Ride on, Shooting Star - 1.1

In the center of the void of space far, far away, the sun burns bright in the darkness. Everywhere around me, I see the stars and the black, the reds and blues of gases in space, the constellations lined together in glowing streaks. Cygnus, Pegasus, Draco, Andromeda: they all dance around me as the void spins.

I keep trying to correct my position: I have to catch the sun because the darkness is after me. I can feel it creeping closer as the constellations are swallowed one by one. The shadow is looking at me hungrily, ready to eat.

The sun will save me if I can just reach it. The sun will save me if it will just reach out for me. The warmth that fights the cold, the light that fights the darkness.

Blood rains from behind me.

The darkness has bitten one of Pegasus’ legs. The teeth climb up in gaseous form, like an all-consuming fog. Pegasus fades and bleeds, trying to reach out to me, but I can’t turn back. I have to get to the sun because the sun can save me. Pegasus screeches; the blood falls faster.

The darkness has taken Cygnus, the poor beast torn apart starry feather after starry feather. Horror-stricken screams echo in the darkness before they fade away. The sun is still too far away.

The darkness has taken Draco. From head to tail, his long body is eaten piece by piece as the darkness cuts it apart. The sun is still too far away.

The darkness has taken Andromeda. The girl’s faint cries fall to whimpers as she’s simply devoured whole. The sun is even further away.

The darkness is at my back, its long tongue slowly wrapping around my ankle. Pulling me in, I desperately claw at something, anything I could use to drag myself away, to get to the sun, to escape the darkness.

My hands cut through air, and the darkness takes me.

“No, no, no!”

When I opened my eyes, I found myself in my room, reaching my hand out for something intangible. My alarm was buzzing its irritating buzz, and I wanted nothing more than to throw it against the wall. My stomach was cramped, my whole body felt like it was on fire, and I was sweating like I had a fever.

It was when I noticed the blood on my sheets that I knew why.

A miserable walk to the shower, a miserable bundling of my sheets to the laundry room, a miserable conversation with Dad.

“Don’t worry, honey. This happens to all girls sooner or later. You just had it a little later than sooner, yeah?”

It wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t lessen the impulse to growl or hiss at him. “I know, Dad, but do we really have to keep talking about this? I’m going to be late.”

The old man scratched at his face like it was the only thing he could think to do but then found more courage. “Well, I talked to your brother about something similar when he was your age. I figured that it was only right that I try to talk to you about this.”

He attempted to smile, put a hand on my shoulder trying to be something like a father, but I just bristled at his touch.

Throwing his hand off me, I yelled, “Well, maybe he should come back and talk to me, too, since neither of you even know what I’m going through!”

Be angry! Do it! React somehow, anything! Show me you’re real!

I waited for something, anything, but he never did look me in the eyes. He just appeared exhausted, like the mention of Aaron had punched him in the stomach.

Tired of waiting, I let out an irritated breath. “I’ll be home later.”

With that, I stormed off, hoping that this would all just go away. The pain in my abdomen told me that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, though.

The morning sun, the cold wind, and the thick fog didn’t do much to help my mood, but they did clear my head a little. I shouldn’t have yelled at him, but I was still mad about the other day. Why can’t he just talk to me? The more I think about them, the more I realize how many of our conversations revolve around inane trivial shit. Are you always serious, or are you never serious? Are you ever going to teach me magic like you did Aaron, or are you just going to give me more weird unfinished anecdotes?

“Ugh, say something, damn it!”

Before I had the chance to stop it, magic had built up in my fingers, and the first attack spell I knew pushed its way into reality. When I threw my fist down with the unintended call of my words, a beam exploded into life at my side. It shot into the side of the road by the southern bridge, partially burning it, partially reflecting off the wet surface and shooting across the bank below.

A splash, followed by Poppie’s voice, came from the water below the bridge. “Holy shit!”

Like a wave washing over me, I bolted down the wet grassy bank to make sure I didn’t just murder my best friend.

“Are ya trying to kill me!?” she yelled as soon as she saw me. Luckily, she was just in the shallow part, which meant her butt would be wet on the way to school, but it would dry before we got there, with or without a spell.

Ease flooded my heart and I breathed it in greedily. “Oh, thank the Goddess.” I moved into the shallow water to help her up. “You’re okay, right? What are you doing in the water? It’s, like, sixty degrees out.”

