Old World Magic

When I woke next there was daylight streaming through the windows and I heard soft talking in the room. I opened my eyes and sat up to see two men in scrubs making the bed across the room from me. They were both dark skinned black men, one a bit older than the other in appearance. I put the older one somewhere in his late forties or early fifties, and the younger one maybe in his twenties.

I sat up in bed and they both turned to look at me. The older smiled and came over and said, "Mornin Mr. Naughton. Bad case of sunstroke yuh had there uh?"

I licked my lips and nodded, clearing my throat as I shook off the remnants of sleep. He had an almost magical quality to his voice. I wasn't sure of his accent but I would have bet money that he hadn't been born in the USA. I must have looked confused for a moment and asked, "Sunstroke?"

The other man finished making the bed and the older fellow turned and said, "Yuh go ontuh the next room, I'm going tuh make sure this guy's ok." The younger man nodded and left the room. The sounds of a hospital drifted in from the hallway for a few moments till the door closed softly. The older man waited till the door was shut before answering, "Yes, because it's easier tuh convince everyone else that yuh had sunstroke or were on a bad drug trip yuh see then try tuh explain the truth."

I raised an eyebrow, and then it hit me. Using my sixth sense I sniffed the air and knew, it wasn't just his voice that had a magical energy, but there was an indefinable aura around him as well, one that spoke of magic and secrets. It was very weak, not like when I was around Ruby, Adam Saks, or Emily Whitefeld. But there was something there.

I pushed myself up into a comfortable sitting position on the bed, and noticed that my IV had been removed. Looking at the door to make sure no one was nearby, I asked quietly, "Are you a mage as well?"

He nodded, "I'm a very weak ones, fledgling I heard someone call me once. But my family has always had th' healers touch. An' th' Silence pays us well tuh keep it all a secret." He smiled at me and I couldn't help but feel comforted, secure, safe.

"The Silence?" I asked recognizing that he was using the word as a proper name, but not knowing the meaning. Elder Creaklimb had taught me much in my time with him, but that name meant nothing. "What's the Silence?"

Just then the hospital room door opened and the old man in the nurses scrubs simply put one finger to his lips and made a slight wink. I was confused and annoyed, wishing he'd answered my question before the doctor had entered. But the orderly simply left the room quietly as the doctor came to stand at the foot of my bed.

The doctor had the cool crisp look to him of youthful arrogance. Certainly he wasn't out of his twenties yet, and now that I was back in my reformed body, I looked younger than him. But I'd been alive for almost forty years, and I knew that swagger, that walk. He thought that he had the world on a string and that nothing could harm him and nothing could ever go wrong. I missed that sort of youthful optimism some days.

He picked up a manilla folder from the foot of my bed and looked at the papers inside for a few moments before saying anything. He spoke to the paper, not even bothering to look at me, "Seems like a pretty mild case of sunstroke, get some rest and drink plenty of water. No booze for at least two days and no driving or operating heavy machinery for three. Any questions?"

I was silent for about half a second, I had a lot of questions, but none I could think to ask this man. But a moment was all the doctor gave me before closing the manilla folder and saying, "Good, you're free to be discharged. I'll send a nurse up with a wheelchair." Then he was turning and striding out of the room.

I breathed a sigh of relief, I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath. I sat up in the bed and looked around. There was an IV port taped to my left arm, but it wasn't hooked up to anything. I was free to move around. So I swung my legs out of bed and went to the little stand alone closet. I found my suit I'd been wearing when I'd been admitted and cringed at the dried blood on it. The suit was likely ruined.

Where had I bled from? I couldn't remember. I took the suit and went into the bathroom. It was quite spacious, with a rope to call for a nurse and handles for people to get up and down from the john. With one foot, clad in some silly little hospital sock with rubber treads on the bottom, I kicked the seat up and then took off the hospital gown, eager to relieve myself before dressing.

After a minute or so, I cocked an eyebrow and looked down. This had to be one of the longest pisses I'd ever taken. And the stream was powerful, strong, like I'd been chugging water for hours. It was several minutes before I was finally done, and I was amazed at how badly I'd needed to go. I wondered how long I'd been out cold. It had felt like weeks that I'd been on the other plane, talking with Creaklimb. But he'd told me that time passed differently here and there, especially when only your consciousness was in that place, that it was likely that my body had not been asleep for weeks. Could my over active and copious micturition have something to do with the 'gift' that Brookesbend had claimed she'd given me? If so, I would rather have had a gift card.

