[Monday, June 1, 2020]

Little by little—and truly, time seemed to ooze by like sludge—Chris started to feel more like himself. Returning to school on Monday helped. To be sure, his first day back was an exercise in patience as he fended off classmates' probing questions, accepting their saccharine pity as he stumbled through the corridors on his cane, gritting his teeth as people plied him with nonstop offers of assistance that he didn't ask for.

But by Tuesday his peers already seemed to grow complacent, accustomed to his circumstances, at least enough that nobody (but Dwight) offered to carry his books between classes anymore. As much as it pushed Chris's buttons to get treated like an invalid, he had to admit the support had been helpful and his body very much felt the consequences of its absence. By the end of that second day, he collapsed on his mattress as soon as he got home.

By Wednesday, at long last, Chris's powers seemed to finally catch up with the rest of him. For the first time, he felt strong enough to orb without getting violently sick, and he made use of this development immediately after school. His first destination was to Jake's grandmother's backyard, where Jake was wrestling in the grass with Bonno.

As soon as he materialized, the boy cried, "Chris, you're back!" and scrambled to his feet, throwing his unbroken arm around his whitelighter's neck. Chris stumbled back a couple of steps from the force but managed, with the help of the cane, to remain upright.

When Jake finally stepped back, he gave Chris a narrow-eyed once-over, gaze lingering on the cane. "How come you have that?" he asked. "Is it because you couldn't walk last time you were here?"

"I could walk," Chris protested half-heartedly. "I was just… off-balance. I'll be much better soon, I promise. I don't even have to use this much longer."

Whether Jake believed this or not, he let the claim slide without voicing any skepticism, perhaps because he was too eager to share his own development to delay his announcement. "Grandma's taking me home tomorrow to get the cast off! She said we could stop by Tony's Pizza for lunch on the way back."

Chris responded to the news with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm before both of them got roped into a game of fetch by a very persistent Bonno batting their ankles with a stick.

Chris's prediction that he wouldn't need the cane much longer proved accurate. Throughout the rest of the week, with studious employment of his exercises from the physical therapist, he found himself needing it less and less frequently to get around, often forgetting it beside his desk at the end of classes or underneath his lunch bench in the cafeteria. By Friday, he managed the whole school day with it tucked inside his locker, out of mind and out of sight.

Even after he had divested of the cane, he remained persistent with those exercises, determined to return his body to its maximum capabilities. After dinner on Friday evening, he shut himself in his room to run through his physical therapy routine, starting by lying on the floor on his back with one leg bent and the other straightened out in front of him. Once situated, he raised his leg off the floor, where it hovered for ten seconds (he held his breath as he focused on counting) before lowering back to the carpet.

Again? he heard Mutt groan. We can't never do nothing fun out there.

Even as the strength in his body and powers bolstered with each passing hour, the barrier in his mind remained fragmented. At random intervals throughout his day, he would hear a barrage of voices surface from within. More often than not these past couple weeks, he ended off the day nursing a headache. Though he tried to reassure himself that, like everything else, healing his mind would take time, a part of him had begun to worry whether this had become his new baseline.

In the meantime, in an attempt to ignore the dread of the thought, he honed his attention on the physical exertion, completing the first exercise before rolling onto his knees. Using the seat of his desk chair for support, he slowly returned to a standing position, his feet a shoulder's width apart.

Ugh, ain't you done yet?

Christian's chiding voice interjected as Chris elevated his arms out in front of him. This is how he will recover from his injuries. Do not disturb him.

"Telling him not to disturb me is still disturbing," Chris growled under his breath as he carefully began to pitch his torso forward at the waist, keeping his core taut as he did so.

From inside his head rang a sheepish apology. To this Chris didn't respond, too busy silently counting down the seconds. After half a minute, he returned to an upright position and relaxed his core with a whooshing exhale that made his shoulders sag.

He don't seem hurt no more to me.

That's 'cuz he's doing all this stuff every day, Ian pointed out.

Chris paused long enough to scrub his temple, wishing the voices away. Of all of them, the only one who remained, for the most part, silent, was Perry. He spoke up rarely, only if addressed directly, and even then kept his responses succinct. It made Chris wonder if, at some point, his counterpart had experienced a similar breakdown of his powers, if he understood firsthand how it felt to be on the receiving end of this endless cacophony. It would certainly explain his reluctance to add his voice to the choir.

