"Ignore you?" Ryan asks. It's likely that the boy is casting a simple glamour, rather than a more formal invisibility spell that most magicians can cast after some rudimentary training. However, if he can cast an invisibility spell by pure instinct, young Andy will certainly be of interest to the Academy.
    It goes without saying that his parents don't seem to pay a lot of attention to their son in the first place.
    "Is it just your parents, or do other people ignore you, too?" he asks.

NPC Being Run by George


Narrowing his eyes, as if imparting an important secret. Which it really is.

"I can make Geoff and Carl ignore me too, when they want my lunch money. They forget completely that they didnt get it."
He grins. "Only just worked out how to do it a few weeks ago."

   Ryan begins to think Andy isn't talking about being invisible or unseen, but a memory-blanking charm.
   "I don't think I know that spell," Ryan tells Andy. "How did you figure it out?"

NPC Being Run by George


Andy grins. He knows something the Magician doesn't.

"I REALLY want it...and then..."

"Andrew Dalton! Stop annoying than man and get over here! We have our room ready."
His mothers strident voice interrupts.

"But Muuuummmmmm...."
"Young man. Listen to your mother."

Andy turns to the magician. "Sorry...gotta go.."
And runs over to his waiting parents.

   Ryan gets the feeling he'll be seeing more of young Dalton, and soon. He watches Andy's parents bustle him off to their room.

   It's close to dinnertime. It doesn't take magic to guess that the Daltons will be visiting the hotel restaurant shortly, or be heading into town for food - probably the former, as Mr. Dalton seems to be treating the whole affair as an inconvenience.

   (Ryan figures on waiting in the lobby, reading a newspaper or magazine.)

NPC Being Run by George

A bit over half an hour later Andy comes back down the lift alone. He looks around, and spots the magician, and heads over.

"HI! I'm doing the Thing now. Its doesn't work too long on Mum and Dad. Its hard. I think it's cause I'm really in their heads a lot."

He holds out a button, and a lipstick without a lid.

   "Did you use these to make it happen?" Ryan asked. Sympathetic magic was the expression of the Law of Correspondence*: that things connected to or resembling each other could be used to effect magic upon the other half of the pair. A rock would allow you to work earth-related magics; a coin, money magics; and a personal effect or concern**, the person in question.





* As described in Fraser's The Golden Bough, and referenced in L. Sprague deCamp & Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea stories.

** A personal effect would be an object: a button from a shirt, a comb, a woman's lipstick. A personal concern would be a lock of hair, fingernail clipping, a drop of blood, etc.

Andy nods solemnly.

"Uh huh. I concentrate on them and think of the right ..uh...twist think. Its dads work shirt button, n mums old lipstick. They lost them. I didnt take them!" The boy looks worried he might be thought a thief.

   The boy's intuitive grasp of basic principles was impressive.
   "Okay, Andy, there's an important rule in magic, and that's that we never use our magic to force people to do things they don't want to do," Ryan said. "It's like when ... Geoff and Carl, was it? When they make you give them your lunch money, that's bad. So you wouldn't want to use magic to make someone give you their lunch money. But you can use magic to protect yourself and others. Do you understand?"

Andy thinks on this. Worried. "I think you mean.." And he grins.

Dont Cast fireball, when you can run away?"
His infection joy sobers. "What happens if you do?"

   "It's like not putting your elbows on the dinner table," Ryan said. He wasn't about to launch into a discourse on magical ethics, no matter how bright Andy was. "You know you're not supposed to do it, and you know it makes parents angry. My Mom used to get pretty upset with me."
   "There are lots of rules in magic, and that's a pretty small one. When more experienced magicians start to teach you, they'll want to know they can count on you to follow the small rules, even if they seem unimportant or silly, before they start teaching you the really cool stuff."

   "You've fallen down before, right? Scraped your knee or elbow, and it hurt pretty bad, yeah?" Ryan adds. "So using magic to cause someone else to fall down for no reason would be bad. You don't need a book to tell you that."

Andy shakes his head.

"No."

Then he makes a face. "Sometimes I'd like to be able to. Even if I wouldn't."

   "It's okay to feel that way," Ryan says. "But you have to be careful, because once you find a reason to hurt someone, it's easier to come up with a reason the next time. A lot of people don't think about that, and their magic gets away from them."


=====

“Every shitty thing we do makes the next one easier, doesn’t it?”
– Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper), The Expanse: S2, E9, ‘The Weeping Somnambulist’

Andy looks at the floor, facing the conflict of desires and what is right, with a solemness that belies his age.

"I know I could do lots of stuff, just with the Forgetting spell. But...."
He looks sad.
"I..I reckon Mum n Dad would Really forget about me if I did it too much. So...sometimes.."
He looks up at the Magician, earnesty  embodied.
"..I just think about it. That I Can do it. So...I dont need to?" Andy hopes that the man can understand this. He's never got to talk to anyone about the magic stuff. And hasn't even thought about some of this stuff.

"like...because I can...I only need to know it. And that helps not want to do it too."

He bites his lip, nervously.
"I dont want mum and dad to forget about me."
This message was last edited by the player at 11:21, Wed 17 Feb 2021.

   "Exactly. It works the same way. If you can keep yourself from doing harm with your magic, you learn how to better control it," Ryan tells him. "Magic is always better when you're paying attention to things, not just what you're doing, but how things respond."

