Ricky ran up the stairs, carrying the massive tome into their apartment. Being on the third floor, every 10 steps the temperature rose by 5 degrees. Dad was the landlord to the building but maintaining the building was just a little more involved than owning a house so he could still hold down a full time job and keep things running.
Ricky plopped on the couch panting with the sudden change in temperature and began reading, his father 10 feet away, staring at a computer monitor, working from home.
In not too long, Mike stood up and stretched stepping onto the balcony and lighting up a cigarette for his afternoon break, Ricky raced out to join his father and share his find. "Look dad! I found a magic spellbook! Its old, and fancy, and loaded with weird spells!"
"Oh yeah? Can it make work suck less?" Mike said with a dry chuckle.
Ricky, undeterred, "Maybe? I haven't found one like that yet. But I saw a couple spells between two people and thought we could recite the spell together."
Mike looked at his 12 year old son with a mixture of pity and compassion... Soon he'd be too old to believe in magic and he'd have nothing but accrued vacation days to give him hope. Taking a drag he sighed, "I've only got a few minutes on break what will this spell do and what do I need to do to cast it?"
Ricky beamed, "It says it will let us share experiences and you just need to repeat the spell aloud." Ricky handed the book over and pointed to the passage.
Mike took the book and read, "Powers of re-creation, I beseech you to rebuild me to be one with Ricky Davis, let us share all that we know and all that we are.... is that it?"
Ricky took the book back and looked at the page, "No, its my turn, then we need to read it together... Powers of re-creation, I beseech you to rebuild me to be one with Mike Davis, let us share all that we know and all that we are."
The pair read it together and then looked at each other... Ricky reached out to his father pinching his wrist... "Ow, don't do that!" Mike said, lighting up another cigarette before he has to go back to work.
"Aw, I didn't feel anything. So much for sharing the experience with you." Ricky said crestfallen.
Mike rubbed his wrist, "Don't feel too bad, you didn't miss out on anything good. You'll just have to wait until you're 38 or so to feel what its like to sneeze and have your back give out..."
Ricky went back inside to continue reading his book undeterred from believing in magic, several minutes later Mike returned to his office setup and continued working... But that night some power in the universe heard their call and answered...