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This time I decided to try something different. Instead of going to the open field in my imagination, I just imagined myself standing up in my room, next to the bed. I pictured the Shaman’s Door in the Foyer of Morrison’s house and the clock on the opposite wall set to 9am. I imagined the whole space, but then focused in on the Shaman’s Door so that a portal would open up where one was expected on the other side. Then I imagined the portal just opening up in front of me. The portal didn’t open up all at once. It seemed as if it was pushing through jello or something, probably because I was feeling somewhat less than fully confident. I could see the room come into view, a few people in the foyer talking, and then I heard a child’s voice.
“Doggie!”
By the time the portal had opened up large enough for me to walk through, there was a toddler running toward me as fast as her little legs could carry her. She zoomed through the portal and I scooped her up in my arms right before stepping through myself. A moment later, I was nearly tripped as my dog Doug jumped through the closing portal to be on the side where the little girl and I were.
Doug jumped around, wagging his tail, and then went on a zoomie rampage through the foyer. He began to run the perimeter of the room at top speed to the amusement of some people and the consternation of others.
“Doug! Sit!” I commanded. He skidded to a stop and sat facing me. “Doug, come.” He got up and bounded toward me. As soon as he was a couple of feet away I told him to, “Sit!” Which he did, though his excitement was making his whole body wiggle and I wasn’t sure if he could hold on without a good distraction.
The little girl’s mother had run over to me as all of that happened. She looked apologetic and stressed out. I handed her the toddler as she spoke, “Oh, my God. That was close! I’m so sorry!” She turned to the baby and said, “Sweetie, you can’t do that! It’s dangerous!” and then she turned back to me and said, “Thank you so much. I’m so sorry. She just squeezed out of my hand so fast!”
“It’s OK! I have a little experience catching toddlers. She must have seen Doug before I even saw her, because she was through that portal before I even realized it was open!”
Doug sat attentively watching us, and then he scooted over towards the mother and leaned his body into her.
“Oh, no I’m sorry. My dog really loves people, but especially little kids. I hope you aren’t allergic.”
The mother reached down to pet Doug, “No, it’s fine. I love dogs! Can Simi say hi to him?”
“Absolutely! And then I have to open a new portal and get him back home.” Doug wasn't wearing his harness since I hadn’t intended to take him anywhere, so I just grabbed his collar to make sure that I had good control of him. He’s not dangerous with little ones, but sometimes he licks their faces even though he knows he’s not supposed to. I wasn’t going to risk him doing that and scaring this mother or the toddler.
The mother put little Simi down and held her hand towards Doug. She showed Simi how to pet the dog nicely on his back and said, “Isn’t he soft? He’s a good boy! You are being so gentle. Nice. Soft touches.” while Doug looked away from the little girl and licked the air as if he was licking the girl’s face, which is what he really, really wanted to do.
I told Doug, “You're a good boy.”
“Hey, Uriel, there are no dogs allowed at Morrison’s house unless they are service animals. It’s for safety.” I looked up and saw Jackson standing over me.
“Oh, yeah, this was a little accident. I’m about to get him home. Although, in my defense, he is technically a service animal. But I shouldn’t need him here.”
“Emotional Support Animal or Service Animal?” Jackson wanted clarification.
“He makes sure that I keep breathing, which I sometimes don’t do properly. Kind of embarrassing, but there you are!”
“Why is that embarrassing?” Jackson had a completely stone cold serious face.
“Um… because I’m too stupid to remember to breathe.” I laughed.
“That’s ableist nonsense, and if Morrison heard you talking about his boyfriend like that, he’d be pretty upset.” Jackson’s face and tone of voice was still completely serious.
“Uh… Sorry?” I secured Doug between my feet and let go of his collar as I stood up to face Jackson.
“Everyone knows you two were on a date last night. That’s a good thing.” Their face was slightly softer, but I was very much caught off guard by the comment.
I tried to make light of it, “We went on one date and you are already ordering a U-Haul for us.”
