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.
She thanked me for being so understanding. "It hasn't been easy, when I first found out that I had these powers I scared myself into silence."
"I grew up in a very stereotypical Australian sports-loving family. My dad still has a shrine to Ricky Pointing in his pool room. Back then I loved sport too, especially cricket and especially our local team, the Hobart Hurricanes. So one summer we're all there at this game. It's the prelim final, the winner goes into the grand final. The game is on a knife edge, I'm nervous. It all comes down to the last ball. We need three runs to win it. The batter hits for the fences but miscues the hit and the ball goes straight in the air. Then for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm in slow motion. I can see the ball soaring through the air. I can see where it's going to land in the outfield. I can also see the fielder running towards it. I know that if he catches it, it's game over. So I quickly throw two tiny time portals, one after the other. I slow the fielder's foot so he stumbles and trips. And just to be sure I speed up and ball so that it safely falls to the ground before a fielder can get to it. My team scored the three runs they needed, and the stadium exploded in cheers. But instead of elation, I feel nothing but guilt."
"For weeks afterwards I can't stop rewatching the footage of that hit. I find there's a subsection of reddit full of disgruntled Sydney Thunder fans dedicated to that missed catch. They have all kinds of graphs showing the ball didn't fall naturally. Image after image with poorly drawn red lines showing how the ball should have fallen. I can't stop refreshing and reading theory after theory. I keep feeling more and more guilty like I'm about to be found out. Eventually, I decided that I never want to feel that way again, I blocked that website and I promised myself I'll never do anything like that in public again."
I promised her that I'd never tell anyone. I kept asking questions about it over the next few weeks, but soon enough everything went back to normal. That was until my birthday when she decided to use her powers on me.
***
My birthday was the first milestone we celebrated together, six months into our relationship.
She asked me what I wanted, but I told her the only thing I wanted was a surprise. I hated the idea of picking out my own gifts, I wanted her to choose something for me, something she thought I'd like.
"But what about birthday sex?" she asked seductively. "You know I'd give you anything."
"Same deal. Surprise me. Just give me something you think I'd like" I replied without hesitation.
"Alright, I'll give you a surprise" she responded in a cryptic tone. For a moment I worried I might have made the wrong choice not just asking for a blowjob.
A week later it was the big night. For my present, she'd bought me a leather-bound copy of my favourite book (Hyperion by Dan Simmons.)
She called me to the bedroom and said she was going to give me my big surprise. She was going to use her powers on me.
"Before we start, I want to know that you trust me," Pip said. She looked gorgeous in the warm orange glow of sunset shing through our windows. I just wanted to snuggle into her.
"Of course."
"Because I'm going to give you something you don't even know you want. If going to push your boundaries in a way you didn't even think was possible. Do you trust me to give this to you?"
I did trust her, completely. Since meeting her I'd become a better person, she'd always given me things I didn't even know I needed, and she'd pushed me out of my shell in so many ways.
None of those had been sexual, yet, but I trusted her so I'd do whatever she asked.
Although, I must admit that the level to which she was checking with me did put me on edge. What did she have planned that would require this much trust?
"Yes. I trust you."
"Good."
She ordered me to get naked and lie on the bed as she took out two sets of handcuffs, or more accurately a pair of handcuffs and a pair of footcuffs and tied me to the head and the foot of the bed respectively.