A Different Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,1

onto one of the giant-sized pillows, still giggling. "Me ride!"

Tabitha picked up two corners and Lauren grabbed the other two, trying not to sniffle. Eighteen months of work - and Jacob finally understood a joke.

He's getting so much better at reading nonverbal cues, sent Tabitha, beaming at the deliriously happy boy as he flew through the air onto Pillow Mountain.

Lauren made sure Jacob landed safely before she replied - not everyone could goof off and mindspeak at the same time. Can you feel the difference in his brain?

Tabitha's eyebrows flew up. No - what do you see?

It was hard to explain, but Lauren tried anyhow. Well, you talk about these kids needing to integrate the words we say with what our tone and our faces say, right? It was at the core of Tabitha's working theory of autism. Too many layers of information, not digested together.

You could see it?

Lauren ignored the hushed awe - it was still weird having Superman powers others couldn't share. His mind lights up differently. When he got the joke, it... the pattern was different. And even saying it, she knew she needed to watch more carefully the next time. Tabitha would hound her until she could replay every second.

Jacob tumbled down Pillow Mountain, landing in a heap at their knees. Replay could wait.

You try now, sent Tabitha softly. Let's see if we can solidify this for him.

Lauren leaned down and tickled Jacob's ribs. "That looked like fun, cutie. Can I have a ride now?" She kept her facial expressions simple and light.

Jacob's eyes got big, and he looked back and forth from her to Tabitha.

Lauren winced - it was beautiful eye contact, gorgeous social referencing - and maybe a kid pushed just a little too far.

And then Jacob's mind lit up, he giggled, and two adult women with no children of their own melted into puddles of maternal pride.

-o0o-

Beth looked around her circle, evaluating. Measuring.

They'd made a lot of progress since the day, twenty months ago, that a brown-eyed stranger had crashed their coven practice, rearranged their circle, and given them a taste of magic at an entirely different level. A meeting they'd barely survived, emotionally torn asunder by his magic and his words.

They'd been doing it wrong.

Jamie Sullivan, messenger of coven near-destruction and a man who haunted her dreams, had made that very clear. And shown them what was possible.

Beth yanked her thoughts back to the task at hand - daydreaming witches were dangerous in circle work.

Mellie, their solid and grumpy earth witch, stood at cardinal north, facing Beth. Power ran smoothly out of her right hand, lines from earth to water connecting competently. It was good to see it so - it had taken Margaret a while to embrace her sudden new identity as a water witch. Before Jamie's arrival, she'd spent thirty years as a sister to earth magics. Being de-earthed and tossed into the world of blue, liquid power had shaken her sense of self to its core.

Beth didn't judge. It had taken all of them months to recover from Jamie Sullivan's visit.

She reached out her left hand to Margaret, seeking the strands of earth and water power, winding them carefully with her fire. She grinned as her flows spit in protest, less than pleased to have to cooperate with water's cool, wet energies.

It still amused her that fire magic had a temper. Just another of the many things she'd learned in the wake of Jamie's departure.

She'd touched real magic that day, and it had been like lifting a blindfold. Hands that had felt small edges of the truth now knew what the whole felt like. She'd spent twenty months yearning to feel it again. Working her circle diligently. Scouring the old texts, looking for clues. Planning and practicing, training her hands and her eyes to shape what flowed in her veins.

And she was learning - once again - that she was different.

No one else present that evening had seen what she'd seen. Felt what she'd felt. It had left her a witch awakened - and a witch alone.

A different witch. Again.

She looked to her right, to the last of the cardinal directions and their newest candidate for air witch, and sighed. Nothing. Not the faintest whiff of the shimmer she'd come to recognize as someone

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