Hear♀ and s♂ul: part one
In a certain town of a certain country lies a magic outlet. No outward signs are shown of this and only the magical sensitive would feel it and only a few people in the world could correctly identify it. This phenomenon is formed of all the magic in the world building up and having to escape somehow. All the genies sitting in their lamps waiting to be found, all the wishes made of stars, all the little breaks in reality that most people don’t believe exist. It all builds up and would destroy the earth if it wasn’t siphoned off. Purely by chance a school was erected on this ground and as a result magical events happen here much more regularly than anywhere else. A portion of the student body and even some of the faculty are not entirely human weather they know it or not. In this school a wish is far more likely to come true for better or worse. This is the story of one of those wishes...
My name is Laura Stone and my soul mate has just completed his last paper crane. He was sat before me on his bed with a look of fear on his face. OK maybe I should explain a little; I hear that the humans have a story about us Cranes that is almost right. They say that if someone was to fold a thousand paper cranes then one would appear before you and grant your fondest wish. As I said that’s only close to the truth, I’m afraid I don’t know all the details but what I do know is that we Cranes are born, or more accurately created, at the exact same time as a human and we are their soul mate, the one person they can be truly happy with. We exist on a plane of existence not quite the same as theirs but if our soul mate folds a thousand paper cranes then we get brought before them. We then have the power to grant any wish they ask of us and afterwards we come to the real world as a human, or at least in human form. We have a certain amount of time to make them fall in love with us; I’m sorry but I don’t know how long it is. If we fail this or our soul mate doesn’t fold the cranes we become just a normal crane, like the ones you see in the wild or a zoo. No more magic, no more thoughts, just the sense of losing the most important part of ourselves.
One of the rules is that we can’t tell our soul mate most of that directly so when I finally spoke up I merely said what was drilled into us from birth. “W-w-what is your w-w-wish?” OK the stutter wasn’t practised but that was always my problem; as you might have noticed I can monologue in my head really well but when I try to actually speak it all comes out wrong.
He crawled back a bit more as I stretched my wings and knocked some books over by accident. He seemed to be getting over the actual shock and was starting to look really excited that it actually worked. He scrambled up and looked me right in the eyes; his nose was all but touching my beak. “I wish for the perfect girl for me to appear! I wish I could meet her tomorrow when I go shopping! Please make it happen!” I was taken aback by this request; it wouldn’t take any magic or complicated reality warping at all. All I had to do was appear before him and his wish was granted. Trying to hide my excitement I nodded and faded away as we were told to.
The next morning I was looking in the mirror of the girl who had found me wandering the streets late last night and taken pity on me. She and her mother had said I can stay with them as long as I wanted and she was lending me some clothes since we were about the same size, it was a bit loose around the chest, well OK very loose, but other than that fit fine. The girl, she was called Allix I think, had left for school so I was alone with her mother for the day.
I had granted his wish by giving myself knowledge of his name and where he would be today. He was called Sam and would be at the main shopping arcade in town after he got out of school.
My human body was about what I expected; I was neither tall nor short really, just like Allix. She had blonde hair and green eyes but I had that mousey look with short black hair. For some reason I needed glasses in this body but luckily the ones I had materialised in weren’t ugly. As I had mentioned mine and Allix’s body types were mostly the same except what boys cared about. I put my hand to my lacking chest and sighed, “How can I get his attention like this?”
“I don’t know. You certainly have my interest right now.” I jumped and spun around to see Allix’s mum stood there leaning against the doorframe. I had no idea how long she had been there but I was turning bright red at the thought even so. “Come on, we need to talk.” She gestured with her head and I followed her downstairs to the dining room.
We sat there facing each other for what seemed like hours before she once again broke the silence. “I overlooked it for today but how about you answer some questions for me? For starters what do you plan to do about school? I won’t ask about what you are doing here or any of that, you can tell me when we are ready.”
