***

  Oh fuck, is it Tuesday?

  It's Tuesday ain't it. Last Tuesday I almost got eaten by a Zombie and Vampires and a big squid thing.

  ‘Do you think I can stay in bed all day?’

  [Nothing stopping you from trying.]

  [But we would like to inform you that it is not Tuesday.]

  ‘Wait what? I’m sure I counted seven days.’

  [The City of Doors has a six day week.]

  ‘Did you guys realize how shit Tuesday is and burn it from the Calendar?’

  [You are correct.]

  ‘What really?’

  [No.]

  ‘Alright wise guy. What day is it then?’

  [We can tell when you roll your eyes. The day is Voiday.]

  ‘Well at least it isn't Tuesday. I want to ask what the days of the week are but I would feel like a three year old.’

  [Would you still like to know?]

  ‘Yes’

  [The days are Orday, Truday, Sacriday, Growday, Firday and Voiday.]

  ‘Truday kinda seems like a Tuesday. It's even the second day of the week!’

  [But today is not Truday.]

  ‘I will take my wins where I can get them.’

  I pull myself out of bed and do the usual strip wash and dressing myself. Then join Maria, Emily and Derek for breakfast.

  We have some sort of sausages with what might possibly be eggs. Definitely not from chickens, what with them being blue, but definitely eggs. I think.

  “Derek, is there any chance I could get some fake bullets for my gun?” I ask without a mouth full of food, because I swallowed first. I’m not a savage. “I would like to get a bit faster with my reloading, I’m still feeling very clunky with it.”

  I ask for two reasons, first is what it says on the tin. My gun is a beauty and I want to be able to treat her right. But the second reason…

  Derek's eyes got wide and a big smile grew across his face. “Yes!” He coughs slightly. “I mean, yes. I think that could be arranged, I will pick up some shell cases without powder in them from work today.”

  Everyone loves it when you engage with their special interests.

  I miss videogames.

  “You know that's an excellent idea. Being able to reload your weapon faster could save your life in combat situations.” Derek hums to himself. “It might be a good idea to make dummy bullets for all my weapons. For safer practice.”

  “If you make the tip a different colour then you would always be able to tell the difference between real bullets and the dummy ones.” I’m digging deep on this one. I'm pretty sure I saw fake weapons with orange tips on TV or something.

  Derek happily nods his head at me. “That's an excellent idea!”

  Who would have thought my biggest contribution to this realm would be gun safety tips. I’m British, I don't know anything about guns!

  Now that I think about it, there are a lot of guns in this house. On walls and such. At first I thought it was a common thing for this world. Now I just think it's Derek. Maybe I should try and remember more safety stuff. I don't want Emily accidentally blowing her foot off or something.

  I switched focus to Maria. “Your shooting was so good yesterday evening.” I gush.

  Maria gives me a little nod but before she can respond Derek cuts in. “Yes! Maria truly is something don't you think! Did I ever tell you how we met?”

  Dude I’ve been here a week and I’ve talked to you twice. “No? But I would love to hear the story.” I said.

  “I was a small-time traveling gun salesman. I would travel up and down Ravenshale, which is one of the landmasses of this realm, selling weapons. Some of which I had made.”

  He’s taken her hand in his as he tells the story. Oh God these people are one of those sickening old couples that are desperately in love even after being married for decades aren't they.

  “I was just a young man. And to make a little coin on the side I would arrange shooting competitions, simple things like hit three targets and I would give you three coins. It would cost a coin to play. I would set up the challenge in the local pub normally of an evening as the beer would make the patrons worse shots.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Drunk people with loaded firearms. The gun safety in this realm is horrendous. If I ever get into a gun fight I will be more worried about my opponent shooting themselves.

  “And?” Maria pipes in.

  “And, well the targets used to be bottles, you see, but the last bottle was a trick of illusion. Un-shootable, bullets would pass straight through!”

  “He thought himself very clever.” Maria said.

  “I would start with real bottles of course, let them win the first few, increase the bet until the last round where I brought out the fake. It was an excellent little money maker.” He grinned.

  Maria tried to look disappointed in him, but the smirk gave her away.

  “Of course during one of these competitions I met a noble lady who radiated power and authority. I knew I had met somebody special.”

  “He thought I was drunk, rich and an easy mark.”

  “I would never. But yes I did play to her ego somewhat and increased the bet more than I ordinarily would. Much more, higher than I could afford.”

  “I might have been pushing the bet up myself a little bit.” Maria said with a twinkle in her eye.

  “A little?” Derek looked incredulous.

  “A lot.”

  “Well of course with this mammoth bet, the illusion bottle had to come out.”

