Page 44 of Forged In Magic

Taking her hand, he led her the few feet to the bed. “Me too. Let’s sit down and eat something.”

“No, we need to keep working,” she protested verbally but didn’t resist as he gently pushed her so she was sitting on the bed. “My magic is cutting out for longer and longer. If we don’t keep going, we won’t have enough,” she said quietly, too tired to even whine.

“We’ll just take a little break, since we missed dinner again. It’s almost eight and we need to eat. Here.” He put a bowl of steaming rice with chicken and a fork in her one hand and a bottle of water in the other. “It might be one of the last hot meals we get for a while, so enjoy.”

Isaac hadn’t said it, but they both knew it could be their last hot meal—ever. Exhaustion continued to pull at Kate, but she forced herself to eat, knowing she needed the fuel.

When their magic had started cutting out in the early afternoon, they began conjuring what they could. As time went on, their magic cut out more and more.

In the last hour or so, Kate had only been able to conjure something about every five or ten minutes. Which only equaled to one or two days’ worth of food if they were careful.

So wrapped up in her own exhaustion and fear, Kate had been relying more and more on Isaac for his support and encouragement as the day went on. Neither of them had said much as they had struggled with their magic. “How are you doing?” Kate asked between mouthfuls.

“I’m tired, but eating something will help. I’ve filled as many five-gallon jugs of water as we can fit in the space because we need to leave a little room. We’ll have to have space to store waste, like the filled portable toilets,” he said, nudging her shoulder.

“Eww, gross. And thanks for that,” she teased, pushing his shoulder back. “I honestly didn’t even think about that.” Kate glanced up at the shelves she’d been working to fill. Even while creating the cans and boxes, it hadn’t really dawned on her that they’d now have even more garbage. “It’s all in packaging.”

Isaac must have heard the despair in her voice as he gave her shoulder another gentle nudge. “Hey, it’ll be okay. We’ll flatten the boxes and put them under the bed. That’s why we purposely made it six inches off the ground, remember?”

That was the first time in her life she’d had to put so much thought into a bed. A good headboard, enough space, and comfy was all she’d ever considered before. Raising the bedframe too high would have meant even less headroom for Isaac when he was sitting on the bed and too low wouldn’t have given them storage space underneath.

Every day, there was something more to consider in their tiny little world. She looked around the space and wondered how much more they could fit. And how many more air fresheners they would need. The place might be considered cozy if she played with the definition of the word, but daisy-fresh it wasn’t.

“Are you finished?”

Kate looked down at her bowl and realized she’d eaten more than half. “Yes, thanks.” She handed the bowl over for him to clean and walked back over to the shelves, taking stock of what they had.

They now had water to rehydrate food, but if their magic stopped working, they’d have nothing to heat the water. Eating cold, rehydrated, freeze-dried stew didn’t sound all that appetizing.

The few perishables she’d created sat neatly on the shelves along with all the canned meats, crackers, peanut butter, honey, packages of instant foods, and various snacks. Trying to group meals in her mind to figure out what else they needed, she settled on more lunch box size milk and juice containers that could be stored on a shelf.

Every so often, Isaac touched base with her to see how she was doing. A couple of months ago—hell, even a few weeks ago—that would have annoyed the hell out of her. Her first thought would have been that she didn’t need someone constantly checking up on her. But now she knew Isaac wasn’t doing that. He was checking in, not checking up. Because he cared. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but that one little word adjustment altered her outlook. Or maybe it was just Isaac.

She’d been working for a couple hours, and thinking about Isaac made her turn to look at him, appreciating everything he’d done for her.

The room shook and pitched her forward. Her shoulder hit the shelving units and packages fell all around her.

A cracking sound followed.

In the next instant, Isaac was right beside her, helping to upright the shelving units.

As soon as they were steady, he took her in his arms. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She pulled back to see his face. “You?”

“I’m okay.”

They both turned to survey the damage. Besides the packages from the shelves, the lantern and phone had fallen off the nightstand and the folding screen was tilted toward the wall.

“Nothing is broken,” she said as she put the lantern and phone back in place.

“Kate? Remember the loud cracking sound?”

She looked where Isaac was pointing. “Oh, fuck.” On the wall closest to the foot of the bed, there was a hairline crack. It ran from the floor to about three feet up. “Do you think that’s a good thing? That the wall will crack open, and we’ll be able to get outside?”

“If this room was somewhere on the ground… maybe, but I’m not sure it is.”

Slowly spinning around, she looked at everything they had lined up on the floor. Something had changed. “I thought the side of the bed and the headboard weren’t touching the wall?” She turned back to Isaac, her eyebrows raised in question.

---