Just a Tuesday - 2. Tuesday, March 25, 2025 – A New Friend

~The Lawyer~

“Since you're here, Mr. Upfield, may I ask you about my brother?” The cursebreaker broke the silence, and I nodded.

“Of course.” I wanted to say more, but Quentin's question and accompanying grin came back to me. I had wanted to mention it, but now that I was sitting across from his big brother and wishing I could be close enough to him to check if he had freckles—Quentin had a lot of unusually dark freckles on his nose and cheekbones—it seemed like a recipe for embarrassing verbal missteps.

“Well, I assume he accepted you as his new legal representative” — I nodded in confirmation — “but how did it go? Did he behave himself?” An “I sense trouble” expression crossed Dustin’s face.

“He’s definitely not someone who hides behind pretty words,” I said diplomatically, and got a genuine grimace in return.

“Certainly not.”

“He was direct, looking for my weaknesses, I suppose, but he wasn't rude.” After a half-hearted shrug, I added, “He didn't seem sad about me replacing Mr. Thompson, but it didn't seem like a big deal either.” Finally, I did not mention that he had asked whether I had fucked his brother, especially since I wasn't quite sure why he would ask or assume such a thing.

Dustin raised one corner of his mouth, but it wasn't quite enough to call it a smile. “When Quen first got on the wrong side of the law, our father hired Thompson; they're old friends. He paid him all these years without complaint. That's pretty much the only thing he ever did for Quen.”

“Ouch,” I muttered involuntarily.

“Thompson is a good guy, very good at what he does, but he never built any kind of connection with Quen, always wielding the moral hammer, and who knows what he told our father.”

I wrinkled my nose. Confidentiality is incredibly important in this job, and this Thompson—I had only spoken to him on the phone once and exchanged emails otherwise—was rapidly losing points in my books.

Dustin exhaled harshly and shrugged.

“Like I said,” I said, making a small, noncommittal gesture, “Quentin has a loose mouth with a sharp tongue, but he was cooperative and listened to me attentively. It was just a first meeting without much substance, but I'm actually looking forward to the hearing.”

“What hearing?” Dustin asked, frowning.

“To see if he gets a few months' probation or not.”

“I thought that was history after the last incident...”

“Apparently not.” I shrugged. “If all goes well, he'll be out in June or July.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Dustin's gaze wandered into the distance for a moment.

My imagination ran wild again, showing me romantic scenes of a grateful Dustin first hugging his brother and then thanking me for my work, his smile as he invited me to dinner so tender it melted something inside me.

“Hm?”

“I just wanted to know if you have any siblings, Mr. Upfield.” An almost wistful smile played around the cursebreaker's lips, and I shook my head.

“No, unfortunately not.” According to my family's stories, my mother had had several miscarriages after me before they gave up, but the way I had grown up after my parents' death, it was probably better that I didn't have any siblings. Accordingly, I tried to smile apologetically, but Dustin shook his head weakly.

“I love Quen more than anything, but sometimes I'd like to trade him for someone else. Someone with less nerve-wracking problems.”

“I've been told that's normal,” I replied dryly, thinking of my constantly arguing cousins. “Although I guess having a brother with your celebrity status isn't easy either.”

“Probably not, but Quen has never actually complained about it.” Dustin chuckled softly.

I already liked his smile, but that little sound sent a pleasant shiver down my spine. What I wouldn't have given to hear it close to my ear during a romantic candlelit bath with wine...

Quickly I dismissed the thought. And I'd better be on my way, too, because my original business and the other item on the to-talk-about list had been taken care of. With my mind wandering, it could only get awkward.

Before I could say anything, though, Dustin took another breath. “Forgive me for asking, and you don't have to answer, but those gloves make me curious...”

Accustomed to comments and questions about the gloves, I no longer took much offense at such remarks. “You'll have to ask your question, Mr. Percival,” I said, when there was no real question following, and he looked away, embarrassed.

“Excuse me...” He still didn't ask, though.

“No, I'm not part of the paranoid anti-magic faction. I only protect the people and objects around me.” I didn't say things like that often, but a cursebreaker in such a position would certainly view my situation with more understanding and compassion than a random passerby on the street. Nevertheless, a familiar fear tingled inside me and combined with the restless magic to form a nauseating mixture in my stomach. The fear of the fear in the other faces, the excessive distance from others.

But Dustin raised his brows and even leaned forward curiously. He examined me closely, not judgmentally, but as analyzing doctors do. “Well, since only your gloves are anti-magic and you're not wearing a face mask or goggles or anything like that, I exclude radiation, poison spitting, and the like,” he said in a light tone. “You work with people and move around in public spaces. I exclude unwanted mind reading because you also want to protect objects...”

