Lewis thought he had seen some bizarre shit in his lifetime.

But this had been a different level of weird.

Eden sat cross legged on her bedroom carpet. Her palms were open and facing the ceiling. She stared at them in complete awe. Because from them, hovering a few centimetres above the skin were small flickers of flame.

They weren’t much bigger than a birthday candle, and flickered uneasily as she flexed her fingers. But they had been barely anything a few hours ago, and now, as she furrowed her brow and pressed her palms closer together, she could make them hop from one hand to another, circle upwards, weave into different, shaky forms.

Fire’s gift to her.

She sighed, and closed her fist softly. A soft hiss of smoke escaped her fingers, and when she opened them again, they were empty. She concentrated again, and the flame furled out, an orange yellow blossom in her palm. Open. Close.

She had been doing it for a few hours now. Flicking the fire on and off like a lighter, unable to grow tired of it. When Fire had left, and all that remained of their encounter a pile of ashes in a clearing, Eden had unfurled her hand to reveal her own flames. Out of all the batshit crazy things that happened today, Lewis thought, this new, firebending Eden took the cake.

Sam would disagree. As Fire unfurled into nothing he had stayed and cried into the ash.

“-Where is he? Give him back, please, tell me anything-!”

But nothing prevailed. After awhile, June and Eden looked at each other, a momentary truce exchanged between their glances, as the knelt beside the smaller boy, and coaxed him away from the embers.

“We’ll come back, Sammy, I promise.”

“Where do you live, Sam? Come on, you should go home, we’ll come back-”

“As soon as we can, right?”

“Right.”

Lewis remembered the way he had sniffled, his arm over his face as the two girls wrapped their arms around him and walked him away from the clearing. Lewis wouldn’t lie, his heart broke a little too. But what was there to do? Lightning would not strike twice today, that was evident. This spirit was temperamental, if nothing else.

Besides, Lewis had Eden to worry about.

“It was so weird, Lewis,” Eden explained quietly. She frowned at the ground.

“It was like, for a second I was her. I could hear her thoughts.”

She flipped over on her back, and groaned to the glow-in-the-dark star stickers they had plastered her bedroom ceiling with when they were six. A whole universe existed in Eden’s bedroom. He had cried in here many nights, where he stayed over to be anywhere but home. There was Eden’s bed in the corner, but there was always the second mattress by it’s side, like it had been for years. At one point, her uncle offered to buy them a bunk.

“How am I supposed to explain this to my family?” she whispered.

“Don’t.”

“I’m serious. What- What am I?”

“What is anything?”

She glared at him through the gaps in her bangs. It was a enough-of-the-philosophical-bullshit-and-help-me glare.

“I’m serious too,” He explained, “I get it. You love them and they’re catholic, god-fearing hardasses who will take you to be exorcised. The best thing is to not tell them, and we’ll- we’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t like keeping secrets from them.” she chewed at her lip, “And, dude, have you thought about this, like, seriously? What if I do need an exorcism-”

“Do you hear yourself?” he gripped her shoulders, “Is this thing hurting you?”

“No.”

“Are you feeling anything bad from it at all?”

She shook her head.

“It feels-” she looked at her hands again, “I don’t know how to say it exactly. It feels right. Like I was missing something, and, I don’t know. As soon as she touched me, something just clicked. Like this is who I’m supposed to be.”

She laughed.

“You know what’s crazy? I feel like… I feel like I can really trust it. And, I don’t want it to go away. But I still don’t understand it. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

“And we will. As soon as we can.” Lewis grinned, “For now, you can just be Prince Zuko.”

This elicited a laugh from Eden. A real, snorting laugh, the kind where you could see her gums and the front tooth that a little chip in it that she hated.

“Seriously though, you know karate, you could become a flame warrior or something-”

“Lewis, I literally stopped at yellow belt.”

“Are you saying you couldn’t kick someone’s ass with ease?”

“Oh, absolutely not. I’ll kick their ass to the sun!”

From the other room, a loud string of angry spanish words were yelled with sudden force. Lewis knew no spanish, but was pretty sure whatever was being said was not decent.

“FERNANDO! TURN DOWN THE TV!”

Eden’s uncle knew only a few english phrases. Turn down the T.V! Was one that he had learned from living with Eden for sixteen years.

“Always watching those damn soaps!”

His phone buzzed. He swiped it open and read the text.

“It’s from June.” he proclaimed. Eden visibly gritted her teeth.

“She says she and Samuel are going to the library after school to record everything that happened today. For research and stuff. She wants to know if we’re coming.”

Silence.

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

More silence.

“I honestly do not understand your hatred for her.”

“And I don’t know how you stand her.”

Lewis thought about June as she dropped them off at Eden’s. Eden had disappeared into the door as soon as possible, happy to be back at home base, but Lewis had hung back.

“Listen, June.” He scratched the back of his head, “I know we aren’t really great friends to begin with but after today-”

“I get it.” she said immediately. She looked straight into his eyes, and they were chocolate brown and completely sincere.

“You can trust me.”

They didn’t need to say anything else. Sometimes, you just meet people who see the exact same world as you do.

Lewis returned back into the plane of the presence.

“Well, listen Eden as your begrudging best friend, I have to begrudgingly dole you some best friend wisdom. We just went through some straight up traumatic shit today And something tells me we’re at the tip of the iceberg.”

He paused, thinking.

“What I’m trying to say is, I have a feeling, I don’t know if you feel it too, but we’re all in this shit storm together now. I don’t know what happened, but whatever that magic was, it took away Toby, it set things on fire; We don’t know what it’s capable of. We can only trust each other right now.”

Eden whistled

“Deep, bruh.” She cracked a smile, “But- I agree with you. I feel it too. Like-”

“-Like this was all fate?”

He felt his cheeks burn at that stupid ‘F’ word. What was this anyway, some shitty horoscope reading? Since when did he believe in stuff like destiny?

“Yeah. Exactly like that.” she sighed, “Let’s sleep. I’m tired.”

“Goodnight Sanchez.”

“Goodnight Goodman.”

She tugged at the lamp string, and the room went dark. He heard the familiar shufflings of her settling into the covers of her bed, and soon enough, her breathing turned to soft snores.

Lewis stared at the ceiling stars, and his mind did nothing but race. In the light of the moon streaming from the window, he retrieved his notebook from his coat, and scribbled into it’s pages, until they glowed yellow with the sunrise.