Magic Beans

**March 5, Big High, the hallway outside the Thaumaturgy Club clubroom, shortly before 5pm**

The gorgon known as Beans slithers out from behind a set of lockers as the last of the upperclassmen pass by. She had started going to Big High only a few days before, but she has already started to be wary of the stares sent her way by her fellow students - both those of curiosity and of fear.

She isn't used to that sort of attention. Before, when she went by a different name and did not have a zoo exhibit's worth of reptiles growing from her scalp, she was mostly ignored at school. Just one quiet kid of many.

She's starting to miss it.

Still, it isn't all bad. This school has so many interesting people, clubs and activities, swimpeople and even magic! she's always wanted to do magic, all her favorite books are about magic, and… She turns around and looks at the door labeled 'Thaumaturgy Club' in big red marker letters above a scribbled out 'Black Magic Club'.

Magic is real! And she might get to do it!

She approaches the door cautiously and knocks.

Samantha is rummaging through a box of crystals, looking for the clear quartz she knows is somewhere in the room. She had it yesterday. If Boon was still in the club, she’d blame them for misplacing it. Since they’re not, she’s just frustrated.

Which means when the little knock sounds on the door, she answers with an irritated “What?” before yanking the door open. She scowls at the unfortunate soul who interrupted her for a moment before realizing who is there. Her expression softens -- not into a smile, but at least it’s no longer hostile. “Oh, hey Sabine. Did you need something?”

Beans jumps a little at the sudden movement, the snakes in her hair hiding behind their own coils, but she smiles when she sees who it is. "Hi Sssamantha," She says, struggling to get her forked tongue to produce the S around her fangs. "Umm, classss just ended so I… I thought it wassss time for clubs..? Is it not? I am sssorry to disssturb you." She peeks around the older girl, trying to see what she was up to.

Beans can see a worn notebook and the crystals that Samantha had been rummaging through scattered across the newly-turned-to-stone table. Samantha shrugs.

“It is time for clubs, yeah. The others couldn’t make it today, so I’m just trying to find stuff for a cleansing spell. The energy in the room has felt a little off since I did that scrying on Monday, and a waning gibbous moon is good for cleansing and banishing spells. Do you want to stick around and help? We could do something more interesting if you wanted instead. Like…” she pauses to think of something more flashy but not destructive, “Like a light spell?”

Sabine's eyes practically sparkle at every magical word the elder witch says. Spells! Scrying! Waxed Gibbet Moons! All of it is so exciting.

"That sssoundss sso cool! I would looove to learn a light ssspell. Are those cryssstalss!!! I love crystalsssss. I have been practisssing making them," she says, excitedly making her way to the table and admiring the way the precious stones catch the light.

Samantha almost grins at how excited Beans is, but she has a reputation to maintain. “If you learn how to make crystals, that would be very cool. We can get a new table, but like, clear quartz.” Then no one could hide it from her.

Samantha closes the door and follows Beans over to the table. “So like I said the other day, I think of people’s magical abilities like bodies of water: some people have access to a puddle, and some to an ocean, and everything in between. There are ways to supplement that and such, but we can over that later. For now, the first step is helping you tap into that. Crystals and stuff can help with that. Have you ever done any magic before? Aside from helping me scry on Monday?”

The new girl shakes her head, snakes wiggling back and forth as they adjust to the movement, all of them starting at Samantha with rapt attention. "Nope! I did not know it was real until I came here!" She smiles widely, showing many fangs. "I love reading booksss about witchess and wizardsss though and I always wanted to be one and I usssed to make up potionss and spellsss and write whole notebooksss full of them!" She waves her arms around in excitement. "Missr Inge showed me magic with thessse really cool runessstoness and that wasss the first time I ssaw magic!"

“Is Inge on Big Team?” Samantha asks, and she gathers a few of the crystals in a row. “The first step to learning magic is learning how to tap into it. Using stuff like wands or sigils or crystals can help you do that until you can do it yourself.” Samantha makes a face at ‘wands,’ like she thinks they’re cliche. “Close your eyes, and try to feel the energy in the crystals, see which one resonates with you. Picking one that feels good to you will help you more easily tap into your own magic.”

Sabine closes her eyes and tries to focus on the crystals, a task made a lot more difficult by the fact that she is very, very excited to be doing it. "Yess! Missr Inge joined at the sssame time as me she iss very cool and blue and he doesss fire sstuff!" She says, extending her hands towards the table and waving then around as if she can grab the magic out of the air. She can't, of course, and she doesn't seem to feel anything.

"Ummm. How do I do thisss?"

“His magic is probably a lot different than mine,” Samantha says, then holds her hands about six inches above the crystals. “Hover your hands over them like this, and try to focus on the energy in the room. It might be weird or difficult at first, like using a muscle you’ve never used before. But everything has energy, even if you haven’t felt it before. You just have to...uhhh align yourself with it, I guess? Like I stay still and focus on my breath as an access point to energy, but that doesn’t work so well for people who have difficulty standing still…” Samantha trails off, realizing her teaching skills might not be quite up to scratch here.

Beans opens one eye to peek at Samantha. She adjusts her position to match her teacher's and tries again, trying to spread her awareness outwards into the stones.

"There'ssss something there!"

Sabine can't help but wiggle her fingers in excitement as she realizes she can feel one of the stones. When she tries to focus in on it, though, put some of herself in it, it seems to slip away, to fade, and another one takes it's place… she scrunches her eyebrows in frustration and sticks out her tongue before trying again, only for the same thing to happen.