Poppie grabbed my hand and I easily pulled her to standing. Long, wild, curly, red hair that had a cotton candy quality to it; harsh cold blue eyes, freckles all over her cheeks, and a short stocky body that probably weighed half as much as mine did, despite her gut. She looked into my eyes while leaving something unsaid, then went back to searching the river. I didn’t bother asking since I knew what she would say, so I stood by the concrete incline that led back to the road. Sadly, this was just another familiar routine.

In the mornings along the Ambient, the mist that rose from the river was colored by the early sunlight into this pink-orange haze that, if I didn’t despise it, I might call it pretty. It was cool, too cold for wet socks, but not so unpleasant that I hated it.

“Oh, there it is!” Poppie went deeper into the little, shallow river and fished up a pink pencil case covered in balloons and rainbows. She walked back to the bank, put the case between her palms, then pressed her fingertips together. Magic bubbled on the surface of her skin and Poppie sang,

“Like the desert winds, the gale blows.”

A tune for an incantation, the melody rises and falls like wind over a hill. From all around us, bright pink haze blew in a hot tornado, twisting and shifting everything like a massive hair dryer. A moment later, the gas was replaced by the normal morning fog, and both of us were dry again.

I knew better than to ask for specific details when she was in a bad mood like this, but figured I might at least be considerate. “Special day?”

Poppie rolled her eyes. “No, just another morning. I figured you would’ve passed me sooner. How about you?”

Thinking about this morning had disgust flood my face. I turned away and headed toward the concrete stairs back to the road. “Let’s just go.”

“Sounds like a special day.” Poppie followed me for a moment, then cut me off before I could reach the stairs. “It didn’t finally happen, did it?”

Before I could react, she dropped to her knees and flipped up my skirt.

I kicked her in the face, pulled my hand back just in time to not kill her with a beam. “Poppie, what the hell!?”

She rubbed the blood from her nose and got a big smile on her face. “Oh, somebody is having a special day, isn’t she? How does it feel to finally suffer like the rest of us?” She popped back up and threw an arm around my neck like nothing happened.

How irritating. “Don’t touch me. I’m already in a bad mood as it is. I don’t need you making it worse.”

I made the climb up the stairway and back onto the road as Poppie followed quickly behind. The pink air, the bright sun, and the wet road all came together to pinprick at my skin like the whole world was trying to get on my nerves. All in the form of the one person in Downbeat I could really call a ‘friend,’ as skeptical as that word was.

“I mean, I could get you in a better mood. I know a trick or two, ya know?” she said with a raised brow.

I knew where this road led. I was not in the mood for this. “Yeah, sure you do.” I don’t even know why I bother with her some days.

Holding her nose up in the air, some undeserved hint of superiority in her voice, she continued, “You’re damn right I do. But don’t worry, you’ll understand when you’re older.” She gave me a side glance. “Aaron knows what’s up.”

The river fog was exceedingly thick today. It does this after it rains like it did yesterday. Much like I hate it, I hate it when Poppie leads me on like this too. “What does my brother have to do with anything?”

Her crystal blue eyes looked like they were laughing at me.

In a moment, she lowered herself, then tackled me to the ground. We rolled on the springy wet grass until she was sitting on top of me. A new phrase, another look: the game starts as it always does, whether or not I’m a willing participant. “I know all kinds of things, Dawny. I could teach you…”

I feel so tired. I’ve been stuck in this same loop for a year now. Get up, get ready for school, meet Poppie by the river, and then she does this. She always does this.

“Your hair smells really good today. Did you get a new shampoo?” She bit my ear softly. Her breath warmed my skin as her hands traveled inside my uniform.

“No, it’s the same as always—Poppie, we’re going to be late! You’re too young to be doing this. I’m too young to be doing this!”

Her lips made their way down to my neck. “We’re the same age; what does it matter?”

I pushed her off and forced her to see my eyes. “Poppie, please.”

She frowned but eventually sighed and buttoned my blazer back up. “Spoilsport.”

“In other news today, Empress Luna is announcing a plan for civilian-assisted space exploration. A new branch of the Arian Space Administration government office will be formed called the Arian Space Colonization Agency, or ASCA for short. She believes that the future of mankind lies among the stars, and the next generation will be the first to visit worlds beyond our own, making Aria the forefront of that future.”

Poppie pressed her hands over her ears and groaned at the electronics store across the street. “Geez, does anybody ever just go in there and complain about the noise? It’s like they want to blow out the speakers on that thing before they get a chance to sell it!”

