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“How’s it going in here?”
Cassandra peered around the doorway to the otherwise empty classroom that Lucy was working in. She fought back her laughter as Lucy violently jerked up from the books she was pouring over and whipped her head towards her with wide eyes, but she couldn’t hide her smile.
“Oh, hi Cassandra!” Lucy stood up abruptly from the table. She smoothed out her sweater as she walked over to meet Cassandra. “It’s going great, actually! Ever since the whole deal with my particle accelerator at Wexler, I’ve been fascinated by these other dimensions.” She grabbed Cassandra’s hand and pulled her over to the table.
Spread out across its surface was a whole smorgasbord of research materials. There were several enormous leather-bound tomes detailing the metaphysical principles and the mathemagical structures behind different dimensions of all sorts, from pocket dimensions to entire separate planes of existence. There were dozens of loose papers, covered in complex equations Lucy’s scribbly handwriting. In the middle of the chaos, an enormous map lay, yellowed with age and curling in the corners.
“There’s a ton of theoretical work done on dimensional travel and extraplanar entities and the like, but the last time anybody’s actually visited another dimension – intentionally,” she said, with a conspiratorial look that Cassandra returned with glee, “was Lovecraft himself, back in the early 1900s. A lot of these old maps are either completely incorrect, or the dimensions they’re cataloguing have changed so much in such a long time that they’re no longer accurate. It’s… well, it’s a lot of non-linear equations and non-Euclidean geometric patterns so far.”
“And all of this is staying purely theoretical, right?” Cassandra asked, her brow raised pointedly at her girlfriend.
Lucy held up her hands, placating. “Absolutely. I’ve learned my lesson – no more messing around with weird equations that show up in my dreams, and no jumping into other dimensions unless everyone on Team Library signs off on it. Scout’s honour.”
“You were a girl scout?”
“Well, for a year,” Lucy admitted. She packed up her papers and the books into her tote bag. Once they were all put away, she carefully rolled the giant map back up and slipped it into an intricate pewter scroll case. “Then I got really into my school science club and that ended up taking up all of my free time.”
“Now that, I can believe,” Cassandra said. She held an elbow out, which Lucy slipped her arm through. They shut the lights off and closed the door as they left, with Lucy stealing a quick kiss in the darkened doorway, and then the two of them headed out from the university’s campus to grab lunch.
They ended up settling on a nice little café a few blocks away. Though it was early October, the weather was still balmy and comfortable, so they ended up eating on the patio, their legs casually tangled together under the table.
“Thanks for letting me borrow all of this stuff from the Library, by the way,” Lucy said. Cassandra just hummed contentedly in acknowledgement.
It was something that still threw Cassandra for a loop sometimes, that she had not only lived long enough to have a long-term romantic relationship, but that she had managed to find someone who understood her on a near-subatomic level. Lucy could have broken her down to her basest building blocks and still recognized her, due in no small part to how much she could recognize herself in her.
Another thing that threw her for a loop was how easy it was to be with Lucy. She’d never had the chance to date anybody before, not with her tumour casting a shadow over her life. She’d always been the odd one out, because of her love of science or because of her goth phase in high school or because of her nerdy enthusiasm; the end result of her always being on the outside was feeling horribly self-conscious when it came to opening up to others.
But Lucy didn’t mind if she stuttered her way around a flirty line, or if it took her a solid two months to stop blushing every time they held hands, or if she got so nervous the first time they made out that she accidentally headbutted her in the nose. The fact that she was equally as interested in science and math and magic as she was was just the crowning glory to such an amazing person.
“What’re you thinking about?” Lucy asked, pulling Cassandra out of her head. She shook her thoughts away as Lucy gently kicked her ankle under the table. “You looked a million miles away.”
“Well, maybe not a million miles,” Cassandra said. “Can I take a look at those equations you were working on?”
Lucy stuffed the last bite of her sandwich in her mouth and nodded. “Sure thing – just let me find them.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” Cassandra raised one hand. Her fingers glowed with a vibrant cobalt light, and with a flick, the flap of Lucy’s bag opened up and the pages flew across the table into her hand.
“Woah!” Cassandra startled at Lucy’s sudden outburst. She turned wide eyes on her girlfriend, who was staring at her with equally wide eyes in return. “Your eyes – they, they were bright blue and, and glowing! And you just – you – I didn’t know you could do that!”
Cassandra pulled her hand back and clutched it against her chest. Her cheeks flushed warm and she bit her lip, suddenly very embarrassed. As soon as the rush of shame came over her, it was replaced with an equally strong feeling of stubbornness. So what if she used magic? They both knew it existed, and it had been such an uphill battle to convince everyone at the Library to let her learn to use magic without them breathing down her neck or constantly babying her about being careful. She wasn’t going to be ashamed of it now.
“Um, yes? I mean, I only recently started working on it, and stuff like short-range levitation or summoning is fairly simple –”
“That’s incredible!” Cassandra twitched backwards, caught off-guard by Lucy’s enthusiasm. “I can’t believe you’re actually learning magic! What else can you do? Can you fly? Or read minds? Ooooh, can you teach me?!”
Cassandra laughed, bright and a tiny bit overwhelmed. Well, she had just been appreciating how well Lucy understood her, and their shared geeky enthusiasm was no small part of that understanding. With her free hand, she grasped Lucy’s hand and laced their fingers together.
It felt so good and so right, having someone to share this with – having someone to share herself with.