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The Magic Box, Tuesday

So, this was life at the Magic Box without Jenkins.

Norman sighed as he walked in for his shift today. There was another shipment of new stock in, and he was going to have to check it over for dangerous items, label it, price it, and put it either out on the shelves or into a safe place in the back room just in case...

He pulled out the packing slip and squinted at it.

"One hundred percent sustainably sourced, non-GMO, cruelty-free monkey paws?" He squinted even more. "How does that even work?"

He got his answer when he opened the box and was immediately tackled by a dozen squirrel monkeys.

Oh.

[OOC: ... Idek. Open with work slowplay caveat!]

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Seers were an interesting lot, so if you thought Bob wasn't going to bother his new TA at work as soon as possible...you probably didn't know Bob.

He walked through the door, looked down at the boy covered in monkeys, and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, dear."

Norman had learned that the monkeys were actually fairly docile when you weren't struggling to try to throw them off, at the very least. The immediate panic of monkeys to the face had worn off a few minutes ago, and now Norman was kind of stuck on the flat of his back, still covered in monkeys, but most of them were just kind of sitting around and grooming one another.

"... Hello, welcome to the Magic Box, how can I help you today?"

He was a diligent magic shop employee, at least.

"Is there a particular reason you're covered in simians?" Bob asked, eyeing them distastefully.

"They're monkey paws," Norman muttered. "They're just... attached to the rest of the monkey."

That really was the best answer he had for you, Bob. He didn't seem terribly thrilled about this arrangement himself, at least.

"Also nonmagical," Bob supplied helpfully. "Which is just as well. Honestly, the things some people will put a spell on."

"If I ever open a box and get attacked by magic monkeys, I'm quitting," Norman decided, ever so carefully attempting to sit up. This mostly ended with him sitting, monkeys perching on his head and shoulders and knees.

Sigh.

"I'll admit I'm kind of tempted to do that right now."

"Why don't you?" Bob asked.

Norman sighed and waved a hand up at a monkey on his head to stop it from grabbing his ear.

"Because I need the job."

"Why?" Bob asked.

"... For money," Norman replied. Because that was why he'd gotten the job in the first place, after all.

He paused, and then glanced past Bob toward the book selection.

"And, um. Because it's educational."

"Ah." Bob nodded. He could understand that. "So, you're an untrained seer? Or undertrained, at any rate."

"Completely untrained," Norman replied, fidgeting a little. "It's hereditary, but it skips generations, so my mom didn't have it, her father's brother did."

...

"And he was kind of crazy."

Even for a seer.

"Yes, well, a lot of people say that about seers. Sometimes it's even true. Fragile concepts of reality," he explained. He peered at Norman as if trying to assess his.

Edited 2018-07-07 01:50 (UTC)

Norman stared back, demonstrating the sort of resolve (and an impressive grasp on reality) that a teenage boy might demonstrate when being studied by a ghost like that.

"What's so fragile about it? We just see things most people can't." He paused, and then added, "though I haven't figured out yet how everyone can see you."

"I'm special," Bob declared. "So tell me this - you see things nobody else can. How do you know if they're real?"

"How does anybody know anything is real?" Norman's jaw tensed for a half a moment. "They tell me things, those things turn out to be true, is that test enough?

Then there were the visions. Which weren't real, weren't actually there in the moment. But they had happened, once. They were, in a way, real, too.

"And if they don't tell you anything verifiable?" Bob asked. "Or if they tell you something that isn't - what makes you think ghosts can't lie?"

"Of course they can lie," Norman replied, tilting his head faintly. "I don't tend to drill them to verify that I can trust my own eyes."

... And now he was concerned, suddenly, that maybe he should be.

The visions were starting to worry him, now.

Seeing that worry start, Bob nodded. "Now you begin to see why seers can develop fragile senses of reality."

He nodded again, this time indicating the books. "If there are decent ones over there, that's a good start. Training is another. How much magical sense do you have apart from what you see?"

Norman hesitated a little more, the monkeys starting to wander off to get into trouble elsewhere because he just wasn't fun enough.

"Magical sense?"

Look, these weren't conversations that people tended to willingly get into with him.

