Who: Emily [Narrative] What: Magic the constant bedfellow. Where: Haven, mostly. When: The past few months.
Magic is the tide lapping at her shores. It washes warm over her feet, a constant call of the sea even during those moments it’s not threatening to drown her. She feels it rising ever-higher, dim but clear. Once she made out its shape in the dark, recognized it for what it was (fate, inevitability, the end of all things), she found herself aware at all times, capable of identifying magic’s touch no matter the circumstance. It has become too-familiar background noise. It is Emily’s violin bow in her hand, or the scent of her lover’s skin -- a tune she’ll never forget, something she can breathe in then pick out blindfolded.
Magic is a hum along the length of her spine. It’s a warm hand at her shoulder when Haven is awake and laughing, a smile laid against her hip when all but the two of them have gone to bed. Magic is what makes Em stop and stare. It is that thing which causes her to forget about blinking for too-long stretches of time. It leaves her lost in the fog with arms outstretched, so when it’s early morning murmuring, the words come out thoughtlessly foreign. When it’s late at night and her arms are wrapped around his back to reach up into his hair, it’s eyes shut tight in a liquid rush of Spanish.
Magic is an invisible brand along unblemished flesh. It criss-crosses her like ley lines, connecting points of interest: these are the restless legs prone to swinging from seats, that is the coastal curve of waist she’s so easily caught by. Here clever musician’s hands, there a crooked Andley smile made softer by mortality. She stands in front of the bathroom mirror when it’s been wreathed by shower steam, and magic looks back at her like a second skin.
Magic is the itch along her veins which inspires late-night wanderlust. It is what makes her say ‘I’m going to stay up a bit’, which drives her out of that shared private area and through Haven’s common halls. It’s the taste of a half-shelved memory, magic driving her through the dark until she and Wagner stare in silence at one another from opposite ends of the hall. Magic is what gives them understanding -- the distant recollection of Vaughn’s hands against her belly, and the arch of her back when Em opened her mouth to scream that silent scream. Magic is what makes him shudder when she cocks her head and almost-smiles, studies him with dark assessing eyes which, for that distant moment, forget their empathy, their humanity in favor of seeing what’s laid out for her.
Magic is mother and father, friend and lover, foreign familiarity turned death threat written like a line in the sand. It rakes blunt claws across her in search for breath to steal, and in turn Emily throws herself against it in outrage. How dare the world be so fantastically unfair. But she says nothing, merely bites her tongue. Magic is the sugared laugh of irony; Em Andley knows better than to give it the commentary it craves. Rather, she watches the clock. She studies time’s passing in the play of light and shadows running against the wall. She waits, and watches, and tallies the good days to set up against the bad.