"Just remember to breathe."

"Never forget your pencils."

"You should have eaten breakfast."

On and on the voices in his head went, and Cameron grimaced in response to them. They weren't his voices. Or rather, they weren't his own thoughts. They were definitely his own voices, though, since no one else seemed to hear them and he knew he wasn't sensing the thoughts of those around him. Telepathy was a magic he had failed to acquire during his attempts at learning it.

He wasn't entirely sure what the voices were, but he was confident in one thing: the voices were talking to him. As usual. He shuffled his feet, looking around the street he was scuffling down. If the police saw him, he'd probably be grabbed for truancy again. Slipping away the last time that happened hadn't been easy for him.

"That lady was very pretty. Think she'd be willing to give you some money for a meal?"

"Quiet, you," Cameron hissed under his breath.

That particular voice annoyed the twelve-year-old boy. It was always checking out the women around him and making comments. To him, it seemed like something the boys at the foster homes he'd run from would do. They were older, teens.

They were also nasty. At least the voices were better about certain things.

For two years, Cameron had hidden on the streets, guided by the voices in his head. For the most part, they'd kept him safe. It had been touch-and-go with the voices at first, though. He didn't always hear them initially, which sometimes caused him to miss part of what they were saying.

Over time, however, his connection to them grew stronger and he came to rely on them, to depend on them. Some of them knew what he needed to do before he did, something which saved his life on more than one occasion.

"Just saying," the voice responded. "She was very pretty. I bet if you-"

"You know he doesn't like hearing that."

"Yeah, he doesn't. It makes his face flush, sort of like when he sensed the minds of those people the other day who were-"

"I said hush!" Cameron hissed again, drawing looks from adults. He gave them a nervous smile. "Sorry, I'm late for school and have a test, and the, um, the voices of self-doubt are hitting me."

The man who'd been looking at him most critically nodded and kept moving and Cameron let out a sigh of relief. He was still nervous around people. During his time on the streets, he'd also grown to be able to sense the minds of others, though that had only begun around six months prior.

He couldn't read them, but he could sense them, receive impressions from them. Much like the voices, that ability had served him well ever since he developed it. He could tell if someone was hiding down an alley, for instance. He could tell how hostile someone was or if they were lying or honest.

Admittedly, he'd only figured out how to do that last one just a few weeks before, but he still thought it useful.

"No, go right," one of the voices said as Cameron went to cross the street straight ahead.

Shuffling his feet for a moment, Cameron darted his eyes around, then turned right and went down the street. He hated going down streets like the one the voices guided him to. He could tell before he'd even set foot on it that it was the local whacko street.

The street with people who claimed to be psychics and the shops selling 'magical' goods. He knew most of the people doing that were just regular people, people who did that just to make money or fool others. Or themselves.

Since he could hear voices in his head and sense minds, Cameron knew others probably had powers, too. The voices even admitted it to him when he asked. They'd also told him about how most magicians were either registered with the government or part of a criminal operation, and he wanted to beneither of those.

He didn't want to work with criminals and he definitely didn't want the government to know about him. He'd had bad enough luck in the several foster homes he'd been in before the voices started talking to him and he'd run away. If he went to the government, they'd likely put him back in one, where he would just be abused again.

Cameron did his best to move quickly, pulling his mind as close to him as he could. Ever since that particular power awakened, he couldn't figure out how to shut it out, much like the voices in his head. He could, however, change its range. Anywhere from three feet to three hundred.

If there were other magicians around, he didn't want to risk one of them being able to sense his mind brushing against theirs.

Frowning, Cameron realized that one of the voices had mentioned pencils again.

"Why do you keep bringing up pencils?" He muttered under his breath.

"They have proven themselves very useful," the voice that had just told him to never forget them responded. "Did you know that you can stab someone with one? And most people don't realize just how deadly they can be, thinking it's only a thing of media. But nope, you could ram it through an eye, sharpen it and ram it into-"

"Stop!" Cameron hissed.

"Excuse me?" A voice not in his head but through his ears startled him, and he jumped, looking at the speaker.

A heavyset woman in her forties or fifties, her graying brown hair was tied into a neat braid down her back, her dark brown eyes staring down at him disapprovingly. She was dressed in a flowery blouse and black pants, a dark green apron over it all. The white name tag with green lettering fixed to the apron declared her Elaine.

He had nearly walked into her, he realized, and the voices in his head were giggling at him. She held a watering can in her hand, and he quickly turned his gaze to the half-barrels in front of the shop they were in front of. They were filled with colorful flowers he couldn't identify.

"Sorry," Cameron muttered. "I-I'm late for school, and-and I should be on my way. Sorry. Just, um, just talking to my self-doubt. I've a math test, and I'm awful at math, and-"

"You can stop," she says. "I know you aren't heading to school, little one. You're not clean enough, and judging by your body, it's been a decent time since you've had a good meal. Where are you really going?"

"I-I have to go," Cameron starts to walk, only to trip over nothing.

He threw his hands out, catching himself and springing forward, finding himself tripping again. That went on several times, with Cameron catching himself quickly. He might have been skinny, but he still had some decent reflexes, honed over the two years he'd been on the streets.