"How do you mean?"

"For a start, how did you immediately know I was a ghost?" Bob asked. "Which, by the way, I usually have a lot of fun hiding from the class," he ~~whined~~ bitched.

Norman blinked. And then tilted his head a little. And then kind of waved a hand around a little.

"I just... knew."

That was very descriptive, Norman.

"Everything I can do is attuned to the dead, as far as I can tell," he added, a moment later. "My former employer here is immortal. It was so much the opposite effect that I never could manage to even look at him for long."

But the dead? Like a magnet.

"Ugh, immortals." Bob had feelings on the subject. "So, you have a sense of the amount of life or death in someone. You mentioned visions in class?" Not to him, but he was a first-rate eavesdropper.

Norman winced a little.

"Of things that happened, ways people died," he explained. "I don't have control over when I get those. Or what I see in them."

"That is generally the way it works," Bob said. "Is it psychometric - when you touch something? Or merely due to proximity or concentration?"

Norman bit his lip a little.

"Maybe proximity, a bit," he ventured, "but mostly they just happen when they need to happen. Unless by proximity you also mean time-wise..."

"Hm. So, situational," Bob theorized. "Do you ever get visions about things other than dead people?"

"I get... I get visions of things that tie in to those dead people," Norman replied. "A witch trial that ended in one vengeful spirit and seven cursed zombies. But maybe not the whole trial. And I never did see any of them actually dead in the vision."

He paused, and then fidgeted, and then added, "but nothing that isn't about the dead even tangentially, no."

Bob nodded. "So, a very narrowly focused sort of seeing. What about other things - can you affect the supernatural world, create your own magic?"

"I... I don't know," Norman settled on, finally. "I mean... I know of a seer who could do some pretty terrible things... but I think most of them were after she died, and I don't know if I have that same potential, or if that was just a product of her circumstances."

And since Norman had no interest in cursing people to forever wander as zombies...

"Mm. Our potential often changes when we die. Not generally for the better, but she would hardly be the first, either."

He swirled a finger in the air, bringing up a glowing yellow circle. "Light is generally the easiest. Well, light or flame, but light's less likely to burn down your house if you get overzealous."

Norman watched the light quietly, sort of... awed by it. He certainly had never done anything like that before.

"How do you know if you can...?"

"You try," Bob said simply. "You take everything you know of that feeling you have, that ability, and you focus on it."

"And just... focus on... making light?"

That seemed too simple, somehow. But then, he could see the dead with no effort at all. Could speak to them likewise.

Could see through time, literally. And knew when a man was immortal simply beacuse his eyes kept trying to slip by him.

"Focus is one of the most important parts, and one of the most difficult at first," Bob said. "For you, I would suggest you try thinking of it less as creating something, and more as making it visible. Just as ghosts are visible, make the light visible."

"Make something that can be seen," Norman summarized, biting his lip for a moment. "Because it's so close to what I already know?"

"Precisely," Bob said. "There is a light that wants to be seen - bring it out."

Norman tried like hell to hold back the urge to fidget, at that. A light that wanted to be seen.

Aggie had cursed an entire jury to eternal damnation before they'd killed her. What was a little light in comparison.

He pulled in a steadying breath.

Just bring out the light. Just like the ghosts, it was something that wanted to be seen. Maybe just... right... there. A little light, a small glow that started at his fingertips, the way Bob had done.

Faint. Greenish, where Bob's had been a vivid gold. Norman wasn't entirely certain he wasn't just seeing things now. And he was afraid to move his hand, in case it turned out he was wrong.

Bob, on the other hand, beamed (somewhat less literally). He hadn't honestly expected such immediate results, if any.

"Wonderful!" he told Norman. "There, you see? You can do it."

It was so faint. Norman was kind of just squinting at his fingers now, mostly in shock. And the harder he looked, the less it glowed, until it had fizzled out completely.

But it had been there, right? He hadn't been imagining it?

... Oh god, his dad could never find out. He'd freak.

"I. I guess I can do something."

"Of course you can." Bob waved off Norman's uncertainty. "That's quite respectable for a first try. Keep at it, and you'll get much better."

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The Magic Box, Tuesday

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