Remembrance

Um, first thing I wrote on my new computer? Not very good, but...

There is no magic in Chicago anymore. I spent the better part of the afternoon on the corner, telling fortunes scribbled on cardboard, but they were dark and violent, and no one thanked me for them. When I got back to the apartment it was dark.
I didn't bother turning on the lights, didn't want to risk seeing what they would show, or what they wouldn't. I didn't want to see the place where a scarf should be tossed, haphazardly splayed across the back of the futon, didn't want to see the sink empty of dirty dishes, or the shelves as straight as I left them. They were human urges, the sort of things that I thought were beneath me, but that didn't make them any less powerful.
Once upon a time such delusions might have been effective, staved off the ache for an hour or a day, before I was struck with another reminder. Not now though. Since I bloomed (late as usual) I can not help but feel, even if I do not see. On my way to the bed room I cross no trails of intent, find no chaotic streams of energy, no creative tensions or beautiful, aching, paradoxical perceptions of reality.
Your resonance faded from this place long ago. I wish it could so easily fade from my mind.
I toss and turn, dreams populated by twisted ghosts with out-stretched hands, the dirty shadows of beggars souls. They tangle with ephemeral spirits, waifish ideals rent like smoke by their desperate claws. I awake drenched in sweat, body curled tightly about the place you used to lie.
There is a depression in the bed. A disturbance of the sheets, a spot of warmth. I allow myself to believe. I stand, bare toes curling against the cold of the glossy wooden floor, and pad to the window. I pull aside paisley curtains (relics of a prior occupant, you always complained they were too personal to just get rid of but too ugly to tolerate) and look out, shielding my eyes from the glare of the streetlights and the glow of snow dusted streets.
At any moment I expect to feel your arms around me, the scratch of day old stubble, and your slow murmur coaxing me back to bed, asking what it was I had seen, reminding me that it wasn't by my strength alone that the visions were held at bay. Of course I feel nothing but late November wind sneaking around the edges of the glass. I twitch the curtains closed and pad towards the door.
The carpeted living room provides respite for my feet, but ultimately makes the linoleum all the more shocking. There is no one here, so despite your ghostly chiding I flex my mind and fill the kettle while bouncing lightly on a pocket of warmed air.
I light the burner with a match, smiling at your singed eyebrows and sloppy smile, and drop a pinch of sweet Oolong leaves into a brown mug, thrown by hand, chipped and lovingly mended. I use it, though the handle is larger than I find comfortable, for much the same reason that I wear your out sized sweaters, and nick myself shaving with your straight razor. Things have memories too, we took advantage of it all the time in the war.
The war. Dark thoughts and tea don't mix, as the leaves steep, unfurl, and sink to the bottom the water changes color to fit my mood, and shows me images that I would rather not remember. The shivering surface becomes sewer water through which we stalk our foes, a pool of blood that only half exists in the material world, the eye of a thing that was once a young woman that we called Sarah.
We lost so many good people, men and women, some barely more than children, fell wreathed in primal energies, rent by claws and pierced by bullets. The most powerful of us fell to their own hubris, or desperation, rewriting the laws of the universe on a whim before the eyes of those who could not believe what they were seeing, and so unraveled the spells as surely as the most competent counter-caster. Mikhael died that way, his subtle song collapsing into discord, wild energies coursing from him without direction, hungry.
I wonder why we did it. To save ourselves, that's what we said, our way of life, our home. We were the Dragon, united like the magisters of old. I was its eyes, Sarah its voice, Mikhael its wings, you its claws, its breath, its wrath. It was intoxicating to act in concert, four bodies directed by one mind, and in our drunkenness we just made things worse.
The agents of the abyss we pushed back, yes. The angels we struck down, and the devils we burned, but there is a garden that once bore the fruits of life and knowledge, that now lays fallow and from it I can reap only tears and blood.
On the last day, the day that magic left the city, the glass of skyscrapers shivered and ran, the ground shook, rivulets of unreality shot through the streets and sidewalks. People ran from their houses on that day, left their cars idling on the freeway, stared with wonder at the sky. On that day the Veil was torn asunder and it seemed as though the old gods broke forth and all wondered and despaired. That day power failed and the new gods, the gods of commerce and communication, found themselves over matched. That day the servants of the abyss fell before us like wheat before the scythe. That day you were terrible, and transcendent.
We survived, of course, for no blade could pierce your skin and no will could out-fence mine. Back to back we stood, no longer skulking in shadows, too wracked by grief to play it safe, we burned so brightly... Days later you were gone.
I put down the tea, grown cold against my remembrances, and I float again to the window. I remember a road trip I took, after you had gone, to try and find myself in the quiet love of middle America. I met one of them, again, a seer, a servant, a dedicate of the abyss. She was working as an attendant at a Holiday gas station outside Winona. When I saw her my shields snapped up and my mind leaped forward, analyzing, anticipating, ready to fight. And she swiped my credit card, betrayed no recognition. I signed the receipt with a shaking hand and walked to my car.
I hope that's you, somewhere, settled and at peace. But as I look down I see footprints in the snow of someone barefoot, running, and the toes end in claws. The magic may be gone, but it echoes still.