the Packbats' village witch playthrough 2024-07/08, part 3: keep vibing

[packbat]

In which Maybe and Lizzie have a real conversation, and Phido gets lots of scritches.

Content warnings on this section: capitalism and labor abuses in the videogame industry (past, mentioned).

Spring, Card 3: VII of Swords

A child visits to tell you about an exciting discovery.

It was coming up on a week in town when I got woken up at who-knows-how-early by a banging at the back door. I sleepily threw on a robe over my bedshirt and opened the door to see Lizzie, eyes sparkling.

"Maybe!" she yelled. (Why was she yelling?) "Phido found something!"

"…what time is it", I managed.

"I dunno, about ten-thirty?"

I rubbed my eyes.

"Wait, did I wake you up?" Lizzie said.

"'tsfine, I'll get my keys. Shoes."

"Y'sure?"

I nodded and turned back towards my bedroom.

"You left the door open!" Lizzie yelled.

"You can come in", I said back.

…

It was about twenty minutes of clambering through the woods, maneuvering the head of my broom around trees, when Phido and Lizzie stopped and barked at me that we were here.

Uh, Phido barked. It's not even noon, shut up.

It was a spring. A magic spring. Glittering and filling the air around it with a sense of wet energy and light.

"Oh", I said.

"Yeah, right?" Lizzie replied. "What do we do with it?"

I crouched down, looking at it more closely. "Do we do anything?" I asked. "It's just vibing."

"Oh", Lizzie said.

We all spent a long moment looking at it. In the middle of the burbling water was a stick, finger-thick and a foot long.

Lizzie reached for it, then hesitated. "It's blocking the flow", she said.

"You can take it out", I said thoughtfully. "I don't think that should—"

—but as I was talking, Lizzie had pulled it out, and water had come with it. Swirled around it, floating.

Lizzie dropped the wand and stepped back, shocked. The water fell with it, splattering on the muddy ground, and I stepped forward and caught Phido before she could try to bite the stick.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's okay", I said.

"But … what did I do?" Lizzie said, kinda panicky.

"Oh, sorry, Lizzie, you did exactly the right thing, no, Phido, stop…"

"What did I do?" Lizzie asked as I wrestled with Phido.

"You dropped it", I said, distracted with calming Phido down. "If a wand does something you're uncomfortable with, dropping it will stop it."

Lizzie didn't respond. Phido and I looked up, and Phido jumped out my arms to her. She fell down with a yelp.

"It's okay, Lizzie, just…" I rubbed my eyes, and—"ow! Ff—ow!"

"Maybe?!" Lizzie yelled.

"Got magic in my eye, ow…"

"You can get magic in your eye?"

"Yeah, ow … okay, can we…" I looked at Lizzie and Phido, and at the wand. "Are you okay to carry that back to the house? Or, yard, probably? We can talk about what it is and what it means."

Lizzie just stared at me.

"Sorry, I'm just…" I stopped myself before I rubbed my eyes again and just shuffled over to Lizzie and sat down. "Do you know how magic works?"

"No", Lizzie said, stroking Phido's back. "How would I know that?"

"Okay", I said, and thought.

…

"It's been hiding, I think", I said, breaking the silence. I saw Lizzie look up at me, and I clarified: "Magic. It doesn't want to be eaten, and that's what capitalism does to you and me. When it can."

Lizzie nodded hesitantly. "That's why the revolution, and why grocery stores don't work by prices any more."

"Yeah. We did it for us, but…" I patted Phido on her ghostly little head, and gave her a little scritch, "we made space for this, too."

Lizzie kept hugging Phido, looking at the spring (now almost a fountain) and the wand.

"We don't know a lot about magic – us in the coven, I mean. It meets everyone differently. It's something I see, and see through, but Yellow scratches out letters, Gravity plays the clarinet, and … I mean, I'm looking at this," I said, and gestured to the stick, "and it's a wand, it's clearly a wand, and you pick it up and it does magic. You do magic."

The spring continued to burble. A rush of sound crossed overhead as trees were moved by the wind and then settled.

"Is it dangerous?" Lizzie asked.

"No more than you", I replied. She looked at me skeptically. "Listen, if you wanted to hit me, you could probably hit me pretty hard just with your hands. Dancing with magic isn't going to make you something else."

"It does change you, though", she said. "Knowing you can do things. Talk to ghosts." Lizzie scritched Phido's ears, and her tail thumped happily.

I sat and thought about it.

"I was just messing around", Lizzie said. "I didn't think I was signing up to change my whole life."

"I'm sorry", I said. "I … magic was my escape from writing video games. I shouldn't assume it's everyone's."

"You wrote videogames?" Lizzie blurted.

"Yeah, see, it sounds cool, and then crunch time comes. Capitalism kills", I said, with forced lightness.

"I'm sorry", she said.

"Okay, but here", I said, feeling a little more confident. "If I never write a video game ever again, then that's fine, actually. I'm not robbing anyone by not writing video games. I'm—" I gestured to the spring "—a fountain, and if something comes up, that's neat. It's not an obligation."

The water burbled. Lizzie was silent.

"I think you'd be good at it. Magic, I mean, I don't know if you'd be a good video game programmer. But that doesn't mean anything at all."

The water burbled. Phido panted.

"Why?" Lizzie asked.

"The herbs in the vases. Phido. This. …Me. Folks like you, you pull them in right away." I shrugged awkwardly. "Maybe I'm wrong. I just … you're good at what you do."

Lizzie pushed Phido to one side and stood, tentatively. "And if I suck?" she asked.

"Then it'll be really frustrating and feel really bad but you'll get better if you stick with it." I pushed myself to my feet. "Or you'll give up and do something else instead."

Lizzie bent and picked up the wand. Poked it into the spring and pulled it out with a ribbon of water, swirling around it, breaking and reforming. Then she flicked her hand, tossing the water back into the spring.

I picked up my broom, then looked around. "Uh, do you know which way we came from?"

…

After we got back to the house, Lizzie tried to get me to come with her to show the wand to Luis, but I begged off. It was eleven-whatever in the morning. I was going back to bed.