I gulped; a cover story hadn’t even occurred to me let alone anything like school, I obviously hadn’t come up with living arrangements. “Erm, well...” I cleared my throat and had another go. “I kinda don’t have a school, I guess you could say I was home schooled. Maybe I could go where Allix goes?” Home schooled wasn’t a total lie really but I still felt a bit bad for telling it.
Allix’s mum leaned back and sighed, “I guess I could look into it. Do you have money for your own clothes? You really need some that fit you round the chest.” I blushed at the mention of my short coming and shook my head. She got up and stretched before continuing. “Well I have plenty so when Allix gets back we can go out shopping.” I tried to interrupt and say I couldn’t take her money but she cut me off before I had really started. “Don’t even think of turning me down, you need clothes and I have money to burn so there. Oh and while you’re here call me Mary.” She walked over to me and stuck her face right close to mine. “Now we have the unpleasantries out of the way...You are SO cute! The only thing you need to repay me for room and board is to let me dress you up in lots of frilly outfits this afternoon!”
I suddenly found my cheek pressed against hers as she rubbed her face on mine. “O-o-ok, but t-t-there is somewhere I want t-t-to go.” This was working out quite nicely; the only thing was Mary seemed a bit too fond of me for the time being.
“Anything you want cutie.” Hopefully it would be this easy with Sam.
I pulled what felt like the thousandth outfit on; this one was a bright pink dress with frills everywhere. We had been at this for hours and had yet to move on to buying things for me to actually wear. Just before I opened the curtain of the changing room I was hit by a mental transmission that knocked me off my feet. “Hey you OK?” It was Allix; she must have heard me fall.
I stood up and shook my head to clear it, “Yeah, I’m OK.” It had been my spell; Sam had just entered the precinct and I had received a vision of where he would be from now until he left in two hours. I left the small cubicle to a gasp and high pitched noise from Mary and a snicker from Allix. “Is it OK if we hurry up and get to the book shop?” The first use of the spell had given me a vague idea of where he would be so I had made out that I really wanted to look at books but I had an hour and a half till he would be there.
“Aw but we were just getting started.” Mary pouted and stomped her foot.
Allix stood up and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, “come on mum, Laura is going to be here a while so you can have more fun another day.” It still took me aback how childish Mary was all the time; I guess it was put on considering how she was this morning but maybe not. Every other time Allix was being the grownup of the pair so maybe she was this childish but when she needed to she could be calm and collected, oh whatever it doesn’t really matter either way.
Still pouting Mary humped and conceded, “OK, fine. Clothes shopping then, let’s find some stuff you would want Laura.”
An hour later we left the third and final store loaded down with bags. I had been happy with what I had got back at the first place but Mary had dragged the pair of us round to two more shops and had insisted on buying everything I even showed a passing interest for. It was so hot outside that we didn’t talk until we reached the car and started piling the stuff in at which point I whispered, “Allix, you could have stopped her couldn’t you?”
“Yeah but it was fun really don’t you think?” She nudged me in the ribs and gave me a grin before speaking up so that Mary could hear her, “hey mum, since the car is basically full how about you take this stuff home and us two will take the train home? We have enough cash for that at least, don’t we Laura?” I nodded my head once and put the last of my bags on the passenger seat; there really wasn’t room for any more than Mary in the car when you got right down to it.
Mary looked at the car for several minutes making gestures with her hands that made it clear she was trying to work out how to make room for us. “Fine I’ll leave you alone for the afternoon.” She sighed after finally admitting defeat by her own hand. “But before that I want one last hug!” Allix groaned and held her arms out in resignation but before either of us could react I was enveloped and felt the wind crushed from my lungs. With that she was gone and left me panting for air.
Allix snickered, “That’s mum for you. Come on let’s go, the book store’s waiting.”
My plan was so simple so how had it gone so wrong? I was going to wait around the book I knew he was going to pick up and reach for it when he did. Our hands would touch and we would look up into each other’s eyes and that would be that. Unfortunately when the pair of us turned the corner Sam was already at the self, his hand reaching out for the book. I stepped back but Allix stopped me and whispered in my ear, “Come on, don’t give up now. Just say you were looking for that book and strike up a conversation.” She winked at me and before I could stop her I found myself propelled forward.