Well, fine! She will try as often as needed! She does it again, and again. Eventually, one stone sticks. It feels round in her mind, and solid. Even with her eyes closed she can see a deep red gem with a yellow and white crank running through the middle of it like a slit eye. She smiles, and opens her eyes.

"Got it!"

The moment she says that, all the crystals start shaking, like someone is rattling the table underneath them. They jump up and down and against each other, creating a whole symphony of clear tings and plongs. The jasper - for that is what it is - rises to the top.

Then all the other stones turn to jasper as well, before falling back onto the table.

"Oops. Umm. Wasss that ssupposed to happen..?"

Samantha had leaned away slightly when the crystals started shaking, but she leans back in to look at them now. “Huh. No, no it’s not. I’ve never seen anything even slightly like that. If I had to guess,” she picks up one of the crystals and holds it up to the light, “I’d say that you have considerably more than a puddle’s worth of magical potential.”

Samantha looks at the pile of jasper. “I’m going to do so many experiments with those. I wonder if they’ve transformed totally or if they’ve retained their original energies even though they look different now…”

Beans practically beams with joy. “I did a good job?? That wassss GOOD? I wasss sso ssure I did ssssomething wrong!” The snakes are practically dancing, some with their mouths open in jubilation as she bobs up and down. Beans leans down to look at the pile of Jasper. She can still tell which was the original, somehow - it seemed brighter in her mind, more vibrant -- but they all felt like real, true Jasper to her. She can tell, now, that different stones feel completely different. The granite of the table is solid and rough and kind of salty, while jasper is like strawberries if strawberries were also an autumn sunset. Yes, that is what they feel like.

As a test, she grabs her bag and rummages in it until she finds her lunchbox, then opens it and takes out a slice of lime that had come with her lunch - rice with fish. She holds it up to the light, takes off her glasses, then experiments until it’s at just the right position that she can sort of focus on it.

When she puts her glasses back on, she’s holding a lime slice-shaped piece of quartz.

“WOW! Look I made quartzss!” She turns and places the piece in Samantha’s hands.

What do we need for a light sssspell?”

“Well you’re in luck, clear quartz will do the trick.” Samantha’s lips twitch almost into a smirk as she walks over to the window and holds the crystal up to the light. The texture of the lime is illuminated, all of the tiny kernels that used to be citrus showing up vividly. “See how the light catches in it? Light can catch in a lot of things, obviously, but stuff like clear quartz shows it best. It’s easier to envision. So what I do is hold that in my mind, and call it back when I need it. Let me show you.”

Samantha pulls down a thick black curtain over the window, shrouding the room in darkness. Cupping the quartz lime in her hands, she calls on her own magic, and the lime starts to glow. She puts a little more magic into it, and it gets very bright.

“Tap into that magic you’ve got, and you can cast your own light spell. Some people find it’s easier to attach words to spells. Like, you could say ‘light’ or ‘illuminate’ or whatever. I’ll sometimes do that when I’m learning new spells. The words don’t have power, but they help to channel the energy. And magic, above all, is energy.”

Samantha pulls the curtain back up a little, so the room won’t be totally dark, and drops her light spell. She holds out the quartz lime to Beans. “Here, now you try.”

Sabine pays rapt attention from her chair, and bundles her hands in her skirt when Sam darkens the room. The moment the lime gets illuminated with a magical light she gasps, her mouth falling open in a big O. She hops off the chair and eagerly grabs the quartz back from the older girl.

“That wassss sssso cool! If magic issss energy can you power computerssss with it? Or cook dinner? Ohhh what ssshould I ssssay…” She looks at the stone in her hands, excitedly slithering around in circles. Eventually her face brightens and she looks up at Samantha with a smile.

She moves over a little, then tries to relax, to remember the sensation she felt when she changed the stones to jasper. The excited wriggling of her hair and legs slows until it is more of a slow, rhythmic dance, some of the snakes’ mouths opening and closing as if they are chanting. Her eyes are closed.

*“Λευκός!”*

The stone begins to glow, small pinpricks of light appearing in the lime. They expand, revealing themselves to be a galaxy of different colours that begin to overlap and blend, until the whole thing shines brightly like a prism, the colours dancing on the surfaces around the room, casting enormous shadows of her hands onto the walls.

“I don’t know what that meanssss but it felt right,” Beans whispers, looking up at Samantha with the purest expression of joy. The lights are reflected in her large eyes.

Samantha’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open as she stares at the lights. It was nothing like she’d ever seen before, especially not from a beginner. If Sabine could tap into this much magic without having much practice, she must have an awful lot of it.

“Wow,” she whispers. “You really are something, Sabine.”

It took a minute or so for Samantha to remember that Sabine had asked some questions; the lights were dazzling. “Right, uh. So you can definitely power electronics with magic. It takes some effort, and works best if the tech is made to be powered by magic. Like,” Samantha hesitates for just a moment, scowling almost imperceptibly as she thought of Cambria, before moving on, “like Engineer Princess Tune-up. She’s a kid hero, but has a huge magi-tech robot. And sure, if you channel it right, you can use it for cooking. It’s easy to overdo it and just end with something like you’d find on Chimera Cooking, though.”

Sabine beams. “Yesss? That wasss good? Sssso I’m accsssepted? I can join the club?”

Despite her best efforts, Samantha grins. Sabine’s enthusiasm has that effect on people. “Yeah, Sabine. You can definitely join the club.”