I didn’t really think it was all that loud, but she’s always like this with noise. She’s usually got headphones on her somewhere to block everything out, but she takes them off around me.

I shrugged. “Eh, let them do what they want. Who cares? It’s not like there are enough people in this town to even come out this early. I mean, maybe Stephanie’s dad or Amethyst’s mom would buy it if they really wanted to, but those people have real money and can buy better stuff than what that crappy local shop has.”

To get to school from my house on River Road, I meet Poppie at the bridge that leads out of town going south, then we head north on Sapphire Street, the only ‘major road’ in Downbeat that isn’t the highway. As it is the ‘major road,’ there are lots of little shops and restaurants from here to the northern end of town, including an old electronics shop that sells, well, mostly old electronics. The cafés, which are mostly located on the other side of the highway further north, are open this early, but little else is.

Shops here are mostly little brick buildings all stuck together in a row, but with oddities here and there like the pre-war era diner that’s made out of an old mobile home still on the wheels, and the foreign restaurants that are either too expensive for Dad or too expensive for everyone, and I don’t understand how they stay in business like that.

From here by the restaurants, we take a left going west on Misty Drive, and that takes us directly to the girl’s school. You’ll see new faces every now and again thanks to the Air Force base further south, but those deployments are scarce and they never last long. People come, people go, but nobody ever stays. Except Dad. Dad stays. Aaron left, but I’m still here.

“Woah, do you see that!?”

Here she is complaining about the volume, then she yells in my ears. After trying to rip my sleeve off and jumping and pointing with her other hand, I noticed a bright burning shooting star in the dawn blue sky.

“Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.” It was almost pink as it burned through the atmosphere, shining in a magnificent blaze, leaving a streaming trail of gold behind.

Poppie gasped and grabbed my face. “You haven’t!? Oh my Goddess, oh my Goddess! Dawny, when you see a shooting star, you have to make a wish! Okay, okay, I wish… that all the bad people would just go away! Okay, now you!”

I looked back up at the star as it shot through the sky and wondered.

A wish? What would I wish for? I stopped believing in Santa a few years ago when Aaron told me he wasn’t real. Why would I make a wish now? Shooting stars are just rocks hurtling through space. They aren’t magic by nature. Nothing in space is magical; only Earth has stuff like that.

But, what if she’s right and it really will come true? I mean, a wish is harmless, right? If there’s nothing to it and words alone don’t hold any power, then… Whispering quietly and turning my face away from Poppie, I clasped my hands.

“I wish… I could meet her.”

It shouldn’t matter, but I didn’t need anybody to hear that, especially not Poppie.

“Hey! I shared my wish, so share! What’d you wish for?” She grabbed me and shook me. Thankfully, even though she’s an ambient mage, Poppie has never been as strong as her three sisters. While they all had that strength enhancing spell stuck in their bodies in the womb like most ambients, Poppie has always been the odd one out.

I quickly pushed her off and rolled my eyes. “Wishes are dumb. They’re just words. There’s no magic in a rock burning up in the atmosphere, and there’s no magic in just hoping for something. It doesn’t matter what I wished for because it will never happen.”

Poppie pouted and crossed her arms. “Man, you are a spoilsport today. I thought Arians were supposed to be ‘joyous’ or something.” Terse with me, Poppie looked back up at the shooting star.

However, she then tilted her head to the side as confusion washed over her face. “Hey, uh… does that… look like it’s getting closer?”

I stared at the white star myself and—honestly? It did look like it was getting closer. And fast. Really fast. “We should probably run.”

Poppie frowned. “I mean, don’t we die if it hits anyways?”

I nodded. “Most likely.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

As quickly as possible, we bolted in the opposite direction down the sidewalk. It was still getting bigger, and we could see the fire breaking through what little cloud cover Downbeat had today. The trail was getting larger, and I started to hear it.

Zooming through the wind, Poppie and I ran as fast as our legs would carry us, but the sound only kept getting closer, like an airplane or a rocketship breaking through the atmosphere, coming right at us.

Then, the closer it got, the more I thought it sounded like an engine. When it was right at our backs, it did sound like an engine. We passed the point where the star was visible, but the white cone around it was now just above town. Good Goddess, is this the day I die? This is too showy for somebody like me! I’m a dull person with a dull life who needs to die in a dull way! You’re not supposed to throw a twist in the story right at the very end!

