Tuesday, January 4, 2022 - TriBeCa, New York City, United States

Ella stared at the kneeling… creatures. They all looked human but with her eyes glowing and her crown on her head she could see the slight silhouette of something not human, scorpion like creature.

Everything hurt. Her ribs were still broken. She was covered in wet, cold, dirty slush and detritus of the alley. But all that paled compared to her face. Her jaw couldn’t move well and — and this part almost made her cry — she had clearly lost some teeth.

The creature all kowtowed in front of her, and kept muttering some sort of ritualistic nonsense. Ella could feel like she was going numb and needed help. She needed them to leave. Not enough time for answers before she passed out.

“Get out of here! Leave me alone!” She screamed. Coughing from the pain in her chest. Her eyes were tearing and she felt a bit lightheaded.

The creatures turned around and ran. Almost tripping over one another.

Ella felt her vision going and she found herself on the ground again. The sun looked like it had moved some and her face was numb where it had pressed into the snow. Breathing hurt.

She fumbled for her phone and managed to send out a text before passing out again.

The next thing she knew, Jade and Charlie were at her side pulling her up. She tried to scream when they pulled her up from the pain but started coughing. Blood sprayed onto the snow.

“Shit. We have to get her to the hospital. Call an ambulance!”

“No… no ambulance. No hospital” Ella protested. “Can’t explain…”

She passed out again. When she came to, she was in a warm bed and felt woozy. The beeping of a heart monitor was obvious.

“Ella!” Charlie whispered. “You are awake! Be quiet. The doctor said you have some broken ribs, a broken jaw, a concussion…”

“No. Can’t explain… the hospital…” it was hard to form words.

“You aren’t in a hospital. You are back at my place. I had the doctor make a house call.”

“Fuck… you can do that?” Except it came out more like “ooo can do dat..” Ella couldn’t form words. She felt around her mouth and there were teeth missing. Her jaw didn’t work quite right.

“Hmm. Yeah. I can. My dad has a service on retainer.” Charlie then muttered under her breath, “although how I am going to explain this I have no idea…”

“Let me shee…”

“Umm. Ella you are pretty fucked up. I don’t think you should.”

“No… let me see.” She carefully enunciated.

Charlie set the lights to dim which caused an immediate spike in Ella’s headache. Ella blinked a few times and saw she was in Charlie’s bedroom in a giant four poster bed with curtains pulled aside. It was night outside.

Charlie rummaged a bit in a mirrored vanity, and pulled out a hand mirror which she wordlessly handed to Ella.

Ella snatched it and held it up.

Ella didn’t consider herself vain. She knew she was good looking, even by New York standards. But looking in that mirror put lie to that conceit. Not the yellow and purple mottling of her face. Nor the obvious black eye she was going to have. But a lot of her teeth were missing. Knocked out when she had been kicked in the face.

Tears started streaming from her eyes and she tried to sob, which made her ribs hurt more. Which caused her to cry more. She sobbed and Charlie sat down next to her and soothed her hair. Ella eventually fell asleep again.

When she woke up, she saw that Charlie had fallen asleep at the end of the bed her hair spread out all over. Jade was sitting in the corner, asleep in a large loveseat.

Ella slid out of bed and limped over to the bathroom. The marble floors felt cold to her feet. She closed the door and then looked at herself in the mirror, giving her eyes time to adapt. Her face was swollen on one side. Her teeth showed obvious gaps. She pulled off the shirt Charlie and Jade must have stuck her in, and she a large contusion underneath her left breast. Her ribs hurt as she prodded them.

She forced her attention back to her face. She could always get some sort of implant, but that thought almost broke her. She leaned forward and her pendant swung free from where she had removed her shirt.

“Couldn’t hurt to try,” she whispered. She reached in deep. As hard as she had ever done. Her eyes flared bright, right through the contacts that she had been sleeping in. She drew more and more.

First she started with her ribs. She could feel the crack in the bones, the blood under her skin from broken caapillaries, and the edematous fluid around the injury. She pulled deeper and she could feel the bone shifting back into place, the fluid draining, the blood fading away.

“Good warm up,” she said to herself and took a deep breath, scared of the expected pain which never came.

“One down. Now the teeth.” She looked inside. She could feel the sense of her teeth and the injury and as she pulled she could feel the way her teeth should be. The image of rightness that she pulled at. But it wouldn’t break through.

She came out of it gasping. Her hand trembling. Her face had healed some. The black eye receding, the swelling coming down and her jaw felt better. But the teeth were still gone.

Ella looked at the dangling pendant and without hesitation jabbed it into her chest, right below the heart. She could feel the magic flow into her but it still felt apart from her. She tried again and drained herself again to not see anything.

She grabbed the pendant and finally ripped it off of her neck. She looked at it, a small drop of blood where she had tried to forge a stronger connection. And, not giving herself time to think, stuck it in her mouth to swallow it. She could maybe draw more magic from it that way.

But something happened as she focused on the feeling of this large bear tooth on her tongue. She could feel it melting. It flowed into the jagged bits of teeth that were left, into the roots and she could feel it moving into her jaw. It felt horrible and invasive and slimy.

Her eyes rolled up, and she started trembling. Foam came from her mouth and if a doctor had been there to see her; they would have thought it a seizure.

Ella could see it all. All the quantum superstates sitting around her, how she could reach out to collapse them in her favor. How she could reach through the what-ifs of multiple dimensions of time and bring those potentials here. How the light she had been pulling was only part of the types of light she could pull and why. Billions, trillions, of possibilities opened to her. And soon overwhelmed her.

She caught herself before she entirely fell to the floor and managed to lower herself down before passing out again…

Charlie woke her with Jade hours later. Yelling at her with concern that she had gotten up out of bed with nobody to help her.

Jade had obvious concern as well, but that distance that had sprung up between them was still there — keeping her quiet.

After a while, and a promise that she would not go to the bathroom by herself, she finally got to sit for a moment. Neither Charlie nor Jade had seen the full extent of her damage the night before. So the teeth and reduction of bruising might have been noticeable but neither said anything.

Ella looked into the hand mirror and smiled. The bears tooth was gone, and was part of her. She could feel it, no longer separate but a part of her. Her bones were suffused with it. But she also could feel it leak into the environment around her.

She flared her eyes and it was so bright that both Charlie and Jade woke up.