Just A Little Magic

Chapter One

Ian Lightfoot had woken up early, before his brother could barge into his room to give him a 'happy birthday holler' and his traditional birthday quest. After his sixteenth birthday adventure with Barley, his older brother wanted to come up with a 'quest' each year for them to complete together. Last year it was playing Quests of Yore, with some real life action mixed in. The Manticore, or Corey, enjoyed it just as much as Barley and Ian did. The boys' mom, Laurel, was along for the wild ride with themed snacks for the board game.

The light from the freshly risen September sun was shining into Ian's bedroom as he turned on his computer and pulled up his web browser. In the search bar, he typed in the name of a website he hadn't visited in two years. The one where some of his questions were answered.

The site loaded up on the screen while he dug through a drawer in his desk, looking for the login information from the account he had made when he was sixteen. He kept it buried under all the papers, books, and various other desk items to make sure no one found it on accident.

He found the small post-it note with only his combination to log in quickly scribbled on it:

Username: Wizard2004
Password: blazey2017

Ian's fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard as he typed it into the appropriate boxes and hit 'enter'. He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out as his account was opened. Everything was how he had left it, as to be expected. No profile picture and no bio. Nothing except a username and links to his previous posts on old threads of conversations.

He stared blankly at the screen for a moment, taking it all in. Was he finally going to start accepting this part of himself? What would happen if anyone found out? How would he even begin to embrace this still living at home? So many questions ran through Ian's mind in those few seconds. He was tired of trying to pretend like he didn't have these feelings, like he was nothing more or less than an average senior in high school. So, he began filling in the empty spaces on his profile.

He started with his name;

Ian Lightfoot

Quickly, Ian deleted what he had just typed. No, there couldn't be any way for anyone he knew to find this on accident.

Ian thought for a moment, then began typing again;

Thomas Parker

That was better. Nothing like his real name at all. Very basic, too. No one should suspect a thing.

He clicked 'save', then went to his profile picture. He had no idea what to make it. Obviously it couldn't be a picture of him, so what would work for an icon? Again, Ian sat and thought for a moment, chewing on his lower lip out of anxiety. He still could barely believe he was doing this. It had been years since he discovered this and he was just setting up a profile on a website for it, but it felt like everything was going so fast. Almost too fast.

Ian got the urge to just shut his laptop and try to never think about all of this again. But, he continued. A good couple of minutes passed before he settled on simply using a picture of Blazey, his pet dragon, as his profile picture. Surely she wasn't too recognizable, lots of people had pet dragons that looked like her. Yeah, that was a pretty safe choice, at least for now.

Once he set his icon as Blazey, Ian clicked the box labeled 'bio'. If he thought choosing a profile picture was hard, this would be damn near impossible. How do you write about yourself being something you haven't even yet accepted? Ian had no idea where he was going with it, but he started typing;

"Hey, I'm Thomas Parker, and I'm pretty new to this whole thing."

It was a good start. Ian paused in thought, then continued forming his bio;