The Cost of Doing Magic

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Wispy trails of magenta faded as blue-violet raindrops fell from a saturated rain cloud. Stars twinkled in sunrise pinks, plum-colored cumulous clouds drifted slowly by, and black bats contrasted against a rose-cast sky.

To the Wall Street banker sipping from a cup amongst the trees of the Amazon, this miraculous vision was the result of his soul-searching experience. Depressed at the state of his conscience and his vapid life, he'd sought refuge and change in the hands of a plant meant to induce raw emotion, deep truths, consciousness, and -- hopefully -- his salvation. He laughed and wept joyfully, enraptured by the choreography overhead, feeling certain of his deliverance from his despair.

Six months later, he would be dead. Instead of pursuing a new life's purpose, he would seek new chemically-supported avenues for escaping his internal pain: opioids, meth, heroin. He would never see the blushing sky again.

For the small-town Mississippi preacher up late working on his Sunday sermon, the colorful visions outside his office window was a direct sign from God Himself. His congregation was dwindling, his hope and faith were waning, and his message that coming Sunday service had been written with bitter anger. Unable to help his community, unable to understand why the illness had taken his beautiful wife from him and their children, and unwilling to talk to the very God he'd worshipped since he'd been born, he'd struggled to find words to bring peace and comfort to others. He walked out the door and stood on his porch, arms gently folded across his chest, chin tilted to the sky. Deep violet raindrops began to pour around his home and he touched his face to find his cheek wet, with tears or purple rain, he couldn't be sure, but for the first time since his wife had past, he reached out to God.

The following year, the preacher would stand at his pulpit with a full congregation joyfully singing their gospel and lift his hands in praise and gratitude. The church would prosper resulting in a new playground for the park, a fund to help those struggling with their utility bills, hygiene products for the domestic violence shelter in the next town over, and a contract with the recycling plant in Biloxi so the townsfolk could do their small part for the earth.

Two young lovers escaping prying eyes lay in the wheat fields of the Cherokee reservation one evening and gasped as they watched the churning pinks and purples overhead. Her hand laced into hers and squeezed. She felt her squeeze back. It felt as though their ancestors or destiny or both were telling them it was all going to be okay; they'll get through this hard time of life. Being teens was hard enough, but being teens with difficult home lives, living on the reservation in conservative Oklahoma, and being lesbian, made it near impossible to imagine their lives on the other side of 18. In hues of love and beauty overhead, they knew it had to be their great-grandparents and the generations before teaching them to keep going and keep loving.

In five years, they will look back on that night with bittersweetness for the love they felt then, the eventual heartbreak of their split a couple of years later, and the empowering message of truth from their ancestors that all would be well. One is married to a wonderful woman with a child on the way. One is on a solo path focused on healing and growth that will eventually lead her to the love of her life and the love of herself. Both are happy.

The mob at Burning Man views this sight as just another wonderment of human art and creation. Each individual contributes to the rhythm of the group as they dance to the swirling violet rays and bursts of fuchsia overhead. By dawn, the waning crowd will never realize the transition from the dancing sky into the rising sun.

But what's happening overhead is no mystery. Clouds swiftly painting the sky shades of orchid are no mad-made display nor miracle of God. Shimmering pink dust drifting across the moon isn't the hallucination brought on by mental illness or psychedelics, nor a spectacular show brought on by astronomical events or invading aliens.

For Natalie, this is her gift. She is an artist, a creative, a musician and painter, a choreographer and writer without instruments. Her unique gift of magic was revealed when she turned 17, same as the others like her. On the day before her 17th birthday, desperate with anticipation, she felt overwhelmed with excitement and apprehension. Her older brother George, her rock and her source for anything related to their magical reality, informed her it may be challenging to control her magic.

"It took me over a year to really get it under control, Nat. You remember. I was setting little fires all over the place." He tugged on the bill of his baseball cap, a nervous habit, and smiled. He was evidently remembering with amusement some of his fiery missteps.

"Dude, you caught my favorite sweater on fire! I was so pissed at you. I still am," Dani sneered. He glanced at her and chuckled when he saw the grin on her face.

George continued. "Practice at night and in places you're unlikely to be seen by others. It's important, Nat, I'm not kidding. When humans without magic see this shit, it can really freak them out if they can't come up with some logical explanation for it." He shuddered. "It would me!"

She contemplated this before responding. "Where did you like to practice?" Natalie recalled memories of scorched black spots on their driveway, the bathtub, and the brick-laid path running through her mom's exquisite garden in the back yard. She missed that garden with its beds overflowing with flowers and herbs and shades of green.

"It was challenging doing much indoors without setting everything ablaze, but outdoors could be harder to contain and was more visible. I had some luck at the railroad track, the skate park, rusted out cars--anything with a good deal of metal or concrete, to minimize risking a runaway fire."

"Fire is risky, " she acknowledged, "I get that you have to be careful with that. But I don't know what my power is yet, what if it's something not quite so...potentially destructive?"

"Sis, it doesn't matter. It's still magic. It's still something that the whole world can't know about except for people like us. We use it to help where we can, that's our task in life and we can't just run around using our magic without concern for who might witness it. If regular humans find out, it's all over for our kind. We help protect humans because most are good and we share the world with them. But too many are dangerous and if they knew we had these powers, we'd never know peace or freedom again. That's why I'm saying, whatever your power is, you have to learn how to harness it and to do that, you need to practice. Promise me you'll only practice at night when most of the world is asleep and where a bunch of regular humans aren't going to see it?"

Natalie managed to adhere to one of those rules, but what better canvas than the sky?