Having recently gotten her license, Lucy was riding the high of adolescent freedom. On the cusp of turning eighteen, driving in of itself quenched some of her thirst for her own personal freedom. Driving a somewhat dingy and busted up first car was more than enough for her. It was her ticket to the start of greater independence.

And she drove it everywhere, including to and from school. But in the middle of December in Illinois when the roads are like one giant ice level in a video game, it was admittedly less enjoyable. And the seasonally appropriate penguin air freshener on her mirror, swinging wildly back and forth, would also agree.

But even though the roads were bad, and snow was everywhere, for the past seven years Winter seems to be the chillest season out of the big four. The winters have been coming and going with general expected consistency. But the other three have been a little off for a while now.

Lucy thinks back to the spring seven years ago and remembers how scorching hot it was. It did quick work of melting all the ice in record times. But she still remembers the awful sunburn she earned in the middle spring! You could've sworn it was actually summer for six months.

Or how a couple years after that, the autumn of that year started far earlier than normal. She recalls just how odd it was that all the trees were bare when the season hardly even started. And just how small of a window the colors of the leaves changed before everything was brown for way longer than it should've been.

Not to mention a gravely strange circumstance that even earned its own name. The Cold Summer of 2012. Worldwide, record low temperatures for that summer made any pool party plans less than ideal.

But winter seemed to stay pretty consistent for the past seven years. The pure excitement of the upcoming holiday plans flooded her mind, replacing the past season escapades. Winter break from school starts this Monday, and this year they were going to go up the north pole again to celebrate with Scott and his family.

After a certain incident seven years ago, the Millers politely declined to return to the pole the first few years in its wake (Also keeping the house much warmer than usual during the winter). Much to Lucy's dismay, she begged her parents those first couple of times to go back to the workshop, at the time however they were not as on board with the idea.

But as of late, they've been taking the sleigh trips up north for Christmas and the family has found its rhythm again. And Lucy looks forward to going every year. It's become somewhat of a tradition for the whole blended family to gather there for the holidays. Since Charlie left for university, she doesn't get to see her half-brother and cousin as often as she would like. But Christmas is the most fun time she has with both of them.

The three siblings love to get up to all sorts of wholesome trouble at the pole. Buddy insists on playing a myriad of games, and her and Charlie have snowboarding races all the time. Even Carol's parents have become better company over the years.

Lucy's train of thought about the upcoming festivities was interrupted, as the car lightly rattled pulling into her home's driveway. With the ice level complete, she put the thing in park and started rummaging around the passenger seat trying to gather her things.

Light blue puffer coat first, if the roads are anything to go off of it's a little more than freezing out there. Backpack? Check. Stuff the extra pair of sweatpants she left in here a few days ago in there for good measure. Empty lunch bag? Check. And the pair of pink sneakers she was looking for last week, sweet!

'I should really find a day to clean my car,' she thought, 'Maybe next spring at some point.'

With everything in her arms, she turned off the car and exited into the snowy wind outside. She did a small awkward speed walk up the driveway (keeping in mind the slipping hazards) and up to the wreath clad front door to escape the hounding cold.

She entered the familiar and warmly lit home, 'Just the rest of this week to go before the fun starts.'

She made it through the threshold for all of 5 seconds before her thoughts were interrupted by the family golden retriever Tulip came bounding up to her.

"Hey Tuli!" She immediately dropped her bags on the floor in favor of petting the dog, nudging the door closed behind her.

"Hi my pupper! Hi sweet girl," she spoke in a baby voice trying to pet Tulip as she bounced up and down in excitement.

"Lucy? Are you home?" came a distant voice.

"Yeah mom, it's me," Lucy responded. She maneuvered the bags to the side of the door as she took her coat and hat off. Her red hair was messy and slightly static from the dry air when it escaped the beanie.

The house inside and out glowed warm with the almost absurd number of lights and decorations that adorned the surfaces. While they had declined to go to the North Pole in years prior, Laura and Neil maintained the spirit of the season with gusto. The holiday staples of colored tinsel, string lights, and various other decor items embellished the interior of the house.