“I'm a magebreaker,” I said during his brief pause, bracing myself for the usual reactions—but nothing of the sort came. Instead, he grinned crookedly.

“We could have used someone like you three weeks ago.”

I blinked in confusion. I mean, sure, I know that magebreakers have their place in the magical part of society, they're important, but: “I don't have real control over my magic.”

Now the curse breaker did lean back, but not in fear or concern, rather in thoughtfulness. “May I ask what exactly that means?”

Uncomfortably, I shrugged. “It's too strong for a passive talent, but I can't actively use magic.”

He raised an eyebrow, so I used my worn-out metaphor:

"The magic is like a barely tamed guard dog in the garden. If someone with magic comes to the fence, it wakes up and gets restless. If someone enters the garden, well, immediate aggression to the last."

A frown. Still without fear, but now with concerned curiosity. “What about the proverbial leash?”

I took a deep breath and forced my fingers, which had tightly intertwined, to relax. “I caused the death of a girl, when my magic manifested,” I confessed quietly. “Simply because she touched me. My magic mauled her, if we stick with that image, and she died in the hospital a few days later.” I struggled to keep the memories buried. "It took a while before they figured out what I am; because my magic is so aggressive, no one wanted to get close to me. They gave me through distant lessons a leash, but without a collar, it's not much use to me.“ And then I sat there feeling like I was in the dock, it was worse than any oral exam had ever been.

Dustin studied me, thought, blinked slowly. ”What did they teach you?"

“Nothing, actually", I replied honestly. “The problem, as I said, is that I have no access to the magic unless it is awakened by a mage or magical object nearby. And even then, I can’t do anything with it.”

He nodded simply.

My magic was in turmoil, swirling around me, but when I tried to reach for it, as I had been taught, it eluded me. Then I felt Dustin's magic approaching. All the untamed dog, my magic threw itself against its barriers and toward him, it felt as if it wanted to fight its way free through every pore of my body.

The foreign magic swept over me, light as a breeze, the touch of a gentle caress. The struggle of my magic did not subside, but it lost some of its aggressive undertone, and when the touch came a second time, I understood why. There was something familiar about Dustin's magic. Being the genius that I am, I realized that his magic also broke magical things, only much more specifically than mine. Was that enough to keep him from being broken by me?

I wanted to ask the question, but then there was a kind of jolt and suddenly I saw myself. But the fact that I saw myself—with a stiff back, clenched hands, wide eyes, and half-open mouth—took a back seat to all the colorful swirls covering the image.

A kaleidoscope of colors merging together and breaking into other colors. I stared, speechless, overwhelmed.

There was an astonishing amount of black in the mix of colors, and when I looked closer, I realized the colors didn't follow what I'd learned in art class. Blue and yellow merged into black. Red and green merged into black. Purple and gold merged into black. A black spot broke into blue, white, and dirty green, another fell apart into red and gold.

I snapped back into myself.

“That,” Dustin said quietly, “is your active magic.”

“What?” I made, dazed, even though I had heard him and basically understood him.

A small smile played on his lips. “That's the magical vision. They always say you blink into it by pulling the magic up with you when you open your eyes.”

I understood what he meant, because I had been told that often enough, so I nodded, even though I had never managed to do it. I tried it anyway. I imagined the colorful swirls were a cloth I could grab and pull over my face. And it actually worked.

The world turned gray. Gray on gray on gray, but Dustin was a kaleidoscope, very similar to mine, even though a dirty green was the predominant color for him.

I dropped the magical vision and stared at him. “Wow.”

His smile widened a little. “Colors are one way to describe magic, the easiest, I would say, because we can see them. And what we can see, mages can transmit through magical mind connection. That’s what happened unintentionally before, you were looking through my eyes.”

“I know it’s possible,” I whispered, still totally overwhelmed. “But no one has ever dared to do it. They were all afraid my magic would strike at the slightest contact.”

The cursebreaker nodded, his smile almost fading, the rest becoming sad, sympathetic, but then he held out his hand to me. “I'm Dust.”

Perplexed, I looked at him for a moment before taking his hand and shaking it. “Nathan. Thank you so much, I don't know...” I trailed off because I didn't know what to say.

Dustin—Dust—shook his head slightly, his smile back, crooked but sincere. “I might have a theory...”

~The Cursebreaker~

Nathan Upfield stared at me, unsettled, thrown off balance, and looking incredibly young. The way he tugged at his gloves reminded me of Elsa from Frozen. “A theory?” he muttered, and I nodded.