A big shockwave ran through us and a few nearby windows shattered in little explosions of glass. The feeling in my body went on hold, numbness filling every inch of me.

Ears ringing, head pounding, I tried to stop the deafening sound, only to get a full view of the thing. The star was behind us!

No, wait, that’s… a person. On a motorcycle. A flying motorcycle. Carrying a white guitar off to her left side, like it was a sword or something. As the ringing in my ears subsided, something inside me recognized the noise as music.

She was blaring some song and… staring directly at me?

“Oooh, Sunset, darling! Mommy’s home!”

The last thing I saw was a big white woman on a flying motorcycle.

None of this made sense.

Not her being as big as she was, not the name she called me by, not the flying motorcycle that looked like it was made twenty years ago, and definitely not the pink-white electric bass she swung at my face.

TWANG!

“Aaaah! What did you do to Dawn!?”

What?

Who did what to me?

Oh Goddess, my head hurts… did I just get my skull bashed in? Everything is on fire—I can’t even tell where my hands are.

“I hit her with my bass; what does it look like? Geez, are all children this stupid nowadays?”

Who is that? Don’t I know that voice?

Or maybe my ears are just leaking brain matter and I’m experiencing a slow death.

“Hmm. Nothing is happening. Maybe she needs more encouragement! Come’ere, Sunset!”

What is that sound? It’s like somebody’s striking chords indiscriminately on a guitar and revving an engine somewhere far away.

Oh Goddess, everything's so blurry. I can’t see, my head hurts, my stomach hurts, everything hurts.

“Stop it! Why would you hit Dawn!? She didn’t do anything wrong!”

Is that… Poppie?

“Wait. This is totally Sunset. I could swear her name was Sunset.”

“No! This is Dawn! Dawn Hibana!”

“Oh, shit. Did I hit the wrong kid again? Well. I can still fix this. Looks like she’s still breathing. Nothing ‘resuscitate’ can’t solve.”

My ears were finally normalizing and feeling was returning to me. Somebody was shoved out of the way, and heavy boots stomped closer.

Resuscitate? Isn’t that the spell where you forcibly restart the patient’s heart?

“But… didn’t you just say she’s still breathing?”

Goddess, I wish my vision would clear up. What in the world is going on?

“I’ll save you, Sunset, darling!”

I managed to blink away the blurriness just in time to see that giant woman’s golden glowing hand grip my face. If I had to guess, she could crush my skull between her fingers if she wanted to. I wasn’t sure if it was the magic making me feel like I was being electrocuted or her fingers digging into my head like they were going to pop it like a grape.

I struggled as much as I could to push her off until, finally, she let go.

“Whew! I was worried I might’ve actually killed one this time. Well, not that worried, but whatever.”

All my senses back to normal, I sat up straight and tried to rub the pain away. Why did she do that!? I never stopped breathing! Why did she hit me!? How did she hit me? Nobody can make a bike that flies, much less one that looks older than I am! Who is this?

“What is wrong with you!? Are you out of your mind!?”

I finally got a good look at this person, and she was humongous: a woman with the porcelain pale skin of a northern Arian, a pair of bright green emerald eyes, and a mass of curly golden hair so long that cutting off half of it might clothe a large child—possibly even Poppie. She was so tall that Poppie could probably hide in that hair for that matter.

She was wearing an old sunbleached half-helmet that was probably black at one point, slightly tinted wind goggles, and a long white scarf that might as well have been a bedsheet on a normal human for as long as it was. An open midriff-cut red leather jacket that was either very tight or her arms underneath the sleeves were just that big, a midriff-cut yellow shirt with the word ‘pillows’ written in black, which may or may not have been a reference to the massive things under her shirt; it was clear to all the world that she didn’t know what a bra was. Her equally tight white pants were doing their best to contain her lower body but failing as they only made it halfway up her hips. Finally, she had big black biker boots with gold plates bolted onto the toe and golden zippers that ran up the middle.

The words ‘Biker Bitch’ came to mind.

From her high height, she practically doubled over and put her face right in front of mine. If I had to guess, she probably was in her late twenties, and she was very pretty.

“Hmm… nah, this is definitely the right kid. She looks just like him. One good swing should do it this time. Now hold still, Sunset!”

She stood back up, took a step back, then raised her hands up behind her shoulder like she was about to grab something. That pink-white bass I saw earlier jumped from the ground, like a child being launched off a see-saw, to her hands in gold magic, and—

Wait a minute, this crazy old lady is going to kill me!

