Lakeside Encounter: A Magic University Story
A "what I did in the summer" story
by Cecilia Tan
Kyle hadn't expected to meet magical people here.
When he'd decided to go backpacking for the summer, he'd decided to leave behind all the talk of prophecies and go somewhere the Tower was far from visible. He'd always wanted to go to New Orleans, but there was a sizable magical community there, and the whole point was to get away.
So he went west, and somewhere not quite to Chicago got sidetracked, and he ended up at a campground adjacent to a state park on Lake Michigan. By then he had a solo pop-up tent he could carry easily in his pack, and although he'd forsaken Esoteric Arts as a field of study, he knew enough to be able to keep warm all night long no matter how chilly the night air was, so long as he was somewhere private enough to touch himself. Hence, the tent.
But other than that, and the occasional application of his knack for saying the right thing to bring opportunities his way, he didn't do magic. He did write in his journal, scraps of poems and sights and thoughts, philosophies and words and sometimes rhymes that caught his ear. He hitchhiked from place to place and began to realize just how large the country was, and just how rare the magical population was.
But there he was, sitting on a sand dune and watching the sun set...