August 29, 2023
The first time Nathan came over to Jamie's house, he'd been quite surprised to see that, despite the wacky architecture and Jamie's chaotic disposition, the space looked rather tidy and neat. He soon learnt that this tidiness can flourish almost entirely thanks to two factors: the efforts of the housekeeper Jamie employs and the fact the YouTuber mostly dwells in her basement when she doesn't have other places to be.
The basement is where Jamie records and works on her videos—where Witchcraft Wednesday's magic happens, so to say—and it matches Nathan's earliest expectations in that it exists in a state of perpetual disarray. If he had to describe it in a single adjective, he'd settle for 'hurricane-ravaged'.
Essentially, Nathan thinks as he follows Jamie down to the basement, if there was a scientist working at NASA, and that scientist had moderate to severe ADHD combined with a strong interest in things like medieval alchemy, creepy urban legends and TikTok witch cults, then that scientist's office would bear a pretty close resemblance to Jamie's workspace.
The room is dominated by a desk in the corner displaying a huge PC surrounded by tech: cameras, microphones and lighting equipment, all looking so expensive Nathan treads around the set-up with unmatched caution. The rest of the studio is cluttered, leaving not a single piece of bare wall in sight.
There's a big bookcase full of colourful file folders, shiny awards and framed photographs. Strange knick-knacks accumulated over years of making all sorts of videos seemingly migrate across the room at will, each object carrying with it a story Nathan knows Jamie can regale from memory without blinking twice. A messy evidence board still shows a thorough analysis of a peculiar vanishing case covered in a video from way back in January, as well as a stray vegetable soup recipe that probably doesn't belong on that board, but Nathan's been meaning to copy it and try to make the dish someday regardless.
As baffling as this space is, though, Nathan supposes it's cozy in its own way. It's pleasant, it's unique, it has character, and it makes him feels at home.
Only the frogs still take some getting used to.
"Jamie," he begins as he stops in the doorway, raising his eyebrows at the little amphibian hopping slowly in his direction; Jamie herself merely spared it an amused glance before advancing further into her studio. "Think it could be a good idea to put that frog back outside before we talk or what?"
Jamie looks back at the frog. Shrugs. "It can wait. It's not like he's going anywhere. I'll catch him later." She moves to an open window and closes it. "Should've closed this a little earlier."
There's a little pond at the far end of Jamie's backyard, home to a small colony of frogs and toads. Occasionally, individuals of the neighbouring species will tumble down the window well and, should Jamie have left her window open for ventilation purposes, merrily apply themselves to home invasion. Though Jamie could solve this issue pretty easily by installing a cover of sorts, she seems to find these little visitors far too entertaining to be bothered by them. In fact, she recently found a way to turn the frogs into a source of revenue by pointing a camera at the window, all to keep real-time track of the amount of frogs making their way into her studio at any given moment.
("You wouldn't monetize a frog," Nathan had said in disbelief when Jamie first pitched this idea to him, and in response, she'd turned around and done just that. And, somehow, it works. 'Live Frog Cam' makes Jamie's audience go buckwild. Nathan's never before seen Twitch stream chats blow up with so many excited exclamations of 'Frog!!!', 'froggy...', 'FORG :D' and every possible variation and misspelling inbetween.
It's madness. It's brilliance. The line is truly very thin.)
"Guess you get to stay for now, then," Nathan mutters under his breath to the ribbity little cash machine. Ever since he had conversations with a bobcat, talking to animals doesn't strike him as all that odd anymore. Unlike Jinx back in the day, however, this frog doesn't react to him, continuing on its way undisturbed. Nathan wonders what it would've had to say if he and Jamie still had magic to translate its language.
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ParanormalAfter a wild adventure involving a powerful magic book, former drug dealer Nathan has turned his life around: having abandoned his criminal ways, he now works a minimum wage job and is learning video editing on the side. But even though everything s...
