A warm mist filled the small room, leaving in the air a slight manufactured smell of grass and soap. Above the watery sound of a shower running, a reluctantly tuned tenor sang a Nirvana song.
After having soaked the entire bathroom floor, Sebastian, very uncarefully, climbed out of the bathtub.
Without even bothering to dry himself up, the young man put on his jeans and threw a tower over his head, leaving it hanging while finished singing “Lake of Fire”.
He opened the door and stepped into the supposed living room, now transformed into a large study room.
“Is homework finished?”, he started, “I’m starving! What do you want for…” He stopped and looked at his son. Andrew, who was sitting, legs crossed, on the table, on top of his now half torn homework, raise his eyes from a big old book and looked at his father. The dark hair, slightly unkept, almost reaching his bright green eyes gave the boy the same carefree look his father now seemed to have.
“Pizza! Daddy, what’s a…?”, the boy looked at the book again, searching for that weird word.
“Isn’t that level of Forces a bit too advanced for you?”; Sebastian asked, smiling proudly at his little mage. “And we already had pizza at lunch, so no way!”
The boy gave his father a fake annoyed look “but you’re a terrible cook!”, he said and jumped of the table.
“And you made a mess at your homework; you’re going to have to make them anew before we continue your magic lessons! I don’t want to get called to your school again”
“yeah, yeah”
“Say what?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it again. And yeah I’ll behave at school”, Andy said blinking at his father.
As soon as Sebastian turned and went to the kitchen, Andrew looked at the piles of papers and took a deep breath. He stared at the top page for some seconds, the closed his eyes and very slowly, measuring every syllable, he repeated the words Sebastian uses to levitate objects. “Just one page”, the boy thought, “Come on!! There can’t be a force minor than the weight of a paper!”
From the kitchen a laugh broke his concentration “nop, you can’t do it like that! Try the basics first. Besides, you can’t use my method. I told you, you have to find out something that makes sense to you. Magic is something very personal.”
The young boy blush a little; he had been training magic, on his own, for some time now, using Sebastian’s former notes. Andrew had it all learned by heart, but he still couldn’t move a page. “But that takes so long!”, he said, half sad, but still fully determined as he manually cleaned up the dining table.
Sebastian reappeared with dinner some minutes later and both sat at the table.
“Why are you in such a hurry to learn magic, Andy? It takes it’s time, and you’re still very young”. Andrew stared at his plate and continued to eat without a word. “You know”, Sebastian continued, “when I started it was very difficult, I studied day and night and it took me a while just to be able to figure out why magic existed and how I could…”
“Daddy, can I have karate lessons?”, the boy interrupted, lifting his eyes from his food.
“Hum? Err… sure.” Sebastian frowned, slightly confused. This request was typical of a 6 year old boy, but Andrew always seemed years older than he actually is and always wanted things other boys only cared about years later.
“What about violin, Andy?”
“I don’t like it anymore, I want karate”. The boy had that look again. He stared deep into his father’s eyes, completely determined. That look, among other things, had made Andrew’s teachers uncomfortable. The boy looked too mature, too confident. Too weird.
“Well, just as long as you don’t get yourself into even more fights! Your friends train karate, uh? Ok, then. It’s only natural that you want to join”
“No”, Andrew said “I don’t want karate for kids. I want to learn how to fight for real”.
In the last couple of years, Sebastian had learned to appreciate and admire his parents calm and cold head; for a 6 year old so sure of himself and so rational was kind of scary, especially for a first time parent.
And his poor parents had had two of them at the same time.
But before Sebastian could tease Andrew with his imposed maturity, the boy finished the conversation with a single phrase “If that man ever comes back, I won’t be scared this time”