Verboten
Chapter 39
Friday, March 26, 2010
Disclaimer: I do not own the Winx Club
Fore Note: Let's admit it; everyone is influenced by the environment around them. Mine includes a marathon of James Bond movies on the flat screen which just set the tone for the way I'm going to write the future chapters.
On Earth.
"There are thirteen lessons in magic, or principles," Asta said. She sat at the end of the bar. Business was somber and it was the afternoon. The witch gulped her tea and poured another cup from her pot: cinnamon. "This book is written for people already understand the principles." Asta pointed at the Basic Magic: Level One book. "Hmm, the author is also a teacher at Alfea. Interesting. Anyways…"
Roxy cut in. "But I can do some of the spells already. Or the really basic ones." She remembered the incident with the vacuum on the ceiling.
"Just because you can do the spells does not mean you understand the value of them or your powers or the entire study of magic. Magic is the circumventing of the laws of physics or creating a force that negates the laws. With magic, anything that is not possible in the physical world is possible."
"Like what?"
"Bringing people back to life is one." Asta became pensive for a moment. "It requires a great amount of energy. An eye for an eye, almost. You can't take without giving. Actually, that's a morbid idea. Let's try something happier like flying. Gravity and weight is the force that pulls you down but lift is the force that pulls you up. A fairy can fly because she has wings but a witch can fly because they are using magic. Most witches use the concept of gravity negation in the area around them to fly while others might use strong winds to keep them up. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I think I do."
"It helps to have an imagination."
"So these lessons…?"
"They teach you the mindset that you need to perform magic. Don't be daunted. If you can already do the spells in this book, you've already got the difficult part over."
"Really?" Roxy was flooded with relief. "So how do I learn these lessons?"
"They're a series of…hmm, self-discoveries or journeys. When I was young, my mother and I did not live in the house for the most part." Asta placed her chin on her hand, thinking deeply. "This is extremely difficult. I didn't grow up in a city. You're not as attuned to magic and nature as you should be because you live in the city. You've lost your connection, if that is the right word, to the planet. What would you say if we went camping? Something like a back-to-nature thing."
-
Andy sat on the sand with his guitar on his lap. No songs came from his lips. It was difficult. The reality of everything had changed. Inside, he was angry. He wanted to put the blame on someone. It would have solved all his problems. That person he could blame was gone to some other galaxy to save the world.
The beach was devoid of people, giving Andy a desolate feeling. Where did he go from here? Live his day-to-day life without ever acknowledging magic or accept it? He finally knew who those weird fairies on TV were. Small consolation. He felt like things were getting worst and worst for his alien friends. Sky was a total ass.
"Mind if I join you?"
Speak of the devil and he doth appear.
Andy looked up to see Sky standing near him. The guitarist did not answer and the blond king sat cross-legged on the sand.
"Sky, you're a jackass. I don't understand why the hell you're here or why you got me involved. Why do you do any of this?" Andy said all of a sudden.
Andy expected a violent response. "I did not choose for you to get involved, Andy," Sky said softly. "If I had the choice, you would not be involved. The person you must blame is Bloom."
"You're blaming Bloom?"
"Well, if she had never revealed to you her exact identity, you would have never realized that she was one of the fairies on TV. Look, I'm a bad person. I don't sound like one, I am one. Maybe five years ago I would not be saying this but this is the present. I'm not even going to pretend to have some pretense of guilt because it's a waste of time. What happened happened and we must keep moving forward. There is no point in getting angry. If you're still unhappy about this ordeal, we'll erase your memory when we have the time."
"And you're a king?" the guitarist criticized. "I have to wonder what Bloom sees in you."
"Do you think knowing what you do now is a bad thing? Magic is a natural part of the universe. Andy, I am the king of a planet. I graduated from a topnotch program from a military school several realms away. I am constantly in the sights of some gunman or assassin because they want me dead for what's in here." Sky pointed to his forehead. "I consider myself lucky to even have someone Bloom at all. She should have left me when the whole I-have-a-fiancée-already debacle unraveled."
"You had a fiancée already?!" Andy asked incredulously. A simple 'what the fuck?' summed up his thoughts. "Dude, how old are you? Twenty-one?" What a two-timing jerk?!
"Don't be quick to judge me, Andy. You make the deadly assumption that I always have a choice in everything I do. I don't. I don't get to choose my own wife. I am lucky to even experience a romantic relationship with anyone. My realm and my family come first before me. It's also the reason why I seemed 'messed up'ed to you. I look like a bastard or someone who is better off dead than alive to you, don't I?
"Bloom and everyone else probably think that too but I know in my heart that what I'm doing is right even if no one sees what I see. It's been foretold on my planet that I am destined for great things but I don't want to be that person in the prophecy."
"You have prophecies?"
"I sound even more of a nutcase, don't I? I grew up faster than I had wanted to and personally, I think I have many regrets. I withhold the truth a lot because it's part of my job but I might as well be lying for all that everyone cares and it hurts to think that."
"And you're telling me this why?"