After a long pause (Chris could almost sense the other selves turn to stare at Perry expectantly), Perry said, It did.

Chris had already begun the next exercise—hoisting one knee in the air, drawing the opposite elbow down to touch it—but he paused midair, frowning. Of course, Perry would not expound on this revelation without being probed further, so into the empty room Chris asked, "What did you do about it?"

I erected a new barrier. It took practice to get back to normal. After a beat, Normal-ish. The barrier still fell again in moments of extreme emotion.

It was perhaps a bit disheartening that time itself would not alleviate the problem, but knowing this at least gave Chris a path forward, one he intended to seize on. If this was to be his new normal, he was resolved to practice muting the voices as long and often as possible. "I can do that," he affirmed to himself as he resumed the current exercise. "I've got plenty of practice controlling my emotions for telekinesis." For the rest of the set, he concentrated on the exercise with only half a mind, the rest of his attention diverted to constructing a wall, solid and soundproof, to silence the voices.

In lieu of Chris's "extenuating circumstances," as they were deemed, the school administration offered to let him push off his exams to a later date, reschedule them as he saw fit once he caught up on the information he had missed. Tempted as Chris was to procrastinate studying, the threat of relinquishing part of his summer acted as enough of a deterrent to keep him studying hard to remain on track. He would take his exams on time if it killed him.

His first, biology, did not go particularly smoothly. Although he had dutifully read through all of Dwight's copied notes, once sitting in front of the test he found most of the material hadn't stuck. It didn't help that his counterparts kept popping in to submit their opinions. It's definitely stamen—Don't listen to her, it's pistil—Isn't this cheating?

As long as half of his mind was dedicated to filling out answers, he didn't have enough attention to commit to keeping his newly-constructed barrier in place. Snarling under his breath, he muttered, "Shut up."

At the front of the classroom, Mr. Garcia glanced up from a book. "Did you have a question, Mr. Halliwell?"

Ducking his head to hide a blush, Chris mumbled, "No, sorry. I was just… talking to myself."

You should've said, 'Talking to my selves,' Demon cheerfully interjected, follow by Mutt's, Hah! Good one! Chris gritted his teeth but did not respond.

With a hint of impatience, Mr. Garcia suggested, "In the future, perhaps you can talk to yourself silently so as not to disturb your peers?"

"Sorry," Chris said again. Before resuming, Chris took a moment to set down his pencil, close his eyes, and visualize reddish-brown bricks, one at a time, gliding into place between him and them, slotting smoothly together like Tetris pieces. Once the wall reached as high as his eyebrows, he picked up his pencil and got back to work.

Whether the effort succeeded in sectioning off his subconscious or whether his selves had simply grown bored of interacting with him, he heard no voices for the remainder of the exam. Unfortunately, despite his determination to excel, their silence did not do much to help his chances at a passing grade.

His exam the next day, math, fared a bit better, with him exiting the classroom, if not self-assured, then at least reasonably confident he had completed a majority of problems adequately. He felt relieved for the day afterward, a study day, which he and Dwight used to work on history. (Studying together was really just an excuse for Dwight to tutor Chris through all he had missed, but Chris appreciated that Dwight didn't admit as much aloud.) Whenever they got sick of memorizing dates, they took a break and practiced sign language for the upcoming practical exam.

Thursday, when Chris and Wyatt returned home from school, the manor was deserted, their mother's car gone from the driveway. Wyatt headed straight upstairs to study, but Chris, who detoured briefly to the kitchen to scrounge up a snack, found the hastily scribbled note on the counter: At the hospital. Phoebe had the babies. She understands if you two can't make it. Love, Mom.

He vacillated back and forth as he munched on a multigrain bar from the pantry. On the one hand, they were his new cousins; he supposed he should meet them, and Phoebe would surely appreciate a visit from her nephew. On the other hand, he had still barely begun his English essay, due midnight tomorrow, not to mention his sign language practical he still had to rehearse for. Honestly, he had not even planned to break for dinner. (As with every other day this week, he did schedule in a brief pause for a pit stop to Jake's old classroom and then to Jake himself so he could bring the boy his homework and collect his work from the previous day, of course.)