“No need for a U-Haul inside the building. Just give me a call and we’ll have a crew show up with little red wagons.” Now they had a genuine smile, and I knew that I had not somehow pissed someone off by going on a date that I didn’t know was a date until after it was over. At least that. But maybe I’d gotten myself into some other kind of trouble as Jackson continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a pool going to see how long that’s gonna take. You know, the man hasn’t dated anyone in like 25 years, or if he has, he’s been discreet enough that even I don’t know about it. All eyes are on you now.”
“Oh, boy! I didn’t bargain for that.”
“Well, that’s life. Has Morrion met your dog?” Jackson asked.
“Yeah, when he came back to my real house.”
“He’s been to your home over there, where you come from?” Jackson looked surprised and also like they were calculating the possible meaning of that in terms of the relationship.
“Yeah, when he was doing the security checks after I showed up in Memphis.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” Jackson gave a nod and then continued, “If the dog is gonna be around here, he needs a leash and a harness.”
“Alright. I’ll remember to harness him up if I bring him back on purpose someday. Right now, he’s going back home.”
“OK. See you later.” Jackson started to walk away, but then Morrison arrived in the foyer and waved at them and me.
The mom of the toddler leaned in toward me and said quietly, “Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt, but thank you again. See you later.” She put her hand out and we shook before she walked back over to her partner who had been in a conversation with someone else on the other side of the foyer this whole time.
Morrison walked up and said, “Good morning! Who have we here? Did Doug decide to join you today?”
“He and a toddler had a meeting of eyes across the portal as it was opening and they both sprinted towards each other. It was a little sketchy. Luckily Doug got stuck on this side and the toddler did not get stuck on the other side.” I explained.
“Excitement!” Morrison rubbed his hands together, “I’m glad everyone is OK. Are you ready?”
“Just a minute, I need to get Doug back home.”
This time it was easier. I decided to go with the hand swirl in a big circle like Shaun and Morrison both did when they made their portals, and that overcame whatever problem of headology my earlier attempt had encountered. I shoved Doug through the portal and told him to get on the bed. Looking inside, we could see both my real body sitting on the bed and Doug’s real body snuggled up against me with his head on my leg. It was a strange thing to see myself like that. As soon as Doug had jumped onto the bed, he and his original physical form merged, and I closed the portal.
Jackson had seen the whole vignette on the other side of the portal, and now they looked at me a little differently. “That’s you over there?”
“Yup.”
“Woah. That’s cool and very different.” They had that serious look on their face again.
Morrison turned to Jackson, “Before we head off, I wanted to ask you something. Can you please include a request to add Uriel to the security and medical alerts at the next meeting of the Security Team?”
“Security makes sense, by why medical?” Jackson asked.
“Uri’s energy healing is of a level that it makes sense for him to show up for serious emergencies. He helped significantly with the injured after the Dragon was gone yesterday.”
“For the record,” I jumped in, “I seem to have some sort of power boost here that I don’t have back home. It’s not that I have special skill. It’s just that being here seems to make the skill that I do have a bit, well, overpowered.”
“The source of your power is irrelevant. The question is can you save lives? If yes, then you will almost certainly be added to the medical alerts.”
“So, um, yeah. Apparently, I can save lives sometimes.”
“Cool. I’ll put it on the agenda for the next meeting. You can come if you want, but it’s not required. We meet on Tuesday at 3pm.” Jackson was all business.
“Alright. I’ll see if I can make it, but I don’t know for sure yet.” I responded.
Jackson and Morrison nodded to each other and Jackson walked off towards what had once been the main sanctuary of the building.
Morrison looked happy to see me as he grabbed my right hand in both of his, looked me in the eyes and took a deep breath. Then his face got serious. He lowered our hands while keeping my hand tightly interlocked with his and said, “I need to have a serious conversation with you about a few things before the lecture at 10am. I would really like to be sitting in the sunshine right now, but I think we should have this conversation in my apartment or yours for privacy. Which do you prefer?”
I felt my face flush as my mind immediately jumped to possible serious topics. “Um, how about your place. We could sit in the living room, yeah? It’s comfy there.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.” The smile returned to Morrison’s face. “Let’s just portal straight there to save time.” He made a circle in the air next to us, not over top of the Shaman’s Door as I had done. His living room appeared on the other side of the portal. Morrison gestured for me to go ahead.
