Chapter 4 — Miscommunication

“WHAT THE FUCK-”

“WHAT THE FUCK-”

Both women shouted at each other in surprise simultaneously. Mira and Ness were less than a foot apart when their vision cleared enough to see; Ness stumbled back but hit what felt like a solid wall at her back. Mira stood her ground.

“Where did you come from?!” Ness got the sentence out first, but Mira was mid-way through asking the same thing. Ness was realizing, at the same time, that though she was still in a forest, it was wild and unkempt and muggy, very different from the controlled wildness of the park she had been trekking across. It was also significantly darker, almost nightfall.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her head to the side, catching a dark-skinned man she also hadn’t seen before; he was dressed in what looked like a cross between a festival raver’s outfit and a cosplayer— lots of strips of silk, but also a pair of curved swords hanging one from each hip.

There wasn’t a festival in the park this week, but cosplayers and LARPers often used the woods for their games. She tried to back away in a different direction, maintaining her distance from both of the strange, suddenly present people, but again she backed up half a step and stopped, an unyielding wall behind her that she was just realizing she couldn’t see.

The man gestured to the other woman to catch her eye, and then gestured at her with both hands in a way that looked to Ness like sign language— she couldn’t decipher it.

“Okay, okay, you’re right.” The other woman directed her words at the man, and then looked back to Ness.

“Keep your voice down, it’s not safe here,” Mira told Ness. She held her palms out in a kind of placating gesture.

“Where- why can’t I move?” Ness asked, but more quietly. A trickle of fear was starting to creep in as she realized just how weird the situation was.

“I’m.. not sure.” Mira replied. It wasn’t a reassuring reply. “You’re inside a magic circle but that doesn’t normally work on humans. You’re human, right?”

“What else would I be?” Ness retorted. She tried kicking a foot out— not at Mira, but off to the side. Her boot hit solid air with a confusing thump.

The man gestured at Mira again.

“Yes, I noticed,” she told him, and eyed the woman’s furry brain ears and tail. She returned her attention to Ness. “Can you tell me that you’re human?”

“I’m human. I’m human. Why?”

Mira seemed to relax.

“Most of the things that look human but aren’t also can’t tell lies.” She reached out with one dark brown leather-clad toe, and kick one of the small rocks that made up the circle. Ness stumbled back as the wall of force she was backed up against disappeared.

“Wait, magic circle…? Am I.. is this a dream? Am I hallucinating?”

“No?” Mira’s tone dripped with notes of are you an idiot?.

“Well what the fuck do you mean by magic cir- you know what, never mind, I’m leaving.” Ness stepped around Mira, having spotted the faint deer trail that lead out of the small clearing they were in.

Mira reached out to stop her- whoever this person was, she weren’t in any state of mind to travel these woods alone, and obviously the botched Tunneling spell had brought her here, making her Mira’s responsibility.

Mira’s fingers brushed Ness’s arm as she reached out to stop her; and they both exclaimed aloud at the same time.

“Oh, fuck-” said Mira.

“Whoaaaaa- wha-” gasped Ness. At the touch of the woman’s fingers her whole body shuddered, a cascade of tingling energy that felt like it started at her fingertips and toes and rushed orgasmically through her whole body and out through the point of skin contact.

Mira knew the feeling well, but it had never been anything like this potent. Usually the magic that flowed into her from her familiar was a little trickle, a constant but tiny flow of power that she could shape and channel. That trickle felt like a rivulet that might drain from a thatched roof during a mild rainstorm. The flow that came from Ness felt more like a river; like a completely different category of thing.

“I… think I know what happened,” Mira told Ness. She sounded grim. “Let’s make camp and I’ll try to explain.”

“Camp? Are you joking? I need to get home.. Where’s the street? Can..” Ness remembered that her phone was refusing to turn on. “Can you call me an uber, or at least let me see your map?”

“Oo-burr?” Mira was confused at the word, but shrugged it off. “There’s no map of these woods. The terrain changes too much, anyway. Look… I think your home is a lot farther away that you expect.”

“Magic.” Ness’s voice dripped with skepticism.

“Ugh, yes. Come on. Even children know about magic.”

“Magic?”

“Yes, magic. I’m a sorceress, but there are other kinds.”

“Magic.”

Mira threw up her hands, and rubbed her temples. They had found a small stand of trees that would shield them from view. It was dark, and the damp was starting to turn to cold. They couldn’t risk a fire without her spells to conceal them.

“Okay, look, I.. can show you. I think.”

“You think?”

Mira frowned.

“I’m a sorceress.”

“So you said.”

“Okay, well, do you know what that means?”

Ness shrugged. “High charisma score? Lots of castings per day but only a few spells?”

Mira looked confused. “Charis- what are you talking about? No. Look. Reality is like… a soap bubble. We’re on the outside. And there’s the Membrane. And inside the bubble is Magic.” She made a sort of sphere shape with her hands to help illustrate.

“Uh huh. Sure. I’ve eaten mushrooms, too.”

Mira looked even more confused, but shook her head. “As a sorceress, I tap into that magic directly, poking a little hole through the Membrane. But it takes power to do that, to get that power.”

“Okay. So. You need power to get power. And you don’t have any power?”

“Yeees.. and no. Maybe. Uhm. We use a Familiar to anchor a Tunnel into the magic, and my familiar.. uhm.. died.”

Mictlan made some gestures at her. Ness had no idea what they meant, but she could see the smirk on his face.

“What did he say?” Ness asked, gesturing toward Mictlan.

Mira grumbled something that Ness couldn’t quite make out.

“He said I killed my familiar- it was an accident.”

Ness shrank back. “Killed?”

“We were fighting bandits, and.. a spell misfired.”

“So how are you going to show me?”

Mira swallowed nervously. Ness’s skeptical frown deepened.

“One of the bandits had a scroll, uhm.. Magic power and a written spell all bundled together. I tried to use it to power my Tunneling spell instead.”

“And…?”

“And.. I think it worked.”

“So, where’s your familiar?”

Mira looked over at Mictlan, seeking some kind of support, but the man just quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Tunneling anchors on the nearest beast. It requires some of that wildness, it’s like… friction. Glue. But ’nearest’, uhm, is… kind of an approximate word. The magic flows like water, it might be easier for it to follow a river bend than to jump the banks.

“The scroll opened a doorway to… wherever you came from. And you were on the other side.”

“So what? I’m not a wild beast.”

Mira bit her lip, and gestured toward Ness’s head.

“You’ve got ears. A tail..”

“It’s a costume!” She pulled the ears off her head, demonstrating that they were just attached to a headband.

“I felt the power, when we touched. That’s what that was. A lot more power than usual, but…

“Ness, at least for now, you’re my Familiar.”