Abracadabra, You're Gay (Kellic)

Eight

Alex looked at me with bright eyes, his mouth turning upwards into a smile as he held the unlit cigarette between his lips.

He didn't make me as uncomfortable as other Readers did. I didn't like the fact that somebody could always tell exactly how I felt as I spoke to them. Or the fact that older, more experienced Readers could actually discern some of your past and your personality.

I especially didn't like that if they were really good, they could even figure out what you felt guilty about or what you regretted. I hated somebody knowing all about me and this kept me far away from any kind of Reader.

Except now I found myself sitting across from one - a particularly gifted one at that - and happily letting him read as much as he liked.

"The school you went to," he began, "was... difficult it seems."

"Worst few years of my life," I nodded, stirring the spoon around idly in the cup. "I wasn't given an ounce of freedom there."

"They locked you guys away from the world?"

"We were an embarrassment to our parents," I replied, "unable to control our powers and it was too risky if we were caught."

"So did you ever go home for holidays?" Alex took the cigarette out of his mouth as he spoke.

"The school was our home," I answered. "None of us ever left the campus grounds."

I reached my hand out as I spoke, a flame popping into existence and curling around my forefinger. I pointed it in Alex's direction and he smiled gratefully, lighting his cigarette with it.

Alex took a deep breath of the cigarette, smoke curling out of his nose and mouth when he breathed out. I played with the smoke lazily, using my forefinger to turn it into shapes and write words with it.

Alex watched with some fascination before he got back to grilling me about how it was to grow up as a wizard back when being accused of performing magic could kill you. It was a different time then, I told him. Mortals were more on edge about 'magic' and the so-called evil witches and wizards that came with it.

"So like they burned you at the stake?" Alex laughed, leaning forward with interest.

"I'm a hundred," I laughed. "Not a thousand."

"Come on," Alex continued to laugh, "you have to admit it sounds exactly like that."

"Okay, let me explain better," I said, trying in vain to stifle a smile.

So I told him the story about how there was a group of mortals who used to hunt down anything that came from the wizarding world. Any magical creature they could track down to actual living people.

And their cause only grew from there - people started to join their cult and the hunters started to expand in numbers. Wizards were being gunned down if they couldn't hide their powers effectively. So in order to protect ourselves, we all went into hiding. Most of the children were shipped off to schools in the middle of nowhere and kept until we had learned to suppress our powers like our parents had been forced to.

"They shot children?" Alex asked.

I nodded. "My mother told me about relatives of ours that were murdered before I was born. Apparently their neighbour caught sight of their nine-month old baby that suddenly started floating. They made some offhand remark about it to somebody, brushing it off as not having their glasses on or something. But somebody from this cult heard them say it, knew what it was and the next day the whole family was... well."

"And nobody did anything about these murders?" Alex asked aghast.