I walked in. Morrison followed. The portal closed silently behind us. Morrison gestured at the seating. This room was arranged to host quite a few people – 20, maybe 30 if not everyone was sitting down. I picked a couch and sat down. There was a coffee table in front of the couch and a single comfy chair at one end of that coffee table. I thought that Morrison would either sit next to me on the couch or sit in the big chair. Instead he pulled up an ottoman from the other side of the room so that he could sit directly across the coffee table from me.
Just as Morrison was seated and leaning in to start the conversation, Shaun showed up at the door. “Knock, knock!” he said aloud as he stood in the doorway with a tray in his hands.
Morrison looked up at Shaun and grinned, “Ah! Thank you, Shaun. This is perfect!”
Shaun came over and placed cups of tea in front of each of us and a plate with a few muffins in the middle of the table. Then he put down one small plate in front of each of us along with a rolled cloth napkin.
“You are amazing, Shaun. How did you know we would be back here right now?” I asked.
Shaun looked down at me with a sly smile as he stood up straight, “Eh, I figured if you didn’t show up I could drink all the tea. I drink a lot of tea.” Then Shaun put his hand on Morrison’s shoulder and said, “Give me a shout if you need anything,” before leaving the room.
I pushed the plate of muffins toward Morrison so that he could pick first. He put a chocolate muffin on his plate and I waved my hand over it and pushed magic nutrients in for him.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Of course,” I replied.
As I put the blueberry muffin on my own plate, Morrison said, “I can’t splurge like this food-wise for long, but just getting to have these treats for the first time in decades is a very big deal.”
“You may have said that before.”
“I may have said that before, and I will have to say it again so that I don’t forget to put the breaks on, but right now: Chocolate!” He stretched that last word out and punctuated it with a bite of the muffin.
After a few bites and a sip or two of tea, Morrison leaned in to start the conversation, “Hoo! OK. First off, please be patient with me. I’ve been thinking about this conversation for hours and it’s awkward and uncomfortable because it’s about ethics and making sure that I actually live up to the stuff I say that I believe in.” He sighed again, then continued. “There are two matters I want to discuss with you. The first one is relatively simple. It’s about the mental connection that we still have. We need to fix that.”
I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the mental connection. In fact, I rather liked it.
“Yes, I kind of like it, too.” He was responding to my thoughts. “But that’s where the ethical problem lies. You see, this is not an even connection. I opened you up like a book and all of your pages are visible to me. All I need to do is turn to the page and I can see what’s written there. Metaphorically speaking. You, on the other hand, only get what I project in your direction. When I did the magic, I followed the well established protocols to not dig anywhere that I didn’t specifically need to dig. Once I had determined that you were going to be cooperative and trustworthy, I let you tell me which pages to look at instead of flipping through on my own. And, under normal circumstances, that connection should have closed down on its own within hours, two or three days tops.
“However, a couple of variables have interfered with the natural closing of that pathway. One is that you are on a different timeline than I am. If I’m not mistaken, this is only day three for you since the day that we met in Memphis?” I nodded my agreement, and he continued. “The other variable is that I saw some stuff in you that…” He paused and looked around the room as if he were looking for the right words, “that made me…” He paused again and shook his head. “No, that makes it sound like I don’t have agency. Look, there are some things that I learned about you, your personality, and the stuff you’ve done with your life that really attracted me to you. I became instantly and very unprofessionally infatuated with you at that moment.” He took another deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “Aaaaand, since then, every time you are gone I poke at that connection like it’s a loose tooth.”
“I’m not going in there and rifling through your life. I just keep reaching out to see if you are still there, still connected, if I can still feel you even though you are in a completely different reality. Which I can. Sometimes I can hear your thoughts, and sometimes I can watch a little bit of your day through your eyes.
“So, I need your help to close that connection down. I should be able to do a ritual to close it down all by myself, yes, but also you and I both know that sometimes magic gets sidetracked by the stuff in our subconscious. I don’t want to risk a failed ritual because I didn’t actually want to lose access to you when you go away. That sounds bad. It is bad, and I think you understand what I mean?” He ended that last sentence like a question, so I treated it as one.
