As soon as Navisdan walks out the door with Vani, Edie pulls her granddaughter away from the living room. She takes her into the guest room, and sits her down on the bed.

“What’s wrong, grandma?” she asks as her grandmother settles beside her.

“Lovebug,” she pauses. Then she turns so she can look Marsha fully in the face. “What you saw today, outsiders aren’t supposed to see.”

“You mean humans,” Marsha replies.

“Not entirely,” Edie says. “Some of those within our community are completely devoid of power, and are totally human as you’d understand it. The universe isn’t without mistakes, and the magical community knows that there will inevitably be instances wherein a phy-… outsider will glimpse our world. According to longstanding tradition, any outsider who witnesses something they shouldn’t, should have their memories wiped.”

Suddenly, it feels like a shadow has descended and wrapped tight, vice-like fingers around Marsha’s heart. Her eyes lose their light, and a sullen expression creeps into her face. Her heart feels like its being constricted by weights-- and breathing isn’t particularly smooth, either.

“It’s for our safety,” her grandmother tells her. Grasping her hand and squeezing. “And because you are my granddaughter, I am being given this opportunity to explain things to you before…”

Marsha’s always loved myths and magic. Growing up with her parents... She was different. Ostracized. Alone. In moments when she near drowned in despair, myths and magical stories had constituted an escape. She’d imagine herself in those fantastical worlds, and her life would be bearable again. She finally knows that those worlds she imagined herself in, were real. And now it would be taken away.

Her eyes start to sting as tears gather. Her breathing gets heavier. Then her face crumples up and the waterworks come. She leans into her grandmothers’ shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Oh, lovebug,” Edie says, running her palms down her hair. “Trust me, you won’t feel a thing. It’ll be like it never happened.”

“But I don’t want to forget, grandma,” Marsha cries. “I don’t want to.” She lifts her face from Edie’s shoulder. It’s all soggy with tears. “I’ve got n-nowhere else to g-gk-go. And I don’ wanna forget...ab-about Vani.” She places her face back in Edie’s shoulder.

Edie’s eyes gleam with emotion. She continues to run her palms over Marsha’s hair, smoothing it, while she gazes into the middle-distance over her head.

“You wouldn’t have to leave,” Edie says. “You simply wouldn’t remember anything beyond bringing Vani to my doorstep. I’d tell you that you passed out. That Vani had gone home with their father.”

Marsha shakes her head and sobs a little louder. Feeling like the whole world is ending and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. That guy from earlier was easily strong enough to overpower her if he wanted. She didn’t like to think about it. Even if she ran now, would they let her go? Let her just keep this knowledge that she’d kill or die to preserve?

“Alright,” Edie grabs Marsha gently by the shoulders, pushing her away and cupping Marshas’ face in her hands. Trying to wipe away her tears.

“I d-don’t want to forg-get, grandma,” Marsha says. One last time, as if it will matter.

“I know…” Edie says. Thinking long and hard for a few moments on the ramifications of what she’s about to say. It’s something that is only afforded to those who’ve already shown that they might be a good fit for their world. But then, Marsha had just saved the Prince’s heir.

“There is a way,” Edie says. Petting Marsha’s hair again. “But it would mean dedicating the rest of your life to learning, studying our people and their ways and truly integrating. You’d never be able to go back-”

“Yes,” Marsha blurts. “I d-don’t want to go back, Grandma.” Her heart lifting at the possibility that she might not have to ever go back. To that world of…cold, dark loneliness. Where magic doesn’t exist and people like Vani and their father are just fairytales.

“Very well then. Before an outsider can be adopted in, they must first pass a test. And then if they pass that one, they must pass more. Magical tests. Things that can only take place in dreams,” Edie cuts herself off. She can’t say any more, it would be giving Marsha an unfair advantage.

Marsha nods, slowly and with very little energy left for today. She’s walked too much, her body aches. And she’s cried too much, so now her head and face also ache. Her entire body is just one big wracking pain at this point. But she’ll be damned if she gives up the chance she’s been waiting her whole life for, just because she’s tired and achy.