   "And, Andy, I know sometimes it seems like your parents are busy with their stuff, perhaps too busy for you, especially when you want to show them things ... like earlier, when you saw me walk out of the mirror," Ryan adds. "But they do care about you, and they do love you, even if they sound angry at you or each other. I used to think all my Dad cared about was me doing my homework, or my chores, but that wasn't true. There'll be lots of times that you have to look very carefully to see what's true and what's not."
   "That's a lesson a lot of really smart people don't always get."

At that moment, the elevator door chimes and opens. Mrs Dalton rushes out, in stocking feet. She looks frantically around.

"Oh Tomato! There you are!"
She rushes over in panicked relief.

She looks up at Ryan while hugging Andy.
"I'm so sorry he's bothering you again Sir. He just wandered off when we were settling in."
To Andy.
"Daddy and I were so worried. You Have to stop wandering off like this Tomato."

She takes Andys hand to go back to their rooms.
"I'm sorry again Sir. It's been a long drive, and we just let our attention drift. We must look terrible."

This message was last edited by the player at 03:26, Thu 18 Feb 2021.

   "No bother at all, Mrs. ...?" Ryan says. "Your son is a very perceptive young man. He saw me working some magic, and asked me some questions about it."
   He turns to Andy.
   "It was nice meeting you, young man."
   Ryan turns his attention back to the mother. "I'm Ryan Blake. And I know what you mean about travel. I just arrived the other day, myself."

"Dalton." She replies.

"Magic you say. He is very interested in magic tricks. Well as long as he wasnt bothering you too much." She smiles, now the crisis is abated.

"We're here to visit Andys cousins, and my husbands sister. Probably for a few weeks. I do hope you enjoy your stay." She looks around at the lobby.
"Its an odd little city. Suits Toms sister down to a T."

Turning to Andy. "Say thank you to Mr Blake."

   "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dalton. And Andrew," Ryan says.

   (Ryan intends to eat dinner at the Inn's restaurant.)

Mrs Dalton and Andy head for the elevator. Andy waving all the while.

The restaurant at the Inn is surprisingly cozy. Somehow, the owners have managed to shake off the chain restaurant feel that so many hotel eateries seem to have. Still, there are touches that scream 'country kitchen buffet.' Yellow and cream curtains hang in the windows and the tables are covered in cloths that might be beige or they might have once been white but are now old and discolored. Little bowls shaped like cows sit on each table, happily containing creamers. And, beside those, rooster-shaped boxes hold packets of sugar and Sweet n' Low.

Tonight, the place seems fairly empty. Not surprising, really. It's likely that most visitors were out partaking of the festival... well, before the explosion. After that, there was no telling what was going on back in the park. Hopefully, most folks had the sense to stay put and keep out of the way, but you could never tell what people would do when faced with something out of the ordinary, like that.

As Ryan stands at the front of the restaurant, eyeing tables, a middle-aged woman with greying hair pokes her head out from the back of the house and calls out, "Hey, hon! Just take a seat, anywhere. I'll be out in a second."

   Ryan sat down at a table. The decor evoked an era long-past, the things one remembered from an aunt's kitchen table when you were a child. He made sure the flip-stand of cards showcasing weeknight specials, Sunday brunch, and pie was placed against the side of the metal napkin dispenser, the shiny surface as close to a mirror as one could get.

   A faded menu was laid against the booth's divider. It wasn't clear if this was normal, or just something overlooked by the server on her rounds. A fairly standard array of lunch and dinner offerings were presented; certainly, the roast beef special wasn't the glorious piece of culinary craftsmanship that was shown on the top of the menu. On the back of the menu, the typical breakfast selections were arrayed beneath a cheerful banner that read, 'GOOD MORNING!'

   He settled on a chicken-fried steak, served with garlic mashed potatoes and a side of steamed vegetables. He hadn't decided if he would dare the House Salad or Soup of the Day.

{Running random NPC}

A lady enters the hotel restaurant alone. Well made up, lipstick perhaps a little bright, her heels clack as she crosses the tiled entrance to the bar. Looking around at the few guests she sighs.

"The usual please Syd." She places her clutch on the bar, as she orders.

The bartender nods and prepares a colourful cocktail.
"There you go Darl. This ones on the house."

Ryan's meal is quite good. The chicken-fried steak appears to have been made fresh, rather than a pre-packaged cutlet, and the country gravy is just the right thickness. He finishes with a slice of pie, of course, featuring locally-grown olallieberries.

He leaves a good tip, and returns to his room, looking forward to a good night's sleep - something he hasn't truly enjoyed for years.

[Ryan leaves restaurant, returns to room.]

What is there to say about the rooms at the Bellhollow Inn & Suites? They are clean, comfortable, and entirely typical of contemporary hotels. The King-sized bed is spacious, with a feather down topper.

The bathroom mirrors aren't a problem, but the black rectangle of the flat-screen television is. Ryan takes one of the bath towels and drapes it over the screen.

He reads a hundred pages or so of Kirkegaard's novel. There's a certain starry-eyed idealism in the characters, something Ryan left behind after seeing too many friends and family members cut down by the Hunters for using magic.

It's around 10PM when he tosses the book onto the opposite side of the bed and turns out the lights.