magix city

magix

"You can…sit down." Timmy looked blankly at the couch as if this wasn't his own living room. Roxy, who had been hovering awkwardly at the threshold, made her way over and sat down in just the same place on it that she had sat the last time she had visited.

"Are you okay?" Timmy stayed standing in the middle of the room, looking at her with concern, and Roxy opened her mouth and then felt stupid all over again for barging over here with her crazy proclamations she had only half thought out. Less than half.

Were her hands shaking still? She pressed them together so he wouldn't see if they were. "Yeah. I mean…" she hesitated, then nodded. "Yes. I'm okay. Sorry for barging in on you like this."

"That's fine. I mean, you're not barging in." He stuck his hands into his pockets. "But, I mean, I'm kinda surprised to see you."

Roxy nodded. "What you said yesterday makes sense. Brandon told me about all of it too, but what you said makes more sense than what he said." She pressed her thumb into her opposite palm as if there was a button there to stop her rambling. "Not that he really wanted to talk about it."

"That isn't surprising." He shrugged. "No one ever does. And I get it. We're just rehashing old arguments now. But..." he paused as though trying to put it delicately. "You said...you think you can help me?"

She nodded. "Have you ever heard of the White Circle?"

He shook his head. "You mentioned the Black Circle the other day, the thing the Wizards...used. I've never heard of the White Circle. But I didn't keep up much with any of that."

"The White Circle was created as a link between the earth fairy world, Tir Na Nog, and the Magic Dimension." Roxy pressed her lips together. "Morgana was connected to the White Circle because she was the queen of the earth fairies. I...inherited it from her, I guess. The Earth fairies wanted me to take it even though I told them I wasn't going to be queen. Before everything...happened, it was the key to freeing the earth fairies from that realm. But it could also transport people throughout the Dimension. It can. I can. It's at Alfea now. Faragonda holds onto it for me because I didn't really want to think about it, but—it just came into my head suddenly today." She looked up at him. "I could try to use it to bring you to her."

She did not reveal that this idea had come suddenly to her as she lay in a heap on her bedroom floor, an abject magical failure. But that was spells. The White Circle was different. After she had been freed from the Black Circle the girls had taken her back home to Earth to reunite with her father and smooth over her missing-persons case. She had been drawn to it after she had returned, before she even knew what was calling to her. It was the only magical thing she found instinctual and easy to control—although her use of it had been very limited. And it almost felt like Morgana was just over her shoulder when she touched it.

That feeling kind of made Roxy sick to her stomach, because she didn't deserve that.

Timmy nodded thoughtfully, but he did not look as excited as Roxy had thought he might be at a breakthrough. "That sounds like Stella's scepter," he said. "We tried a bunch of things with that when it first happened, to be honest, and none of it really worked. From what I understand, these teleportation objects don't really work like that—it can get you to Omega, but probably not to a specific person's location."

"That makes sense." Roxy bit her lip, feeling kind of stupid—that she had really thought for a second she had something to contribute, that she'd come here at all and with too much confidence said she had assistance to offer him. "Sorry. I didn't mean to come in here like—this is something you've been doing forever. I just wanted to let you know that if you thought it would help. I would help you."

"I take all the help I can get," Timmy said quickly. "I mean, I'd rather hear about it and know it won't work now than never hear about it and maybe it would've worked. Or...you know what I mean."

"Yeah. I do." Roxy stood up. "I'm gonna go. Thanks for letting me talk to you about this." She didn't want to be here anymore now that she knew she was just being an idiot. She wanted to be in her room alone, or at least in the dark and without roommates.

Timmy laughed, but he didn't look that amused. "It beats talking to myself about this, which is what I'm usually doing." He glanced at the clock. "Do you want a ride back to Alfea? Though fair warning, I only have a bike."

"No, that's okay. I got the bus here. I can get it back." Roxy hesitated. "Would you want to...not say anything to Brandon about this? All of this? He would be annoyed and I just don't really see the point."

"Yeah, sure." He didn't look happy about it. She felt worse now. She didn't want to cause problems between them. But it wasn't a problem, because it wasn't like she was involved at all anyway, because it wasn't like she could help at all after all, so...it wasn't fine. Everything was fine, and he didn't have to know. "You sure you don't want a ride?"

"Totally. Thanks." She headed for the door.

For a second she had really thought...but there was nothing she could do for him. Of course there wasn't.

"Hey," said Riven, opening the front door.

"Hi," Musa called from the living room. "I already ate. I thought you were coming back later."

"I was supposed to be, but we got off early today." Riven went to the kitchen. "A lot of the kids are leaving early for midterm break. Makes training exercises quicker."