“Wait, sto—!”

Poppie jumped in front of her, but rather than, I don’t know, not attacking her, she changed the angle mid-swing and slammed Poppie right in the temple.

Twang!

The sound was like the beginning of a lullaby: something sweet and familiar, something warm and soft, but vibrant and alive.

Poppie corkscrewed off into the grass by the sidewalk, and the bass rang out through the mostly empty street.

The old woman smiled wide and pumped one of her arms. “Hell yeah, that’s a home run! I knew there were good candidates here, but I didn’t think I’d find two at the same time.” She turned to me with strange familiarity plastered on her face. “You heard that. It sounded great, didn’t it, Sunset?” Smiling like a wild beast finding fresh meat, like I was supposed to know what the hell she was talking about.

The Biker Bitch was making direct eye contact with me, so I assume I’m Sunset, whoever that’s supposed to be. “Um, my name is Dawn, and what the hell are you doing hitting us with that thing!? Are you out of your mind!?”

The Biker Bitch remounted her big cruiser and cradled her chin in a thoughtful pose.

Oh my Goddess, she’s really considering it.

“Probably. Hey look, she’s back up! Here, these are for your little problem. Kay, bye~!”

The giantess snapped her fingers, materializing a package of ‘assorted female hygiene products’ at my feet, then her massive boot slammed down on the bike’s starter, forcing the engine to roar to life. She pulled her goggles down, pulled the clutch down, and rolled all the way down on the gas.

Clutch slammed to the engine, the rear tire spun, and the bike lurched forward, sending the front wheel soaring in the air. She rushed past northward, and before I knew it, she was gone in a cloud of burnt rubber.

I think I sat there on the road like a lame duck for maybe ten minutes, trying to parse together what in the living hell just happened.

When I didn’t find an answer, I fixed myself up, picked up the package and threw it in my backpack, then collected my drunk-staggering Poppie.

“I knew we were going to be late.”

“Miss Hibana? Miss Hibana. Miss Hibana!”

Running down the hall as quickly as I could, I grabbed the door just in time to hear Mrs. Rich call my name for the third time. “Here!”

All eyes trained on me. I’m sure I looked spectacular right now: from Poppie getting all up on me to the incident with the Biker Bitch, there was little doubt that all the trouble I went through to straighten my hair had gone to waste, and not a single piece of my uniform was properly in place.

The larger, shorter Mrs. Rich looked me up and down. “Did you encounter any difficulty getting here this morning?”

I thought about it. I could say what actually happened, i.e. being attacked by a giantess with a guitar on a flying motorcycle entering the atmosphere from space.

Or I could, like, not, I guess.

Good Goddess, is that really what happened… like, fifteen minutes ago? It just happened, yet it still doesn’t feel real.

“It’s a long story,” I decided.

Mrs. Rich considered pursuing her question, but decided against it. “Very well then. Take your seat.”

As I started toward my chair, I made eye contact with Amethyst, whom I met at the beginning of this semester. Quickly, she took her phone out under her desk, then returned to attention.

Taking my seat at the desk just in front her, I put my backpack down then grabbed my phone. A new text—from Amethyst, obviously.

“What happened?” she asked. A question for the ages, if there ever was one.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Mrs. Rich began, “let us begin with the lesson.”

She took her textbook out of her purse, then clicked on the projector to show the slide show that goes with the chapter. “It seems as if most of you know your second-level spells already, so we’ll be using today and Monday to cover those spells. We’ll then move to the practical section during the rest of the week. So long as everyone produces satisfactory results, we’ll advance to third-level starting on the fourteenth for the rest of the unit.

“Now then, on page 108…”

Well, that's sort of refreshing. I thought we’d end up stuck in second level till next year. Huh. Guess it’s two weeks to play my game instead of a month. Noting that in my phone’s calendar, I stood up my text book and answered Amethyst.

“I got my first period today. It’s been a rough morning.” Send.

And what a morning it was indeed. Didn’t I hear ‘resuscitate’ earlier? That’s what she said, wasn’t it? How bizarre. She was throwing magic around the whole time we interacted with her, but I couldn’t analyze anything she was doing. What even is ‘resuscitate?’ I know what it does. Or at least, I think I know what it does. But my heart never stopped, and I’m not sure it did anything to me at all, other than make me uncomfortable.