Laura met her daughter in the kitchen coming from the adjacent study, "How was school sweetie?"

"It was alright," Lucy said as she made her way to the fridge with Tulip in tow, "Just a lot of studying and tests going on before Christmas break. All the usual shtuff."

Grabbing a yogurt and a spoon, Lucy leans against the countertop to eat the snack. Tulip taking a seat on the floor next to her. Laura on the other side of the kitchen leans over the wooden dining table, grabbing a handful of mail and hands it to lucy.

"Here's your mail by the way. It came in earlier today," she explained handing over the envelopes. Taking her place next to her daughter expectantly. This is always her favorite part.

Lucy's eyes light up with anticipation, as she quickly sets down the yogurt cup. With the spoon still in her mouth, she opens the drawer next to her for a knife, and swiftly separates and opens the white and red decorated envelope. The front reads in golden cursive; Direct Postage from The North Pole.

Ever since she was a kid, she put herself in charge of writing regular letters to Scott with updates on the families. It's a tradition she still takes very seriously as the official unofficial correspondent.

"Well, what did he say?" Laura asks, watching Lucy put the spoon down and fully open the letter.

She begins to read Scott's letter out loud:

"Lucy,

I'm glad that you finally got that license! I know that you were a little nervous going into it, but I never doubted you. You are and always have been a very capable girl. I hope that driving for the first time has been treating you well. Maybe next you'll learn how to maneuver the sleigh if you've been extra nice this year. It's certainly better than driving a regular car in all that snow. And speaking of being nice, I don't mean to give anything away present wise for this year, but I do hope your snow globe collection has been treating you well.

The family up here is doing just fine. The visit we had with Carol's parents recently went surprisingly well. Buddy does know how to ease the atmosphere though; he's been getting really into construction lately. Takes after his grandfather like that I suppose, which Budd enjoys to no end. I guess it's from seeing the elves do some much building on a regular basis that got him interested. He's even insisting on wearing pointy elf shoes everywhere he goes.

It'll be good for him when everyone comes up here in a week or so to visit, just to remind him that he is in fact human.

Charlie has been popping up here and there between semesters. He's very interested in taking over as Santa one of these days. And as far as Bernard has told me, it would be the first time the position of Santa has been passed down the family line in a thousand years! We're not going to be thinking too seriously about it just yet. But if he manages to really impress me later down the line, I might even get to retire early!

But I digress. Let me know how your parents are doing and let them know that now's the final call for any last-minute present requests. Family discount of course. (Against Bernard's better wishes, but he won't be reading this anyway).

All the best,

Scott Calvin (Santa Claus)"

After her dramatic reading, Lucy hands the letter to her mom while she returns to her yogurt and scans over the other mail made out to her. Her expression drops when looking over the many college recruitment pamphlets. But thankfully her mom was too busy rereading the letter to notice.

"Well, isn't that nice. A thousand years, can you believe that luce!" Laura scans over the handwritten letter, "And you're not driving that sleigh by the way."

"What? Why? It can't be that much different than driving a car," Lucy says with a smile.

"Lucy, sometimes I doubt that even Scott knows how to properly drive that thing."

"All the more reason why I should learn! I'll be way better than him if I get enough practice," Lucy puts the empty yogurt container in the trash and the spoon in the sink in quick succession.

Laura hands off the letter back to Lucy as she exits the kitchen, "Well I'm sure your father will agree with me that sleigh lessons should be for when you're older."

Lucy collects her bags she left by the front door and makes her way to the staircase, "Whatever you say mom!"

She shouts as she makes her way up the stairs to her room, Tulip galloping from the kitchen in hot pursuit. Laura's look gazes off to where Lucy just was.

