Open Minds: The Fog

Chapter Six:Lexi*-In Which a Perfectly Good Fence is Ruined

*Author's Note: The chapter starts with Lexi's perspective, then Jeanie Lee's then Lexi's again.

Lexi awoke impossibly hot. Her left side was weighed down by the warm, snoring body of Taylor. He had managed to take up as much of the bed as possible, including most of Lexi's personal space. She pushed him off with some effort and stretched. She opened the curtains of the motel room and shuffled around, looking for her bag.

Allison was sleeping on the other bed, and there were grocery bags on the couch. Lexi looked in them and pulled out a battered box of frozen waffles. She searched the small room in vain for a microwave and put the whole box in the microwave for two minutes.

Waitting for her waffles, Lexi sat on the couch. She knew her only hope of completing the mission and getting a team was to not tell anyone what she had found out and to banish Caliph in secret. C-class banishment spells. Those were hard, and she wasn't any good hand at Lihe manipulation. She sighed and opened the microwave just before it beeped. She picked up the soggy, defrosted box and dropped it, yelling.

Allison sat up groggily. "Fire? Or nah?"

Lexi frowned and kicked the box aside. "Nah. Do you have any books on C-class banishment? I wanna work on my...Manipulation techniques. I heard C-class is good for, uh, visualisation."

Allison took a few seconds to think about the question. "There's a.....blue book? Think it's in the car. What you doing practicing in the morning, Hon? With school in ..."

"Two hours. I'm good. The car? Thanks." Lexi took off running.

On the deck of the scummy motel pool, the sun was rising in light pastels and the mist of rain was burning off. Lexi propped the blue book on a sun-bleached plastic chair. The chapter on C-class instructed the reader to visualize, to feel the flow of Lihe around them and to tap into it. It then went on to describe the hand movements in the spell.

Lexi started by repeating the motions detailed in the book. Over and over. Until her wrists were sore.

The sun started to show itself over the buildings of the small town. Lexi decided it was time to move on. She closed her eyes and thought about the book's directions.

"Imagine and feel the flow of the Lihe around you. The way the currents and steams and flow and tide of it going through the world."

Lexi inhaled and opened her mind to Lihe. She tried to loosen the human part of her and bare the her power. In the rose darkness of her eyelids, pinkness glowed. Little lines of bright pink and red darted around her. Small, strong ones inslide thick, soft, clearer ones. A large band of it passed in front of Lexi. Eyes still closed she extended her hands into it.

Lexi couldn't see her hands with her eyes closed, but she could feel them. She felt the Lihe like cold water but not as solid. She felt the resistance. She slowly lifted her hands out, trying to keep the Lihe on her fingers. It disappeared and her eyes flew open. The currents were gone and the light of the sun was sharp and cold compared to the soft darkness of her head.

She tried again and again.

Finally, it happened. She was able to visualize the Lihe flow almost every time she tried. It was nearly two hours after she had woken up. Just half an hour before school time.

She had her hands in the Lihe flow and was getting dispirited, She had never been any good at Lihe manipulation in the first place, and C class was supposed to be pretty difficult. She pulled her hands out, but felt tugging on her fingertips.

The Lihe hung from her hands in pink threads. It seemed to drip and sag, as though it was sticky.

Excited, Lexi recalled the motions of the spell. She raised her right hand in a fist with the index and middle fingers raised. As she lifted her left hand, thumb and pinky extended, the Lihe threads wound around her fingers and melted into her skin. Her eyes opened. Her hands here glowing softly pink. She circled her right hand and lifted the pinkie. Pink strands followed her fingers and symbols burned themselves in the air around her.

Her hands were each surrounded by glowing globes of woven pink thread and symbols. Lexi wiggled her fingers and the symbols trembled. She stuck out her hands in the shoving motion from the book.

The globes flattened into discs and shot forward. They smashed into the chain-link fence around the pool and burned a hole right through it, sizzling out on a telephone pole.

Lexi's jaw fell open. She pushed up her glasses and looked at her hands. She had really done it. She had done the spell. Glancing at the ruined fence and pole, she turned and walked nonchalantly back to her room.

Allison and Taylor were eating the microwaved waffles and discussing the latest album by some Korean artist. Lexi flopped on the bed. The two looked up and gestured to a Dominoes napkin with a waffle on it. Lexi ate it in all of its soggy, bland glory. She didn't add to the conversation at all and instead started and the almost-orange wall and thought about Caliph. She tried not to envision Jeanie Lee being devoured piece by piece as she failed the spell. It didn't work

They arrived at the school just in time to be tardy for homeroom. Lexi was nonplussed to find that Caliph was not crouching behind Jeanie Lee as she fiddled with her Cardinals cap. Lexi couldn't feel him as her teacher droned on disinterestedly. In fact, she didn't feel much of anything in the Lihe for the next two classes after that. It wasn't until after and entire uneventful day that anything happened.

Jean was getting really suspicious. It was those two transfers, Trixie and Payton Shan. She didn't trust them. She was sure they knew what was going on. They show up when all the weirdness was reaching its peak. That big black monster was always with her now, unless she had Corduroy to hide her. But Corduroy was dead-tired from doing it, and the monster was lurking in the halls as she made her way outside to walk home.

Skirting the side of the school building, she saw the monster standing on the sidewalk, waiting for her to walk right to it. She stopped and scuffed her shoes, trying to think of an excuse not to keep walking. She made a show for no-one of bending over to examine the flowers on the hedge that closely encircled the entire building.

Jean's fingertips were on a flower when she heard someone whimper inside the hedge. Slowly, carefully, she edges towards a break and looked behind the bushes. There was that Trixie girl, crouched against the bricks of the school, hands over her face, panting. She looked up. On seeing Jean, she went white and stood up quickly, moving as if to run. She tried to push past Jen without making eye contact. Jen panicked. She couldn't let Trixie get away. She didn't know what she wanted from her, but she needed it.

She shoved Trixie back against the wall and laid her forearm across the girl's throat.

Lexi struggled against Jeanie Lee. She held her to the wall and almost choked her with her arm. Her brown eyes searched Lexi's hazel ones. They were both breathing hard. Caliph's presence was flooding Lexi's brain and her air supply was running low from her heavy breathing.

"Shan! You know what's happening to me. You know what that thing is. Who are you? What is going on?" Jeanie Lee's face was impossibly close. Her hair was hanging loose from it's ponytail in her face.

Lexi made a squeaking, retching noise.

"Right, right. I'll let go." Jeanie Lee released Lexi and stepped back. "Now tell me what's going on."

Lexi rubbed her neck and straightened her glasses. "First, my name's Lexi Allistor and Payton isn't my brother. Second-"

"I knew it!" Jean interrupted. Lexi glared.

"Second, you're developing powers from your Patron and the spirit's name is Caliph. He wants to eat you, body and soul and I'm gonna save you."

Jean started. Lexi smiled condescendingly. "Tell you what. I'll explain in the Library at lunch tomorrow."

Glossary (In alphabetical order):

Lihe: Spirit Energy (pronounced: Lee)

Lihe Manipulation: Using the flowing Lihe to perform spells

Patron: A being, usually confined to the Fog that puts some of itself or its power into a person, no matter the motive or circumstance

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