“Yes. I get what you mean. You want me to do the ritual with you so that both of us are involved in severing the connection. But, what if I don’t want to lose that connection? What if I also like the feeling of you popping up in my head randomly throughout the day, not just as a thought but as an actual presence?” I countered.
“That’s an easy one to solve. We can sever the existing connection which is uneven and create a new one together with clear boundaries and equal power for both sides. We can do that in a ritual once we have agreed on the terms of the connection we wish to share, if you still want that connection after this one is severed,” he answered.
“Can’t we just create a basic telepathic connection that will reach across the divide? No keys to the other person’s memories, actions, emotions, etc. Just an open line through which we can choose to speak to one another or share what we are experiencing directly, and then if there is a reason to do more at some point in the future, a specific invitation can be extended.” I asked.
“Yes. We can certainly do that if it’s what you would like.” Morrison sat back and took another bite of his muffin. He still wasn’t settled, though. He took another sip of tea, then leaned back in to speak as he put the tea cup down.
“So, now the second issue. It was brought to my attention this morning by a trusted advisor that I may have inadvertently caused you to be attracted to me through magic. Let me make it very clear that love magic that coerces someone into having emotions for another person is abusive and highly unethical and I would never do it intentionally. Not for myself and not for anyone else. That said, I have had an open door into your mind for three of your days, but more than a week of my own. During that time I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about you and wishing that I might have a romantic connection with you as well as a friendship.
“It was pointed out to me by this advisor that I had mentioned after our first meeting that you had said that you weren’t particularly fond of me, yet here we were just one week later in my timeline kissing goodnight. That does seem like I may have…” He stopped. He looked at me intensely. I realized then that he was scared of the consequences of what he was telling me now. The room was quiet, and I wondered if I should finish his sentence for him. At last he continued, “I may have been affecting your emotions while I was reaching out to see if I could feel you across the divide. I –”
I had to interrupt him there. “Wait. No. I don't think that you unethically affected the way that I feel about you. The reason that you weren’t my favorite person in the comics is because your character in the comics is an arrogant douche who thinks he’s always right and is very condescending to nearly everyone, sometimes including his own teachers.” Morrison winced as I said this. “The man that I see in front of me isn’t like that, though. You have been kind and respectful in every interaction I’ve witnessed with the one exception being the first moments of our meeting in Memphis. And, let’s face it, you had reason to be less than generous towards me at that moment. You and the others had every reason to think that I was a threat and should be dealt with as such.”
“I was an arrogant douche,” Morrison agreed. “When I was younger I really did think that I knew more than anyone around. Akiva was one of the few people I ever trusted or respected. I learned a lot after Eve and I broke up. That experience forced me on a long journey of learning humility, respect, trust, and a bunch of other stuff that I had somehow missed despite the fact that Akiva had tried his level best to teach me.”
“Well, there you go,” I said, “I had good reason to be less than thrilled with you back in the day. But, you’ve changed. Honestly, I’m really impressed with how different you are from that person, and I wonder how a hundred year old man keeps learning and growing like that. I hope you’ll enlighten me about it sometime so that I can do that, too. And, since you aren’t the arrogant jerk that I knew from the books, that made it possible to enjoy the rest of the things about you that I do like. Some things about you have long been on my list of ‘qualities of a perfect romantic partner’.”
Morrison raised his eyebrows, “Oh?”
“Let’s start with the most shallow qualities. You are hot. Sexy. Hot. Gorgeous. Handsome. Beautiful. Did I mention hot?” We both laughed and Morrison reached over to touch my hand while I continued. “You are very smart. I like smart. You are so, so intelligent. You continue to learn new things, and you already have a very large body of knowledge accumulated over your life. Those two things together are extremely attractive. Especially now that you don’t act like your innate intelligence makes you better than others.
“You have spent your life trying to do good things in the world. Even before you learned magic you were doing altruistic work. This place, the schools, the city inside of a building, this is all amazing, and it wouldn’t be here today without you. Yes, Akiva laid the groundwork, but you are the one that turned it into what it is today. And the Shaman’s Doors. I know that was your contribution to help the Crows’ move without detection during the years that they were being actively hunted down and killed by the government.”
“Crows are still hunted by certain elements in the government.” Morrison corrected me.
