Then Nariel saves me again.
The sunglasses materialize in his hand, and as he puts them on I burst out laughing again at the image he strikes.
Then I grab my phone and snap a selfie of us before he knows what I’m doing.
He lowers his eyes to look over the sunglasses at me.
I wiggle my eyebrows in silly challenge.
He smiles, that slow curving of the lips that sets my heart racing.
Then he turns up his nose and strikes an unaffected pose, and I let out a breath, that this is as far as he is pushing it. Me.
But the phone has reminded me that I can control our conversation, too.
Chapter 11
Isnap pictures with my phone as we set out. I’m not an excellent photographer, but these are meant to be informative, not artistic. Food stalls and games, lanterns along the river, trees for wishes, an array of yukata. This will be a guaranteed hit on my travel blog.
Or it would be, if I were planning to actually write it, and not just use this as cover.
I can snap photos of Nariel, too. I’m not sure there’s a point to that, except my vague sense that I want a record that I—weexisted, that whatever our relationship is was real, that I was more than just a magic zealot.
Since I’ve spent most of my life only wanting to be a fanatic for magic, I don’t examine this too closely. I made my choice in Costa Rica.
Instead I use just a trace of magic to flip my phone’s camera angle for a selfie, only to find Nariel raising an eyebrow sardonically as I feign sneakiness.
I manage to get the picture before I crack up. Then I accidentally get a picture of that too.
“Not worried about saving up for tomorrow?” Nariel asks.
Magic, he means. I shake my head. “Can’t you feel it? Even as densely populated as Kyoto is, there’s still more magic in the air here. For just as little as I’m using, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to restock before tomorrow. A great advantage of Shinto is that Japan’s natural resources are well-tended and protected throughout the country.”
“I’m surprised you don’t live here,” Nariel says.
“I have spent a fair amount of time here, off and on. But it’s... sometimes it’s soothing, to be able to feel so much magic—comparatively—in the air. But sometimes it also made me want to scream, because I couldn’t actually do anything with it.”
“And now you can.”
Yes.With the access I have, there’s enough in the air that I can just use small amounts of magic casually without even worrying about waste.
What I always wanted, I have at last. At least for now.
“Do you think you’ll move here now? Settle?” Nariel asks.
“I won’t need to,” I say. “Because magic will be accessible everywhere.”
This is true, as far as it goes.
I try to distract Nariel with another magic-assisted selfie, but he senses the magic and turns it back on me.
“How do you know how the camera works? Do you even have a phone?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “Of course I have a phone. Why would I spend rare magic to communicate with my people when there’s a perfectly viable alternative?”
“And you still haven’t given me your number?”
“We’ve only been apart long enough for you to use the bathroom,” Nariel drawls. “And I shudder to think what sort of messages you’d fill my phone with.”