Something else the voices had been good for.

"You can give it up, kid," Elaine said. "Until you-"

"NOW!" All of the voices in Cameron's head hollered in unison.

While Cameron had been used to the voices in his head for awhile, having all forty-some of them yell at once was too much for him, and he passed out, collapsing onto the ground, his body going limp.

"Oh, dear," Elaine muttered as the small boy collapsed to the ground. "He never hit his head. What happened?"

She looked around to make sure no one was watching, then set her watering can down and walked over to the boy. Grabbing him, she found herself nearly grunting as she lifted him up.

He's heavier than he looks, she thought to herself.

After picking her watering can back up, Elaine returned inside, grateful that the street had been empty at that moment. It wouldn't do for people to see her bringing in an unconscious kid. They might think something she didn't want to deal with the fallout of others thinking.

"Elaine!" Suzanne, Elaine's friend and only employee, called out from the back room. "Did you finish watering the plants? If-"

"Kid passed out in front while I was watering," Elaine interrupted, walking through the open door to the back.

She walked down the hall and up the stairs as Suzanne, the twenty-six-year-old prodigy joining her after locking up the front.

"He's so small," Suzanne commented as Elaine set him on the couch in their living room.

"And that's not fat we do see," Elaine said. "He's got a layer of light muscle on him."

"Look at the dirt," Suzanne said. "Street kid?"

"Probably passed out from hunger," Elaine said. "Though he looked to be in pain just before he passed out."

"What did you do to him?" Suzanne asked suspiciously. "Did you trip him up again?"

"He caught himself every time," Elaine stated. "He never struck his head. Kid has some decent reflexes. Judging by his size, he may have passed out from hunger. Get the reading crystals. If he possesses no talent, we'll let the police know so they can pick him up. If he does have talent, we'll see where he aligns before proceeding."

Suzanne nodded and left, returning a few minutes later with a small, wooden box, a flower painted onto the cover of it.

"Thank you," Elaine said, then turned to the boy and lifted his shirt, pushing it up to his shoulders a few times before grunting and pulling it off of him. "Damn thing wouldn't stay up."

She opened up the box, running her fingers over the various colorful crystals contained within. Fire, water, earth, wind, energy, light, dark, enchant, force, blood, necromancy, scourge, nature. The thirteen primary schools of magic. The crystals, when placed on someone and hit with the proper spell, could read someone's affinity for them. The only five crystals she hadn't managed to acquire yet were of the lone schools of magic, the schools of void, time, space, shift, and mind.

Taking the fourteen crystals from Suzanne – the thirteen to represent the thirteen primary schools of magic, and the dark purple one which represented magic itself – Elaine began arranging them on the boy's chest and stomach.

Hovering her hands over the boy, Elaine wove together the spell that would activate the reading ability of the crystals. A few seconds passed before she felt the spell complete. The rich, violet crystal for magic began to glow with a furious intensity, nearly blinding Elaine before she canceled the spell.

She then spent the next several minutes blinking the violet spots from her eyes, knowing Suzanne was likely doing the same. The boy had a powerful gift of magic.

As soon as her eyes had recovered enough she could see properly, Elaine looked down at the crystals, and for the first time in nearly two decades, she felt herself heavily surprised. The boy wasn't just powerful, his magic had destroyed the dark purple crystal of magic when it read it. In fact, he had destroyed all of the crystals.

"It's about time I started keeps some specifically as backups," Elaine declared.

"What does that mean?" Suzanne asked.

"He's powerful," Elaine told her. "Beyond what a child should ordinarily be."

"What's his school?" Suzanne asked. "I didn't catch which of the crystals tested positive."

"None of them," Elaine answered. "The boy has a hard road ahead of him, as it seems that not only is he powerful enough to destroy the testing crystals when they read his magic, but he possesses one of the five lone schools."

"If he's lived on the streets," Suzanne said. "Do you think he's run from something?"

"I doubt he's an experiment," Elaine snorted. "If someone were able to consistently produce powerful mages like him, we'd already know about it. My guess? He might not know he's a magician at all. He is only twelve. However, if he's been on the streets awhile, it's possible he may have awakened his gift through the stress and danger."

It wasn't an uncommon way for a magician to awaken into their power, though it wasn't the preferred method. Elaine had awoken Suzanne through the 'preferred' method – meditation and looking in upon oneself to find their tree.

"So he's probably not registered," Suzanne let out a long breath. "What are you going to do?"

"He's even more powerful than my uncle," Elaine snorted. "Of course I'd see if he's up for training. That will have to wait until after he's woken, of course. The trick will be training him, since he doesn't have a magic in any school you or I know."

Elaine herself used a mix of nature, water, enchant, earth, and wind magics, while Suzanne used wind, earth, and enchant magic. Elaine did know a little of force and blood magic, but not enough to consider herself a good teacher with either of them.

Neither of them possessed the lone schools of magic.

"I'll need you to run the store," Elaine told Suzanne. "Fetch him a clean outfit, would you? Once he wakes, I'm having him take a shower. Gods know he could use one."