Going Your Own Way, but with Magic

Chapter 3

A/N (to the one person reading this): sorry for tiny mini chapter, it was the only way to slice it. You're great, drink water, etc.

It takes me a while to find a suitable field. It has to be somewhere where I can light a massive fire without causing the library incident on a larger scale and somewhere where no one sees me standing in a salt circle having a chat with some smoke. The next obstacle is the irritating lack of nearby rivers. I walk two hours each way to a stream because I refuse to buy a bus ticket for this. The stream is pretty, but the water is gross brown colour.

And that's all the build up to me standing in this field at four with a bag of fancy salt, a box of matches and an Evian bottle full of stream water. It's a good field, if I do say so myself. Overgrown with no distinct path and full of wildflowers, all the shades of purple and yellow and orange you can imagine. The hills in the distance have enough mist over them to look picturesque. All in all, it's a good place to try a weird ritual you read in a slightly creepy book in the hope it'll give you some insight into the strange and terrifying power you appear to have inherited. It has a mystical sort of feeling. Dear god what is happening to my life.

The thing about 4pm rituals is that you don't even have darkness to disguise what an utter twat you look like.

My salt circle is a bit pathetic but it'll do. Now the only problem is that I don't know how to light a fire, aside from getting very angry and turning into a weapon of mass destruction. I thought it was apply match to sticks. It takes many attempts and some frantic googling to find out that you need paper, or cotton wool, or something. Eventually I get a tiny flame going, and get so excited that I nearly extinguish it straight away. After a few minutes it grows to a healthy little fire. Not quite the 'inferno that could strike fear into hell itself' mentioned in the book, so hopefully these not-magic teachers aren't too picky. Oh my god, this might be the stupidest thing I've ever done. But the fire's lit now. I have to go through with it. I throw the water over the fire. There's a nice hissing sound and a surprising amount of smoke. I crouch down and start talking as fast as I can.

'Hi I'm Max I don't know if you're real but if you are I need your help because I did something and I don't know how and I need to understand what happened and please could you give me any kind of sign?' I pause for breath and get ready to laugh at myself. I don't get the chance, because as the last wisp of smoke disappears I am whisked away.