Reality Will Never Be the Same

“Magic.” he said in a flat tone of voice, and Willow silently cursed him for being so in-control, even now. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, whether it was 'placate the crazy person until I can call the psych ward for vacancies' or 'please let one of us be hallucinating, and by *us* I mean you'. Then again, for all she knew, it was the 'this is what smoking that funny weed does to perfectly intelligent young people' tone of voice.

She didn't delude herself into believing it was the 'I know all about the demon nightlife, it just surprises me that you do, too' tone.

“Uh-huh.” Willow answered, and felt her heart rate speed up even more. Her mouth was dry, her legs were shaking and her palms were getting sweatier and clammier by the minute.

She wished he would just say something, anything. This silent, staring thing he was doing was unnerving – like she was one of his suspects, or something, and he was trying to stare her into admitting the truth.

“Magic is real.” he said again, for the fifth time. If this were any other conversation on any other night, Willow would be teasing him about senility and old age, but this wasn't any other night.

“Yep.” Willow replied, still not able to focus on a single point in the entire room. Her gaze kept shifting everywhere, coming to rest on her uncle every few seconds, hoping to finally see something other than that blank look on his face.

“Where you sniffing the cooking spray earlier?”

Willow figured the 'extremely offendedannoyedshocked' gasp she made was enough of an answer to that.

“You're seriously trying to tell me that all that hocus-pocus-mumbo-jumbo is true? Cauldrons and broomsticks and black cats?”

“Not...entirely.” she hedged, wincing. Now was not the time to expound on her issues regarding witching stereotypes.

A raised eyebrow was her only response.

“Well, I've never owned a broomstick, let alone flown on one. In fact, I'm not sure you even could....though...maybe with a levitation spell to get you off the ground, and then you'd need some sort of small wind spell to help you steer, but why anyone would want to try on an actual broom-” Great. This was a fantastic time for her babbling habit to kick in. “And I don't have any cats, black or otherwise.” Not that she wouldn't like one, but in this house, with her uncle? – yeah, no. Alpha issues aside, she didn't even know if he liked cats. Or pets. Or animals, in general. “And the cauldrons only get used for the really big spells – ones that require heavy duty potions. Usually short phrases or chants work for the smaller stuff.”

And that was officially too much information in a thirty second period.

“Chants.” And they were back to the blank disbelieving/insane niece look again.

This called for a demonstration. Mumbling a few words under her breath and a slight flick of the wrist, she floated a book left on the hallway table into the living room, letting it hand in mid-air next to her Uncle Jethro.

Willow held her breath as he looked at the floating book that was breaking several laws of physics, and every law of gravity, hoping that it was the beginning of acceptance she saw on his face.

Then his body sort of slumped in place, as if under the weight of this new revelation/dimension in his world, and said...

“Huh.”

END

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