Daniel grumbled as he knelt, hunched over on all fours, scrubbing the brush against loose mana.

Glinse had made a small concession to practicality, though not to Daniel’s face. When he had arrived for his punishment, he found a bucket and a full sized scrubbing brush rather than the toothbrush he’d been threatened with.

Still, given the sheer amount of space he was expected to clean, he expected he’d be there all night. The courts were all wide and spacious, and all were splattered with the aftereffects of dueling practice by dozens of covens.

(Just one year of this,) he reminded himself, as he lifted the brush, dipping it into the bucket. In water, the mana dissolved away, vanishing completely from the brush. A small mercy, since it meant he wouldn’t need to refresh the cleaning water every couple minutes. (One year, then you can get into a proper warlock school.)

Thinking about how harrowing his first two days had been, it felt like a struggle to imagine himself lasting nine more months.

“Heya!” Jen’s voice cut across the gymnasium, echoing in the empty, unpopulated space.

Glancing over his shoulder, Daniel compulsively pulled down at the back of his skirt, worried that his prone position might make the fabric ride up too high and expose his diaper. Jen jogged across the courtyard, keeping one hand on her hat so it wouldn’t blow away while she hurried to him.

Wiping sweat from his forehead, Daniel looked up at Jen and sighed. “Hey. I’m not sure if I have time to practice today–I’ve got to finish this by tonight.”

She paused, glancing out at the expanse of unfinished scrubbing. “Well…I mean, this is going to take hours, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Daniel groaned. “And my arms are already getting sore.”

“So what’s the harm in a fifteen minute break?” Jen asked, smiling pleasantly.

Daniel couldn’t argue with that logic, or any logic that would let him procrastinate for a while. Dropping the brush into the bucket, he stood, stretching out his back. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”

“I think it’s easier to show this kind of magic than to tell it,” Jen explained. “Especially if it’s kind of unintuitive for you. So…I’m going to show you.”

“I don’t get how a demonstration will hel–” Daniel started, but his words cut off suddenly as Jen slipped her hand into his, squeezing tightly.

“Not a demonstration,” she corrected. “C’mon, Daniel, sit down.”

He felt like a dork for being caught off guard by simple hand-holding, but it took an effort not to blush as he sat cross legged on the floor, facing Jen. She mirrored his posture, reaching into her robes to produce her wand.

“It’s like with your coven,” she said, shifting slightly to get comfortable. “I want to just…reach out a bit. We won’t be able to make the same sort of mental bond without a full pentagram, but you should be able to kind of get a magical sense of what I’m doing, y’know?”

“Oh, yeah,” Daniel said, his brain finally catching up to what Jen wanted. Producing his own stubby wand, he held it in his left hand while squeezing her right. “I can do that.”

Closing his eyes, he extended his mental awareness through their touch, finding Jen’s mind on the edge of his own, in tandem with her fingers intertwined with his.

“Can you see the world around us?” Jen asked, and he felt her presence blink, somehow coming off as a mental rendition of a stutter that matched with her stumbling over her words. “I–eh–with your eyes closed, I mean. I know you can see it with your eyes open.”

“If I really concentrate,” Daniel replied. “I wouldn’t be confident wandering around blind, but it’s like a sort of ghost image?”

“Hmm?”

“Like when you stare at a lightbulb then look away,” he clarified. “If I know something is there, I can kind of…know where it is with my eyes shut, too.”

“I’m not talking about the physical space,” she clarified. “More, the magical energy flowing through things.”

“Oh, eh…” he said, trying a little harder to concentrate. Jen’s hand was warm, and he felt acutely aware of how he’d begun to suddenly sweat as they touched one another. “Sort of?”

“It takes practice, it’s kind of like trying to see what’s in a magic eye picture,” Jen explained. “Just…follow my lead.”

He wasn’t sure how to ‘follow her lead’ when he was sitting quietly with his eyes closed, but he nodded anyway, not wanting to seem difficult.

As he wondered what exactly he was supposed to do, he felt a tingling sensation in his mind, like light sparkling into existence. Furrowing his brow, he concentrated on it, trying to follow the light.

“You see that?” Jen asked. “Or–not ‘see’, but–”

“I see it,” Daniel replied, bobbing his head in agreement. “It’s super faint, but I see it.”

“I’m kind of highlighting it, so you can pick it up easier,” Jen explained. “But that’s the scrub brush.”

