As we came behind my house, she told him goodbye.

He was a bit confused looking at the giant tree. He joked:

“Don't tell me you are a wood fee and live in there...”

She laughed heartedly:

“Nice one! You don't know how close you are. Now I am going to disappear! See you!”

He watched me, surprised but got it when I extracted my sports shoes out of the tree hollow.

“Oh!”

He laughed but still not fully getting it.

As soon as she gave me back control of my body, I started climbing under his curious eyes with the other shoes dangling in the sachet at my belt. I had never before climbed that tree so fast, then ran away directly to the bathroom to wash my face and mouth:

“How could you kiss him?”

I was angry with her.

“Hey, you did not wave him from the window! I told you, you should wave to him! I owed those kisses to him!”

Oh, it seems she is not happy with me either.

“bueeeh!! wuerg!!”

“What do you want to say? Try to explain yourself in words!”

“I need to puke… You… you… you did it extra because you feel how much I dislike him!! I'm getting crazy here!! You do not owe kisses; you may owe thanks but not kisses!!”

“I kiss whom I want!… and no, I did not do it extra to annoy you. I really like him. What can you dislike in him? He is gentle, kind...”

“The warlock tries to kill me, and you have time for kisses? This is all you have in your head?"

“He did not try to kill you; he tried to subdue you! Once he realized I was no easy prey, he left. Damn, you are too weak physically; that is the problem!”

“Subdue? This is not Mephisto's world here!? What was that for an abnormal behaviour?”

“He was an orc warlock! What do you expect from them!?”

“An orc warlock? This does not make sense! And still kissing Matt because of that?”

“Not because of that! Because I like him and he helped me! What don't you like about him?”

I sighed. She did have some arguments, but I simply do not like Matthew.

I continued to wash my face. Do I need to take a shower to clean my dirtied self? Yes, I will take a shower!

“I dislike everything, the way he moves, the way he acts, the way he kisses and smells. It gives me a goose skin of the bad kind!”

“Indeed, he is not a great kisser, but what’s wrong with how he does it? He is gentle, warm, and kind and may learn; he is young!”

“He doesn’t do anything. He puts his flat tongue in my mouth, hugs me like a bear, and then puts his hands everywhere. Bueh!…Oh, forget it, and don’t kiss him again!”

She protested again:

“I kiss whom I want and when I want! At least he did not run away as your hero!”

I let the water run over my skin. I put my hands over my face. How can I tell my alter ego that she cannot kiss whom she wants? She should kiss whom I want!

“Joe did not run away; he brought reinforcement, called the police, which was very wise of him; this is what one should do. Not go fight a crazy with a knife?”

“Yes, you are right; he must have been the idiot who called the police. By the way, that was not a knife but a bottle. And yes, leave your girlfriend, fight the lunatic, hide and call the police, then pick what's left from your girlfriend from the floor and meanwhile drink a glass of wine. Good for him, but not for you; he left you. You might have been dead or worse, a warlock's toy...”

I sighed again. I am no demon to become a warlock's toy? Is it even possible? At least the water felt good. Calming.

“A warlock's toy? Joe said come, why didn’t you follow him?”

“He did not say come, he said run, and I could not; you saw that the warlock blocked the way. How to run when he holds me by the hair? And once he saw he got you, why did he not come back to help you?”

“To risk his life because you were too stupid to do what he said?”

“Oh, stop it. You are blind; stop talking nonsense!...”

I am arguing with my other self about boys, but is this all? Leaving emotions aside, I need to try to think logically about my situation.

The problem was the warlock. I do not see the forest because of the trees.

How comes he was a warlock? Why a warlock? A Mephi warlock with Mephi spells?! I knew I could not possibly be the only witch in the world; that was clear to me, even if Flo thought she was unique, but I would have never expected to meet a Mephi game character?

How can I make sense of this?

Is it a dream? Am I still dreaming? Even the logout could be part of the dream!? Just a continuation of the dream I had inside? If I am still under the dream interface, if I dream it, then I can dream it to the end, no problem with it, the dream is not so bad, but if I do not dream it...

Am I nuts? I mean, really nuts?

If I am crazy, I will end up sooner or later in a hospital; I am in no hurry to end there. Maybe some medication would help, but I will not go to a doctor until I am convinced that I am crazy. I hate the idea that somebody would try to rumble inside my brain to experiment with some chemical solution. But then Matt did not call me crazy. He saw what I saw..., unless I just imagine what he said. But then... Then I am definitively lost…

So yes, I hope I am not nuts, at least not to the level that I imagine all these things that do not exist.

Then what can it be? If I am not nuts and I do not dream, then… I am, or rather, I became a witch, and I just met a guy who probably became a warlock.

How comes? What could help me become a witch and him become a warlock? Specifically, a Mephi warlock and a Mephi char witch? This is no mere coincidence!

I think the dream interface played a role.

Under the dream interface, I first incorporated Flo into me and probably triggered something that enabled me to say the same spells in reality.

Probably some genes played a role, or else all who were playing Mephi would become some weird characters. Was it only some random thing? I precisely wanted to incorporate that character in me. What happened with him? How did he become a warlock?

Damn, without that fight, I could have asked him gently, but at least with the warlock incident, I learned that I am not the only one who gained such faculty. Why did he have to behave so aggressively? Is Flo right with her orc warlock theory?

