“What?” I asked.
“Touch me again,” he insisted.
Hesitantly I reached out toward him, my fingers brushing over his arm.
Again, the sparks literally flew.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“This makes no sense,” he said, shaking his head. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
“What shouldn’t be happening,” I demanded.
He grinned at me, confused but obviously delighted, too.
“I think it means you are a Tesseris Mageia,” he said.
He looked down pointedly.
Beneath my feet the stone seemed to be flowing like liquid. I held one hand out, watching in amazement as little circles of Earth, Air, Fire and Water circled my fingers.
“But that’s… impossible! We didn’t—” I spluttered as he raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean, yeah, obviously, we did do that, but we didn’t… we didn’t Bond, did we?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. There’s an actual ritual for a Bonding. It doesn’t just happen by accident,” he said. “But we’re both definitely showing signs of it.”
A ghost of a memory teased at the edge of my mind. Something about three women.
He held his hands up. Rather than just nails lengthening, his hands began to shift and flow, fur flowing over them as they curled into paws. He halted the transformation at a point where they were somewhere halfway between human and animal.
I slid my fingers over the silky fur on his fingers. He laughed and pulled his hand back.
“Don’t tell me,” I laughed looking at him. “Your paws are ticklish?”
“Apparently,” he said before throwing his arms around me, spinning me around.
“Maybe it’s just the Goddess’ way of showing you what we were supposed to be all along.”
His words echoed in my head, bringing a strange sense of deja vu, but I dismissed it.
We dressed quickly to head back to the base. As we walked, Hel snagged my hand to hold it in his. The electrical snapping feeling was gone, but having him close caused a warm thrum in my magic. My senses were going crazy with all the input I was receiving from the various elements. I had no cluehow he could possibly be handling an increase in his senses, if it was anything like this.
I watched him in delight. As we walked he played with his form. He switched from man to lion, to some kind of four-legged prey beast.
“Where do your clothes go?” I asked when he switched back to human and they reappeared.
He shrugged.
“Dunno,” he said smiling. “It’s magic.”
He switched to the form of a wolf and I laughed at him as he “woofed” at me, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
Suddenly his ears perked up and a growl escaped his throat. Suddenly, he was human again and wrapping his arms around me, forcing me back against a building.
“What-” I began, but he put his hand to his lips before pointing up. I watched for a minute before I finally saw it: miles above us was an air transport slowly moving across the sky. It was too far away to make out a logo, but I had no doubt it was Alexandrian. We stood frozen under the overhang until it passed.
“You heard that?” I asked in wonder. He nodded.
