11 - Thinking Happy Thoughts//Lea

A thousand different ideas popped into her head at the same time, but they didn't overwhelm her. No matter what new phrasing or wording came up, she could hear them all. They were all essentially the same thought.

I wish things would go back to the way they were.

As Paxton held up the strange red gem in his hands, Lea could feel all of her inhibition fade away against the thumping noise that the thought was making in her ears. It was no longer a matter of believing it or not; she'd seen magic for herself. Experienced it.

This was Paradox City, after all.

"How?" was all she asked.

"How?" Nora asked in turn, giving Paxton a strange look. "Don't you want an explanation of all of this stuff first?"

"You said I could have a wish," Lea reminded her. "A real wish, anything I wanted."

"Like getting your dad out of prison," Paxton said quickly. Nora shot him a look. "Waco told us."

"Did he do it?" Nora asked. "Whatever it is. It wasn't violent, right?"

Under the gaze of these two teenagers who she'd met barely a week ago, Lea felt herself crumble. It was a similar feeling to the one she'd gotten the week after her father was arrested. Everybody whispering behind her back, trying to figure out if whatever criminal act he'd committed was hereditary.

But there was something different in Nora and Paxton's gaze, something that told her that they understood. Not from Lea's perspective, as the daughter of a criminal, but from her father's.

"He stole some stuff," Lea admitted. "A lot of stuff, actually."

Lea wasn't sure what to expect, but understanding silence certainly wasn't it.

"I don't have time to judge you or process this to begin with," Nora relented. "The truth is we need you."

"Need me?" she asked curiously. Nobody had ever needed Lea before, especially in the way Nora's serious gaze suggested.

"The Noiz," Paxton explained, holding up the red gem. Though she'd held it before, Lea had never taken a close look at it. It looked like a capital letter 'B' with the bottom half turned sideways. As he held it out to her, it began to glow.

She reached out for it but Paxton quickly pulled it back.

"Nope, not yet," he said, laughing nervously. "Don't want a repeat of downtown."

"That's what turned me into a giant monster?" Lea asked so loudly that Paxton and Nora shushed her, gesturing to the second floor where her brother was.

"Yes," Nora said, holding up her large green necklace. It had the exact same shape as the gem Paxton was holding, but it was a bright green colour. "It's a Noiz, but in it's raw form."

"How come it's not turning Paxton into a monster?" Lea asked.

"I'm already bonded to one," Paxton said, fishing around his shirt and pulling out his own necklace with a chunky blue gem. "Raw Noiz only affect people who aren't bonded to a Noiz. You're already bonded to this one, but I'm not sure if the raw magic is entirely out of your system yet. If you touched it, you could fire up that raw magic all over again."

"Magic," Lea repeated, still unable to really believe it. "Wishes. It all sounds crazy."

"To be fair, I didn't know about the wish until today either," Nora said. Paxton quickly rushed over to his battered book and brought it closer.

"You know the third quarter of the Mooar Shee? The part that covers the creation of the Noiz?" Paxton said to her. Lea was almost glad it wasn't directed at her, she was entirely out of the loop.

"Yeah?" Nora answered, non-committal.

"I told you I'd only managed to translate this part so far," Paxton said, pointing to some strange looking script that only sort of looked like English. Even so, Nora and Lea moved closer so they could see what he was referring to. "The part about the eight Noiz together became the Very Great Thing."