What the Legends Left Out

"Do you like tea?" Max asked as he placed a kettle over his fireplace.

"I've never had it." Callie looked around Max's house in wonder.

"Never had tea?" Max scoffed. "Who raised you?"

Callie shuffled her feet uneasily. "Well my parents, sorta, for like half my life. . ."

"Oh." Max's joking attitude fell. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Callie took a seat in one of the long couches. "Will you answer my questions now?"

"Sure thing, kid." Max sat on the couch across from Callie. "What do you want to know?"

"You said that fairy thing was a sprite?" Callie clarified and Max nodded. "What did it do to me?"

"It was sucking out your life." Max said grimly.

"My life?"

"It's like a leech, it lives off of other being's life forces."

"So, if you hadn't shown up. . ."

"You would've died." Max concluded. "Congratulations, you're the first person to ever survive an attack from a sprite."

"Really?"

"Not that it's that common. Sprites shouldn't even be in this world."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone had to have summoned it."

"You can summon creatures from other worlds?"

"Where do you think all the myths of dragons and unicorns came from?"

Callie thought for a moment. "What happened to the sprite?"

"I sent it back to it's home world." Max stretched like it was no big deal.

"You can do that?"

Max nodded. "So can you, but you'd need a lot of practice. You don't want to keep the portal open long enough for more creatures to come through."

Each word Max spoke flew around Callie's head like flies, confusing her more and more. "So everyone can do this?"

"Nope. Just you and me."

"What?" Callie tried and failed to grasp what he meant.

"Kid, you've got a lot to learn."

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