Well, supposing I am not so unique after all and other people achieved the same results with the dream interface, maybe the question is, why Mephisto game? What is so special about this game? It could be only a coincidence, or maybe there is indeed something specific to the game? What special faculties could I gain from car driving simulations, extreme skiing, or a shooter game? None? Or maybe swift reflexes?

I cannot draw a conclusion from only two cases, but possibly the dream interface and the Mephi game work in combination as some catalyst that helps one learn the faculty to materialize thoughts.

If we are two persons who did this: materialize Mephi characters so close to each other, then there must be more, many more in the world. So let us see first how this is going to unravel. I don't want to be the first case study. When people start to examine you, you are degraded to the role of a lab mouse.

Not with me, thank you.

If history is a good hint, witches do not end well as soon as people discover them. Even the false accused witches.

Whilst I was thinking about this, Flo asked again for the lead, and soon my face and my hand were looking wounded and burned. Is this real? I looked at my happy face in the mirror, not believing what I saw whilst she gave me back the lead:

“Almost forgot about your wounds!”

I should now be used to this, yet each small spell from her baffles me. It is hard to believe even if you see it with your own eyes.

If we are at the fringe of moving into another era, if we start to materialize our thoughts, this can be full of opportunities but also pitfalls and dangers.

How was the story with the Krell and the forbidden planet that I saw some time ago? The story of a civilization millions of years older which eradicated itself when they learned to materialize their thoughts?

I came out of the bathroom and went towards my room. I almost entered the room when I heard some noise coming from Lola's room. Something like a repeated whining. My first instinct was to ignore it and go to bed. I was tired and in need of rest. But I stayed and listened carefully: it was whining. Somebody was crying there.

Then I heard voices. Clara and Lola talking. OK, the sisters have their problems. I was again thinking of going into my room when I heard Clara's angry voice:

“You ruined us! The insurance does not want to pay because you drove without me! Our parents will need to sell their house!”

“But I have my driver's licence!”

“It becomes valid after you are eighteen! Couldn't you wait for two more weeks? Until then, you are only allowed to drive accompanied by a person with a driver's licence! Me! How many times do I have to tell you this?”

“I want to die...”

“Oh, stop the nonsense!”

I went to my room. Fuck I did not know that. I hurriedly checked on the internet. Yes, she was right. Yes, the insurance was right not to pay the bill. Oh, fuck!

I saw I had an email. From a Helenofdarkrealms. Another spam mail that passed through my spam filter? I almost deleted it when I remembered: this was the email address of Helen, the gamer girl!

As I wanted to open the email, Flo interrupted me:

“Why don't you try to fix Lola's problem?”

“Fix Lola's problem? How could I?”

My alter-ego has a solution for Lola's problem?

“If you had that piece of paper in your pocket, that driver's license, she would have no problem! True?”

“True, but I do not have it!”

“You could have it!”

“Yes, I could have it if I had learned. I plan to do the licence, but I do not have it yet!”

“You have the age; you could have it. Then she has no more problems!”

“What do you mean?”

“I would not be a fairy if I would not be able to make a mere license!?”

“Maybe you can make the license, but it is not only that. To be valid, it needs to be recorded in the database, else it would be easily proven as a fake!”

“I bet with you that I can make it. I can make a perfect one, and Lola would have no problems!”

“You would only fry their computers, and I would get into trouble. That's all you would achieve!”

“I checked with some mobile phones. If I do it carefully, I do not fry them."

"What?? You did the nonsense again?"

Interesting, I did not even realize she was busting the mobiles there. I mean testing. Do I start to be like those people who do things and do not remember?

"No nonsense. Checking with magic is not nonsense! I found out that too much magic fries them; a gentle infuse of magic works."

"Next time when you do something, tell me. I don't like to have something done and then do not know that I did it. How did you find out that too much magic fries them?"

"It can be that I fried one or two..."

I sighed. Hopefully, nobody thinks of me, but she must stop frying mobiles. She continued:

"I could even make some modifications. Look at your mobile phone!”

"My mobile phone! If you fried my mobile phone again, I'd kill you!"

"You cannot kill me for a mobile?!"

I took confused my mobile phone and looked at it.

"It is a way of speaking; I do not mean it seriously. Stop frying mobiles; people will make a connection to me, and then I am fried, understand?"

I had Matt's number and Joe's number in there, and I had chats with them. They both have told me they love me.

I sighed. Indeed she did not fry my new phone; she did manipulate it, a thing that was already scary enough.

“You can fake things on my phone; great, but Joe did not send me this. He knows he did not send it to me. He can show me he does not have it on his phone!”

“True. I did it as a fun thing for you. I could have done it on their phones too, but I preferred not to. It was just a joke for you. What I want to say with this is that I am confident I can do good work for Lola.”

I shrugged. Why do I argue? If she can do it, let her do it, I'll check then if it is ok.

“You can? Then do it!”

“It does not work like this. I need your help. I need to learn where those what you call records are and what all this looks like. We do not have much time; if you want to give it a try, we need to do it now, during this night. Is Lola really your friend? Do you care for her? Do you want to try it? It is a way for me to pay for your help if you are interested.”

I stood there, thinking, watching the two love declarations alternatively on my mobile phone.

“To stay in contact, here is my number: xxx. Love, Joe!” “Love, Matt!”

What do I do?

I raised my head and watched myself in the mirror. Fuck!

“We do it!”