Daniel nodded, reaching out to brush his senses against the brush. Now that she’d pointed it out, he could feel it more clearly, outlined in his mind.

“Everything has energy running through it,” Jen explained. “We just sort of…I guess we make those bonds stronger, and then use them to control stuff. When you’re linked with your coven, it’s because you’ve all bonded your minds through the energy that’s connecting you, and when you connect with an object, you can move it around, because you magically connect yourself and become sort of…one big thing.”

“I know everything’s connected,” Daniel objected. “That’s really basic. It’s just hard to see.”

“I wasn’t saying you didn’t know,” Jen replied, her grip loosening on his hand a little. “I’m just kind of going over everything I can think of that’s relevant, ok?”

“Okay.” He shut his eyes a little tighter, trying to extend his mental senses further. With effort, he could just barely detect the threads of power connecting the brush to Jen, and Jen to himself. “Why’s it so faint?”

“It’s not,” Jen said. “Not to me, but everyone has different levels of like…awareness, I guess?”

“Well, if I can’t see the power, how am I supposed to control it?” Daniel grumbled.

The connection between them severed, and Jen sat back. Daniel blinked a few times, recentering himself, noticing her frown before anything else.

“I’m just trying to help, there’s no need to carcinize on me,” she said, immediately adding, “Because–carcinization is when things turn into crabs. Uh, and I don’t mean like with a spell, it’s an evolution thing, marine crustaceans have a tendency–”

“I get it,” Daniel said, shaking his head apologetically, one hand still laced with hers. “I’m sorry for being crabby.”

“It might be…” Jen began, tapping a finger to her lip. “So, you know how some people don’t distinguish colors as well as others?”

“I guess,” he replied. “Like, you might look at two blue shirts and say that one is Cobalt and the other is Turquoise.”

“Turquoise is like…green. There’s no way you’d mix those up.”

“I don’t know names of colors, I was just making a point,” Daniel clarified. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

Jen nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! And it’s a learned skill–you can get better at it, but if you never practice, you’re basically, like, half-colorblind.”

“Is that actual science?” he asked, frowning. “Not focusing on colors makes you colorblind?”

“I…don’t know, but it’s a metaphor.”

“You mean an analogy?”

“I dunno, does it matter?” Jen asked, before answering her own question. “You get my point, so, yeah. I think you might just need to practice on seeing the difference more,” Jen explained. “Here…let’s connect again, and I’ll try to show you more, okay?”

Nodding, Daniel tightened his grip on her hands and closed his eyes.

Again, they linked, and as their minds grew closer, the spectral lines of power radiating from the brush grew more intense.

So did everything else.

He noticed every bit of sensation coming from his body–the tingle of his skin on hers, the slight chill and warmth that came from working hard in an air conditioned room, the chafing that’d built up around his diaper’s leg guards–but it was more than that. He could feel Jen’s sensations as well, a slight pressure on the bridge of her nose from her oft-repaired glasses, a little sweat built up beneath her breasts, a point of pain on the inside of her cheek where she’d bitten down on it. He could feel her, completely.

The connection was more intimate than he’d expected, and as the mental embrace rolled through his mind, Daniel felt his body react.

Pulling his hand back sharply, he disconnected their thoughts before Jen could recognize what he was feeling. She wouldn’t be able to see the growing bulge below his skirt and beneath a layer of diaper, not if she hadn’t felt it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, jolted by the sudden break.

“I–” Daniel started, hurrying to think up an excuse. A random erection wasn’t that unusual, but until now, the general weirdness of the situation and his below-the-skirt apparel had kept that at bay, and he really didn’t feel like unpacking or explaining any of that at the moment. “It was just a lot of sensation, and…it felt kind of like an invasion of privacy? I could feel…uh…you.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jen said, nodding as she got it. “You probably haven’t done this much before, have you?”

“Not really,” Daniel admitted. “There was coven practice this morning, which wasn’t even really the same, and then, uh…this.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Jen promised. “It’s just kinda how it goes. I’ve practiced this with my mom plenty of times, you get used to it and it stops feeling weird before long.”

“Okay, but–”

“Do you want to learn this or not?” she asked, raising a curious eyebrow. “I’m happy to keep helping, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Taking a breath, Daniel exhaled and shook his head, trying to think boring thoughts. The awkwardness had already helped kill most of the surprise boner, and he wanted to keep it that way, no matter what assurances Jen gave about it ‘not feeling weird’.