Family comes first, Krissy tutted. You should really—

That was all she managed to get out before Chris closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and blocked out her voice. "There," he sighed, as he crumpled up his wrapper to toss in the trash. "Much better."

Still debating in his head, he trekked upstairs to share the news with Wyatt, who offered not much more than a distracted, "Oh? Congratulations," from where he had his nose burrowed in a textbook.

His lack of indecision on the subject helped assuage some of Chris's guilt at considering missing the first day of the twins' life. Yes, there would be plenty of time to meet his cousins after exam week ended.

For much of Friday morning, Chris sat crammed in a classroom with all the other sign language students, waiting to be called into an empty room one at a time. After finishing his practical test for sign language, which involved a very awkward, one-sided conversation signed before a video camera, he managed to hand in his hastily composed essay for Mrs. Williams, then doubled back to clear everything out of his locker. His textbooks he lugged to the library to check back in. (For most people, that entailed leaving them in the properly organized piles on the floor against the wall, but Chris was able to slip behind the desk, log in using his volunteer librarian account, and scan his books in immediately.)

Once his books were returned and the remainder of his locker's contents had been stuffed into his knapsack, he meandered over to find Dwight, who had significantly more junk in his locker to sort through than Chris. Chris sat cross-legged on the floor beside the locker while Dwight passed him items. Stapler, two playing cards, a hole puncher (which opened and scattered fragments of paper everywhere), a handful of loose safety pins. Chris alternated piles—on his left to discard, on his right to somehow figure out how to fit it into Dwight's already overstuffed knapsack. Finally, after what felt like an endless day to an endless week, the duo stepped out the front doors at last and into the sunlight.

Squinting as he shaded his eyes from the glare, Dwight asked, "Want to go to the Shack to celebrate surviving our first year of high school?"

"Can't," Chris said. "It's my charge's last day of school." Jake's grandmother had proposed driving him all the way home in order to be with his friends for the day, and Chris wanted to make sure it had gone okay.

His sensing powers located them at Tony's Pizza, where Jake's grandmother had taken the boy for a late lunch after the end of school and before they got started on the several-hour drive home. Chris didn't want to disturb some very much needed bonding time for the two, so he waited to intrude until he sensed them make their way to the exit and made it seem like an unexpected run-in with no premeditation involved. Though Jake greeted Chris's arrival with a knowing grin, his grandmother did not appear in any way suspicious. As Chris accompanied them back to their parked car, Jake gave him an animated account of his last day of school. The first time Jake's grandmother snuck a glance at her wristwatch, Chris ushered the boy into the backseat and waved them off.

His next stop (after popping in at home to invite Wyatt to join him) was the hospital to visit, finally, his aunt and the twins. When the two boys arrived, following the directions given them by a nurse in the maternity ward, Phoebe's bed was empty, but the woman in the second bed directed the boys to the NICU, where they found her seated in a wheelchair between a basinet and an incubator. The skin around her eyes sagged with exhaustion and the entire lower half of her body was draped with a thick, woven blanket, but when her nephews entered she offered a smile that glowed.

"How did your exams go?" she asked.

Wyatt laughed. "So not what we're here to talk about, Aunt Phoebe."

Her grin turned sheepish as she motioned to a couple vacant chairs across the room. Chris peered into the incubator, which glowed with a faint violet hue. The baby inside, naked except for a diaper, had a full head of dark hair and wore an unusual foam mask over her eyes. The plastic label affixed to the outside of the incubator read Charlotte Leigh Halliwell.

In the basinet on Phoebe's other side lay a bald baby (Riley Aiken Halliwell, said the nametag) swaddled in a striped green blanket. Wide awake and perfectly silent, he blinked his giant gray eyes up at Chris with curiosity.

Stepping closer, Chris reached inside to rub a knuckle against one of his fists, and Riley latched onto it. As soon as Wyatt, who peeked over Chris's shoulder, smiled, the infant began to writhe and coo.

Adjusting her blanket, Phoebe remarked, "He's barely cried. We think he might be an empath."

