Page 75 of Found in Obscurity

Kit couldn’t leave the pentagram during the ritual.

“I thought he was supposed to…” Glenn started, pointing at something, but was interrupted by Lorin’s grandmother.

“Shhhh.” She whacked him on the back of his head with her staff. “Give them a moment.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Lorin said, placing the notebook inside the pentagram Kit was in and leaving it on the floor. They wouldn’t be able to touch each other.

It was proving to be a much harder condition to uphold than Lorin had predicted. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold Kit. Have him pressed close and reassure himself he wasn’t harmed.

“Are you okay?” Lorin asked instead, and Kit picked up the notebook and the pencil with shaky hands, opening it to the first blank page and scribbling something before showing it to Lorin.

I’m good,it said in lopsided, wobbly handwriting.

“Any pain? Any indication that the ritual hurt you in any way?” Lorin pressed on.

Kit took a moment to assess himself before writing again, this time a slightly longer message.I don’t think the ritual worked as planned.

Lorin read the message out loud, frowning when the words sank in.

“But…you’re here, and you’re human,” he said. “And I definitely felt the magic wake up. And…”

He raised his hand, examining his marks. He found two very small new runes on his fingers and nails. One was just a tiny arrow pointing upward, and the other was a line with two little triangles on top of it. “These are definitely new.”

“Magic doesn’t ask for perfection, Lorin,” his grandma said. “Just because a ritual didn’t work, doesn’t mean the magic wasn’t used. Your marks will show up with each significant use of your powers, regardless of the success.”

“So it didn’t work?” Lorin looked over at the empty pentagram with the human bone in it.

Kit was supposed to be there. He was supposed to be projected as a human into the other pentagram. In his excitement and joy at seeing him, Lorin had completely forgotten about that.

He ran a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t think he’d messed anything up with the ritual. His grandma had gone over it with him a dozen times. They’d triple-checked everything from the drawings of the pentagrams to the pronunciation of the incantation.

A hand touched his shoulder and he opened his eyes to find Kit standing face to face with him, pale fingers wrapped around Lorin’s wrist.

“You can’t be out…” Lorin said, pushing Kit back toward the pentagram.

“He’s already out,” his grandma said. “And if the ritual failed, leaving the pentagram won’t mean a thing.”

“But how are you human if it failed?” Lorin asked.

Kit shrugged, shaking his head. He reached back and grabbed the notebook, scribbling something quickly before handing it to Lorin.

The shift just felt like it always does.

“So you shifted on your own?” Lorin asked.

Kit tilted his head as if deep in thought for a second before shaking his head again.I don’t think so. It felt like something was helping me along. But not the ritual.

“I don’t understand,” Lorin said after reading the words and looking up into Kit’s eyes again. Kit gave him another tiny shrugand a soft smile and Lorin just wanted to keep it forever. “How long do we have?”

I don’t know, Kit wrote, the tilt of his words a little melancholy.

“Hopefully long enough to check him over,” his grandma said, shuffling closer with her staff. “Grab that basket for me, Glenn. Don’t just stand there gawking.”

Glenn hopped to it with an easy gait, not at all bothered by Grandma’s cantankerous attitude. Maybe he was as used to it as everyone else around town.

“I recognize a well-being spell when I see it,” Glenn said, nosing through the stuff without shame as he walked it over.

Grandma grunted. “They’re not foolproof, and it’s better to go to a physician or a trained spell healer, but we need to keep this quiet for now. Understand?”