She offered her hand, and after a hesitant moment, Daniel reached out and took it.

Their minds met once more, sensations passing between the magical connection between them. It felt physically intimate, in a way Daniel had trouble putting into coherent thoughts. He didn’t have much experience with traditional physical contact, so adding in the extra layers of the magical connection only made it feel more alien to him, more difficult to come to grips with.

“Just follow what I focus on,” Jen said, and through her senses, he saw the world.

Magic spread out from them, spiderwebbing across the whole gymnasium like neurons. Some objects collected power, others had the magic wash over them like stones on the beach, present but not the subject of focus. He could see the way that energy puddled in the stains of yet-to-be-cleaned mana, magic lingering in the enchanted goo, and he could see how to reach out and touch it with his mind.

Extending his senses, Daniel used his magic and his wand to take the brush from off the ground. He whispered the words necessary for the spell, and at his command, it began to hover.

Smooth.

Stable.

No wobble, no struggle to keep it in place, the brush floated in place where he wanted it.

“You’ve got it!” Jen exclaimed, and he could feel her grin spreading across her face as she said it, excitement surging through her in sympathetic glee.

Giddy, Daniel whipped out his wand, sending the brush flying across the ground. The spell wasn’t perfect, he’d miscalculated how far it would go, but though there was more power than intended, the brush still moved along the vector he’d sent it, skimming over the smooth linoleum flooring. He laughed, his own triumph coursing through him, creating a feedback loop as his emotional high met Jen’s.

“I can do this!” he exclaimed, only realizing after he’d said it what a weight that was off his shoulders. Stress and fear over inadequacy, anxiety that he wouldn’t be able to get into Warlock school, it was all melting away as he found that he could control his magic with the precision and accuracy he always knew he was capable of.

“Awesome! Now do it without the training wheels,” Jen suggested, pulling back her mental link.

The lines of power faded, and Daniel’s vision went with it. The brush clattered to the floor as he struggled to maintain the link, and as quickly as it had gone, the fear built itself back up, replacing the connection he’d built with Jen.

Had he even been doing the magic, or was he just riding Jen’s coattails?

A second try proved even worse, the brush was dozens of feet away and once he’d lost it, he couldn’t find it again.

Slumping back, he opened his eyes and shook his head, pulling his hand away. “I can’t do this.”

“You can,” Jen promised. “You just did.”

Trembling, Daniel shoved himself to his feet. “I can’t, and I didn’t. You did.”

“I just showed you where to look,” Jen said, rising to meet him. “Daniel, all the magic? That was you. You just need to get better about tracing power, that’s all, then you’ll be able to keep up!”

“Keep up?” Daniel asked, throwing up his hands. “Jen, I’m a warlock. I’m supposed to be able to do this better, on my own. Not barely keeping up, even while I’ve got people behind me.”

Jen frowned, disappointment building behind her glasses. “But…it’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it?”

He wanted to turn, to storm away, but the room still needed him to clean it up, and telling Jen to leave him alone didn’t feel right. “A step. A tiny one.”

“Well…” stepping forward, Jen laced her fingers with his, and he felt the mental offer as she said, “Nobody ever ran a marathon in a day.”

“That’s not how marathons–” Daniel shook off the thought. He accepted the mental prodding, opening his senses to hers, and as the world lit up once more, he also felt her soft reassuring presence.

“You can do this, Danny,” she said, and their connection betrayed no intended insult–she’d called him Danny because it felt natural, and because she’d forgotten he didn’t like it, nothing more. “I know you can. And if you need someone to help you practice, I can do that!”

He couldn’t help but smile, her infectious positivity leaking into his thoughts. Feeling the scrubbing brush a few meters away, he flicked his wand and picked it up, this time dragging it across the floor back his way, cleaning up a bit of spilled mana as he did.

“Okay, how’s this for practice?” he asked. “I have this whole gym to clean, but moving the brush around with magic should be a lot faster–can you stick with me while I do that?”

Squeezing his hand, Jen nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll just be right here, but you’ve got this. I have confidence in you.”

Daniel wasn’t sure he believed in that confidence, but Jen did, and when she said it, he felt that it was true. He could control his magic, he could build the skills he needed, he could prove himself.

He was going to be a warlock.

...

After only 19 chapters, Danny has finally caught a break!

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