Young Writers Society

Usually, Francesca and Tim scrounged up Sunday brunch from a stall on the streets of Chinatown. Usually they ate standing up, or at one of their apartments, and drank mimosas mixed the from pulpy, too-sour orange juice that had been in Francesca’s fridge for four months. Sometimes they loaded up on pancakes with fake maple syrup at a diner, or breakfast burritos from a truck.

They never ate at places like the Silver Sea.

Anyone who knew anything about San Angelo knew that Silver Sea was the classiest place in town to eat Sunday brunch. Francesca had seen a mushroom-cluster of white, wide-brimmed beach hats and rows of manicured, high-heeled feet on her way inside. She’d seen flashes of diamond earrings and pearl necklaces and glimpsed jewel-studded crowns on canes in some of the older guests’ hands. Even in a flouncy blouse and well-fitted skirt, she was improperly dressed.

Tim, thankfully more in-the-know, had opted for a yacht look. He probably knew people who owned yachts. Maybe one day he would have enough money to buy a yacht. Wizards were like that.

“Man,” he said, as he tucked an arm around Francesca’s waist to lead her up the stairs to the porch. “How the hell did you get a reservation here?”

“I didn’t,” Francesca replied. She noticed Tim wore an expensive watch. Maybe she should have worn bigger jewelry. She owned a set of sterling silver hoops.

Tim leaned closer as they passed through the doorway. “Then why are they treating us like we have one?”

As soon as her heels crossed the threshold, she scooted out from his arms. “Persy,” she replied, as if that explained everything. It would have to, since she was too busy admiring the trim at the edges of the room to explain herself. All the old Victorian houses had pretty trim, but the Silver Sea had gone the extra mile. Some master craftsman had carved patterns of sea life all over–in the bannisters, the corners, the windowsills. And it was all painted a clean, perfect white so elegant it erased all the kitsch of having a sea-themed restaurant.

“Persy?” Tim repeated. He quick-stepped to catch up to Francesca and the maitre d, both already heading for the table, and leaned in to her ear. “Doesn’t she teach at a library? Why would she eat at a place like this?”

Francesca rolled her eyes. “She volunteers at the library,” she corrected, her voice low. Her heels made enough noise on the hardwood floor, and she already felt out of place. “And she owns two floors of a house in First Hill.”

“What does that even mean?”

The maitre d stopped and gestured blankly at a table with two place settings. Tim hurried to pull out Francesca’s chair.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Francesca said under her breath. She smiled at the maitre d as the woman placed their menus on the table, and then raised one eyebrow as Tim sat down. “The fact that she owns property in San Angelo Bay at all should mean something. And First Hill is where all the nice houses are. Well, the ones that aren’t on Whitby.”

“Ahh.” Tim let a moment of silence hang over them. “Then why is she teaching old lady stuff at a library?”

“Just read the stinkin' menu.”

Tim snorted and flipped open his menu. Francesca, already certain she wasn’t going to like the numbers she saw, hesitated. She fidgeted with her glasses, watched as Tim’s long, bony fingers thumbed the heavy stock paper, and then let her gaze wander up to his delicate nose and tousled bangs. He looked like he fit in here, with his intentionally casual, yet obviously expensive clothes, and his k-pop styled hair and make-up, and his utter nonchalance. Even as he leafed through the drinks, his expression stayed smooth.

With a sigh, Francesca popped open the cover and immediately had a heart attack. God, fifteen dollar mimosas? She hurriedly skipped to the real dishes and wondered if she could just leave now.

“So,” Tim said, after a minute. “Decided?”

Francesca’s wallet unfortunately couldn’t handle seafood at this price tag. It would be carbs for her. “Yep. You?”

“Heck yeah.” He picked up his water glass and tipped it toward her like a toast. His smile could light up a city. “So, how did Persy get a reservation here on short notice?”

Rolling her eyes, Francesca clinked her glass against his. “She didn’t. She’s had this set up for a while, but something came up, and she couldn’t make it.”

“Well, we are the lucky beneficiaries, so I guess I can’t complain.” After a quick wink, he took a long sip of water, and Francesca’s eyes caught on the bob of his throat. She watched, captivated, as he set his glass down and leaned back to survey the room, his limbs and neck stretching like a languid Bernini sculpture, and his black hair shining in the morning sun. It wasn’t fair that he could look like that in tech bro yacht clothes.

Francesca could have admired him forever, but then the gaggle of old girls in their white hats burst into the dining room. Their laughter rang out like a herald’s trumpet, rattling the crystalline chandeliers overhead, and their heeled footsteps clattered like a cabinet of china shattering on the ground. Startled by the noise, Francesca had no choice but to look away from Tim and follow the women in their path through the restaurant.

She wasn’t the only one, either. Tim had turned to watch them, as well as the tidy old couple at the table next to them. A quieter group of women in purple hats sat rigid in their seats, forks half-raised to their mouths, as they grimaced at the white-hats. The only people who didn’t notice looked like a middle-aged couple in the back corner, who were so absorbed with holding hands and touching each others’ faces that they didn’t even notice their baby, buckled into a stroller next to them, start thrashing.

The white-hat women sat down at a long table in the very center of the dining room, where everyone would hear them, and Francesca blew out a long, slow breath. She glanced to Tim, who was eyeing the women with a handsomely furrowed brow, and then around the restaurant to see if their waiter was coming. The sooner they ordered, the sooner they’d eat, and the sooner they could leave this place.