Buzz, buzz.

The screen shows a reply.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Darling. Are you doing okay? I know my first one was bad when I got it earlier in the year. I was miserable for a week, but it gets easier. Sometimes. Did you have everything you needed to deal with it? I keep extras in my bag if you don’t.”

There’s another question. How did she know? I mean, perhaps today wasn’t the best day to wear the white panties, but I put on compression shorts underneath! Then again, Poppie figured it out immediately, so… bah, she’s been waiting for this day ever since she started having her cycles. If anything, she just picked up on what I didn’t say. I wonder if… what if the spell the Biker Bitch used on me wasn’t resuscitate at all?

I caught Amethyst’s crystal blues waiting for a response, so I picked my phone back up. “I did. Poppie and I stopped by the drug store on the way here. That’s why I was late.”

Because, the lie is more convenient than saying, ‘I was attacked by a nine-foot tall giantess who magicked up a bag full of tampons and pads.’ Where did she even get them? Did she just steal them from somewhere? Even if she didn’t, that was still a fourth-level teleport, and she cast so much so often! What was making the bike fly? Was that her too? Was she sustaining ‘flight’ on top of everything else? If she’s an avian, she’s one hell of an avian.

My phone buzzed again, and my eyes widened the moment I saw the screen.

“Oh, good. Well, not ‘good’ in that you’re having your time right now, but good that you didn’t get attacked. Jacklyn was telling me earlier that she was nearly run over by this giant woman on an old motorcycle.”

I swallowed. There was no way. It couldn’t be.

Another text. “She said she swung some kind of guitar at her, and before she knew what’d happened, she was here at the school as if nothing did. Naturally, I wouldn’t have believed her if I didn’t run into the biker woman myself! Goddess, it was like something out of a dream.

“She appeared out of nowhere like she’d turned a corner, and I only saw her in time to get a glimpse of her before the bass slammed right into my face. It’s still fuzzy since this happened almost half an hour before the first bell rang, but I distinctly remember a song playing and simply a massive river of flowing curly golden locks! Her hair was so long but in such good condition; I can only imagine how much effort it takes to maintain something like that.”

This cannot be real. She cannot be real. Maybe it’s like that one experiment where a whole town claimed to have amnesia all at the same time. Except, in Downbeat’s case, it’s a hallucination. Just, what in the—

“And, how about resuscitate? Can anyone tell me what the second-level spell ‘resuscitate’ does?” Mrs. Rich asked the class.

Yeah, resuscitate is a second-level spell. Stephanie will probably answer since she likes to brown-nose even if her charisma is way, way higher than her intelligence. She’s really not all that charismatic either.

As expected, the mayor’s prissy daughter raised her hand then answered, “‘Resuscitate’ is part of the electricity family of elemental spells. It sends a weak electric pulse through the body, directed at the heart. It is used in emergencies in hospitals and out in the world when people stop breathing.”

Mrs. Rich nodded in approval. “Excellent, Miss Houdin. Now then…”

That’s what it felt like she did to me, but there’s no way that’s right since I didn’t feel it in my heart but more along the lines of ‘all over.’ I need to put more time into research here. I think I’ve got just about every spell in the textbook memorized even if I can’t perform most of the upper-level ones, but if that giantess was casually casting flight and sustaining it without being an avian, then maybe she was using a whole bunch of upper-level magic? That would certainly explain why I couldn’t tell what it was; I’ve never really seen anything beyond fourth-level spells in person.

I picked up my phone and answered, “Geez, Amethyst, ya know that sounds kinda crazy, right? It’s a little hard to believe.”

I then moved on to open an online spell glossary. Headphones in, music on, I started to read.

By the time the lecture ended, I’d learned a bit about fifth-level spells.

We quantify magical energy in watt hours, much like we do electricity. When magical energy is summoned to the part of the body where it’s either expelled from or used within, then starts the consumption of energy. Simple spells, like your standard first-level levitate, will cost you something like one watt or one joule per second to sustain and something like ten joules to activate. For most spells, the rule is: your activation cost is ten times your sustain cost. Course, it varies wildly between spells and mage types, but this is the general rule that most spells will follow.

Your average avian mage carries around forty to sixty kilojoules by adulthood. With training, they can raise that number to near double, but there’s an upper limit to what a person can do, and it also varies from person to person. Your normal fifth-level spell costs about a hundred kilojoules to activate, tens of thousands of kilowatts to sustain. If they wanted to die in the process, an avian could definitely use a fifth-level spell, but only after training their whole life for one moment.