I dressed in my suit, and decided that the blood stains weren't terrible, and maybe the suit could be salvaged, I'd definitely need a new shirt however, dried blood stains on a white shirt just didn't come out. I stepped out of the bathroom and bumped right into a pleasant looking nurse of obvious hispanic origins.

"Oh, pardon me!" she said as we crashed together in the hospital room.

I smiled down at her, she was quite short, though cute. Maybe in her thirties, with a round face and hair that had been pulled back, I couldn't help but notice the top edge of a tattoo peeking out from her collar on the back of her neck. She was short, and a little on the plump side, but she looked pretty good to me right then and I felt my desire rising as I looked in her dark chocolate brown eyes and said, "No no no, my fault." Then noting her name tag I added, "My apologies Maria."

She smiled and gestured to the bed. Immediately I wondered if I was going to get lucky that easily, but she said, "Sit down Mr. Naughton so I can take your port out. Your, ahem, friend Ruby already filled out the paperwork when she was here, so you're free to be discharged."

I moved to the bed and sat down, rolling up the unbuttoned sleeve of my shirt and pushing the suit jacket cuff up as well. The way she said 'friend Ruby' told me that she had a very good sense that Ruby was not just a friend. Well, Vegas had it's fair share of prostitutes I supposed, and this cute little woman looked like she understood the need for discretion at least. She bent over, the V in her scrubs offering just the slightest hint of her cleavage before her head blocked the view. She quickly removed the tape and pulled the IV port from my arm, pressing a gauze pad to it and telling me to hold it for a moment. She then quickly placed tape around it, holding it in place.

"Tell me Maria," I said as she put the tape back in a little basket that she'd brought with her, "How long have I been here?" I was curious to see how many days I'd been unconscious. I hoped I hadn't been out so long that Emily Whitefeld had figured I'd reneged on our deal. Worse, if I'd missed the poker tournament all together. It would look quite bad for me, and I'm sure I'd be expected to pay for the services she'd already fronted for me.

Maria turned back to me, now holding a clipboard and filling something out. She remarked off hand, "Oh just since the taxi driver brought you in yesterday afternoon."

I was absolutely floored, stunned, shocked. I looked up at the clock on the wall, it wasn't even noon yet. I'd been in the hospital for less than a day? But it had felt like I'd spent weeks in that other place, the great forest, talking with Elder Creaklimb. I had learned so much, practiced my magic, how was it possible that I had been gone for a day?

I visualized the door I kept locked in my mind, then opening it, thought about Maria. My mind connected with hers and I began to read her thoughts. Well, that is what I wanted to do, but instead of the usual slow crawl of information, the usual sifting I had to do, it was like a flood gate opened. Everything that Maria was, knew, thought, felt, it all came slamming into me in a tidal wave. I slammed my door shut quickly and mentally sputtered under the flood of information that I had just received. Too much, too fast, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. That had never happened before. Usually I had to pour over a person's mind to try to drag information out of them. But with Maria it had been like the information couldn't come to me fast enough.

I thought about the door, and this time I changed it. I added one of those fisheye lenses like they had on hotel room doors. Then I let my mind self look through the door. On the other side I saw Maria's mind, but this was no good. I could see her but no information was coming through.

"Mr. Naughton," Maria said shaking my shoulder lightly. I snapped back to reality and looked up at her. "Mr Naughton, are you still feeling the effects of the pain killers we gave you last night? They should be out of your system by now."

"No," I said shaking my head, "Sorry, I was just lost in thought."

She looked at me as if she didn't quite believe me and frowned, "Well, in any case, no driving for 24 hours. There's cabs out front if you don't have anyone to pick you up I can wheel you down to them." She gestured to the folding hospital wheelchair she'd brought into the room.

I nodded and stood as she wheeled the chair close to me. I thanked her for her help as she gave me paperwork from the hospital. Then she wheeled me down to the ground floor and outside into the blazing Vegas heat. I felt woozy again but got into a cab.

