I didn't believe in magic until I met Pip.
I was still sceptical until the day she used it on me.
We met at a housewarming party at a mutual friend's place. I remember thinking she was cute, but she came off as cold and disinterested. Which is why I was so surprised that she messaged me the next day asking me on a date.
I was taken aback by how forward she was, but honestly, I found it kinda hot. I like a take-charge woman, so I thought why not?
I met her at an Italian restaurant where she'd booked a table under the name 'Page.'
We hit it off immediately, we were both big readers and bonded over our mutual childhood love of the Animorph series. Dinner flew by without a break in conversation. By the time she took it upon herself to order a dessert for us to share I knew I was falling for her. Her level of take chargedness is perfectly complemented by my indecisive nature.
The soft light of the restaurant made her features look warmer than they had at the party when we met. All my first impressions of her were wrong. She was focused, not cold. Her grin was a wry smile, not a permanent scowl. And the more she talked about things she loved, the more I couldn't believe I initially found her disinterested.
She kept giving me this look, where she'd move her glasses to the end of her nose and stare directly at me with her piercing blue eyes. Her glasses had thick black rectangular rims, and the lenses were so clear that I wondered if they were prescription or if she wore them just because they fit with her goth geek aesthetic.
I was falling for her already.
I realised that I'd been so lost in her eyes that I'd left a long gap in the conversation so I quickly asked "I was wondering, is Pip short for anything?"
"...ummm" She gave a low groaning noise like she was tossing up whether to reveal something to me.
"Look, I don't tell this story to just anyone, but I feel like I can trust you already. I love my parents, but they're not exactly well-read. Neither of them stayed in school. They loved the name Pipette, but I'm sure they didn't know what a pipette even was."
"Wait, so your full name is Pipette Page? That sounds like..."
She burst in over the top of me and we said the next sentence in unison.
"Like Dr Seuss wrote a science textbook."
We both burst out in laughter.
***
Our relationship and sex life bloomed from there, from date one's nervous kiss, to date three where she mounted me on my lounge. We became inseparable. She was the first thought in the morning, the last I spoke to at night, our lives became one.
We'd been together for about six months when she revealed her supernatural powers. We were in the kitchen as I cooked us dinner.
"Aw, fuck" I said as opened the oven door and realised I'd forgotten to turn it on. I was cooking a baked risotto and it'd take forever if I had to wait for the oven to heat up.
"Anything I can do to help?"
"Not unless you can make an oven preheat instantly."
"...umm" she made her low groaning noise that told me she was deciding whether or not to let me in on one of her secrets.
"I actually might be able to do that for you, let me try." She waved in hand in a rectangular pattern imitating the shape of the oven in midair.
"What are you doing?" I asked quizzically.
"I've never told anyone this. I know I don't have to swear you to secrecy, but I'm going to anyway. Say one word of this to anyone and I'll destroy you" she said with a weird mix of a grin and a glare showing she was both joking and deadly serious.
"I swear. You can trust me."
"Good." She took a deep breath to steady herself.
"I can kind of control time, but only in the smallest of shapes."
"What on earth do you mean 'kind of control time?'"
"Like ever since I've been a teenager I've been able to make these little circles in the air where time moves differently. If I draw one with my right, time moves fast in that circle. If I draw it with my left hand, time moves slowly."
She opened the oven door and a wall of heat rushed out.
"See! I speed up time in the oven and it's already at 180 degrees."
I'm a sceptical person at the best of times, so my brain instantly wanted to dismiss it as fake. But I loved Pip so I wanted to hear her out. And I couldn't deny that the oven had gone through an entire preheat in just seconds.
"I'll do another one to prove it to you." She grabbed an orange from our fruit bowl and waved her hand in the same pattern as before and we both watched it wither in age and burst out with mould like we were watching a timelapse video.
"Like, it's an amazing skill. But it's very limited. I can make a time bubble that's at max 40cm across. That's big enough to, say, make a fruit bowl go off in a few minutes. Or grow a tray of seedlings from seed in 30 seconds not two weeks. I've imagined how much money I could make if I could do it at an industrial scale and cut three hours from bread baking times or whatever. But I just can't do it that big. Or even control how fast or slow the time actually goes. Sometimes I can make a bubble and cook a whole roast in 2 minutes. Sometimes it'll burn to a crisp in 30 seconds. It's a very imperfect skill."
I was flabbergastedin shock. I knew that magic likt this couldn't exist, but the evidence was right there in front of me. No matter how crazy it sounded, it actually worked.
"What else can you do with it?" I stammered, not sure what I could even ask her.
"There's a couple of limitations. Like I said, the bubbles are small, and I can't control how fast or slow they speed up or down. And they don't work on me at all. I tried putting myself in a slow bubble so I could study for an extra day before a test, but it did nothing."
She sighed. "I'm glad I'm finally able to share this, I've always wanted to but never found anyone I trusted until you."
I told her that I'd always support her and encouraged her to tell me more.