shoulder to shoulder with him, knees bumping against his slightly.

Anastasia wets her lips. It isn't as if she has a phobia of snakes, exactly, but the only time she has ever seen one is at the zoo, behind thick glass and beside a board detailing the rather discomforting deadliness of their venom and the unthinkable speed of their fangs.

Lovely first impression to have, no?

But, she thinks, if Tom speaks to snakes, and if he tells her that they will not hurt her, then she will believe it, so—"Hello." She says, softly, lined with a mellow trim of caution.

Anastasia tilts her head slightly, looking to Tom. "Can they understand me?"

Tom is watching her with an inscrutable expression, one that she with all her experience takes to mean he's more than likely sifting through emotions and situations he is uncomfortable with again—and she waits for him like always, she can be patient. Then he shakes his head clear and shuffles himself back, off his knees and onto his bottom, crossing his legs and clearing his throat like a—tiny—lecturer. "They call it 'human noises'," he explains, "but they understand the general tone."

The smaller one, a light speckled grey snake whose species she doesn't know, flicks their tongue out and hisses something to Tom. Anastasia turns to ask for a translation, but he is already spitting a slew of hisses right back—his face curiously flushing and his eyes flitting fleetingly to hers before returning determinedly back onto the angular face of his little friend.

While a part of her is slightly disappointed at having not had the ability to share this particular skill of Tom's with him—just as he is, she knows, even if he doesn't say it out loud—she learns today that Tom feels at ease with his snakes, and despite herself, she is happy that she is not the very first friend he has ever had.


"We'll practice fire now." His fingers flex, and a gleeful light burns in his eyes. The familiar anticipation of using his pow- magic—of knowing he was better than all of them—rolls in his gut.

The feeling is doubled, now—tripled even.

He is not the only one who has them anymore, and perhaps he should feel resentment, at having lost his innate superiority, but all he seems to be able to grasp in his chest is…

(relief. joy. awe)

—satisfaction.

Besides, Anastasia isn't as good as him anyway, he reassures himself, but a part of him suspects that perhaps he would feel the same even if she were.

The girl smiles at him and nods, but Tom now pauses and his eyes narrow slightly. He had thought himself good at reading people—and he was certain he was but- it is always Anastasia who'd given him trouble.

He thinks it might be the warmth. When Anastasia's truly happy, you could feel it from miles away. A tangible glow clinging to her skin, a certain radiance in her eyes, waves of contentedness coalescing into a snug blanket draped over her shoulders like a cape, reminiscent of sunshine and her favourite yellow dress. Once you've felt it, he finds it is difficult not to unsee it, and the politely graceful smile her lips bend into now pales in comparison. A fizzing lightbulb to the sun.

Or perhaps it's just him.

He crosses his arms, "What is it now?" Tom asks, antsy—it occurs to him that he should not be asking anyhow, because he doesn't care at all. He just wants to get on with it, see, it isn't a matter of concern—it's just that practicing is easier with someone else.

Anastasia shrugs, but her fingers curl near imperceptibly—just a small tightening of knuckles, but Tom's sharp eyes dart to them and back. "Well it's just, fire's much more dangerous than water, isn't it? What if we… lose control of it?"

Tom's brow furrows. While Tom had used the orphans' taunts (hurt) as a cloak, telling himself that his powers meant he was better than them, it seemed as though Anastasia had done the opposite: she had locked it down into the deepest box she could find, in fear that it would earn her malicious speculation and mistrust.

When he had discovered Anastasia's possession of the same powers as him, there was no doubt (whispering of freakishness, of uncertainty, of demons) left to squirm at the back of his mind; he wasn't strange if another was the very same.

When Anastasia had discovered his possession of the same powers as her, she too had felt relief, but perhaps—in his unspoken opinion, because he learns that with her even he has tact—so long had she stifled them that it is hard now to force her mind to accept them.

Of course, this also means that she has this particular skill of being able to calm and—compartementalize, is what she describes it as—her mind at a moments notice, and they have already established that their powers stem from emotions. On one hand, Tom admits to being envious of this control of hers, but his own control is of a different kind—and he prefers it to hers, he thinks.

He has had more practice, see, squatting and hidden amongst the bushes with his snakes, furrowing his brows and thinking hard, over and over again, telling the branch above Scout or Billy's head to drop. It is not foolproof, he discovers the hard way, but magic still comes easier to him than it does to in exchange for reluctantly (anticipatorily) teaching Anastasia, he has demanded her teach him how to 'compartementalize' his mind too.

She was more apprehensive at the start, but she grows more and more eager the more they practice—not that he is watching, mind. Anastasia was the one to propose that they should go about learning systematically—and Tom had begrudgingly agreed, much to his chagrin at not having considered it himself. She had nibbled her lip, wondering aloud whether it was appropriate to start with "things like water and fire."

And so here they are.

But Anastasia is insufferably soft (kind) and whereas 'water', to her mind, seemed to register as harmless and thus acceptable,'fire' seems to want to do so much less.

Tom thinks it's ridiculous—what could she be afraid of? After all, they have definitive proof that they're better now. Besides, the other orphans seem to be turning on her now too (my fault, he cannot help but think, half guilty, half vindictive because they have lost a diamond), and there also seems to be no love lost on her side—so even if one of them gets hurt, would it not be akin to killing two birds with one stone?

Somewhat inevitably though, instead of the rightful reclamation that should, what comes out of him is instead a deadpan stare, and a drawling—"Fine. I promise I won't tease you if you do something wrong."