"Where too man?" A deep voiced African American cabbie asked as I got in. The cab had it's AC running, thankfully. It wasn't as cool as I'd like, but compared to the heat of the day outside, I wasn't going to complain.

I was about to say the Casino Royale, when suddenly I had a thought. I reached inside my jacket and found the check that Francis Solaris had written to me. I was glad I was sitting down as I unfolded the check and looked at it. A year ago, in my old life, that would have been more than my annual salary.

I quietly folded the check and said, "Actually I need to go to my bank first."

- - -

It was the strangest sensation. I'd come back to the hotel and checked in with Ms Whitefeld, then returned to my room. Ruby was gone, back to the hideaway I supposed, but Erin the prostitute I'd hired to stay on in the other half of my suite hadn't moved in yet. Nothing seemed that odd or out of place, it was as if I had only been gone for around a day. I supposed that was the case. From anyone else's perspective I'd left the hotel, confronted Solaris, then been admitted to the hospital. I'd spent a few hours in a deep sleep, the doctors didn't even say it was a coma, just exhaustion brought on by heat stroke. Then I woke up and checked out of the hospital.

But for me it was so much more. I'd spent weeks learning at the roots of elder Creaklimb from my point of view. He'd told me about how the gods once walked upon the earth, man and beast spoke together, the fey and the demon lived in the same place as mankind. But that was before, in the early time, when the old world was still new. Mankind had pushed away the fantastic, driven it with wheel, telescope, and microchip. The idea of magic, unicorn, or vampire was something for our fantasy, something that would stay locked away in our minds that we could dismiss as fiction. But I knew, others like me knew. Magic wasn't just fiction and myth, it was real, but now so much further from our life then it used to be.

How could I rectify weeks of learning, discussion, mental growth at the foot of my wise elder, the great tree Creaklimb with the fact that this world thought I'd never left it? I knew the secret song of the wind in the trees and the dance of the falling flower petals. He'd told me about the lost lore of the kitsune, the sneaky guile of the boggarts, and the bloody and often gruesome 'jokes' of the far darrig. I'd learned to play games older than any living civilization and been told jokes in a language that had been dead for millennia.

I realized that it was tearing me apart, this dichotomy. I had to accept the magic that had happened and incorporate it into my life, into the 'real' world. I threw myself onto the bed and ran a hand across my bald head. No hair would grow anywhere other than eyebrows on my body, thanks to the woman who'd given me this form, Reina. I didn't know why she'd given me a body that wouldn't grow hair, but it seemed like there might be a reason.

I closed my eyes for a moment while reflecting on the dilemma, just for a moment. My mind was simply whirling too much to make sense of it.

I opened my eyes and the room was darker. The sun had begun to sink and I must have been asleep for hours. Strange, I'd had no dreams.

Dreams! That was it. The entire incident with elder Creaklimb, with Duskwind, with Brookesbend, it had all been a dream. Of course I knew it was so much more than a dream. But I couldn't process it any other way. I'd fallen asleep and had a long and vivid dream. A smile creased my face as I allowed myself the belief in that lie. It wasn't a perfect answer, but it would do for now.

I rose and went to the bathroom to wash up, and afterwards noticed that the table that had been in the center of my room had been replaced. Gone was the well varnished wooden table with matching chairs, and in it's place now was a soft looking semi circular green felt table with leather rails around it. A poker table, I knew for certain, even down to the chip tray and the logo for the Casino printed on the top. I smiled and approached the table and found a folded scrap of paper on it.

"Mike, I came in with the men that brought the table, and you were out cold. I figured we could get started when you were awake, and am sorry to hear that you had a bit of sunstroke. Call me when you're up and ready to get to work. -E"

I rubbed my eyes and decided that I needed a full shower and change of clothing before I could deal with the luck mage who owned this casino. That and maybe a steak.

- - -

The sound of someone knocking at the bathroom door interrupted my shower. Who would be in my suite? "Who is it?" I called out.

"Hi Mike," Erin said as she slid into the bathroom. She looked as pretty as I remembered. Light features, bright hair, so young. I mentally chided myself, I knew that with my new body I looked younger than her. In fact I'd only just celebrated my twenty first 'birthday' with this body, despite being almost twice that age. "I just got all my stuff moved in for the week into the other bedroom of the suite," she explained as she started peeling off her clothing, "and I thought maybe you might like to celebrate by picking up where we left off yesterday?"

