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If you could have one wish come true for Christmas, what would it be?
This wasn’t a question Henry Gable would have spent any time thinking about during the years he spent growing up in Baba Yaga’s cottage in the swamp. They didn’t waste any time on such frivolous, nonsensical things like wishes and Christmas. That’s what she’d taught him, at least.
He was aware of wishing and the December holiday as he heard the other kids talk about both at school. However, at an early age, he learned Baba’s strict position on such trivialities.
That didn’t mean he hadn’t thought about them at the time. He just had no one to talk to about such things as he grew up, so he put them aside.
When he spent his first Christmas in his new condo with Sandy living with him, she’d put up a few decorations, but her work schedule was so busy, and he was learning how to live with someone, so they let the seasonal celebration slip by without much attention.
He’d attended a few Christmas Parties with friends and even a VRL office Christmas party, but they were just excuses to get together with his new friends. That was what he liked best.
Camila had caught him off guard with the wish question as he was leaving the office on Friday. She’d given him a seriously hot kiss that threatened to ignite the tips of his ears and put permanent steel into his erection. Then she pulled back to smile at him and hit him with the query.
That was a dramatic way of making him reconsider the significance of wishes and Christmas. He had to admit, Camila was exceptionally persuasive at that.
He’d only just returned from his six-month convalescence on Eden a week ago. It had taken him half a year to heal from the damage his body suffered from falling twenty stories to the road surface below.
He’d learned from Roy that his injuries would have been much worse had it not been for Nate’s heroic efforts to save him. He’d managed to slow their descent for a time, but when the strain proved too great for his wings, and they failed, Nate sacrificed his life to protect Henry’s head from striking the ground.
Henry grieved his friend’s loss and understood that some of the man’s effort was likely driven by his guilt over his role in Henry’s daughter’s death. He knew Nate wasn’t at fault for that, but he never got a chance to tell him.
It was one more reason he was glad he’d killed Mab and destroyed her cursed dagger, too.
He took some deep breaths as his chest was beginning to hurt again.
Pulling his mind back from that darkness, he forced himself to think of something happy! He recalled the previous weekend with a smile. He’d never received so many hugs and kisses in his life! It was certainly going down as one of his best weekends ever!
He’d acclimatized the twin Succubi to his friends and taught them to be protective of his group as well. They seemed particularly fond of Camila, much to her surprise. She’d then surprised the rest of them when she named the twins Aadya and Maliha and claimed them as children of House Villamor.
Sigrid obviously knew the significance of that as she gasped at her friend. Camila claimed this act should protect them from being terminated as she’d taken responsibility for them.
While they’d bonded to him and preferred to remain by his side at all times, there were times when that wasn’t possible. He discovered he was able to leave them in his condo with minimal supervision. Mab must have trained them to be comfortable with only each other for company for extended periods. He found they adored nature shows, David Attenborough’s voice almost put them into a trance, so he set them up with a nature channel, and they were content until he returned. He needed to speak with Camila about them.
Spending the weekend at Meixiu’s mansion in a winter wonderland of snow and evergreens made everyone extra festive. It was decided that everyone was invited back to celebrate the Christmas break at the estate. With Henry’s ability to create Magic Doors between any two locations, travel logistics were no longer a factor.
He’d tried to reach out to Yuko to find out how she was doing, but her cell number was no longer in service, nor was Jun’s. He went to their apartment but discovered they’d moved out with no forwarding address. Camila attempted to connect with Yuko’s mother but let Henry know the woman refused to return her call. He wondered if he’d become persona non-grata once more.
They were such a volatile family!NôvelDrama.Org: text © owner.
Siobhan informed him that his inner rift to the Wild Magic dimension was allowing a greater volume of energy through than before. The new levels presented a danger to post-Skyfall Event Humans.
While they still looked Human, their bodies were actually in a volatile state. Their transformation into one of the Hidden Races would be triggered once they absorbed a sufficient amount of Wild Magic. How much was enough? There was no way to tell, as they couldn’t measure how much had already been absorbed. When it would happen and what they would become continued to be a mystery.
Normally, Wild Magic trickled in from ingested food and from the ambient energy in the environment. Hotspots like lightning strike zones from the Pseudo-Clouds gave off heightened levels.
Henry’s inner rift was like one of these strike zones, except it moved with him. The night of his return, as he slept in his bed for the first time in over six months, the Wild Magic flowing from him saturated his condo, seeping through the walls and floors. His neighbors downstairs on the eighth floor in units 809, 808, and 807 all transformed while they slept due to this overflow from him. They were taken to the hospital in the morning and were found to be healthy.
The couple living in unit 807 became Incubus and Succubus. As their relationship had already been on shaky ground, this new state wasn’t likely to resolve their differences, once the initial thrill of the sex wore off, at least. Camila assured Henry they would find their own way, and he wasn’t responsible for their lives.
Another surprise, the seven occupants of 809 (a couple with twin girls) and 808 (a couple with a single son) had all woken to find they’d become a variant of the Fae race not seen in millennia. Much like the High Elves of fantasy lore, they were tall and slim, with elegant features and long pointy ears. This group transformation’s consistency was far enough outside the normal curve that it generated more interest than was comfortable for Henry. That day, he resolved to stay at Meixiu’s mansion.
Marisa began training him to mentally reach inside himself to control the volume of Wild Magic flowing from his inner rift. As she was an expert in managing the senses, she worked with him to devise a means to control the aperture. She found he needed a science-based analogy to allow his will to envision the controls. As the rift manifested itself as a vertical tear in the center of his being, they settled on the concept of a zipper to keep it simple. Henry constructed a spell in his mind to build and integrate the mechanical closure device along the edges of the rift. He would close it with his will to manage the flow.
Wild Magic wasn’t keen on being controlled, so it quickly eroded the first dozen or so attempts until Henry thought to incorporate the Wild Magic into the device’s construction itself. This slowed the erosion, but he realized he’d have to set up a maintenance schedule to replace this inner zipper periodically to ensure he could control the flow. He couldn’t entirely block it, but Siobhan assured him that his most constricted setting was only twice the level of normal background levels… for now. Marisa, Siobhan, and he would have to keep an eye on it.
It took the weekend of practice to comfortably say he could limit the output. They discussed it as a group and determined that, for safety’s sake, remaining at the mansion, even working from it, was a good idea until he’d perfected his method for controlling the flow.
On the following Monday, he opened a door to VRL’s new boardroom to join Roy, Mahati, and Mary on their trip back to Washington, DC. The drive to the airport was delayed. There were complications with the flight tickets and airport security issues. When they finally arrived at their destination, Henry insisted they’d be using a Magic Door to return home and for all future visits. He got no arguments from his traveling companions.
The congresspeople were surprised to see Henry in his Human disguise.
It took three days of testimony before the congresspeople finally agreed they had enough information to work with. They indicated that they might call him back for additional questions. He said he could make himself available, but to keep in mind that he was a working stiff with responsibilities to his company and now a bunch of US Security Agencies. That earned him some chuckles.
He’d successfully constrained the rift and had social outings without issues, so he decided to move back to his condo. He promised that if he felt he was having problems, he would return to the mansion.
He went to work on Thursday, ready to get back to some normality, and wasn’t disappointed. There were dozens of requests for reports from multiple departments at VRL, and he gleefully worked on them all afternoon and the next day as well. As he prepared to leave the office Friday night, he was excited about getting back to work on Monday.
Then Camila hit him with the question. It was only ten days to Christmas, and she left him thinking about wishes with a boner hard enough to drive nails into hickory.
Wicked woman!