  “And? What happened?” I ask, no I'm not on the edge of my seat. You are.

  “I broke the bottle.” Maria said.

  “You shattered the bottle.” Derek stated.

  “Easy to beat an illusion with another illusion. Just a tiny little spell added to the bullet.” Maria smiled.

  “Of course I couldn't afford to pay her back. But she was in need of some new weaponry.”

  “Spells are great, but it's always wise to have some reliable steel in case you need it.” Maria advised.

  “She brought me back to the City of Doors. I spent a long long time working on her weapons.”

  “I might have been extra fussy to keep him around.”

  “We ended up falling in love.”

  “He was going to be mine that first night we met.”

  “Maria had no family to object to the marriage, and my parents were certainly very happy to have a Rift Officer in the family. The rest as you say is history.”

  They do that gross shit that old couples do when they hold hands and look into each other's eyes.

  “Well that was quite the story. But it's time to do something about that collar Tangerine.” Maria said. Is she blushing? She's blushing! You've been married for decades, lady!

  I follow Maria into the drawing room and sit opposite her in a high backed chair.

  “This will feel a little weird at first, okay.” She reaches forward and pulls the pin keeping the collar clipped together.

  Once removed I gained a new sense, it was really weird, it felt like breathing but also tasting at the same time. There was a whole lot of something all around me that I had never noticed before. It felt both fluid and spikey.

  “What you are feeling is mana. It has been all around you all this time.” Maria said. “Try breathing.”

  I take a deep breath.

  She chuckles. “Try breathing in the mana, breathe it into your belly, use your core.”

  I frown a little, readjust and then try to pull the mana into my belly. I felt it, my core. It shifted slightly.

  “Yes, that's right, keep doing that.” Maria encouraged.

  I focused again, pulling the mana into me, it took a little while to get more than a jerk or a shift from the core. But I finally managed to get it just right and the core spun sucking the mana in.

  Holy shit! I manage to not say out loud. “Oh wow, that is intense.” I said. I felt like I had a belly full of liquid fire, not painful, but definitely powerful.

  “There is nothing quite like cycling mana.” Maria said. “Now try to let the mana out, but gently, just a little bit at a time.”

  I felt down into the core and tried to unthread some of the mana attached to it. The core becomes unstable and the mana bursts out from me all at once.

  Maria looked like she expected that to happen. “By expanding your core early it has become much harder to control your mana flow. It will take a while to be able to control how much you draw in and out of yourself. With practice it will come. But you didn't cause this trouble for yourself without reason. Watch carefully.”

  Maria extended her hand face up and slowly pulled a bullet out for her domain. Normally it seems like it appears instantly. But with her slowing down the process like this I can see that the bullet actually slips out. Displacing the air as it expanded and twisted into realspace.

  “Taking items out of your domain is a fairly simple process, just feed it the mana and it will go where you want it to be, these items want to be in real space. Putting something in on the other hand takes a lot more time and effort. The process takes longer both with the complexity and size of the object.”

  She pulled out a penny from one of her pockets. “We will start with something that is both small and of low complexity. Watch.”

  The penny sits on the palm of her hand. It takes almost a minute, but I can feel the mana in the room shift. Pulled into her core and pushed up through her hand. It wraps around the penny, integrating itself, until finally the penny is sucked into the tiny rift inside Maria's mana core.

  “Woah.” I said, channelling my inner Keanu Reeves.

  A little bit of mana shifts and the penny is back in her hand. I notice she only pulls out something at a speed that the displaced air doesn't make a sound.

  “You try.” She said, offering me the penny.

  I held the penny in the palm of my hand and tried to thread the mana through it. My mana is uncontrolled. I pulled in too much and it's sent through my arm like a fire hose.

  But that didn't matter for what I was trying to achieve. The penny acted as a framework, taking the mana it needed while the rest blasted past. It was inefficient for sure and it took me closer to fifteen minutes, not one. But the penny was pulled into my domain.

  I could feel it there, on the edge of my perception. Waiting to be pulled back into real space. Like wearing a ring, but in my mana core.

  I grin at Maria, give the coin the tiny little flick of mana that it wanted and push it out towards my finger tips. I laughed when it appeared.

  “Good work Tangerine. I'm afraid I have some work to do today so we can not go out again. But I would like for you to keep practicing pushing the coin in and out of your domain.” Maria said.

  I nod my head happily. “Yeah I can do that.”

  I spent the rest of the day in a hyper-focus fuelled obsession. I was doing magic. Actually fucking magic. Penny goes in, penny comes out. Now you see it, now you don't. No trickery involved. Actually fucking magic.

  I think this was the best Tuesday ever.

  [Not a Tuesday.]

  ***