After the usual breakfast, market run, and getting set-up for a large batch of soup for the enddays was done, mom had a breakthrough. We were chopping up vegetables when her knife slipped, skidding down the onion and making a slice in the side of her finger. She grabbed up a clean rag cloth and stanched the wound.

"I don't have time for this, I'm going to catch up to Ulricht today," she muttered, quickly tying off the rag and getting back to work.

I didn't think much of it, mom had always been the more competitive of my parents, part of why she did the rare and hard to find books and dad did the catalog items. We went back to the chopping and prepwork.

A few minutes later she started shaking her hand.

"Blast it. Why does it itch so much?!"

That, however, got my undivided attention. I knew that itchy feeling. She was doing the same thing I had done. Ignoring the wound, getting on with something while effectively pretending it wasn't there. With her power built up from several tendays of training and frustration, she was performing the healing equivalent of the emotional flame burst. This brought an errant thought to my mind. I wonder how many "miracles" might happen every day. There have to be incidents where someone turns out not to be as badly injured as first thought, perhaps from mistakes, but it could also be from this very denial mindset. Of course, tracking those in an era of broadsheets… is way beyond my skills, if it's even possible. We had miracles like that in the last world, where people recovered from or survived normally fatal situations, so what would that prove here? I gathered my thoughts, thinking out a nice cogent reply to her not-quite-question, but my mouth shot off for me.

"I don't know mom, probably because you just healed it?" Smart aleck me chimed in. Fortunately it was the positive version, not my inner dillweed, because she was holding a knife.

"I did what?!?" She rapidly untied the cloth, revealing a miniscule red welt where the cut had been before. Her face lit up in wonder, joy, disbelief, and probably no small bit of glee at jumping ahead of dad on this ability since she hadn't gotten the other one handled.

Perhaps I'd spoken up too soon. It might have completely finished healing on its own if I'd kept quiet. But it's equally likely that the healing was stopped when she got distracted by the burning and itching. No matter, it's still fantastic, terrifying, and exciting. Mom clearly focused on the exciting, as she dragged me away from the prep work. Following her lead, we cavorted our way across the room to my dad, interrupting his concentration on the broadsheet he hadn't managed to finish during our hurried pre-market breakfast.

"Hmmmmm?"

"I healed it!" she half shouted the "I", but managed to moderate the volume down for the remaining words, while shoving her finger in his face. Clearly, we can't keep this a complete secret for much longer, but shouting it to the neighbors wouldn't be prudent, either, not at this juncture.

"Well. It's a lovely finger, Kat."

She slapped his shoulder playfully. "You say the nicest things, but that's not the point." She paused for a breath. "You can do the telemotion thing, I can do the healing thing, whatever fancy invented science-like terms Grint wants to use. We've hit the next issue. It's not something we'll be able to keep secret. What do we do?" Excitement had faded as the terrifying bits started to push their way to the fore.

"That's the big question, isn't it. I don't know. We don't know enough to even start, so we're going to have no choice but to bring in other people. Ethically, this could help so many people that we can't just hide this discovery."

I wanted to interject that it still might be linked to our genetics, but I'd not paid enough attention to life sciences, so I didn't even have the words to discuss it with them. I'm sure they had someone like Gregor Mendel here doing that kind of stuff. Monofocus on magic for the lose, again. There was a bit more confirmation testing we might need to do. We needed an outsider we could trust. I had one in mind, but then again, I might not be thinking with my head.

Let me clarify, because I'm sure some people will read that and snicker. I might be leading with my heart, not my… you know what nevermind... seriously.

I wanted to bring in Lunette. She had access, drive, capability, and could potentially do the research and use her thesis work to broadcast the findings within the community of magic researchers. My only concern was that I'd be dragging her into whatever mess this was going to make, politically. I wouldn't have even thought about that, if my parents hadn't. While my grasp of politics as a concept wasn't poor, my grasp of local politics was still abysmal. I seriously had no idea about anything, and the skills I might use to learn about them weren't useful here, except for reading.

The good news was that it only took living proof and about a month of practice to move my parents to the point where they could unreliably do things they hadn't even dreamed of doing before. I'm not sure how far just the concept would get you without proof. It seemed to take something significant to break past the barriers. The example alone wasn't enough by itself. The concept was key, but again, only one key with an unknown number of locks to open, one of which is clearly the raw skill with the energy.

The possibility that there really is a cabal that keeps certain mythos from the public consciousness seems less far fetched every day. Surely someone has stumbled on this before. That's the part that scares me more than anything else. I'm not so arrogant as to think I've discovered something completely new. Perhaps it was known and lost, perhaps it's been suppressed, and perhaps there's a genetic component to the affinity. So much unknown.

My other idea was clearly a head-based idea. Probably a better option as well. Wilhena. Her father had taken an interest in magic tomes, and she was semi-famous. She's more politically connected, wealthy, and a bit harder to disappear unnoticed, just in case my conspiracy theory side isn't running wild.

Either way, we've hit a point where it's proven that the abilities are not something caused by the ThanaTopiary system and unique to me. Now, we just have to decide what to do about it.

"I have a couple of ideas on who we could ask. Let me explain…."

I quickly summarized the thoughts I've already written, but reversed the order, proposing that we start with Wilhena since she was both local and influential.

"Grint… that's not a bad idea. What about the magic club teacher? Should we consider him? I like the Halgershien idea since we have ties to them several ways, and you working for Henrig makes accidental exposure to them a bit more likely. As your mother and I work together, there's less possibility of accidental exposure from us to coworkers. Probably significantly less, since we generally have to struggle and work to do what you're doing almost as a second nature. Let's not rush this. We need to plan this carefully. I hate sounding dramatic, but our lives will be changed no matter how we handle this."

So, plan we did. We spent the rest of the enddays strategizing, figuring out arguments, demonstrations, and possible consequences of accidental revelation if we didn't do it in a planned way. It was transformative in our relationship. By the end of Tenday, it seemed like my parents were looking at me like an adult, an equal partner in this venture. It was both a relief and a bit daunting. In far too many ways regarding this world, I was still working with the background information level of a child, even if I had the acumen of an adult. I didn't think I'd be able to get much sleep. Tomorrow, I'd need to talk to Henrig, and get him to come with me to the book shop after work. It was like a first step, heading into the unknown, again. Of course, even if we didn't take that step, it was only a matter of time until we were sailing over uncharted political waters. Before I drifted off to sleep, I checked in on what my continued practice with Leatherskin mode and some telekinetic mudslinging had wrought.

{Status:

Name: Grintel Coddlestahl

Age: 17

Mental:

Acuity:

Perception:

Memory:

10

8

10

Psyche:

Wisdom:

Insight:

Willpower:

7

8

14

Physical:

Strength:

Coordination:

Endurance:

7

7

12

Skills:

Energy Conversion

2.974

Energy Emission

2.600

Energy Control

2.216

Channeling

0.077

Instructor

0.026

Meditation

2.607

Walking

5.021

}

Nice! I can work with that, as long as it's not right now.