Chapters
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Gus was the first to emerge from cover. Despite the trees, his feathers and fur still looked a little scorched around the edges. Some part of Lotus still remembered what it was like to feel pain from heat, but that was a distant memory now. As distant as being human, and a dude."I was going to say you did that without blowing up," Gus began. "But you dropped the ball on that part, right at the end."She scooped the spell book up into her magic, then stomped out the embers burning on what was left of her…-
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Lotus had been on extended camping trips before. Or more accurately, Eric had. He had always enjoyed a chance to be in nature and get away from the stress of a modern life. Getting out into the wild meant there was no one around to judge, no one whose standards he could fail to meet. Lotus could enjoy many of those same things. There was no fear of neighbors noticing her through an accidental gap in the blinds. If the police or some shady government organizations were going to find her, they would have a…
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133.2 K •
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Chapter 16: Discord“I'm afraid not, my dear ponies." Chance heard the voice, though it did not seem as though anything in the room had changed. It made them all shiver, though Chance had never heard it before. It was not the voice of a pony, that much she could tell. Then, as though their barricade was a hologram, something casually walked through it, and the voice suddenly had a body.Chance wasn't sure what she expected from the body of the being whose mind she had briefly sensed. In one way at least it…-
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Lotus woke to the birds, whistling and singing to each other from the other side of her tent. The shiny blue fabric did nothing to mute the sound, and almost nothing to keep the light from shining in and blinding her.Lotus crawled a little lower into her sleeping bag, sinking past its edges. The birds were as loud as ever from that angle, but at least the bag did something about the light. The light couldn't get her inside, but the shame was just as strong inside as out. She remembered…
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133.2 K •
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Lotus couldn't see out the window, so she had no way of knowing exactly where Gus decided to stop. Not until he gave the command, and she took her leg off the pedal. He switched off the engine, plunging them back into the silence. A few seconds later the lights went off too, and they were cast into near-total darkness.Lotus didn't try to say anything, didn't even move—anything might make her think about what she'd lost. What you took away. This wasn't an accident. You knew the risks, you took them…
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The front door hung open ahead of her. Whatever happened to the door, it didn't stop her from fleeing into the night. The cold air should've been a relief, compared to the orange and blue flames consuming her home. Instead, she found the air grating and painful against her coat.Compared to the flames behind her, the outdoor air was freezing cold, chilling her through to the bone. There was no smoke, only a growing cloud of steam, blinding her. Where was it coming from?Then she saw. It was raining again, a…
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133.2 K •
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The spell was, in fact, still going.Lotus felt it, though she couldn't exactly describe what she was feeling, or how. The spell wasn’t drawing power from her anymore, the same way it took active concentration to hold something up in the air. That wasn't a good thing—a spell that she wasn't actively casting was a spell that she had no way to stop."It shouldn't be!" She stood up, stumbling away from his camera. The little toy woodpecker toppled off the side, clattering against the floor. Lotus recoiled,…
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Another few days passed. Lotus spent them as productively as she could, running endlessly over the practice exercises a princess in another world had sent. At least she was making some small amount of progress—she could hold objects in the air now, so long as they weren't too heavy. That meant she didn't have to stick her face into food to eat it anymore.If only she had trusted her entire savings to invest in meme stocks, maybe she could've bought a cabin in the woods somewhere, and wouldn't be trapped…
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Lotus stared down at Luna's response, turning over the magical letter in the air. She could hold it there now, so long as she stayed focused. That focus took total concentration, and shattered the instant she looked away. But it was all the proof she needed—she could learn this. She could get better. Once she mastered this new skill, she could return him to reality.Of course that wasn't what her new pen-pal seemed to want. She wanted Lotus to find the way back into another world, so they could be saved…
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The task waiting for Lotus was harder than any academic challenge she'd ever attempted before. Of course learning an impossible new skill was not directly comparable to anything she'd done in her life before. But the many hours of practice and study that followed felt very similar.Nothing in high school had ever felt quite as difficult, of course. No piece of math homework she ever failed to complete had the promise of never having her own body again, or forever marooning someone who was only trying to…
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