A solemn feeling rested in her chest, straight up into her room without much of a conversation. She was going to dwell on it some more when she remembered what Neil told her not too long ago about this problem. Something about how teenagers need their privacy, a critical stage in development or something. But he ultimately told her not to worry about it too much and that it was normal.

Sometimes she wondered what she would do without him.

Opening the door, she threw the backpack across her room onto the bed. Her recently found sneakers went tumbling out of her arms along with the empty lunch bag. With tulip casually strolling in through the open door, Lucy turned on the standing lamp near her closet.

Taking a seat at her desk with a huff, she tossed her small mail pile onto the desk. The college recruitment flyers seemed to have a staring problem. The concept of future plans bore its way deep into Lucy's mind.

'What am I gonna do…' she thought

Trying to distract from the sinking feeling in her stomach, she averted her gaze from the papers and found the gentle snowfall outside to focus on instead.

She keeps forgetting that Mother Nature only has domain over three of the four seasons. She asked her about how that all works a couple years after the Escape Clause incident. She didn't really give much of an answer and didn't seem to want to talk about it all that much. But she did explain that she can only control three of the four seasons, and that Jack Frost has sole domain over winter.

Looking at the snowfall outside, her mind starts to wander to the herald of the season. She's learned not to ask about him much, she wouldn't get a lot of answers if she did. Just a vague nonanswer before they go off on some 'Well, we don't have to think about him much anymore! He's been taken care of, let's talk about something else' response. But she can't help but wonder what happened to him. Especially now that summer, autumn and spring have been getting a little out of whack. What happened to winter...?

But her thoughts were interrupted when her phone started ringing. She completely forgot that it was still in her backpack. She stood up from the desk and riffled through the contents of her school bag.

She pulled out the phone and saw it was Charlie calling her. A smile returned to her face.

"Hey Charles," she answered, "What's going on?"

"I hate that name so much..." Charlie started.

"You hate all my names for you."

"Yeah, but I hate that that's the one that stuck!"

"Don't blame me, it's the logical next step! It's basically your full name already," she put the phone on speaker as she walked across the room to sit down at her desk again.

"That doesn't mean I have to like it. But what's been going on doofus, it's been a while since the last time I called," Charlie asked.

"Yeah, you now owe me your life's story because you've been slacking off," she giggled, "No but I'm doing alright. The parents are alright, did you wanna talk to them?"

"No no, I'm good. I'll talk to them plenty when we're all at the pole next week. How's Tulip?"

"Oh, I get it. So, you like the dog more than me now huh?" she responds in a sarcastic tone. Lucy then begins to spread out the various mail onto her desk while she talks.

"You said it not me," Charlie quips back. Lucy can practically see the smile on his face as he did so.

"So rude!"

"I live for the drama," he continues, returning to a more casual tone, "How's the driving going? Have you hit anything or anyone yet?"

"No, actually I haven't."

"Now you're the one that's slacking off. You got a teenage rebellion quota that you're not filling."

"That's not teenage rebellion, that's a prison sentence."

"Same thing, right? What could go wrong with a little adolescent defiance to authority?"

"Because that worked out so well for you right?"

"Uh yeah, absolutely. I'm going to college now, and I have a great girlfriend and a car -"

"And student loan debt and a stupid beard and a humungous ego," Lucy interrupted in a terrible Charlie impression.

"Alright alright, I get it. I get you wanna be me"

Lucy chucked at the notion as she sifted through the mail. Setting aside Scott's letter, she picked up a few college enrollment mailers. The abysmal feeling settled back into her skin as she looked over the different colleges around the area promoting themselves to her. Her mind fogged over as she thought about the decisions, she's gonna have to make soon.

Intellectually she knows she's still in Junior year and won't really have to worry about it until she's a senior. But this decision about what to do after high school, what to do with her life, feels like it's chasing her down the street at breakneck speeds.

'What if I can't outrun it…?'

Her mind was so fogged over in fact that she didn't even notice that Charlie was trying to get her attention this whole time.

"Lucy!"

She promptly snapped back to attention to answer, "Yeah, yeah, I'm here! I'm good."

