I’d always found ice cream to make hard conversations better, even when they weren’t mine. It worked almost every time. Smashing hard lumps of vanilla into chocolate syrup until they’d blended into a less aerated version of soft serve without sending frozen sugar into the air was an excellent focus to maneuver past the impossible. Or distract from anything worth avoiding.
Like this assertion that I might be able to keep my wisp of a fey daughter from crumbling into debris and motes of magic dust I couldn’t even see.
I prefer being an observer, even if I was a con man gone legit. No one’s ever suspicious of an eavesdropper at the ice cream shop.
“We’re wasting time, Hayes,” Geo said from his perch on my shoulder, and Kea nodded from her seat on the bench.
“I’m having trouble believing this is possible,” I admitted, and dumped my ice cream into the flower pot beside me unfinished. “Magic, through willpower alone?”
“No,” they said in unison.
“You’re a persuasion mage,” Kea said.
“That’s why you were a successful con artist for so long,” Geo said. “Why your penetration tests work, even when they shouldn’t. Which is using your powers for good.”
“You know what else would be?” Kea said with an edge an eight-year-old shouldn’t have. “I’d like to keep living.”
I looked at her, trying to see past the embodiment of my dreams. Trying to see anything but the embodiment of my lost wife and daughter.
“What bargain do I make?”
The words were a whisper, but her lips stretched into a smile anyway. “Now you’re starting to ask the right questions for a mage.”
“Not sure you can afford not to decide otherwise,” Geo said acidly. “Unless you want to end up a slave to her, possibly frog-sized? She doesn’t like you, you know. Perhaps she’d find a cockroach more useful than your current form.”
I lifted him off my shoulder and set him down on the bench, then looked at them both, hoping desire trumped skepticism. “What do I do?”
Geo opened his mouth, but no words came out. The compulsion spell, presumably. He gave Kea a bulging-eyed look of desperation.
She obliged. “You just want me to continue to exist past the deadline.” Her dark eyes were hopeful now, as childlike as her first exploratory bite of the discarded ice cream. “Persuasion mages work mostly on instinct and belief.”
I rested my hands on my knees and stared at the concrete wall in front of me, elbows stiff, and wondered if that’s why no one else had tried to come into this lovely garden spot while we were here.
“I don’t know how I can keep that up forever,” I said slowly. “Wouldn’t I have to continue wishing you to be alive? What happens when I fall asleep? Or dare to think of planning for—for the future?” I wouldn’t say the words out loud. “Isn’t it like not thinking of a pink elephant?”
“What?”
Geo sighed with enough force the bench rumbled. “Just get past the critical moment and it should be fine. You can do a single moment.”
“Which is in five minutes,” Kea added. “So figure it out, Dad.”
“You’re going to be a handful,” I retorted, and we settled into comfortable silence, watching customers enjoy frozen treats and a most enthusiastic Labrador puppy encounter ice cream for the first time.
If this didn’t work, watching him try to lick vanilla off his nose was a good way to go. It made Kea giggle, anyway, though I could tell she wanted to race over and join the rolling herd of organized chaos.
“Thirty seconds,” Geo warned.
I closed my eyes and felt the cold sweat of nerves break out at my temples, a habit I’d thought I’d long since controlled. But then, I didn’t usually delve into memory.
I’d lost the exact shape of her eyes until 24 hours ago, but I’d never forget the sound of my wife’s laughter. I’d tap into that joy to keep the daughter of my dreams alive.
In the end, it was anticlimactic. Kea touched my arm and grinned up at me. “We’re past the deadline.”
Struggling to smile, I felt tears streak my face in wonder as a burble of laughter escaped my throat involuntarily. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, a delightful grin on her face. “Didn’t you feel the magic pop?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but pulled her and Geo in for a hug anyway, trying not to squash the frog out of sheer excitement.
That’s how I saw the meteor hit the ground, tightening my arms around them as the only protection I could manage in time.
It came as a ball of blazing flame and scattered screams, trailing soot and chunks of rock, clipping the edge of the ice cream shop and splashing a shower of dirt across unsuspecting vehicles.
A car alarm blared as I stood to inspect the damage—silenced by the wave of a pale arm in pristine robes emerging from the crater.
This time, my tears were of rage. Who knew hell would be this damp? To yank my daughter away, moments after she’d truly been born?
I’d be damned if the Marble Witch would win this time.
I probably was anyway.
***
Not quite as hoped, but out of time for now. This week’s prompt was a trade with Cedar Sanderson. Go check it out! Update! Not a trade. Inspiration came from Becky Jones.