One could never tell when a witch's power would first emerge. Personally, Chris had never known of someone expressing magic from birth (except, of course, Wyatt, who was in most ways an anomaly unto himself), but perhaps the possibility wasn't unheard of. After all, while most witches grew into their powers in early childhood, there were those who developed them only as young adults. If late, why not early, too?

Still, the possibility was remote enough that, as he fed another finger into the infant's tight grip, Chris remarked, "Pretty young."

Phoebe shrugged. "Well, we don't know for sure. It's only a theory. You can hold him if you want."

With an eager nod, while Phoebe reached into the basinet to scoop out the infant, Chris backed into one of the chairs Wyatt had carried over. Once his arms were properly positioned, he let his aunt deposit Riley into his grip.

Meanwhile, Wyatt sidestepped over to press his fingers to the glass of the incubator. "And this is Charlotte?"

"We're calling her Lottie."

"Cute," Wyatt remarked.

Not too far into the conversation, when Phoebe blinked, her eyes remained closed for a couple seconds. Chris wasn't even certain she realized she had done it, or when she did it again and only opened her eyes at half-mast. Her lids fluttered.

"We, uh, won't stay too much longer," Chris said, "I'm sure you want to get some rest."

But at his pronouncement, Phoebe's eyes flew back open. "Nonsense," she huffed, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. "Anyway, you have to stick around. Coop will be here with the girls soon. They'll be so upset if they miss you."

So against the better judgment the brothers stuck around. They chatted for a bit—ultimately, Phoebe wrung from each of them how their exam week had gone, which tests they worried about, which they had left feeling confident—and eventually Chris switched placed with Wyatt and passed Riley into his arms. As they spoke, Phoebe huddled deeper beneath her blanket, hitching it up over her shoulders so that the hem reached just beneath her chin.

At some point, a nurse joined them and flipped off the ultraviolet light above the incubator so she could remove Lottie from inside. Sliding back the foam eye mask, she carefully presented Lottie to an eager Phoebe, who pressed the baby to her chest the entire time that the nurse spent changing the tiny bed sheet at the bottom of the incubator. Chris could see the longing in Phoebe's eyes as soon as the nurse finished and turned to replace the baby in her box.

Shortly after the mask had been replaced, the light flipped back on, and the nurse had departed, Lea's head poked around the half-open door. "Wyatt and Chris are here," she called over her shoulder.

Following behind her skipped a cheerful Katie, then Coop to bring up the rear. Chris and Wyatt vacated the seats to let their cousins join their mother, Wyatt handing Riley off to Coop as they did so.

"Can I hold him?" Katie begged. At a nod from Phoebe, she gleefully scooted onto a newly-vacated chair as her father brought the baby over. Katie situated her arms carefully on either armrest, closed her eyes, and drew in a series of slow, meditating breaths. After a long pause, she nodded. "'Kay, I'm ready."

Coop leaned over to carefully deposit the infant into her arms. His hands lingered for a moment, making sure she was completely solid, before letting go.

From her own chair, Lea tilted her head backward to glance at Chris and Wyatt. "She has to sit while holding them just in case she becomes intangible by accident."

"I haven't even once!" Katie cried defensively.

"You've done amazingly well, bunny," Phoebe cooed. Inside the incubator, Lottie twitched, then seemed to jolt herself awake. Startled, she scrunched up her face and began to wail. Half a beat later, perhaps sensing his twin's distress, perhaps only overwhelmed by the bustle around him, Riley began to whimper uncertainly. Katie hugged him closer and murmured, "It's okay, baby, it's okay," until he settled again.

Chris and Wyatt stayed another half hour more, then ducked out to give the immediate family some time alone. The next day, the first day of summer break, Chris slept late. Normally, once vacation started, Piper wasted no time to scheduled magic lessons for her kids, but with Phoebe still in the hospital their curriculum would have been somewhat truncated regardless so for once she decided to look the other way. During the rare time off he'd been granted, Chris took Jake (and Bonno) to the park nearby. They hiked through the woods behind the playground, tossing sticks for Bonno to race after.

Phoebe did finally get released—alone—that Monday. The doctor at the NICU anticipated the twins, Lottie especially, requiring at least another week's stay, possibly longer. Phoebe and Coop had already made up the nursery weeks ago. There were only three bedrooms upstairs, the master suite, Lea's, and Katie's. Even with a monitor beside the cribs, Phoebe wanted proximity to the twins, so Lea agreed to transfer to the guestroom on the main floor. (That it came with an attached bathroom was a perk she by no means minded.)