Had I not experienced how Kellen's and my magic harmonized so incredibly well, even though they were so fundamentally different, I would have considered the poor magebreaker in front of me a hopeless case, but there it was, hope. Not only could Nathan and I both break magic, there was something else familiar that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"You can compare magic to music. Same magic, same instrument, for example,“ I said slowly. ”But different instruments can play the same song, and the same lyrics can be sung to different melodies." I had learned this kind of magic theory from my mentor, with whose help I had laboriously learned to master general magic.

Nathan nodded slowly, a concentrated frown adorning his face.

“May I examine your magic a little?” I asked cautiously. The question was probably not entirely fair, after all, I had already touched him magically without warning, but that had largely been my risk.

Hesitantly, he nodded.

“If you feel uncomfortable, let me know.”

He nodded again, and I could see him bracing himself.

Slowly, I extended my magic toward him. I liked the metaphor of the untamed dog. The dog had already sniffed me and sensed something familiar, because now, on my second attempt, he slowly calmed down and his aggression faded. He was still running wildly and aimlessly through the garden, but he no longer tried to jump over the fence to attack me. I considered that a success.

Apart from that, I listened to the magic in other ways, sensing the harmonies which connected us. Nathan was like a child trying to sing along to a song on the radio. He can't hold the melody, the words don't fit, but you can still recognize what it's supposed to be.

I voiced the comparison aloud and he gave me a questioning look. “The way you're watching me, you find that helpful,” he remarked skeptically.

I shrugged and nodded. “I know someone—a battlemage, to be precise—whose magic, fascinatingly, forms an incredible harmony with mine. It's as if a violin fits seamlessly into a death metal band, or a saxophone into a Mozart symphony.”

His skepticism grew.

I grinned crookedly. "No, really. I don't want to send you to singing lessons or anything, but we could try it. Singing the same song, magically speaking, I mean." I couldn't have said where exactly the idea that it might work came from, or the enthusiasm to try it. Because if it went badly, his magic would reach out for me, which, depending on its effectiveness, could either cripple me or kill me outright.

Nathan looked at his hands, tugging at his gloves again. “I could kill you,” he muttered quietly.

I licked my lips and took a deep breath. “Your magic has only reacted when there was skin contact, right?”

“Like this I have accidentally broken enough magical items too, yes.” He nodded weakly.

“Then I won’t touch you. But seeing as the evil watchdog has already calmed down, I’m actually optimistic.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “And what do you suggest?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. My train of thought sounded stupid even before I had uttered it. “That we sing together until your magic is in harmony with mine.”

Again, he looked at me with skepticism.

If I had known he would be able to do something with it, I might have sent him a memory of the feeling of the intertwined magic between Kellen and me, but I doubted it. Besides, almost all of my memories of Kellen were sexually tinged, and I really didn't want to share that with a stranger.

“How is that supposed to work?” he wanted to know anyway.

Reassuringly, I raised my hands. “It's just a theory, okay? But the magic-music theory helped me to work beyond my own limitations.”

A brief nod.

“Do you know the song Clementine?”

“Who doesn't?”

“Okay. Let's just try it, shall we?” I placed my hand in the middle of the desk and nodded to him.

Hesitantly, he placed his gloved hand next to mine. Instinctively as close as possible, but without making actual contact, if only through the fabric.

I gave him a moment, then began to sing softly. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my daaaaaarling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.” My mentor had always used this song, this melody, repeating the chorus over and over until it went on like a trance.

Nathan joined in when I started the second round. More speaking than singing, but still.

I didn't count how many times we repeated the chorus, but I could clearly feel his magic calming down; the wild dog lay down and watched the stranger at the fence curiously. “Concentrate onto your magic, weave it with the melody", I finally sang seamlessly. At first I thought he hadn’t heard me, but then something changed. I couldn’t say what, it was too subtle at first, but before I could ponder it further without interrupting the melody, there was a jolt.

The box with the bomb lock, my fear of blowing myself and Kellen up.

The gloves were gone. Every single pair. The room was destroyed.

My helplessness at the sight of the people affected by the aging magic, the pain of hearing that someone had killed themselves because of it.

“Your name is no guarantee of your success.”

A curse I couldn't break right away, a desperate family, a crying girl.

“You're a murderous monster.”

“Isn't it enough that you're fat? Now you're dangerous too.”

“Do you think your magic makes you special? You're nothing but a dangerous freak!”

“You're too old for a letter from Hogwarts, Dumbledore and Hagrid aren't coming to get you!”

The whirlwind of Nathan's memories swept me away, the few images flashing from my own memory too fleeting to be recognized clearly. I tried to break free, but the faces, the words, the hatred, the fear, rained down on me.

A table in a library, books, pens, a half-finished poster. Frustrated discussions with a girl. A touch on my arm, hard, angry, and then pain. A pressure from within as if my body were tearing apart. A silent scream from the girl as something inside her was shredded. The girl's body on the floor, twitching, but intact.