"Yeah? Then what did I just ask?"

"Uhhhhh…Lucy, how can I be more like you? You're so great and awesome," she asked sarcastically. Again, pulling out the bad Charlie impression.

Charlie laughs on the other end in response, "No! I asked what are you doing right now. Must be something really important for you to ignore me like that."

"I guess it is," Lucy sighs.

"Is something wrong Luce?" her brother asks, dropping the playful tone.

"Maybe…It's just life stuff," the girl trails off. Debating whether to go into further detail about her plaguing thoughts.

"Hmmm. I don't know as much as others do, but I know a couple things about that," He prodded "You wanna talk about it?"

Lucy thought about it for a second, before launching into her current teenage woes.

"It's just, colleges have been sending me junk mail about going to their schools. And you know I'm sure these places are great but like. I don't know if I wanna go to college. I don't know what I wanna do in general after high school! Everyone else at school seems to have such a clear plan for what they wanna do. They got jobs and scholarships. And I have nothing! I just quit gymnastics like six months ago and I thought that's what I wanted to do, but I guess I was wrong..."

Lucy threw her head back as she slumped into the office chair, "I just have a bad feeling that I'll never actually decide on what to do. And then before I know it my life will have been wasted!"

Charlie gave a stagnant pause to let her chime in a final time before answering, "Lucy, you're really smart. You always have been. Smarter than I was at your age. But I think you might be overthinking this one."

Lucy cheerlessly put her head down on the desk as she listened to Charlie's advice.

"It's good to want to plan ahead and make goals for yourself for the future. And you can do just about anything you set your mind to doing. But you don't actually have to make a single choice and stick to that for the rest of your life. You can hop from one thing to the next and change paths as many times as you want. Because it's your life. No one else is gonna live it for you. You're the one at the helm here," he concluded. Charlie waits for a beat as Lucy collects her thoughts on the matter.

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Think of it like this. Let's say that you're someone who, I don't know, wanted to be Santa Claus for a while right?"

"Ok." Lucy gives a soft smile at this weird stranger who would want to be Santa Claus.

"Right. So, you've wanted to be Santa Claus for years now. And then you are! Then you become Santa and you do that for another few years and everything is great. And then you wake up one day and decide, this doesn't feel right anymore. I'm gonna quit being Santa. The time you had doing it was fun. But it's not bad that you would want to do something else. It's just different. That's just how life goes."

Lucy thought on this idea for a beat.

"Yeah. I guess so. Thanks Charlie," Lucy responds softly.

"No problem. And FUCK anyone who tells you otherwise."

Lucy dramatically gasps, "Rude mouth! Tulip is right here!"

She spares a glance at Tulip who has now taken a place in the middle of her twin bed, and barely perks up at her own name. Clearly, she cares very deeply about such harsh language being thrown around.

"I bet Tulip would swear like a sailor if she could talk!"

"Not my precious babygirl! She is a SAINT!"

The two devolved into a fit of laughter, the sullen mood now officially broken.

"Well in any case, I hoped I could help a little bit," Charlie chucked, "None of that stuff is ever gonna be easy really. But you're smart and capable and stuff, so you'll be just fine."

"I hope so. I am smarter than you, and I won't look like Santa Claus when I'm in my thirties. So, I got those going for me."

"I will fight you when next week rolls around. Prepare for a beat down!"

"In your dreams Charles!" Lucy shot back, "My gymnastics skills haven't just disappeared into the wind."

Charlie only scoffed at his half-sister's threats, "Tell Mom and Neil I said my hellos. And remember to start filling that teenage rebellion quota! That you can use those backflips for."

"Will do. See ya idiot," Lucy smiled.

"See ya Gremlin."

Lucy hangs up on the call. Her conscious a little more at ease, she sits back in the office chair to try and cement Charlie's advice in her head. Surely, he was exaggerating when he said she can just do it all, right? Eventually she's gonna have to settle on something to do with her life.