Active mages, like the once-in-a-generation kind, can approach a megajoule in magic capacity. That’s a single life that could power anywhere from four hundred to nine hundred homes for an entire year—or, uh, so says the Worldpedia page. But this is just simple magic capacity! A trained mage can naturally regenerate to full charge in a week with just food, water, and rest.

I always knew that upper-level magic was dangerous to the user, but I never realized how dangerous until today. I might actually die if I tried to cast something like warp or teleport myself. My body isn’t capable of ten kilojoules yet, probably. Oh, and that wasn’t all I realized while ignoring Mrs. Rich’s lecture either: ‘flight’ cannot move objects, just the user. It’s like growing a pair of wings and then burning your magic reserve to fly. If you aren’t used to it, you’ll probably fall, possibly to your death like some adventurous active mages in the past before airplanes could do it for them.

The Biker Bitch was flying on her bike, so either she had a high-level levitate going and was controlling it at sonic speeds, or she was using more advanced or more obscure magic I don’t know about. And for that matter, along with me and Poppie, I heard in the lunchroom that she hit the tall kid and the farmer’s daughter too! I… could swear I knew the farmer’s daughter’s name—Amethyst said it in a text—but whatever; that doesn’t matter.

My brother was a prodigy because he could cast teleport and warp at sixteen. That’s rare, even for an active mage like him. If the Biker Bitch stopped whatever she was doing to make the bike fly then started it up again, she has to be some kind of once-in-a-generation active mage or something. Just… pure insanity.

Thinking about it drove me crazy through the morning, so by the time lunch rolled around, I recovered there and spent the rest of the day waiting to get home, mostly to sleep after the whirlwind of today. And the stomach pains.

Poppie poked me right where it hurt while we were eating lunch, and I definitely slapped her arm so hard that she fell over. People looked, we got weird stares, it was awkward. I apologized, and we ate our lunches in silence thereafter. Not fun.

I said my goodbyes to Amethyst, met up with Poppie, and we made the journey home together. Trying to ignore the pain in my belly, I looked back at ‘Saint Michael’s Girls School’ and decided that would be my topic while we walked home.

There are three schools in Downbeat, all under the name, ‘St. Michael’s:’ One for boys Grades K through eight, one for girls K through eight, and a co-ed High School for nine through twelve. Many of the students refer to their school as the SMB, SMG, or SMH to make things simple, but this often leads to purposeful mistranslation—‘Scratch My Balls,’ ‘Sub-Machine Gun,’ ‘Suffering Misery Hell,’ and anything else you can fit in those three letters.

Because of our small population, there were no state-funded ‘public’ schools anywhere near here, making this place the easiest option for most of the small towns in a fifty-mile radius. Of the seventh-grade girls’ classes, we were separated based on scores from a test we took at the beginning of the year with three sections: general education (math, science, history, language), magic theory, and application of magic. Those with higher scores, like me, went to the advanced class, while the rest, like Poppie, went to the regular class.

I only see her at lunch during the school days, and since we’re really all we’ve got, that’s when we talk. She says she hates school and doesn’t want to be in Downbeat anymore. Honestly, I agree with her since I think I’d do better studying on my own, but I know good scores are the only way out of this place, so I’ll suffer until I can escape.

When I finally went home, my head started hurting. After a painful, bloody experience in the bathroom, I decided that I’d sleep until Dad made dinner.

Everything hurt, I felt miserable, and, worst of it all, I couldn’t get the Biker Bitch out of my head. Sure, there’s all the questions I have about her magic, but more than anything: why the guitar? And what a sound it made! Something soft and familiar but loud and alive; a wild vibrance full of colors I should know but didn’t recognize. Just thinking about it makes my heart ache like the beginning of my favorite song started to play but got cut short.

She hit Poppie, but Poppie didn’t even black out like I did. She said it hardly hurt even though it sent her flying.

That sounded great, didn’t it, Sunset?

The Biker Bitch talked to me like she knew me. She kept calling me Sunset, but that’s not my name. Who was that woman? Why did she attack us? Why did she give me tampons? No, wait, I know why she did that, but why did she help me after she attacked me? Any time I try to add reason or rationale to the situation, it always comes back blank.

Eventually, sleep took me, and the Biker Bitch evaporated from my consciousness.