“The fact that you are a magic user is also a big bonus. I’m sure that you know what it’s like to be with someone who isn’t a magic user, or worse, doesn’t believe it’s even real. It’s like you are living in two different realities in the same physical space.” Morrison nodded in agreement with me as I spoke. I don’t know if he ever dated anyone who wasn’t a magic user after he started learning magic, but I’m sure that he’s seen what that looks like in other people’s lives considering how many students he’s had at this point.
“The only thing that I can think of that I don’t like about you right now is that you literally live in a different reality than me, which makes this whole relationship thing a little weird and complicated. That said, I’m willing to ride with the weirdness and see how we resolve it over time.” I’d probably said enough at that point, but I just wanted to make sure he had no doubts where I stood. “So, you see, the sudden change in attitude from me had everything to do with your not being an asshole and magical coercion was not a necessary ingredient in it at all.”
Morrison rubbed his face. He didn’t look completely relieved. He looked like he was still holding on to some small doubt.
“Also. Did I mention that you’re hot?” I added after the silence dragged on a little too long. He laughed, which was what I’d hoped he would do. And since the tension was a little lighter, I added, “You know, you can go in and look for yourself. I give you my consent right now to go looking around to find the place in me that cares for you, that’s crushing on you, that wants to jump your bones, and any other place that is attracted to you to find out if it’s been caused by magical coercion or by anything else.”
Now Morrison looked taken aback. He took a sharp inhalation and sat back away from the table. He turned his head as if his attention was on the door then looked at me with a side-eye glance before turning his head back to me again. “No. I’m not brave enough to do that. Not right now.” There was a long silence. “Yeah, I’m just thinking of all the things that I could find in there that I have no business finding while looking for that information. I appreciate your openness, but I don’t think that would help make our relationship more equal. Not unless I gave you the keys to do the same to me, and yikes. I don’t want to look at some of those parts of my own brain, so I’m definitely not ready to let you go there.”
I munched on my muffin as I watched Morrison continue to consider the repercussions of that level of knowledge about what someone else finds attractive about you and why, or what you find attractive about someone else and why.
“Now you’ve got me thinking about why the idea of looking for the places where you are attracted to me and why that feels jarring and not intimate or comforting. Is it just because I’m afraid that it’ll turn out that I did mess up and you are just giving me an out? Or is it because we all need to keep our skin on us, even when we’re naked?” Morrison’s last question left a gruesome mental image to contemplate. A degloved lover is not intimate, just gross, and also not at all healthy.
“Yeah,” I nodded between sips of tea, “boundaries are good to have. We can keep healthy boundaries. But I stand by my belief that any incidental magic that you may have done is irrelevant to the outcome regarding my feelings for you. It may have nudged things to move slightly more quickly to my timeline because you had a week of poking at that connection when I only had one day, but I believe that had I been in your physical presence that whole week, we would have still ended up with a hallway kiss and rampant rumors about ‘Morrison’s boyfriend’ shortly thereafter.”
“Alright. So we’re good?” He asked.
“We’re good. And it’s almost time for that lecture. What’s the lecture on?”
“Oh! Yes! The lecture is going to be about the dimensional tears and what we know about them. I want you in that class because you’ll need to know as much as possible if you are going to help us deal with the emergencies that arise from them, like the dragon incident you helped with. But, first, do you want to slip into another dimension so that we can do the ritual to sever our connection before that class? If we step out of this timeline, we can be back in time for class with everything taken care of.”
I shook my head. “Do we have to? I mean, the connection has been up for a while now. A couple of hours more won’t hurt anything, will it? I feel quite safe, especially considering your aversion to looking at stuff I was perfectly willing to show you. Frankly, I’d like to just stay in this dimension until it’s time for me to go home, if that’s ok with you.”
“Alright. We’ll do the ritual after the lecture. This way we won’t have to pass notes in class,” he teased.
I got up, walked around the coffee table and put my hand down for Morrison. He took my hand and I pulled him up to his feet. Once he was on his feet, I leaned in to him and wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me back in a strong embrace. We kissed. It was sweet and warm and everything felt so good and right and wonderful. Then we stepped apart and Morrison opened a portal to the lecture hall in the college where we needed to go next.