"Talking is therapeutic and you don't work for me. Ordinarily, I can't tell this to people like Brandon or Bloom because there are constraints on those relationships. Brandon gets paid to do what I tell him. Bloom is the princess of another realm."
"And you're not mad at me for calling you a jackass?"
"What do you want me to do? Snap your neck? I'm not going to care. There are worst names out there."
Andy let out a breath, unsatisfied. He was expecting Sky to be a ball of fury but all he did was sit calmly and talk.
"So what's it like out there?" Andy asked.
"'Out there?' What do you mean?"
"Well, the magical dimension and stuff."
"Don't use the word 'dimension.' A dimension is not a place, it's a measurement like the second and third dimension—sorry, I get bugged when people do that. There are idiots who tack on 'dimension' just to make the place sound cooler. Anyways, it's not necessarily as magical as you would think it would be, at least in Magix it isn't."
"Magix is an artificial planet. It's not naturally formed in space but rather created by machine and magic. They use it as a centre for commerce, interplanetary education and politics. Its capital, extremely creative might I add, is Magix. It's one of the worst places to be right now because there is too much tension between the witches and fairies and NMBs."
"NMBs?"
"Non-magical being. They're not 'non-magical' per se. They just don't practice magic at the level that the girls do. Right now, they're back in Magix probably teaching. They were interns at Alfea, a school for fairies, before we came to Earth."
"And you?"
"Packing up to go home and run my world before the whole attack in Alfea happened."
Sky explained to him the Black Circle and how they had attacked Alfea in their search for the last fairy of Earth which was Roxy. Sky also explained the theory of the Black Death killing all the magical beings during the Middle Ages.
"You know, I'm finding all of this extremely hard to accept," Andy admitted.
"It's understandable. I find it hard to accept that a place like Earth exists."
Andy asked him to explain.
"Earth feels like a jump back through time to me. This place is so polluted and all of your people have lost their sense of natural self-awareness. You're so detached from nature that it's terrifying. Most of all, what scares me is that not even tap water here is directly drinkable. I can spoil the future for you by saying that a lot of societies ended up going out this way. This is going to end very badly and you humans don't make a one-eighty right now."
"'You humans?' Aren't you human, too?"
"I am and I am not. I'm human but not a human of Earth. I am an alien of Earth but a human of Eraklyon. The term 'human' refers to an individual or group of people who are capable of abstract thinking, logic, language and reflection no matter what one looks like. Take Nabu for example. He's a born merman with fins and gills and everything. We call him a merman but where he comes from, he's just a 'human' or another self-aware being. It's very subjective."
Both men were silent for a long while. They watched the sand fly away on the wind.
"Sky, when I first met you, I didn't even know who you were until you started working at the bar. I didn't even know that Bloom was engaged until Klaus said that you were engaged. I didn't peg you for the smart-type either. To be honest, I thought that you were really stupid and that Bloom must've been blind. I even thought that you were some horrible druglord after Bloom gave me that fairy story."
"That sounds about right when you reveal to people that you have magic."
"Are you trying to be funny?"
"No."
"So how did you meet Bloom anyways?"
"It started with Stella getting attacked by an ogre…really stupid when I think back on it."
-
Alfea.
Everyone rushed into the small cramped room. "Tecna!" Musa rushed over to the unconscious fairy and shook her shoulders. "Digit, are you sure about what you saw?"
Faragonda and DuFour filed in lastly. The Winx Club had been on their way to DuFour's office when Digit came screaming after them. The little pixie had told them what she had seen in the laptop. She had told them about how they had decided to send an email to Nina. By some weird twist of coincidence, an innocent conversation about viruses suddenly had itself downloading onto Tecna's laptop. Tecna's was a tecnokinetic but she could not travel telepathically without a digital mean.
DuFour grabbed the laptop, threatening to fall off the bed. She righted it on a table and placed a hand on it. "I sense that something alive is in here," the magic teacher said to the headmistress. "Tecna maybe?"
Faragonda nodded. "That means we're still have her but we have to get her body under observation. Get word to Red Fountain, Carlotta. We need to move her. They have better equipment than us for this. Whoever this Nina is, she has ambiguous intentions and I don't like them. I already have one of my staff leaving, I'm not having an intern dying."
Latter Note: Short. A lot of things are happening. As a warning, I think it's safe to say that this story, despite being labeled a Roxy story, focuses on more than one character (gee, like maybe all of them, you think? *sarcasm*).
Verboten is a way for me to explore the different venues about myself. I do this for because I think what I'm writing is very important. It's not important for you the reader but for me because I gain a sort of sense of knowing who I am. I'm seventeen (at the moment that this chapter is published) and I've been writing Verboten since May 2009. The amount of effort and concentration that I've put into this terrifies me because I feel like I'm possessed by two dozen demons. There is not a moment that I do not spend contemplating this story and never in my life have I been possessed of something like that.
I've recently reread some of my 'Andy and Bloom run' chapters and I'm amazed that I wrote those things, especially the way I wrote Andy. It's one of those moments when you think 'What the hell?' but instead of criticizing yourself for your flaws, I am shocked speechless by it.