“So,” Mindy said, “you’ve got to wait for two months?”
Opening that email had soaked up Tim’s time and attention for long enough that it wasn’t a long wait before his neighbors got back from work. At least there was that - he couldn’t stand to be alone for much longer.
“I know I shouldn’t complain,” Tim said weakly. “Out of the three of us, I’m sure I’m going to be the first to get this over with. But I was really hoping that I wouldn’t still be looking like this when the holidays come around...”
“Is that what’s been bothering you?”, asked Mindy, who was clearly trying not to sound too harsh. “I mean, aside from the obvious...”
“Honestly, yeah,” Tim said. “Maybe it sounds silly, but I’m dreading the whole month of December now. I keep picturing myself wearing all those ornaments again, like someone’s going to put them back on me when the time comes...”
“Well, don’t worry,” Mindy said, with a little bit of a smirk audible in her voice. “We’re not going to let anyone kidnap you and make you decorate their living room.”
Tim let out an “mm-hmm”. He didn’t want to admit that, in some deeply ingrained place in his mind, he felt naked without all those baubles hanging off of him. But he saw a great opportunity to change the subject. “Did you guys get your applications back yet?”
“Mine isn’t until April,” Callie said, unable to keep an annoyed snort out of her voice. “And I keep telling Keith to apply, but I think he still hasn’t done it yet. I don’t know what he’s waiting for. Did you send it in yet, Mindy? I know you were on the fence about it.”
Mindy shrugged. “I don’t know. What I ended up with isn’t really all that bad, I guess. I might get some weird looks, but I’ve still got all my human features intact, just in a different color. Besides, if I can learn to control the powers that came with this body, maybe I can fix it myself...”
Tim stated back in shock. “Wait... you actually have witch powers now? You could fix all of us!”
At that sudden display of excitement, Mindy only winced. “Not anytime soon,” she said. “They’re telling anyone who became a witch not to try and transform people without the proper training. And the applications for those are taking way longer than the restoration ones, believe me. I guess everyone who’s qualified to give the training is too busy fixing people.”
“But between you and me,” she said a little more playfully, “I’m starting to pick up a few things by myself. I wasn’t even sure if I had any magic in me until yesterday morning. I dropped my coffee cup and I was like, ‘No! Get back here!’ And before I knew what I was even doing, the cup just zipped right back into my hand!”
Callie had a half-impressed, half-disappointed look on her snout. “That sucks that you have these abilities and they won’t even teach you use them. You could be helping people right alongside the rest of them!”
“I know,” Mindy said, “but I think they’re afraid. They accidentally revealed to the world that magic exists, and they did it in the worst possible way. Now everybody’s confused, and scared, and maybe even angry. The last thing they want is some new person who has no idea going rogue and screwing things up even further. Making people even angrier... Have you guys been watching the news much lately?”
Callie shook her head. Tim knew he didn’t need to answer that question - until today, it wouldn’t have occurred to him that he could work the remote by himself. He stared back blankly.
“Well, anyway,” Mindy continued, “these days, it’s like every other story they talk about is from hundreds of years ago. Like they’re trying to get us up to speed on the whole history of magic we never could’ve learned about in school. And it’s really depressing stuff. These guys were always being blamed whenever things went wrong, persecuted, killed. Eventually they decided they’d be a lot safer if they hid themselves away from the rest of the world, and the old stories all became legends and fables.”
She took a deep, shaking breath that betrayed how nervous she had to be on the inside. “And then the other half of the news is people freaking the fuck out about ‘Satanism taking over’ and preaching fire and brimstone and stuff like that. It just makes me wonder if it could all happen again. Like people want to go back to the normal world so badly, they’ll just suppress everything, destroy everything, and forget it ever happened.”
None of the three of them could think of anything to say to that.