Edie looks into her granddaughter’s teary eyes and sighs. She understands that Marsha has had to handle too much today. This might be the respite she needs after all. She gets to her feet.

“Wait here,” she tells Marsha. And sweeps out of the room.

Marsha sniffles, and wipes the tears off her face with the back of her hand.

‘What if I can’t pass?’ Marsha wonders. ‘How do you pass a magic test for determining if you’re like…I dunno, trustworthy, or something?’

She doesn’t think of herself as trustworthy. She thinks if given the opportunity, at any point in time, she would have happily given up her parents to anyone who would listen and do something about it. And when she’d been in high school, she hadn’t been very loyal to her friends, either.

Everyone had drifted apart and never spoken again. They barely spoke to begin with. ‘What if I’m…inherently untrustworthy?’ she asks herself, feeling a pang of horror. Not only at the fact that she might lose her only chance to be a part of a magical world, but that she might be inherently dishonest, disloyal…

Edie walks in, a small glass orb sitting in her cupped palms. The Orb is made of plain frosted glass. It’s what happens when magic is applied that makes it extraordinary. Edie uses it for scrying and other magical pursuits. But it’s also essential for testing ones’ latent abilities.

She knows that Marsha will at least have the flicker. As long as that is true, she will pass this test-- but how much she will pass, that will determine whether or not Marsha is truly open to them. If she has as much as a Nix, even-- she’ll be inducted without problems. But if it’s barely a flicker, that means that will be all there is.

Most humans have that flicker. For the direct line of descent from practicing Wix, it’s slightly stronger. But not by much. It’s all determined by belief, after all. Not blood. But if she were to have no flicker at all, like her mother…

“Alright,” Edie says, sitting beside her granddaughter. “Here goes nothing.” She hands the ball over to Marsha.

Marsha receives it, stares at it, and then looks up at her grandmother for instruction. She might be twenty-five, but right now she feels about a decade younger.

“You need to concentrate, lovebug,” Edie says. “Relax. Don’t try too hard. Just be yourself. You can try shutting your eyes, and taking deep breaths. Just think about something that makes you feel true joy. Love, happiness, anything uplifting and good.”

One can draw power from anywhere, but Edie feels that Marsha has had enough feeling terrible tonight.

Marsha shuts her eyes, and starts taking deep breaths. Gradually, the anxiety on her face ebbs, and she feels…somewhat calm. It’s difficult to feel calm when ones’ mind is constantly buzzing as Marsha’s does, but. She decides to view that background buzzing as white noise. Allowing it to flow over and around her, like when she’s having a panic attack and she actually takes comfort in her strange little brain quirks.

‘Something happy,’ she thinks. And then pictures the moment Vani ran into their fathers’ arms. Jubilant and safe. And for just a moment as Marsha’s lips wobble and her eyes fill with tears again under her eyelids. It’s Marsha running to her Grandmother. A small child of six again.

She remembers so well how her grandmother used to greet her at the door.

(Hemy Lobu!)

Edie gasps, eyes widening. Marsha opens her own and starts screeching with delight.

“I did it!” Marsha shrieks and stands up, bouncing with the orb in her hands. Staring into it with an expression of such profound happiness that it breaks Edie’s heart.

The orb is now alight with color, three of them, in fact. Red which bleeds into orange and then back into red and then into purple. The three colors fill the orb like ribbons of goo, arcing this way and that, spinning and twining around each other.

Edie smiles, but it’s more out of habit at the display of excitement. A greater part of her is shocked to the core. Neophytes – those with the potential to become Wix – awaken when they’re young. The latest a Neophyte has ever awakened was sixteen. But Marsha is in her mid-twenties.

Something about that worries Edie, but when Marsha looks at her, she smiles and she gets up and she kisses her on the forehead. What else is a grandmother to do?