"Rin called me today," Musa said in an offhand tone. Riven closed the fridge without grabbing the leftovers he had wanted and went into the living room. Musa was sitting on the couch, cross legged, and her guitar was on the coffee table in front of her.

"What did he want?"

"Somebody dropped out of a session that's coming up soon and he asked if I wanted to help him out with the vocals. And he asked if I had anything new and I sent him that one with...the waterlilies one. He said we could do that one too, in the same session, if I wanted to."

Riven chose his words carefully. "You're going to be off teaching for a bit, for break, so...you'd have some time, if you wanted to do it."

"I was thinking about it." Musa pressed her lips together. "I was thinking I might want to get out of here for a bit. Alfea, I mean, and Magix. And I should go see him anyway because I haven't since my dad."

"Yeah, and you could probably stay with Galatea. She's been asking you to forever."

"Actually, yeah. I already called her. She said anytime."

He blinked. "Oh, so you're—definitely going, then."

She nodded. "I figured you wouldn't—I figured you'd want to stay here. I mean, you can come if you want, but..."

"No, that was a good call. There's some stuff at school I might need to deal with, and—yeah. But if you end up doing anything with an audience, call me and I'll go to that."

Musa smiled. "Sounds good."

Riven headed back to the kitchen. This was good. She seemed good. He had only met this Rin guy once, at Musa's dad's funeral, but they had been friends for a long time and he'd known Musa's mother, too. No prizes for guessing that he wasn't asking Musa to fill in on whatever he was producing because there wasn't anyone on Melody he could ask instead. But this was good. This was good. Things with them were mostly good, too.

Ever since the announcement about Omega he had been waiting for things to implode. The concept of a positive development somehow just made him warier. Maybe that was dumb. He could tell Brandon thought maybe making the planet go away would make it be more over for everyone somehow. Maybe he was right. Maybe.

Timmy had wondered for a while if he should tell Brandon anyway about what happened with Roxy. After all, Brandon was his friend, he didn't have that many, and he would probably be annoyed to learn that Timmy had kept the conversation from him. But he didn't—firstly, because it wouldn't come to anything anyway, so what was the point? Secondly, because he felt bad for Roxy. She seemed very disappointed. He felt bad for her in general, too, now that he knew more about her. Her situation reminded him of Bloom at Alfea without the luck and good friends. Bad things had happened to her before she could even know what she was and why.

It stayed on his mind long enough that, just for fun, he opened up his digital access to Alfea's archival research findings. His access was somewhat not-permitted, technically, because he was not a professor or invited by Faragonda personally, but under all of the circumstances he didn't feel as though she'd begrudge him the research. If Faragonda had had the White Circle since Roxy had started school there, she had definitely had it studied.

Sure enough, he found the notes without much effort. The White Circle. Extremely powerful magical conduit used by Earth Fairies. Links the realms of Tir Na Nog with Magic Dimension. Since its creation, the Queen of the Earth Fairies has been the Mistress of the White Circle and is able to wield it to the full extent of its powers, but currently Princess Roxy of Tir Na Nog is the Mistress of the White Circle, and the late Queen Morgana's lieutenant Lady Nebula rules in her stead while the Princess attends Alfea.

He wondered if the Earth fairies knew Roxy didn't intend to be queen now or later.

He continued to skim for a while until a sentence caught his eye. Then he began to read more markedly. Then he pulled up Tecna's notes from that tracing spell she had been working on years before.

He never ended up going to bed that night. He fell asleep on his couch as the sun came up. A few hours later he woke up, called out of work, and drove his Windrider to Alfea without even considering he didn't know what dorm Roxy lived in or anything else. That thought didn't hit him until he was standing in the empty courtyard. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd been back here since everything. The fact that it looked exactly the same was unsurprising—it had only been a few years, after all—and yet it stuck him in a precise, odd way.

He had only been standing there for a few minutes when the doors to the castle hall opened and a steady stream of unfamiliar faces emerged into the courtyard, some heading towards the courtyard gate, some back to their dorms or to their next class, all chatting to each other and laughing.

Roxy was easy to spot because she didn't emerge until the flow of students had thinned out, and because she was alone. She didn't spot him, though, as she headed back towards the dorms, and so Timmy crossed the courtyard to intercept her, calling out her name as he did so.