Her first afternoon back home, Phoebe stood in the threshold of the nursery with her arms around her torso, sobbing. "It's just the hormones," she insisted when her sisters stopped by to check on her later, mopping her eyes as she reassured them. "They'll be fine, I know. It's just…" She stepped inside the room and reached into one of the cribs to lift out a plush, brown teddy bear. Straightening its pink bowtie, she murmured, "They're so small."

Her sisters followed her in, padding up to either side of her, and wrapped their arms around her, Paige propping her chin on Phoebe's shoulder. "They'll be home before you know it," she assured.

"You should get some sleep," Piper suggested, guiding her out of the room. They tucked their sister into bed at only nine o' clock that evening, and she slept through the night.

When Phoebe returned to the NICU the next morning, Piper and Paige joined her. Other than the rows of infants and monitors and couches and wires, the trio was alone. Lottie lay lively and awake in her box, the ultraviolet light not yet turned on for that morning. While Phoebe opened the side door of the incubator built to fit a single hand inside, Piper checked for cameras. Spotting one in the corner of the ceiling, she gave a subtle twitch of her fingers, freezing the feed. Off her nod, Paige then stepped up beside Phoebe and reached her palm into the incubator to hover over Lottie's scrunched-up forehead.

Orange light began to radiate outward from the center of her palm. After a couple of seconds, it seeped beneath Lottie's skin. Piper from the middle of the room and Phoebe right beside Paige both watched the proceedings.

"There," Paige whispered to Lottie, "that should—"

"Did you see that?" exclaimed a voice.

Snatching her hand back, Paige spun around to find, in the doorway, a wide-eyed nurse, clinging to a clipboard with one hand, a tiny bottle with the other.

"See what?" Piper asked innocently.

"That baby was glowing!" the nurse cried.

"Glowing?" Piper forced a laugh. "I didn't see anything."

The nurse swept across the room to stand before Phoebe, brushing an anxious Paige out of the way to reveal a decidedly normal-colored baby. The nurse peered down at the child. "Her skin was orange. I'm sure of it."

"Well, the doctor said she's still a bit jaundice," Phoebe offered feebly, her smile painfully wide.

"But…" The certainty melted from the woman's face, leaving mostly confusion. "She was lit up."

"It's these fluorescent lights," Paige said, casually waving a hand at the bulbs overhead.

Seeming only further bewildered, the woman mumbled, "But they're LEDs."

Piper eased up to the woman's side to drop a hand on her shoulder with the guise of offering friendly support while surreptitiously leading her away from the incubator. The nurse's eyes tracked back to remain on Lottie. "Well, I didn't see anything," Piper offered in a forceful chirp infused with levity. "Maybe it's magic that only you can see."

The ludicrousness of the statement seemed enough to shake the woman free of her thoughts. With a sheepish smile as she turned to meet Piper's eyes, she said, "You're right, it must have been a trick of the light," and shuffled off to an incubator at the opposite end of the room.

With a relieved exhale, Phoebe shared a meaningful glance with her sisters. As Phoebe resealed the incubator and settled in to spend the morning with her babies, Piper twiddled her fingers to restart the security camera, then nodded to Paige. "We should head out." To Phoebe, she said, "Love you. Call us if there's news." With a kiss to her sister's cheek, she exited the NICU, Paige trailing just behind.

A couple days later, three days before the summer solstice, much to their doctors' incredulity, the babies came home together. While Riley had been on track to leave, Lottie's burst of healthy development left them flabbergasted. Still, once she passed the car seat test with flying colors, they could not deny she, too, was ready to go home.

The Halliwells celebrated the onset of the summer solstice as they did every year: about half an hour before sunrise, Chris and his siblings were shaken awake by Leo, who herded them onto the porch, huddled in blankets, to watch the sun rise. First came the silhouettes of clouds coasting across a purple-gray sky until finally the sun peeked over the horizon. As soon as the first rays of light appeared, Leo spread out beside them on the porch an array of translucent crystals in a single-file line. While Chris, yawning, watched the sky through bleary eyes, Prue dozed off on his shoulder.

