The Grey Area of Sater

Chapter 7

Gray spent the rest of the night in his room. He was feeling better after his conversation with Moxi but still felt like it would disappear if he saw his parents again. Gray was never the type to hold grudges but what happened with his parents hit him differently. He had gotten hurt by words before but this kind of pain wasn't just going to go away. Gray couldn't put it to words. The only way Gray could describe it to himself was this sense of betrayal. Gray pushed it to the back of his mind for the time being.

He had made plans with Moxi for some magic training and to say that she got excited when Gray asked for her help was an understatement. Gray hadn't known the girl for long but from what he'd seen Moxi was a very cheerful person, actually looking back, their conversation that afternoon was the first time he had seen her without a smile. When Gray asked Moxi to help him learn magic her face lit up with joy, her face glowed brighter than he had ever seen it. He thought it suited her and she looked kind of cute with that expression, he hoped to see it again later.

Gray spent most of his evening shadow boxing in preparation for his training session that night. He wasn't sure what Moxi had planned for him, her response to almost everything was a simple "you'll see", all he knew was that Moxi was going to come pick him up at around 1 a.m. Since this was training Gray thought having practiced some basic combat and self-defense would be a good idea. He also decided to meditate for a bit to get his magic in check. That didn't last long though; Gray's eyes decided to glow at the worst times, the pain causing him to lose focus. His surroundings didn't help either, as every tiny sound and scent made itself known in the evening's calmness.

Gray's senses have always been more sensitive than normal for as long as he could remember. He could easily hear things that were typically out of earshot for everyone else and feel every slight brush against his body, even if it was just a fly. The only apparent impact this had on him was that Gray was able to tell people apart from their scent almost like an animal, though, even that was easy to ignore, so he never paid much attention to it. At least not until recently. Gray's eyes started to glow when he was around eleven or twelve, that was when he became more attentive to his heightened senses. At some point he came to the assumption that he had magic.

Magic had always been a complicated topic for Gray. As a child he always had a particular interest in fairytales and fantasy stories mainly due to the magic which always made the plot better without fail. Everyone had always told him that magic wasn't real and something writers come up with to make those stories more interesting but Gray never bought any of that. He always felt this strange energy flowing through his body that seemed foreign to others. Sometimes it was a tingling sensation or numbness or even pressure in a certain body part or sometimes it would seamlessly spread across his entire body. These days Gray kept that information to himself. He used to tell people when he was younger but because those feeling were so uncommon for ordinary people they always brushed it off as just an active imagination and said he was never actually feeling any of it.

Gray began to wonder if Moxi felt the same things Gray did, they were only one year apart so they must have experienced similar things right? Regardless, it felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders after he met Moxi. She was someone he could talk to and actually be believed! He never thought that talking about magic could feel so freeing. For the longest time Gray felt like his magic forced him to hide a crucial part of himself and made him feel out of place, but when the two were together all these feelings melted away.

The sound of footsteps quickly but quietly approaching pulled Gray out of his thoughts. He recognized the scent, it was Moxi's.

Is it already one o'clock?

Gray stood shaking out his legs which had gotten sore from sitting cross-legged for so long. At first he could only see her silhouette in the darkness but details became apparent as Moxi came closer. It looked like she had changed into a tracksuit. It was strange to see, it didn't seem like anyone owned something so casual here.