In any case, it's a load of troubling questions to leave for tomorrow. She decided that writing the letter back to Scott would be more important at the moment than worrying about some kind of long-term life path. I mean really, what is finding your life's purpose when you have the actual Santa Claus waiting on your response letter?

Lucy retrieves a spare notebook from the desk drawer beside her and a pen from the star shaped pencil holder on the desktop. She arranges Scott's letter and her own notebook in front of her. And pauses.

As much as Charlie helped ease her nerves, the lingering reservations she still had made the paper seem like an unscalable mountain.

'Do I tell Uncle Scott about all this? I mean he seemed to have his life figured out before becoming Santa. But is any of that going to help me in this situation right now?' she thought to herself.

She gives the college-ruled a glare like it asked her a riddle and decided to leave writing her response for tomorrow as well. All these questions really sound like a Future Lucy problem!

In any case, Lucy spends the rest of the day trying not to think about it too much.

The evening hours passed in the same monotony of her regular life. Putting off doing homework for as long as possible, Lucy managed to clean out her closet of junk. A long overdue task finally completed. A lot of abandoned hobbies and half-finished projects found their home on the curb in the cleaning spree. And later, after a rather explosive accident involving smoothie ingredients and a forgotten blender lid, Neil came home just catching dinner.

Talk about the usual plagues of everyday life flew in all sorts of directions over a meal of hot beef stew. Laura was going on about the presents she was planning on bringing to the North Pole next week and how Buddy is really going to appreciate the dinosaur onesie she managed to get him.

Neil couldn't say much about his day because of patient confidentiality, but he did bring home a rather gaudy Christmas decor item as a gift from one of his coworkers. It's a rather unnerving holiday themed gnome, and both Lucy and Laura agreed that its eyes were just a little off. Just dead and soulless enough so that it could easily be a horror movie prop. Laura then made a note to herself that she should put that away somewhere hidden after dinner.

And much to Lucy's annoyance, both of them agreed that sleigh piloting lessons would have to wait until she was a couple years older.

Lucy on the other hand, had a lot to say about the snowboarding stunt one of her friends pulled off after school. He brought his snowboard to school and after classes he tied a skiing line to the tail end of his friend's truck. And he managed to pull himself along and snowboarded the iced streets just outside the school.

Miraculously no police were called. And when he did end up falling over, he was left with just a few scrapes and bruises. Lucy managed to capture a very flattering picture of just the right moment when he went down.

A few more hours later in the darkness of the December night, Lucy finds herself back in the kitchen getting one last drink of water before turning in for the night. The warm glow of the multicolored Christmas lights coming from the living room gave her just enough light to work with.

The full Moon looks through the kitchen window, imparting its own soft silver glow onto the girl.

Waiting.

Now clad in her seasonal pajama set, she grabs a water bottle from the fridge. The return of the dark kitchen when closing the door was very welcome at this hour. Making her way past the living room back to the stairs she catches a glimpse of her parents on the couch. Neil, Laura and Tulip were all piled on top of each other under a giant fluffy blanket as they watched one of their medical reality shows.

A fairly common nightly routine, where Laura gets really invested in the drama-based plotline. And Neil has to try and reel her back in right before they have to go to bed.

Consistent, and it warms Lucy's heart every time she sees it.

"I'm going to bed you guys. Night, love you!" she said as she made her way back upstairs.

The couple slightly turned their heads in acknowledgment of the holler, "Night sweetie. Love you too," Neil and Laura responded slightly out of sync.

Back into her bedroom, she set the water bottle down on the nightstand. Her eyes lingered ever so slightly toward her desk where all the abandoned pages were left from earlier. A tiny thought of sitting down and writing that letter to Scott was fleeting. She stood resolute that she could handle it tomorrow.

With only the soft glow of the fairy lights strung up on her headboard, she quickly got comfortable under the covers. Only now was she noticing the beauty of the full moon through the window next to her bed.

