I Believe in Magic - Phan [#Wattys2017]

Chapter 20 - Full Body Illusion

Dan sat in silence for only a few seconds with his hands in Phil's. He barely breathed before Phil told him it was okay to look.

Dan's eyes slowly peaked open. He remembered sitting on the bed with Phil in their room. What he saw did not match.

They were on a wooden park bench. It was painted red, and the paint was just barely beginning to chip. Trees surrounded the edges of a cement path that the bench was sat aside on. Bright green grass surrounded the area elsewhere. They were in the park.

Instantly, Dan stood up, letting go of Phil's hands in fear. "T-the park?! What? How did... he did we get here?! Phil, what did you do?! What is this?"

"Calm down," Phil said, standing up with him and taking his hands again to calm his hysterics. "Let me explain! We're still sat on the bed in our room. None of this is real or actually happening," Phil tried to give Dan an understanding of this odd place. "I created this place in my mind, and because you're holding my hands, you came too. In the real world, we're currently in a trance, just sitting there. But our minds have transferred here!" He waved his arm back. "It's called a full body illusion."

Dan looked at his hands and at the scene around him. A bird flew by. "Everything looks so real."

"I used to do these a lot when I was alone. The more you practice them, the more detailed they can become."

"You created paces?"

"Whenever I was sad or lonely, I would go into the trance and send my mind to a happy place. Sometimes gardens, sometimes a playground when I was younger, sometimes weddings...."

"Weddings?" Dan was still trying to put this insanity together. He saw a bee land on a flower. Butterflies flew low to the ground. Wind blew through the trees. The amount of detail in the park astonished him. If it was true that the more he did it, the better he got, then Phil must've been a lonelier kid than Dan imagined.

"Yeah. Never mind that. I rarely thought of places with other people." He began to walk. Dan followed until they came to the edge of the pond. Phil picked up a very smooth stone and tossed it in. The splash made a kerplunk noise as the stone sunk to the bottom.

Dan was still slightly nervous. He took Phil's hand, and Phil laced fingers with him back. "Why not?"

"I didn't know too many people," he admitted sadly. "Only family, really. I could make up faces, but I never wanted to. Instead, if I would ever encounter a person in a full body illusion, their face would be blank."

"What do you mean?"

"Not like a straight face," he specified. "I mean they would be without a face at all. No eyes, no mouths, no noses. Nothing – a blank canvas."

Dan decided not to ask anymore about the faceless people.

"But anyway," Phil diverted, "what do you think?"

"I think it's amazing."

"Check it out!" Phil said, pointing to the water in the pond. Several large lily pads seemed to have grown and lined up perfectly, like a path. "Come on, I want to show you something."

Phil took Dan to the lily pad on the edge of the pond and stepped on it. It was perfectly secure. He reached for Dan to follow. He took his hand and anxiously stepped on it with him. It was large enough for both of them.

"This... isn't possible!" Dan laughed as Phil dragged him to the next lily pad in the line.

"Anything is possible!"

The two carefully bounded from one giant lily pad to the next without so much as a stumble. Not being so well coordinated naturally, he wondered why he was all of a sudden perfect at the unbalanced stepping when crossing from one of the water flowers to the next. But he had no time to worry – only time to enjoy.

Dan stopped when Phil stopped. Thy had come to a narrow passage in the pond. Plenty of lily pads were laying ahead. Why did Phil stop?

"Phil? Is something wrong?"

"No, just look!"

Dan's head poked around. On both sides of them, the land's edged surrounding the water had greatly thinned. Water reeds grew wildly on either side, bursting out of the ground in an unhealthily overpopulated manner. When Dan looked at them closer, he noticed something unique about the reeds. They didn't look like plants, but like paper rolled up on plant stems. He reached up to grab one. Phil watched him do so.

He removed the scroll of paper from the stem with ease, as if it were meant to be removed. He unrolled it to read:

You are the moon in my dark sky.

His eyes were wide open. "Look!" he said, trying to show Phil. He only smiled.

"Take another," he instructed.

Dan reached again and pulled off another:

I want to be yours forever.

"Love notes!" Dan exclaimed. "They're all love notes! But... how? How did they get here?" He looked at Phil while grabbing another note.

Your love is more valuable than all the magic in my body.

"Phil... did you write these?"

"Not exactly. I just used magic to convert all of my feelings for you into actual words – something I had a hard time doing on my own. But yes, these are all from me... to you."

Dan looked up and down the thin waterway. "There's hundreds of them!"

"Yeah."

Dan was baffled. Every one of the hundreds of reeds had an individual message. There was no way he could read all of them. "This is... so amazing. I don't.... How?"

"Don't ask how," Phil told him. "Just except."

Dan kissed Phil. Hard. With so much passion. Phil's arm's wrapped around Dan's body.

"I didn't know a better way to show my love for you than this. It is okay?"

"It's perfect."

Together, they continued down the pathway of lily pads, Dan taking down a message from a reed every few steps:

You make me happier than I've ever been.

I want you to feel loved.

You are the first and last thing on my mind every single day.

You complete me.

I want to make you happy.

You are my sun, my stars, my galaxy, my universe.

Dan felt his heart twinge with every word. He knew Phil loved him. There were hundreds of messages explaining that he did.

The seemingly endless rows of reeds did end eventually as the lily pad path lead them to land. They stepped off, Dan looking back on his hundreds of unread love messages. He had a sense of guilt for being unable to see them all, but it didn't matter. In the end, they all meant the same thing, and Dan could still not believe that.

Phil stepped onto land again first, pulling Dan up with him. They continued to walk into what appeared to be a forest. Trees shaded them from the light above, but a path was cleared enough to be able to walk through.

"How did you do all this?" Dan asked curiously.

"I just keep creating new things as we go, I guess."

They walked hand in hand through the peaceful woods, listening to birds chirp until finding a large door engraved into a huge tree.

Dan stopped to see it. He ran his fingers over it. It had a handle to pull.

"Go through," Phil urged.

Dan grabbed the handle and pulled the heavy wooden door open. Since it was attached to a tree, Dan expected to enter a tree hollow. They went in, making it into a completely darkened room. Dan jumped when Phil closed the door behind him, shutting out any light they had.