"Timmy." She looked more than surprised to see him. It occurred to him he hadn't taken a look in the mirror before going over and he probably looked crazy. He ran a hand through his hair, but that was about all that could be done with that. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes. Yes, everything's great. Awesome. I figured something out with the White Circle. And if I'm right, then it can help—not just help. It might end up being the answer to everything. When you told me about it, I thought it worked like Stella's scepter. See, when we were looking at first I learned every time someone moves through the Magic Dimension it's like tracing your finger in cement." He gestured with both hands, traveling from one point in the air to another. "That movement and that path leaves a...residue, interacts with the energy of the rest of the Dimension. The Scepter is powerful enough that using it, Stella can instantaneously travel along her own or even other people's already-existing spatial pathways if she concentrates enough, but in any case, the Scepter is like a key that opens that already-existing path and brings you to the end of it immediately. That's why Stella usually needs to have been to a place before in order to transport there, or else she needs to concentrate really hard for the Scepter to access a more distant spatial pathway. Does that make sense? Do I make sense?" He was talking kind of fast, he realized.

She nodded, and he hesitated; the pause was the familiar one as he judged how to take the firestorm of theory and ideas and technical issues in his head and translate it into a somewhat understandable, coherent sentence for someone who hadn't been thinking about this for years. He knew he didn't make sense to a lot of people—in a flattering light, because he was smarter, in a less flattering light, because he was boring—and there was always a moment to school himself into a version that worked better. It had been a long time since he had known someone he didn't have to do that around.

"Well, I was reading about the White Circle last night. I thought it was a key like Stella's scepter, but it's not—it's a door. The White Circle was made to bind worlds together, and means it's operating on a level much deeper than most magic items—it's interacting with the heart of reality, the way that everything is linked together at the most basic level. It doesn't just travel between worlds, the worlds are flowing through the White Circle. When it's being controlled, it creates a new door by selectively filtering that that base energy that flows through it."

"I didn't know that," Roxy said. "I mean, I knew it could teleport you. And I knew it was important to the Earth Fairies—and to...the others who wanted it." She pressed her lips together. "But that's...good? That helps you?"

"Yes. See, I already had a pretty good tracer for Tecna, trying to search for her magical signature. And Tecna was working on some tracing tech too, and seeing it gave me some new ideas to finish it. But the scale was the problem. Most tracing tech is imprecise because it's working on that surface-level interaction of magic in the Dimension, and the amount of data and the ability to identify one specific signature isn't there. But using the White Circle with my tracer would theoretically allow it to pierce through more superficial layers of chaos and hone in on Tecna's magical frequency as it interacts with Omega in its most basic way." Magic wasn't his wheelhouse at all, but tech was—he knew enough to know how the one could power the other. At least, he hoped so. This had all made perfect sense to him at one in the morning. He hoped it still would when he got back to his apartment and took another look at the scribbled notes on his tablet.

"So—you could use it. Or at least try to use it," Roxy said with some hesitation.

Tommy nodded. "I have a theory, anyway. So—if your offer still stands, to try and use the White Circle—"

"Yes. Yeah, of course." Roxy nodded. "Everyone's going home for midterm break tomorrow. I can get the—" she faltered, then frowned. "I can get the White Circle from Faragonda then. I'm probably supposed to meet with her soon, anyway. I've sort of been dodging her. She'll want to see me."

"Dodging Faragonda?"

"Yeah, I..." Roxy opened her mouth and then shut it. "It isn't important. But when I see her she'll give me the White Circle. And I'll bring it to you. Tomorrow. Uh, what time?"

Tommy considered. "I'm off work tomorrow. How about noon at my apartment?"

Roxy nodded. "Yeah, I'll be there. And—" she paused. "Can we still not...tell Brandon about this? At least not right now?"

He shook his head. "Yeah. You're probably right. I won't say anything to him." That was the wrong decision. He knew it even as he said it. But he didn't want to think about that now. First finding Tecna's notes and now this was as close as he had felt to a breakthrough in years—but then, everything was on a deadline now. He didn't want to be blowing things out of proportion because the timing was making him nervous.

Sometimes the magnitude of the situation faded into the background because he had been living under it for so long, going through the motions of life half-absent and constantly occupied with thoughts of that place and of her. Then other times, like now, it felt like the stress and worry and stakes were crashing down on him. He had trained to stay cool in dire circumstances at Red Fountain—he had participated in a lot of pretty dire circumstances—but this was so much less tangible. There was nothing to fight or attack or destroy.

He knew it wasn't his fault that Tecna was gone. But if he failed and they destroyed Omega, it would be his fault she never came back. He was the only one looking.

aaaa I want to keep writing this story so much but I have a job now and I have no time to do anything lol. i'm a lawyer now. It's lots of fun. (It's not.) also I'm the slowest writer in the universe. i mean, I've been updating my twilight fic semi regularly but tbh that has a lot fewer viewpoints and characters and less stuff is happening in it.

anyway, thanks to all who are still reading and commenting. i really really really do appreciate it.