Page 77 of Shroom for Improvement

Would he reach over into no-man’s-land and brush his fingers against mine?

Of all the possibilities, why did the thought of Sonny holding my hand under the duvet feel the naughtiest?

I shook my head. We needed to talk about what happened earlier, and what it meant for us, but another time. Because something was happening. The orgasm had brought about a new level of focus, and the air around me was charged. Electric.

I felt something manifesting in my core. Like a bubble, or a ball of heat, or something physical yet not physical. Perhaps this was thefeelSonny had talked about when he told me to feel the glamour, not think or imagine.

“It’s like something’s alive inside my chest. I don’t know if this’ll make sense, but it’s like a tree or a plant. Like the magic is being sucked out of the air and the ground through roots and is all pooling into the middle of me. In here,” I explained, pointing to the centre of my chest.

“Yes! You’ve got it! May I?” Sonny said. He hovered his hand a few centimetres above my sternum.

I nodded, because at that moment, with the prospect of him touching me again, I forgot what words were and how to use them. I assumed he would flatten his palm against me, over the top of my shirt, but he undid one button, then another, then slid his fingers between the plackets and against my bare skin.

And there was me hoping our knees might knock together.

My breath caught in my throat, my eyes fixed onto his face, and maybe even time slowed down.

He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. In real life and beyond that. His pupils were so dark it was difficult to tell what was dilation and what was iris, but it was impossible to miss the pink that painted his cheeks and nose and the tips of his pointy ears. How had I, Claude Stinkhorn, most miserable man in all of Remy, wound up with this gorgeous creature looking at me like I was... like I was something special?

“I feel it, too,” he whispered, as though conversing any louder would scare it—the magic—away. “You’re incredible—you’re doing incredible.”

At this, the magic seemed to grow. Or purr. I wasn’t quite sure.

“What do I do now?” I asked. “Do I wait for it to keep building? Or do I try to direct it? And if I direct it, how and where do I do that?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” Sonny said, his hand still on my chest. Hopefully, he’d forgotten about it, and would leave it there forever. “Aim it at the teacup. Inside the teacup.”

I nodded and closed my eyes, blocking out everything else around me—the birds chirping outside the window, Jenny’s nuisance yawning, the doom-like tick-tocking of the grandfather clock. Everything except Sonny.

The glamour seemed to vibrate inside me. It became cold—icy even. I felt it shift, move, as though it was trying to escape. Sonny must have sensed it too, because he lifted his hand away. I would have mourned the loss, but the glamour began to seep through my bones and flesh and skin like osmosis, and unceremoniously, it charged at the teacup.

The tea leaves didn’t so much swirl like a mini tornado, but shot a foot into the air and scattered over the table.

“Ooh, look at you go,” Jenny deadpanned.

“You did it!” Sonny yelled.

“Yes!” I punched the air, and then, without thinking, I pulled Sonny to me by the front of his T-shirt and kissed him.

Sonny let out a surprised little mewl, and I let him go.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Sonny did, about two hours ago,” Jenny said.

I flipped the house off behind my back. “It wasn’t exactly a storm in a teacup, though. The leaves didn’t swirl or anything. More like a gust.”

“A williwaw,” Sonny said.

“Yes!” I was grinning again. How did he have that effect on me? “That’s a perfect description for it. A williwaw in a teacup.”

“The fuck is a williwaw?” Jenny asked.

“So, we just keep practicing. And gradually we focus on making it swirl.”We. Sonny said we, and notyou, Claude. I didn’t even know if he’d realised. “Eventually, it will become a storm. And also eventually, you’ll be able to conjure a lightning strike. We’ll get there.”

We.

“In the meantime,” he continued. “We should try out a few other things, too. Just to be sure. I’ve been thinking, there must be a reason why shroom lore isn’t so well known as other fae lore.”

---