I landed hard on my butt. Disoriented, I blinked at my surroundings until I realized that in trying to break free, I had actually stood up and fallen. I clumsily picked myself up and looked at Nathan, who had his hands folded in front of his face and seemed to be breathing into them. “Oh God,” it slipped from my mouth. “I'm sorry. Are you okay?”

He slowly looked up, pale as a ghost and trembling slightly. But he nodded.

When I no longer had to hold on to the desk and had pushed the foreign memories aside enough to feel like myself again, I went to the window and threw it open. The cold air was a relief.

After a moment, Nathan stepped next to me and leaned against the wall. “I saw memories from you,” he whispered.

“That... was a mutual thing,” I muttered back. “I'm sorry, I didn't expect that.”

He shook his head weakly, his eyes still a little glassy.

“Coffee?”

He nodded.

So I made coffee. On autopilot, I made both cups the way I like it, but I didn’t notice until Nathan had sipped and frowned at the contents of his cup, but he said nothing and continued drinking.

We stayed silent.

I felt his presence in the back of my mind, as if we had actively sought a magical mental connection, but I couldn't uninvite him. I shivered. Maybe it was just the cold air coming in from the window, which was still open.

He stared outside, his face unreadable. He might have been a few pounds overweight, but he was undeniably attractive, and the charisma I now sensed in him, rather than seeing it, I could well imagine being powerful in a courtroom.

But I had seen parts of what he kept buried deep inside.

I tried again to push him out of my mind, but his presence remained. With an internal frown, I examined his magic again and was completely baffled when I couldn't tell where his began and mine ended, so evenly and firmly were they interwoven between us. And yet it was a completely different feeling from Kellen's magic.

My cup was empty, and I took that as an opportunity to turn away. “It worked,” I said, and began rinsing my cup in the tiny sink of the office.

“Yes,” he murmured from the window, “I can feel it.” When I looked up briefly, I met his gaze. “Is this a one-time thing or” — he gestured back and forth between us — “is it now like an automatic connection between a phone and wireless LAN?”

That made me chuckle. “I have no idea. Your magic wasn’t exactly cooperative until just now, but with the intensity…” I shrugged. “We’ll see.”

A gust of wind swept across the room and he shivered, but didn't move. “Do you think my magic will still be so aggressive towards other magic users?”

I shrugged again. “I would advise you to carefully make all the exercises you have been shown. Maybe we've put a collar and leash on the wild dog together, maybe in his eyes I'm just an alpha animal that's better to submit to peacefully." I dried my hands and forced myself to smile encouragingly.

The counterpart on his side was somehow tortured, but he closed the window and then brought me the cup, embarrassed.

“Just put it down, I'll do it tomorrow. I need to call it a day now and have a piece of cake after the surprise. Would you like to come with me?”

The invitation was half sincere, half polite, but he would need a long, long moment to himself, I was sure of that – I could see the struggle within him. The cup hung in the air for a moment, trembling slightly, before he placed it next to the coffee machine. “I need some comfort food,” he admitted uncertainly, and I nodded.

“Okay. I just have to...” I pointed to the computer and he nodded back.

“I'll wait outside.”

That wasn't really necessary, but I refrained from making such a comment. Instead, I listened to our magical connection and was once again surprised that it only broke when he had reached the waiting area. That was a much greater range than usual.

But then again, nothing about this man's magic seemed ordinary. I had already shaken hands with magebreakers without any problems and had never heard of a magebreaker being capable of such a thing; such stories were all based on passive talents.

I caught myself staring at the screen, lost in thought, before hurriedly shutting down the computer and gathering my things. Just a few meters down the hallway, the connection to Nathan snapped back into place.

Mobile phone and wireless LAN.

A smile crept onto my face. However, it slipped away when I saw him sitting like a heap of misery on one of the chairs in the waiting area. For a moment, I saw my younger self, frustrated and overmotivated, in the office of a mage who patiently explained to me how much hard work it would be if I really wanted him as a mentor.

Had my subconscious dug up the memory? Or did it pop up because Nathan had seen it during the exchange?

“Dust,” he said, rising as I approached, “this is... this may be a stupid question because you control a different kind of magic, but...” uncertainly, he kneaded his coat, “would you teach me what you know?”

I studied him and my question answered itself. “Let's have a bite of cake first, and maybe you should sleep on it, but essentially, I'm available,” I replied with a slight delay and a nod.

Maybe I should follow my own advice and sleep on it. Our sudden and intense magical connection was all well and good, but I had felt the relentless aggression of his magic, as an outsider and from his memory, and despite my optimism, there was still a risk.

But alongside the small smile on Nathan's face, hope sparkled in his eyes and a warm, comforting feeling rose within me. This could be good.