The baby in the corner had other ideas. Their thrashing had escalated to whining and whimpering and tiny fist-shaking, and the stroller wiggled and wobbled, its plastic joints threatening to come undone.

That was odd. No decent stroller would be that weak. Francesca turned completely in her chair to more closely examine its construction and then gawked, open-mouthed, as the baby screamed, and the stroller exploded in a spray of warped, plastic bits.

The parents startled out of their romantic reverie to press into the wall, half on top of each other. Nearby diners scrambled from their seats, leaving chairs overturned in their wake, and Tim launched himself past the table, pen in hand, already scrawling an aether conduit on one palm.

Francesca tapped the sides of her glasses, and the enchantment engraved in them flared to life. Activated aether lit up her vision, pouring from the baby’s mouth like storm water in a flood. The magic set the whole building abuzz, vibrating like glass at the perfect frequency. Francesca’s ears hurt, and the floor groaned under her feet. She could hear the chandeliers clinking, and silverware bouncing on porcelain plates. Tim’s wizardry looked like nothing in comparison. He held a tiny net of energy in his hands, spread wide to catch the baby up in it, and Francesca knew it wouldn’t be enough. The collision of aether might even make the situation worse.

She stumbled forward, heels buckling as she staggered from table to table, and shoved Tim out of the way. She reached for the baby’s parents and pulled them off each other.

“Calm down your kid!” she hissed, right in their ears. “My friend can’t stop them!”

The father’s lips curled. “I saw him writing on his hand! Isn’t he a wizard? He’s more equipped than anyone!”

Francesca groaned, and the sound disappeared in the din. A mimosa glass broke somewhere in the background, spilling orange liquid across the floor. “And your kid is aether-loved! Get your butts in gear and calm them down.” She glanced behind her and saw Tim trying to reconstruct his net by retracing his scribblings, but it was smaller and weaker than before, since more of the ambient aether had been used up.

The father glanced at the mother, and the mother flushed beet red. “She won’t listen to me! She only calms down with the nanny!”

Francesca’s eyes bugged out of her skull. This was stupid. She grabbed the baby, muttering the worst cusses she could think of under her breath, and ran out of the building. She felt the vague thud of Tim following after her, the whisper of the parents shouting in alarm. Then, when she made it to the grove of trees just outside the restaurant, she sat the baby on the ground, plugged her ears, and waited.

It took fifteen minutes for the kid to use up the ambient aether. All the while, disoriented restaurant guests meandered about, hands over their ears, while staff rushed to and fro, cleaning and fussing and trying to reassure customers that they would be reimbursed somehow. The shiny cars that people drove in this neighborhood slowed down as they passed by, and dog walkers wearing designer sunglasses crossed the street to avoid the chaos.

The baby’s parents called the nanny. Francesca and Tim sat in exhausted silence as the scream of magic slowed from thunderous to loud to a mere whisper.

“Isn’t it wild?” Tim said, when the crying had been reduced to only crying–no magic in earshot. “Aether-loved can do so much.”

“Jealous?” Francesca asked, examining her ankles. They throbbed dully, but they hadn’t swelled.  Heels were so cute but so painful.

Tim scratched his wrist and gazed at the scribbles on his palms, then at the baby, then at the parents, cowering behind a bench as though their child would explode. The nanny still hadn’t arrived.

“I wonder where the nanny lives,” Tim continued. “Isn’t it crazy that some people have to live so far away from their jobs?”

Francesca tugged at the buckle on her shoe straps. “Weird segue, but I think it’s more crazy that those parents are calling someone on what I assume is a day off to handle their own kid.”

As if he hadn’t heard her, Tim stood up and began to pace. “Wouldn’t it be amazing,” he said, a hand on his chin, “if we could crack the miracle of aether-loved? Imagine what people could do by combining aether-loved power with the control and sustainability of wizardry. We could change so many lives.”

And now they were back to magic. The lack of Sunday brunch had clearly fried Francesca’s brain, because she could not for the life of her follow Tim’s train of thought. “You wizards are so obsessed with aether-loved,” she retorted, “how they don’t adhere to aether mechanics, how they access so much of the stupid stuff. I bet there’s just some secret source that none of you have figured out how to tap, and that’s the whole difference.”

Tim took two more steps, then pivoted to look directly at Francesca, fingers still on his chin. The baby’s screaming had fallen to quiet, shuddering sobs that enticed the parents to finally inch out from their hiding spot, and the sounds of the city took center stage once more. Leaves rustled overhead, and cars rumbled by on the street. A few new restaurant patrons idled around the grove, waiting to be seated as the Silver Sea cleaned up and resumed business as usual.

“What do you think that source would be?” Tim asked, his face unreadable. He’d turned back to the baby.

Francesca waved her arms in an approximation of a shrug. “I don’t know. The ground? Magma? I’m a civil engineer, not a wizard. I just figure that if artificial conduits based on modern theory can’t access more aether, then it could either be blocked or maybe in a different state that doesn’t flow. A solid, maybe.” She looked at Tim, expecting him to counter her with some more advanced rule of aether mechanics, but he didn’t look back. He faced the street instead, and the upward angle of his gaze, tilt of his chin, and cross of his arms told her he was somewhere far away, no longer listening to anything.

So much for their fancy brunch.