“Err, excu-.” I stopped and gathered myself, this time my voice would be audible for sure. “That boo-.”
I was cut off again but this time not by myself. Another girl barged into Sam and grabbed the book. “Yes! Item GET!” She was tall and good looking, her jeans were ripped and her t-shirt was adorned with that on/off I/O thing you get on the front of a computer. “Oh hey didn’t see you there. You alright?”
Sam rubbed his arm and winced. “I’m good, actually no I’m not. That’s exactly what I was reaching for so give it back.”
“Sorry but you know the rules, finders keepers.”
“Oh fine. Have to come back another day.”
“Yeah you will. My name’s Cassandra BTW but you can call me Cass.”
“I’m Sam, pleased to meet you.”
It was about then that they got out of earshot but I continued standing there in shock. How could this happen? Don’t coincidences like this only happen in fiction? And they always seem so contrived but then here I am. “-k is the one I wanted.” I finally managed to croak out, far too late.
“Hey Laura I found this one you might like and- Hey what happened?” it was only then that I noticed I was crying. I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my face. “Come on now let’s get out of here and talk. Did you not get the confidence to talk to him? Did he turn you down? No never mind save it for later just calm down for now.”
Soon after, we were sat in the nearest fast-food restaurant. I had told Allix what happened and was now sat hunched over my drink just staring at the liquid as it rippled and caught the light. We were surrounded by happy families and groups of friends but none of them were taking any notice of us. Their chatter was little more than white noise to me right now.
“That sucks and...” Allix trailed off just like every other time she started a sentence; she just didn’t know what to say.
I was in this cloud of depression that I suffered a moment of clarity and a burning question entered my mind. I spoke for the first time since finishing my story. “How did you know what I was planning?” I hadn’t told anyone about anything on this side of my life yet she had quickly come up with a counter measure.
“Well that’s a tricky question to answer but considering I know what you are it’s only fair.” I snapped my head up and she mouthed the word ‘Crane’ to me. My eyes went wide with shock. Sure it was fine to reveal ourselves to others as long as it never became public knowledge but how had Allix found out? Had there been any giveaways? I couldn’t think of any but what if there were? I would have to fix that but I don’t know how or where to start. “I wasn’t your fault or anything by the way.”
She was looking out at the people passing as she spoke. Suddenly her eyes clouded over and she looked down before continuing, “See that guy out there? The one in the green shirt. He and I were dating for a while before I knew, well much of anything really. I really thought we had it, you know? That thing that makes it all easy, makes it work. I guess I was lying to myself and ignoring the signs because I loved him so much. One time we were about to...and then I touched his face, just softly with my fingertips but then I got a flash of something and for some reason it made me feel sick to my stomach. He went home saying we could pick back up another time but not without kissing me on the forehead. That time I could tell what the flash was; it was a glimpse of his memories and emotions. I could tell he was just using me from the little look I had. Using me for...”
I reached out and grabbed her hand; she wore fingerless gloves at all times, guess I knew why now, but her uncovered fingertips touched mine and I saw her eyes flash a light blue before she pulled away. I had put all my heart into getting across my thanks for her support but there was still more to be said, “I must seam really petty right about now huh? All I care about is some boy and here you are with whatever it is you have.” We smiled at the same time and suddenly it didn’t seem so bad.
“According to the internet it’s called empathy. All I can ever find is some new age hippie sites and articles about comic book superheroes but it’s nice to have a name for it.” Allix got up took a last swig of her drink and then threw it across the aisle and into the bin. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet, I hadn’t even started mine so I took my cup with me. “Come on, we have plans to make and there’s no time to waste, first we need to see if mum got you into my school.” I noticed now that the grip she used on other people was carefully crafted so as to avoid skin contact even with the tiny amount of skin showing.
Part two