Once Leo allowed them to, Chris, Wyatt, and Prue stumbled back to bed for a couple more hours of sleep. But by eight thirty, they were back downstairs with their knapsacks packed, prepared to take on the longest day of the year. Once Piper finished filling her own backpack with flower seeds and tuna fish sandwiches, they piled into the car to meet the rest of the family at a local state park. This year, given the proximity to their birthing experience, Phoebe and Coop ducked out of the annual hike, as did Henry, home with Ariel, but Paige and Bobby swung by Phoebe's house to pick up Lea and Katie to join them.

They spent most of the morning trekking up the base of a small mountain, pausing frequently to give the younger cousins ample time to rest. It was Katie's first year participating in the whole trail, and though her newfound ability to control her powers granted her more energy (and the terrain was not difficult to traverse), her family was hyper-vigilant to avoid wearing her out.

Every time they stopped, Piper reached into her backpack pocket to retrieve the seeds, which, along with fresh sprigs of lemongrass and mugwort, she scattered as offerings to the local wood nymphs.

When they reached a plateau at half past noon, Piper passed out sandwiches for lunch. With the sun beating unflinchingly over them, Chris snuck an extra water bottle from his father's knapsack and chased his sister and cousins with it, squirting them in spurts as they squealed with delight. (Leo tried only half-heartedly to stop him.)

On their descent, Paige had to carry Bobby down much of the way. When she needed a break, Wyatt hefted the almost-six-year-old into a piggyback ride. Though Chris offered the same for Katie, whose face had turned cherry red as she puffed her way down, she refused to stop, determined to complete the hike on her own two feet.

By the time they returned to the parking lot, it was already nearing four thirty and Piper was getting antsy to get home and start on dinner.

Phoebe, Coop, and Henry were already at the manor waiting for them, Henry with two-and-a-half-month-old Ariel poking out of a papoose on his chest, bright-eyed and curious as she watched the group troop inside. In the back corner of the living room, the twins lay in a double stroller, Lottie asleep with the hood unfurled to obscure her face while Riley, wide awake, gurgled cheerfully, kicking his toes in the air.

Immediately upon arrival, Piper bustled into the kitchen to commence their traditional solstice meal filled with the fresh produce Leo had picked up from the local farmer's market the day prior. Dinner on the summer solstice was the most colorful meal of the year.

While Prue followed Katie and Lea to the stroller to fuss over her new cousins, the rest of the family migrated to the dining room, clustering around Henry to admire Ariel. She giggled when Paige hefted her out of the papoose and tickled her chubby belly.

At some point during the conversation, Chris slipped into the kitchen to find his mother hard at work, darting from oven to counter to stove, deftly sprinkling spices over grilled asparagus and checking the readiness of the eggplant and churning the spaghetti in its pot.

"Can I help with anything?" Chris asked.

Barely even glancing his way, Piper replied, "You can set the table. Food'll be ready in five minutes." She shooed him back to the dining room with plates and cutlery.

He had to duck between members of his family to get the job done. When he appeared beside them, they did not even halt the conversation, seeming to hardly notice his presence, though they did obligingly shift their arms off the table and out of his way whenever he set down a plate.

By the time he tucked napkins and cutlery beside each plate and a cup at each setting, Piper emerged with the first dish. The others were called in from the living room and Ariel was set down in her car seat as Wyatt and Chris helped Piper with the remaining trays of food, spicy kale salad, spaghetti squash, broccoli with quinoa, eggplant parmesan, asparagus, and rice with raisins and cranberries.

"Wow, it's a feast," Phoebe remarked as everyone tucked in.

Midway through the meal, when Ariel began to squall, Henry excused himself to heat up a bottle in the kitchen, then returned and sat with her cradled against the crook of his elbow, using that same hand to balance the bottle over her mouth while his other hand shoveled salad onto his fork. As dinner began to wind down, from the living room came first one wail, then, moments later, another, summoning both Phoebe and Coop away as everyone else began to help clear the table, crowding the counters with dirty dishes and many, many leftovers.