Now naked she slid into the shower with me and I pulled her lithe body against my muscular chest, my arousal already stirring. "So," I asked as the water sprayed over us both, wetting down her fiery red locks, "The payments have gone through?"

She put a finger against my lips, "Shhhh, don't talk about money, it's so crass." Then with that she pushed her lips to my chest and nibbled lightly. Her lips sucked on my flesh and I couldn't help but shudder. My hands began to roam her back as she gently pushed me against the wall and explored my chest with her lips. Not a kisser, ok, I could handle that. Her hands found my stiffening rod and she looked up at me with her green eyes that seemed to sparkle in the misty fog of the shower spray, "Are you going to give it to me Mike? I felt a little wanting after yesterday."

She was referring to the fact that after a night of rampant sex, I'd gotten distracted and couldn't keep my erection yesterday morning when she was blowing me in the shower. Of course she couldn't know that the reason I was distracted was because I was reading her mind at the time and found some pretty awful, no, horrific childhood memories.

But I pushed that aside for now and reached down and let my fingers caress her pussy. Smooth and freshly shaved, and now wet from the warm water of the shower, my fingers slid along her puffy lips causing her to shudder slightly, "I intend to make up for that, and in spades." Then, grabbing her by the wet hair, I pulled her head back and dove forward, my lips finding her neck. I kissed and suckled at her creamy flesh as I let one of my fingers push upwards, between her nether lips and into the warm slickness of her sex.

She moaned and one handheld the back of my bald head as the other began stroking my cock. She said nothing, but simply vocalized her enjoyment and need with sighs and moans. I let my finger slide in and out of her lips, fucking her with my middle finger. The entire time I let my pointer and ring finger rub along the length of her labia, sliding between her puffy outer lips and tight pink inner ones. I could feel her getting wetter and wetter, her natural lubrication mixing with the water of the shower and running down my hand and her thighs.

I broke my kissing from her neck to ask, "My my my, you're really wet for me aren't you?"

She slapped me lightly on the chest, spraying water everywhere as she moaned and half pouted, "Yes you beast, I told you that you left me wanting." With that she squeezed my turgid shaft and looked at me hungrily.

I chuckled softly to myself and removed my finger from her honey pot. I put it to her face and said, "Suck," in a commanding voice. Erin hesitated for only a moment then opened her mouth and took my middle finger. She licked and sucked on my finger erotically, cleaning her own juices from it as the spray of the shower pounded around us. I added, "I hope you're prepared, because you're in for a week of being fucked at pretty much any hour of the day. By the week's end, you're going to know the feel of my dick in you in every way so well you'll dream about it."

She smiled around my middle finger and then pulled the digit out and asked coyly, "Promise?"

I grinned, and instead of a response turned her around so she was facing away from me. Forcefully I pushed her shoulders forwards, bending her at the waist. Her arms went out and pressed against the glass of the shower wall. Reaching down to her now exposed ass, I caressed her sex. My fingers spread her cunny and stroked the lips, preparing her for what was about to come. "Oh yes Erin, oh yes."

Mentally I felt her screaming internally. Unable to resist, I let my fingers continue stroking her for a few moments as I mentally opened the door in my mind and allowed myself to connect to her. Much like in the hospital, there was a sudden flood of information. Too much info, it was difficult to process. But I tried to lock onto the most immediate and pressing thought on her mind and with great difficulty managed to single out that one thought. It was like trying to listen to one person while in a crowded and noisy bar, if that person was speaking softly.

'Oh God,' she thought, 'He's going to fuck me and I need to tell him to put a condom on. My purse is right there, I can see it through the shower stall... why aren't I stopping him now? Why don't I make him put one on? Why do I want it so bad with him? I should make him put one on right now. Right now before this goes any further...."

I smiled and realized what the problem was. I let my fingers lightly stroke her clit from behind. Her experience as a prostitute made her always want to use condoms. But my sex appeal, her desire for me, was overruling her common sense. In fact, I could sense that her wisdom was about to overrule her desire and she was getting ready to stop me, at least for long enough to grab protection. I had no desire to wear a condom. I knew that she was 'clean' I could sense it with my 'sixth sense' and besides, I'd read her mind.