Nothing looked unusual about it, but this particular full moon seemed more full than usual? There was nothing concrete she could put her finger on, but something was weird about it. usual?

As strange as such an observation is, she ultimately decided it wasn't too important what the moon was doing right now. She just wanted to get to sleep.

She laid her head onto the pillow and drifted off into a sound slumber. Sandy was playing in her favor tonight.

That same night, at the heart of the largest magical city in the realms, in The Magical Governance building. The night was shaping up to be rather typical for the employees in the Magic Field Overseer Division.

The usual night staff were all at their desks, finishing out the night shift as the early hours of the morning strode in.

In a particularly large windowless room however, you couldn't tell what time it was without the aid of the two clocks on the east and west walls. Their dull green color was broken up periodically by equally dull matching columns. At the head of the room was a large orb of swirling blue magic hovering just above the floor and spinning on its axis. A completely magical replica of the earth sparkles and lights most of the area in a sky blue. The rest of the vast floorspace was taken up by arched waves of desks, whose design had a slight Alphonse Mucha inspiration in their very little detailing. Each one contains their own screens and sets of various buttons and levers.

The mystical occupants of each of these desks were milling about their nightly duties. Taking up soft spoken workplace conversations with their desk mates.

"But it's a privilege to be sitting here in the first place," a stocky dwarf said in a gruff voice.

His receding hairline swept back and his beard sporting a singular braid. You could hardly see his eyes past his own eyebrows.

"It is. I'm not saying it isn't Lewys," the satyr desk mate responded, "I love my job. I'm glad I'm able to be here, knock on wood and all that. But you have to agree that it can be so dull at times."

"I have to agree with Adam here, Lewie!" the third desk mate, a fairy, piped up.

"I love it here too. Wouldn't have much to brag about if I wasn't here. But these Magic Fields never do anything. That's their whole schtick!"

The little blue fairy flew with a trail of sparkles over to her half deer coworker and sat atop his head of messy ginger hair. Adam comfortably leans back in his chair.

"Especially the Lunar field. This thing's been dormant for millennia," Adam lazily motions towards his screen. It displays a thin veil of millions of little purple dots across the globe, moving at a snail's pace.

"Well, if you're so bored then, go and get me a coffee why don't ya?" Lewys asks gruffly, "And one for Lucia too."

With an annoyed eye roll, Adam dismounts his chair and leaves the room in pursuit of the coffee machine. His hooves clomping on the hard floor as he went.

"You have to admit he does have a point. Even you have to get a little bored from time to time," Lucia continued hovering in the air where Adam's head used to be.

"Of course, I do. But we can't afford to be lax, we're the first alarm bells to go off when anything happens," Lewys said as he stared intently at his screen.

"But nothing ever happens!"

"Then what's this?"

With her interest slightly piqued, she flew over to Lewy's shoulder to look at his screen.

The veil of dots across the image of the earth were swirling now at a slightly faster pace. The adjacent numbers next to the live video jumped ever so slightly. Not remotely noticeable to those untrained in the field.

"Well would ya look at that. Ya got one right," Lucia responded sarcastically.

"It's better than nothing, aye?" Lewys remarks.

While he goes to write down the numbers in the log on his desk, Lucia was almost about to take flight back to her own seat.

When something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.

A small but noticeable collection of dots on the screen were gathering in one specific area. The little blue fairy doesn't say anything at first, but Lewys looks up from his work to meet her confused gaze.

"Everything good, Lucia?" He asks.

"What is happening over here?" The fairy flies in closer to the screen pointing out the cluster on the screen. Lewys looked up from his paper to see what she was talking about.

He cocked a disbelieving eyebrow at the screen, "Spotting?"

"And gaining," Lucia said as she flew back to her own screen to get a better look at the situation.

"Archive this for the record books. Substantial spotting growth for today's date, under supervision," Lewys directs as he starts typing in commands on the dashboard.

"Particle speed has increased by 0.8 ETS," Lucia says as she also starts furiously typing, "We are nearing the 1x threshold."

