My apologies for this chapter being a week late - I have been finishing up seven stories this December, so my regular long-running sagas were put on the back-burner for a little bit there. Thank you for your patience.
TapTap
Christine did no longer bat an eye that she was being let into a magical 'Sanctum' by a flying, sentient cloak in order to visit her... she honestly wasn't quite sure what Stephen was to her right now. She was not even startled by her lack of startlement at this point.
She greeted said cloak with a pat and let it lead her upstairs, only to stop and blink in the stairs once she saw what was above it. She heard talk of magic literally all the time. She saw enough proof of it happening, too, to know by now that neither she nor they were crazy. She knew Stephen could travel by making glowy rings in the air and she had seen those... people... make other glovy things in the hospital when they came for her patient. But Stephen seemed to just be in the magic, she had never noticed him... well, actually doing it.
Maybe that was a proficiency thing, some sort of level of skill or control about magic, because Stephen was not here. Elice and the stabbed-with-something-which-wasn't-a-knife-but-probably -some-sort-of-magic-she-could-bet-glowed-as-well-patient was casting sparks of golder glitter out into the air from their hands, standing in an open space upstairs. It looked like they were practising. Maybe it was hard - which would make sense - or maybe the formely her's and now Stephen's patient had to recover somehow after her injuries.
"Christine!" Elice looked up right in the middle of making some sort of glovy circle which turned into a blade, a blade which Christine just knew was sharp enough to cause the injuries of the woman standing next to the Islander.
"Hello," said woman was turning towards the staircase as well, the sparkles in her hands going out as she stopped moving. "Thank you, for your help. And for standing up to those sorcerers - I know the risks you took, and I am grateful."
"Thank Stephen," Christine stepped up the last few steps from where she'd stopped in the middle of the staircase. She didn't really know what else to say.
"I know. I have," the young woman replied, smiling warmly suddenly, giving the women next to her the impression that the room was a little brighter, as if she lit it up. Christine rightly assumed it was some sort of sorcery.
"Cloak?" The call came from a room several doors down, and was followed by the cloak swishing away from them to go join Stephen, who met it in the middle of the hall, within sight of them. He easily snapped it in place on his shoulders with a simple motion, still walking towards them. "Christine? I did not expect you." Unexpected or not, she hoped that she was not unwelcome, and the slight half-smile she could only just glimpse at the corners of his mouth seemed to indicate otherwise anyway.
"I just wanted to ask a few questions..." Christine glanced at their patient and at Stephen's housemate, who still had her hands full of magical, glovy, golden fire. At a stern look from Stephen, she put it out.
"Of course," Stephen retook Christine's attention by speaking. "Join me in my office?"