And the hints of warmth peek out from the corners of her smiles again, even as she rolls her eyes.

.

"You—You said you'd not tease me!" Anastasia exclaims heatedly, blushing furiously from what Tom can see is not covered by her drenched arms.

The tiny—tiny—wayward ember has long been decimated by, in comparison, a tsunami's worth of water.

Tom's face is straight. "What are you talking about?"

She lifts her head up and glares, flustered—the only time Tom can remember her being so visibly embarrassed, he thinks unbidden, is the night she slipped into his bed that first time. "You're doing that thing of yours where you're laughing inside, aren't you?"

Her rosy puffed cheeks are—disappointingly, in hindsight—all that takes for him to crack.


Anastasia frowns.

"Breathe," She says, legs crossed under her.

He glares at her—"Not sure if you've noticed, I've been doing that my whole life." Tom shoots back, flatly, but clenches his eyes shut nonetheless.

Anastasia winces, worrying her lip. It's harder that she expected, she admits, to teach Tom how to calm himself. No, it isn't just about calm, she's found—now that she's actually thinking about it. It's not even about composure, as she used to refer to it as in her mind.

It's emptiness.

But it sounds more alarming than she's sure it really is.

She remembers balls and banquets and teas, and she remembers flinty eyes, old and young, scrutinising for any sign of any vulnerability.

She remembers hating it. The crawling skin, the judgement, how they would look away in dismissal as soon as they found something beneath them.

It wasn't enough to hide your emotions—she was young, lacking enough control over her masks to prevent them from cracking at the brittle edges, unsavory emotions leaking through. They were more experienced, hawks of nobility—they had played their games long enough to know precisely what buttons to press, and any minute tick would give her away in a second's glance.

("let the adults talk, little girl")

Not that the other children her age—or even a bit older—did any better, mind. It was a learning curve, but Anastasia had always been oddly intelligent. She was tired of being overlooked, constantly patronized, and she was already disadvantaged as a girl besides; so she needed a leg up.

She doesn't quite know when she first began doing it, can barely remember how, but…

"A box." Anastasia says, finally, eyes glinting up with determination. Her fingers curl in her lap and she leans forward. Tom opens his eyes again and listens, unconsciously mirroring her, attentive still. "A box made of mirrors, visualise it there in your head. Hide your anger in there, when it comes. Lock it up and don't let it go. Your mind's empty now, yes? Clear of all of the red, nothing can rile you up. And someone might try to glimpse it, a moment lacking control, a flaw in your composure, but all they'll see is themselves and what they already know, never the back of the mirror itself. Never you."

Tom Riddle eyes her with an inscrutable look, and then he shuts his eyes once more, a set in his brow.

.

Tom doesn't know when he began reading other people's minds. He doesn't know when he even realised it was happening. But he thinks that he's been doing it for a while now, actually—Tom has always been good at reading people, after all—but only now is he actively doing it.

He's only just accepted that he can, really.

It's not like a book, easy to browse. Sometimes it slams into him at the most inopportune times, a bombardment of thoughts ranging from breakfast to the weather to work to sleep, all the little absently floating musings which come unconsciously to mind, he might hear.

It's getting better, though, he's found. With the knowledge of Anastasia's existance beside him—not that he will admit it—he finds himself becoming bolder, more unafraid to experiment out on the streets, to practice and improve.

He finds that when he thinks about something really hard, the person he's mind-reading wavers. Sometimes they are influenced slightly by his wishes, bent over for him—though his hold is still quite weak.

He finds that it comes easily to him. He only needs to look them in the eye and push.

So he experiments, but not on Anastasia Emrys.

Part of it—a small, insignificant part, he is ever quick to assure himself—is because he does not want to. Because he is afraid of being caught. Because she isn't like all of the other asinine sheep. She's magic, like him, and he doesn't know what he'd quite do if Anastasia found out and decided it was horrible. If he was horrible.

Another, much larger, part of it, is that he actually can't. When he eventually musters the will to give her just a hesitant prod, something gives, like it always does, but…

At first, he is quite confused. After all, all he heard was, well, confusion.

It takes a few days of mental gymnasics and a few more tentative probes to realise that it is his own confusion, bouncing back to him. For a minute he panics, wondering if he's left something permanent in her mind, because none of the other minds he's read have had his emotions bleed through too, and certainly not without conscious effort on his end! He had wondered if it were because they're both magic, but—she doesn't seem confused.

At all.

He comes to the bemusingly irritating realisation that for some reason, the only thoughts there in her mind, for all his later scouring, are his own.

Anastasia Emrys, the only person whose mind he cannot read.

It was a mystery to him—how?—and several times his resolve had almost broken and he wanted to just march up and demand to know, but for his own pride and the thrill he felt swinging in his chest like a pendulum, at the thought of the puzzles ensconscing Anastasia and the inevitable eventuality of him piecing them all together. Because he won't stop until he has.

(but for (weakness). his fear—she cannot leave him now.)

But now, as he looks into her oddly (captivating) eyes, so blazingly determined to help him learn, Tom feels himself being drawn in without cognizance of the fact, and now that he finally knows what she's doing he sees the mirror.

A perfect rippling pond, one which bends at his touch and so never breaks, never reveals its secrets to him.

Ingenious, he thinks.

(incredible, he thinks too. wonderful, subtle, clever, dazzling)

And mine.