Young Writers Society

"We are," Runi said - she didn't miss a single beat. Even if they had only just started traveling together, she couldn't help but see James a friend.

...Even if he probably didn't feel as positively about her.

"We met at a town a little while ago," she added. She wondered if Bo knew about James as himself, rather than as Erimor, but she didn't want to reveal that she had figured out his name. "Erimor's totally chill with the whole mage thing, so don't worry - he won't be telling anyone about me or you!"

Were James not on guard he would've facepalmed. Bo's brows shot up and his gaze drifted back to James. Their eyes met with two opposing attitudes. Bo held his smile and James held his scowl.

"Well that's good to know," Bo said. "I'd think anyone who knows Mickey pretty well would probably be chill with magic too. Speaking of, how'd you meet Mick-"

"You still haven't told us what exactly you want with us," James interrupted sharply. "Why did you visit us in the middle of the night and what do you want with Runi?"

Bo nodded with his lips pursed into a thoughtful pout. "Oh, yeah. Well, basically, I wanted to come to offer a safe place for a mage such as yourself-" he turned to Runi and did a little twirl of one hand and a small bow. "-if you would like to join a small community of like-minded and like-magicked people. Mickey's kind of the leader of the guild. We stay very hidden and very quiet, but if you'd like to come see, we'd love for you to consider having a home with us. Of course, uh, because of you know, privacy reasons, we kind of want you to consider beforehand. Obviously, if you want to leave when you get there we'll letchya go, but we prefer most people don't know the location if they don't wanna stay. So if you have more questions and stuff, throw 'em at me. I'm the answer guy."

She asked the first question that came to mind.

"How long does it take to get there?" she asked. "Because that sounds awesome, and I'm totally down for it - as long as Erimor can come with us, at least for a little bit."

"Not too long!" He answered. "Four days at most. Plenty of time to change your mind too, I guess."

James was concerned that Runi was too eager to jump into things. They didn't know who Bo was - not really.

"What does Mickey look like?" James asked though it sounded more accusatory.

Bo stretched his mouth down his face in little puckered lips and then nodded with a grin.

"Oh, yeah! Gotta confirm it's the same Mickey we know, ey?" He waggled his eyebrows and pointed a finger gun at James. James was not impressed.

"Well, he's about yea high-" Bo said, holding a hand at his side at about belly height. A little shorter than James. "He's got mostly gray hair and a little goatee, and he's got some freckles on his cheeks. Looks really friendly. Or at least, uh, that's his human form, anyway."

Her eyes widened.

"He has multiple forms?" she whispered, awe in her voice. "Is he a were like me, or is he something else that I haven't heard of? I've never really interacted with other mages, so I don't really know what other ones can do. But this is so cool!"

She glanced over at James. He was being understandably wary of Bo, but her earlier assessment still stood strong: Bo seemed like the type of person both of them could trust. She gave him a thumbs up, a smile, and a confident pat on her chest - she hoped he understood that it was a gut feeling, and that her gut feeling was almost always right.

James fought to keep his face neutral as Runi smiled at him.

This was not a good idea. Admittedly, Bo's description of Mickey, though lacking, seemed to match his memory of the dragon. And knowing what Mickey was, Mickey probably hadn't aged very much in the ten+ years since he'd seen him.

As James pondered, Bo answered Runi's question.

"Oh! No, no, uh. Mickey's a dragon!"

"Oh my gods," she managed to get out. "I mean, oh my Mickey!"

Mickey was a dragon. That explained a lot, now that she thought about it. She had always thought dragons would be pretty chill with magic, since, in her book, they had been responsible for how the world worked. Maybe not now, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense for them to hate magic like the rest of the world did.

"How soon can we go?" she asked, grinning from ear to ear.

James was trying not to panic. Seeing Mickey again? Really seeing Mickey again? He was going to meet with a dragon? He... he didn't even know how to process that. He stood frozen, still on edge as he stared at Bo.

Bo laughed. "Well, we can go now, if you want. Unless you guys want to sleep some more. I know I did kind of interrupt your sleep cycle."

"Erimor, do you need to sleep? Because I don't need to sleep," Runi hurriedly asked, eyes alight with excitement as she glanced over at James. He still looked worried, but Runi was sure that she had judged this situation right. Besides, Bo had passed the test that James had given him - James hadn't objected to the description of Mickey.

James grit his teeth. "No," he said stiffly. "I don't need to sleep."

It wasn't like he was going to sleep with Bo around, anyway.

"Then let's go!" Runi exclaimed, grinning as she turned back to Bo. "I'm so ready for this."

Bo grinned, and gave Runi a nod. "Alright then, well, follow me. Don't forget your horses," he said, gesturing to the steeds. But it seemed like James was already on that, as he was already moving to his horse and grabbing its lead.

Runi couldn't stop smiling as she fell into step behind Bo.

After a few hours of walking James was convinced that there was no secret mage hiding place and that all of the talk about Mickey was a hoax. He was tired, the horses were tired. Tired of walking, tired of running, tired of not getting any sleep and running into strange people in this gods-forsaken forest, even if one of them was kind, if strange. He just wanted to go into hiding, and be ignored by society for once.

Bo led the way with a seemingly endless amount of persistence and enthusiasm. He and Runi chatted quietly here and there, feeding off of each others' excitement, and that was the only thing keeping him moving forward.

That... and the distant thought of Mickey, who he wasn't sure he was really ready to see again. Nor did he know if he wanted to see him again. He was not even remotely the same person he was when he was a boy.

After stopping in a seemingly arbitrary spot in the forest, Bo put his hands on his hips.

"I think this is it!" he said with a smile, tapping the ground three times with his foot, looking back at Runi with a grin and eyebrows waggling up and down. James only rolled his eyes - that was, until the ground began to give way in front of them.

Just a foot ahead of them, a perfect rectangle caved down into the earth, creating a tunnel that was just a little higher than Bo and a ramp of earth and dirt that led down. James stared, eyes wide.

Even the horses would fit... how...

"Whoa," Runi just barely managed to get out, staring at the tunnel that had somehow just formed before them. Obviously it was magic, but how had it just done that? It couldn't have been Bo - Bo could just do stuff with lightning. Or, at least, that was how she thought it worked.

(She really needed to learn more about how magic worked, if she was going to be hanging out with a bunch of other mages.)

...Maybe Mickey had done that! It seemed like something that a dragon could do, but she also didn't know too much about what dragons could actually do.

"This is so cool!" Runi finally said, grinning from ear to ear as she took a confident step into the tunnel.