5 A secret rendezvous

"Yunxin!" I grinned from ear to ear, ducking out from behind the pillar. I had been very secretive in asking her to meet up after school, not wanting to give away the surprise.

"What is it? Why so secretive? And why are we keeping Sherry out of this?"

"shhh, follow me! I'll tell you later!"

I led her to a less populated area, where I'd checked that there was no one else around.

"What is it? Are you trying to show me some of your 'magic' again?" Yunxin laughed.

"Yup. Watch."

Putting my palm out, facing upwards, I concentrated and muttered

"Feera."

A flame burst forth in my palms, flaring up to bathe my face in orange light. I managed to maintain it for a second, before it went out with a splutter, like its oxygen had been abruptly cut off.

Yunxin's face was frozen with her mouth gaping open, her expression priceless. Not wishing to lose the momentum, I snapped my fingers loudly, exclaiming

"Zippa!"

From the tips of my fingers, a small bolt of electricity sparked, crackling merrily before discharging itself into the ground.

And finally,

"Hypo!" I flicked my fingers at her, and tiny droplets of water splattered in her face, waking her from her stupefaction.

"Wha-wha-wha What?! What did you just do?!"

I was proud of my performance. I'd practiced for this.

"Magic~! Tada! "

"Bullshit!"

She gaped at me, not knowing what to say.

"No, seriously, I told you I was able to practice the magic used in my dreams. Its not just fantasy, it really is real!"

"But how did you do it?! And why couldn't you before?"

I couldn't really explain the whole concept of the how. But as for the why - "I just didn't know how to before."

"Could you teach me too?"

"Yup, I'll try! It takes a lot of patience though. Its almost like doing 1 hour of meditation everyday"

Yunxin made a face at that. Knowing her, she must be thinking that it was way too much effort just to make a little sparkle or a 1-second fire.

"Why do we have to keep this a secret from Sherry though? Meditation feels more like her kind of thing."

I agree. But... '...an evil witch. I had nightmares whenever I closed my eyes, seeing a witch coming after me, burning everyone to death.. '

I remembered what Sherry had said before. It hurt, knowing that Sherry was so traumatised as a kid by what I had told her, and that she actually thought the dreams I considered interesting and looked forward to seeing were so evil and horrific.

"Do you remember me telling you about the dreams? Where I was a power hungry bitch that knew magic?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't feel she was evil or anything right? I admit she was quite bitchy but, I won't go so far as to call her an evil witch."

"Yeah..."

"I think Sherry doesn't quite like the idea of magic? And she seemed traumatised by my dreams, she told me that she had horrible nightmares when she was a kid because of them. To the point that, to her, the me in the dream was an evil witch. I think she will be more comfortable thinking it was all just a dream and none of it was real."

"I see..." Yunxin didn't look very convinced, but she shrugged nonchalantly and accepted it. "I do feel bad keeping secrets from her though."

"So do I. Maybe one day we can tell her, but I don't quite know how to do so now."

Yunxin nodded sombrely.