Once the table was clear, the family piled into the living room, where Phoebe had already settled in with Lottie's head tucked beneath her shirt to nurse. The infant lay atop a special nursing pillow that helped position her without the use of arms so that Phoebe could maneuver herself unhindered. The adults grabbed seats in chairs and on the sofa while the kids claimed spots on the floor around them. Piper stayed behind to transfer leftovers into plastic containers, but they left the middle cushion open for her on the sofa.

Leo went to retrieve the row of crystals that had been on the front porch luxuriating in the sunlight since dawn. When he passed them out one by one, they hummed with energy, still warm to the touch. Chris, settled in cross-legged on the floor, placed his crystal on the coffee table in front of him.

From her seat in a chair, Phoebe took charge with a clap of her hands. "Okay," she announced, "Time for a bit of meditating." Squished into Paige's lap, Bobby groaned as loudly as he could. Paige wrapped her palm over his mouth with a firm shush. Ignoring the disturbance, Phoebe raised her hands, each thumb and forefinger pinched together as if she were conducting an orchestra.

"Now, close your eyes." She waited until everyone had followed the instruction before doing so herself. "Slow, deep inhale, two three four five six, and hold, two three four, and release, two three four five six. And in…" She sucked in a long breath. "Hold." Pause. "Exhale… This is a time to be solemn, Katie."

Because Katie had peeked one eye open and begun to giggle as she observed her cousins, aunt, and uncles. The moment she was criticized, she muffled her laughter and shut her eyes again, but Bobby had already joined in her giggling, which ultimately led Prue and Lea to chuckle as well. Even Paige smiled as she quieted her son.

Finally, the noise in the room dipping once more, Phoebe resumed her soothing oration. She had them focus their minds on the tension in their muscles, slackening each muscle one by one. She had them direct their thoughts inward to bask in the magic within their cores.

"Oops," Katie peeped.

Chris opened one eye to find her staring down, where the lower half of her body had slipped through the wooden floor up to her waist. Carefully, she levitated back up, made herself tangible once more, and lowered her crossed legs back to the ground. When she looked up, Chris caught her gaze and winked. Grinning, she closed her eyes.

"Focus on the power of this day, the solstice, on how the sun impacts your life and your magic. We could do nothing without the heat of the sun. It brings us life… Focus on nothing, clear your mind, pay attention just to your breath…"

Despite years of practice, Chris's mind drifted laconically. For a time, he managed to concentrate on his breathing, but as the silence wore on, he found himself mulling over the unusual ways in which magic had piloted his life over the past year. Not only his new powers but his whitelighter responsibilities as well, his place in the Greater Good, they are not for you, Christopher, none of your powers are, wasn't that what Death had said?

If Death was to be believed, his destiny was—what?—to act as witness to the passage of life, just as an angel of death played witness to the passage of a soul from one world to the next. The onus on him felt simultaneously too large for words, looming over his every waking moment, while also seeming to require no expending of thought whatsoever, a power that operated passively in the background whether he wanted it to or not.

Gaining this power was a lot like getting assigned a charge: against his will at first, but something to which he had grown attached in his way. Although, if he were honest, he felt far more attached to his charge than he did his title as Keeper of Time. And he felt he had made greater strides in that arena as well.

For the first time in a very long while, he had begun to feel confident in Jake's chances in life. The boy had been all but set up to fail with a family circumstance like his, a mother like his. Yet against all odds, his mother had sought assistance for her vices. If she could stay on track, which Chris was determined to help her do, then Jake had a real shot in the world.

From the depths of his subconscious, words sharper and clearer than usual due to the penetrative nature of his meditative state, Merlin's voice filtered through to point out, He could be almost normal. If he didn't have a whitelighter. Though the words were somewhat snide, his tone lack the aggressive bite for which he had become known before Siyut's attack. Of everyone, his nightmares had perhaps changed him the most, mellowed him to the "evils" of magic.

Lulled by Phoebe's voice, Chris felt too absorbed (in truth, too lazy) to bother blocking out the noise, a languor that allowed the slew of voices to continue their conversation unimpeded.

I bet he'll be happy once his mom gets home, Ian remarked thoughtfully.

Ah, who needs moms. Bet they ain't nothing but trouble.

Definitely hold you back, Demon agreed glibly, Mine didn't let me sacrifice my first witch until I was in my late thirties. Talk about a buzzkill.

"Yeah, yeah," Chris muttered.

