I still do not own Marvel, and I do not mean to pretend that I own Marvel.
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Stephen didn't mention sorcery again. Indirectly, he did, and Christine was certain that they would talk about all of those things again, but for the rest of the night, the difficult subjects seemed to be banned.
Her former patient and Stephen's sorcery apprentice were cooking when Christine and Stephen finally left his study, and they spent a few minutes playing with the cloak before they all sat down to eat together.
Christine noticed with a surprising lack of surprise that there were some very strange dishes on the table, though neither of the other two women seemed to favour them. Stephen, on the other hand, ate more of the strange, unidentifiable goo than he did the normal food.
Noticing her puzzled looks, Elice smiled. "Sorcerer food. The more - and the more powerful - magic you perform, the more you need supplements from 'normal people food', so to speak."
The other woman smirked. "Elice has not yet reached the level of magic where it becomes necessary, and I am too rusty to go there, but Master Doctor Strange needs it sorely, so we made sure to make some anyway."
Nodding her understanding, Christine let herself be distracted by another part of what the woman had said. "'Master Doctor Strange'?" She questioned. "Why do you call him that?"
"Well, he is a Master of our order: and a very important one at that, being a Master of a Sanctum," the slightly older woman spoke up at once. "The Ancient One was not titled so, I suppose, but while he makes for a grand Sorcerer Supreme, he does still have a few steps to go to fill her shoes."
"He prefers the title Doctor, and he is a Master, so we just title him as a Doctor as if it were another first name," Elice added in softly, "it seems only fair, doesn't it?" Yes, Christine had to agree. It did.
After dinner, the newly healed woman withdrew to rest, and Elice went upstairs to play dominoes with a very enthusiastic cloak. (Apparently it loved that game, a very amused Stephen had enlightened Christine.)
Stephen was sitting by the fire in the large room downstairs, an open tome in his lap, though Christine could just tell that he would not mind if she spoke to him; and she found herself walking around the many bookcases which lined the walls, running her fingers over a vast collection of books, many in languages unfamiliar to her. She wondered if they were all from this dimension, or world, or whatever.
When she asked him as much, he smiled. "I do not speak all the languages they are in, yet," he replied, making her roll her eyes, "but most of them are in magical tongues from this realm. Not all - a few I've added myself were gifts from one of the residents of Asgard, in fact - but majorly so. Some are even unfamiliar to you simply because they're written in Mandarin Chinese."
He chuckled at her sceptical look directed at him. "Not everything has to be magical, I suppose," she admitted, looking back to the books again. She could feel him smile.
"Not everything has to be," he agreed, and she could hear the smile, too.
She did not yet know all that he had been through, but this was enough: there was no space between them, no questions which couldn't be asked, even if not all of them had easily spoken answers, and they were fine. They were walking steadily upon the right path, and they would get there, eventually.
She looked forward, increasingly, to knowing where there was.