"Now this doesn't make much sense at all," Lewys continues his laser focused supervision of the moving dots on the screen, "Why is it moving this fast?

"Lewie, the particle speed is climbing exponentially. There's no stop in sight," Lucia says with growing worry.

"Movement status?"

"Currently in Stasis but if-" Lucia cuts herself off when her eyes welded themselves to the images. Her typing stopped in its tracks.

Lewys takes note of the pause in action, "Talk to me Lucia. What's it doing?" he asked with mounting concern.

"It's funneling," she said in a soft tone. Her eyes wide with anxiety.

At this news, Lewys looks back at her with the same expression. Both of their faces grow pale, and the pair are frozen in their tracks. The Lunar magic field was not only on the move, picking up speed rapidly, but now it's also funneling!

After a split second, Lewys soon jumped into action. In flipping one of his control board switches, an offensive siren blared into the windowless room. The magical earth replica at the front of the room turned its blue shade to one of very light purple, bathing the rest of the room in nearly white light.

A staggeringly calm, robotic voice then came over the intercoms, "Lunar Status: Active. Initiating Code: Iris. Repeat, Code: Iris is now in effect."

The other employees halted and then quickly abandoned their previous activities. All resuming to their stationed desks, typing away at keys, flicking the appropriate switches and pushing the necessary buttons. With everyone combined, the anticipation in the room was almost palatable. Everyone's own magic aura was going off the rails at this revelation, history in the making!

And that's exactly when Adam nonchalantly reenters the room with two hot coffees in his hands.

"Sorry I took so long guys, the coffee machine on this floor was broken so I had to go to the-" He was stopped mid-sentence by the controlled chaos taking place.

But it was the almost white light of the room and the code name still being warned on the speakers did he now get what was happening. His face paled and both hands dropped their respective drinks, puddles leaking and forgotten on the floor.

He rushes back over to his own desk where he catches the conversation between his other two coworkers.

"We've crossed the 1.5 ETS threshold. Funneling at around 45.67 Latitude and -85.90 Longitude. 3.7 mile radius and climbing," Lucia exclaimed.

"Keep your eyes on it, just like a storm front. Shout when it reaches critical mass."

"Code: Iris!?" Adam shouts as he reaches his desk, violently sitting down in his chair, "How did it reach Code: Iris!?"

"I guess it got tired of sitting there not doing anything," Lewys managed to spare an ever so sarcastic look to Adam before picking up the phone next to his monitor.

"Movement has reached 100%. The whole thing is now on the move," Adam updated, frantically pushing the control buttons.

"Yes sir, we just reached past 100% movement. The spotlight code has been enacted for the whole building. I think we-"

"It's entered critical mass! Coalesce has been activated Lewie!" Lucia shouted.

Both Adam and Lewys stopped in their work for the briefest of seconds before taking in the information and getting back to work with even more vigor.

Lewys returns to the phone call, "We've just entered critical mass sir. It's going into formation as we speak. We'll keep you posted on any destructive outbursts this thing might do. Its chosen right smack dab in the middle of suburbia to take form. Do we need offensive action?"

The dwarf paused to let his superior respond before he continued, "Alright then. Might not be a bad idea to contact The Council. By the speed it's forming right now, we'll have a new life with us by morning. They'll be the ones to confirm if it's Pure or New Age."

He asks as his boss lays out the game plan, "Aye, as long as they are aware it doesn't matter too much who makes first contact. Overseer Division will keep you posted sir."

Lewys holds down a button near the phone to patch himself through to the intercom, "Commander Brany's orders: No evasive action is to be taken. The Council has been contacted. Steady on mates."

He hangs up the phone with a click and watches the screen for himself. The web of purple dots from all over the globe are converging into a single cluster. Northern hemisphere, North America.

The first time the Lunar Magic Field has been on the move in seemingly forever. Out of dormancy and on the run, a new magic spirit is coming.