From outside his head, in a very pointed voice, Phoebe reminded everyone, "Clear your mind."

"Sorry," Chris muttered, "Just the voices in my head." Eyes still closed, he heard Wyatt snicker and Phoebe release a very audible sigh. "Sorry," he said again. "They'll keep quiet from now on."

Sure, Demon said sweetly, Out of the goodness of our—

Chris slammed down the barrier between his conscious and subconscious minds, a boundary as dense as brick, as stone. When he delved back into meditation, he carefully evaded the perimeter of that wall.

His thoughts returned to Jake, and almost of its own volition his magic reached out to caress the telepathic link between them. Jake was on a walk with Bonno, in the middle of crossing the street. When he stepped back onto the curb, his face turned upward to catch the warmth of the late afternoon sun on his cheeks.

Would the boy need him much longer? Leo had warned Chris that most whitelighters' roles were temporary. (The Charmed Ones had had special circumstances since they had come to magic so late in life and had fought evil on a regular basis.) Most charges required guardianship for only a brief time until the risk to their future had passed. If Jake's mother came through and became the parent Jake needed, would Chris be reassigned?

The thought shot a pang of emotion through his chest. It was natural; it was meant to be. But Chris wasn't sure he could live with one day never seeing his charge again.

There's plenty of time before that happens, he reassured himself. Even if Carmen returned home tomorrow, they would need an adjustment period while she made certain she could handle her newly-sober life. Chris would have plenty of work to do, at least for a time.

Phoebe's soft voice, persuading them to open their eyes, did not penetrate Chris's reverie until Wyatt, beside him, gave a sharp jab to his ribs. Torso jolting forward from the prod, Chris's eyes shot open as he rubbed the sore spot in his side. "Ow," he complained with a glower. Wyatt smiled extra sweetly.

Chris cast his gaze around the room. At some point, he hadn't noticed when, Piper had joined them. Phoebe must have gotten up to transfer babies because on her breastfeeding pillow lay Riley, curled up and snoring. Bobby sat limp in Paige's lap, head nodded to his chest, fast asleep as Paige shifted him back so she could prop his head against her shoulder. The sun, which had sunk low as the minutes in meditation elapsed, now streamed in directly through the living room window, casting a garish glare. That was the family's cue to prepare to retire outside to watch the arrival of sunset.

"Leo, you want to get the bonfire ready?" Piper asked. Taking a moment to stretch his legs, Leo got to his feet.

Chris and his siblings retrieved the foldable beach chairs they kept stored in the basement and hauled them up the stairs and out the back door in the kitchen. By the time each chair was arranged in a wide circumference around the fire pit, Leo had managed to get the logs crackling cheerfully and the remainder of the family began to trickle outdoors.

The kids raced to snag the best seats first while, behind them, the adults followed at a more sedate pace. Paige stepped out with a heavily-bundled Ariel in her arms before Coop, who crossed the threshold carrying an active baby monitor that snuffled and snorted with the sounds of the twins in their stroller parked just inside the door. After he sat, he set the monitor down in the grass beside his chair.

While Leo fiddled with the fire, poking and prodding to get all the logs lit, Piper took the time to distribute thick, woven blankets, which everyone burrowed into, and then passed around two bags to the kids, one of long, pre-harvested sticks and the other of marshmallows.

Phoebe sniffed the air as it crackled. With her eyes shut in appreciation, she hummed, "Mm, smells amazing."

Easing into the open chair between her sisters, Piper replied, "We used cedar wood," then, after a beat, added, "I also included sweet grass and sage to summon positive energy."

"I approve," Phoebe said with a decisive nod.

Beside her, Piper set down a nearly empty mason jar labeled in calligraphic script, "Ashes from the Solstice," which she intended to refill from the fire pit come the end of the evening.

The kids dragged their chairs closer to the burning logs with their marshmallow skewers. Every couple seconds, Bobby, ever impatient, removed his marshmallows to jab them for doneness. Katie, unused to bearing the brunt of the heat radiating off the fire, paced away several times to cool off until Lea offered to toast hers for her.

Together, the Halliwells watched the sun's descent below the row of roofs along the block, the sky streaked with orange and pink as the temperature dropped around them and the longest day of the year came to a close.

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