Sleepily, Simon wakes to go take a piss in the middle of the night. Small sparks of energy crackle from his runic tattoos as he steps to the bathroom half awake. He knows now that he won't be returning to sleep, for sleep is just a luxury.
Forget what you've heard about the greats; Merlin, Irwin, Mr. Rogers (yes... he was a wizard). Being a wizard in this day and age sucks ass. Living in some small town in bumfuck, Alabama, was strangling at best and utterly depressing at worst. No one could hire him, for they did not have the appropriate dampeners to keep the natural currents flowing through him at bay, and he survived with a home only due to it being an ancestral family home. In other words, his dad left it to him.
Now fully awake and alert and unable to sleep any longer, Simon grabs a handful of coins and figures out what he's going to eat and where he can look for work today. Sipping on his can of Mountain Dew, he looks through want ads on the internet without damaging the computer (wizards who don't have a lot of control tend to surge with electricity). Simon had a great deal of control over his powers and was a natural talent when it came to focusing it. Still, when a person is kind of down, and out it's difficult, so his surges appear to just be static electricity to those who are unaware of what he is.
In this particular town, there isn't an abundance of natural wizards like Simon. There are those that half-assed studied to become something of a magician but a wizard they were not. Most wizards carried themselves with an air of arrogance and a holier than thou attitude. Simon, even at his peak, was not like them, he was very much the "everyman" of the wizarding world. His familiar, Huginn, a medium-sized long-haired tuxedo cat grooms himself as he does just about every hour on the hour.
"Do you think you'll find anything today?" Huginn stopped to meow. One of the few permanent spells Simon had cast on himself was the ability to speak to animals so that he could better communicate with his familiars.
"I don't know Hugs, all we can do is see what the day offers," Simon replied, Huginn accepted the answer and curled up on the bed to nap.
Later that day, Simon went to eat. Inline at the drive-through, he ordered his food, and once he found out the total took out four quarters and whispered something into them. Once Simon got to the window, the homely looking woman said $7.85; he handed her the four quarters, she accepted them as though it was the full payment, and he drove forward to get his food. Later the enchantment he put on the coins would wear off, but no one would notice where or when the drawer got light. These petty magic spells were how Simon survived in this small town, placing cheap enchantments and charms on things to obtain what was needed to survive. He didn't see the need for messing with people's minds too much, so he only placed temporary spells on things. Respectable wizards wouldn't do such things as cheat fast-food restaurants out of their wares, but none of them were in Simon's place. He'd never had a trustworthy mentor to teach him the more intricate in's and out's, all he had was a natural talent and was taught to focus it. Since he was a tattoo hobbyist, Simon mostly concentrated his power and energy, from upon the runes tattooed onto his body. That was the best way he could think of to pacify the power inside of him without having to actively concentrate on controlling it.
After spending most of his day on social media looking for, what basically equated to attention, there was a knock at his door. Meandering through the house with no sense of urgency, he came to the door to find a clean-cut looking young man. Well dressed, with a gray collared shirt turquoise-colored tie parted brown hair with piercing blue eyes. The man could not have been far into his twenties yet had the look of someone three times his age. There was no formal greeting or any pleasantries exchanged. The young man simply looked down at his clipboard and said, "So you're the one."
Simon, genuinely puzzled, replied skeptically, "What? Who the hell are you, and how do you know I'm 'the one'?"
The young man with a stern, apathetic look upon his face simply continued with his explanation, "There have been traces of spells being cast all over this town, it's ruining the economy, and...."
