Draft: 53 She Hadn’t Shut Down

Reaching a tentative hand forward, she touched a wisp of silvery blue mana. Like in the weird dimension she had just returned from, it started to swirl around her without her feeling a thing. Absentmindedly licking at her ice cream, she took her hand back.

Looking around the small ice cream shop, she started to register how everyone had mana in them. Her mother had a sickly neon green color of mana residing in her chest. It left her in weird vines, almost like a plant with offshoots. She could see small tendrils on her dad and Jason. She was bare of the color, though, and she couldn’t decide if she was happy about it. On the one hand, she was her mom, on the other hand she was her mother.

Her dad had a small bit of deep blue mana in him, all centered in his chest. His mana seemed to act a lot more like a liquid than any other type she’d already seen, its movements feeling more like waves on a beach that anything else. Right now, though, the mana was calm, happily swaying along the shore. James was sure that it could turn stormy in an eyeblink, though.

Jason… Jason was a bit more confusing, and probably the reason she hadn’t noticed anything. He was almost bare of any mana, just a small white glow in his center showing up in her sphere. It was so miniscule it was hard to register any mana in him at all.

“James, what flavor did you choose?” Jason bounded forward towards her. Shuffling uncomfortably as all the eyes in the shop shifted to her, everyone following Jason’s infectious energy, James surprisingly didn’t shut down. She would have before the Tutorial. Even in a dream.

Holding up her cone with the white ice cream containing small black specs in reply, James let that be her reply. Jerking her chin at him, she indicated his own cone, which had two generous scoops of ice cream precariously balanced on top along with some mini marshmallows. After all, she might not have shut down, but she was still James. Talking was out of the question at the moment.

“Oh, I got a scoop of horchata ice cream and Thai tea ice cream with marshmallows. I considered getting the marshmallows toasted, but I figured that would overwhelm the other flavors. You’re really still getting vanilla? I could have recommended something- ooh, I know, matcha. You’d love it, you like tea, right? We’ll get it next time, promise,” James looked at him, amused despite herself. They always had this exchange about ice cream flavors. She would get vanilla and he would promise that he’d order her something new next time.

Maria approached her two children, examining them both from head to toe, her teacher’s glasses making her nose seem sharp enough to cut. Well, at least one child was acceptable, smiling at Jason she gestured to his large frame.

“Just make sure you don’t overeat dear; you know that the semi-finals are coming up for your basketball tournament,” Jason rolled his eyes at her, flexing his arms to reveal his large biceps. James was sure the girl behind the counter was going to faint with the way her face instantly became red and warily kept an eye on her.

“I think I’m fine mom. Even coach said we have to enjoy ourselves. You know what happens when I don’t get ice cream before a match.”

“Yes, you’ve decided that if we don’t get ice cream before a match you will lose it. Tell me, dear, what made you decide this?” She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to step into her precisely laid out trap. So precisely laid that even Jason could spot it a mile away. Being Jason, though, he didn’t care. Not like he wouldn’t get ice cream because of it.

“After I lost two weeks ago obviously, both Oliver and Lucas agreed that the lack of ice cream was clearly the reason,” smirking a little, he took another bite of the ice cream. How the women population didn’t see that little fact and run away screaming from him, James would never know. It was absolutely disgusting. Teeth on cold ice cream. Just, no.

“You’re right Jason, Oliver, Lucas, and you are absolutely the best sources for this debate. It wasn’t because you had stayed up the night before playing video games.”

“Nope.”

“Mariah, lay off the kid! A man’s gotta trust his troops! Or trust his wheels, come shop at Barny’s Used Cars, wheels you can trust!” James wondered how he even managed to sleep at night, trying to sell those rusted ‘cars’ to teenagers. She wouldn’t even trust an adult in them.

Tim opened the door of the shop and let the whole family out. Leaving behind the chaotic feeling of the ice cream shop, James let out a sigh of relief. She hated being indoors. Even the crowded street was better. That was when she realized what had been bothering her. That little thing nagging her at the back of her brain. And it wasn’t only in her dream.

Everyone had a small bit of mana in them. And, consequently, everyone was leaking a small bit of mana into their surroundings. In the street, that small bit of mana dissipated rather quickly. It probably still had a higher level of ambient mana than the empty forest, for example, or a quieter street, but the mana had more places to go. It couldn’t accumulate like it did inside the enclosed ice cream shop.

James hadn’t shut down inside the ice cream shop. Even with everyone’s attention on her, their mana focused on her. She hadn’t shut down.

Her Skill Selection had been consumed by her internal debate between being able to go get ice cream with her brother by choosing Stealth or staying true to herself and taking Mana Dance. If this dream was at all realistic, an oxymoron if there ever was one, then she didn’t need Stealth in order to go out with her brother. At this point, she wasn’t even sure it would really help.

She wasn’t cured, that much was clear by her inability to speak, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t improved. She had, after all, been able to exist inside the ice cream shop. It occurred to her then that the whole dream had all been made up since she’d never been in it before. You could say that she literally dreamed of the possibility of getting ice cream with Jason now. On the other hand, that realization did manage to somewhat invalidate her findings.

But didn’t dreams only consist of people you had already seen? In that case, how had she assigned them all mana, and mana that acted so differently to what she was used to seeing? Mulling it over, James concluded that, potentially, she had always been sensing mana. Without a way to properly interpret it without the System, it had made her anxious, or at least exacerbated her anxiety. Now, with Mana Sense, she was at least able to understand everything around her.

“James!” Jason called her over, already half-way up the street. Startled out of her thoughts, she rushed up to meet him.

“So you figured it out?” He looked at her excitedly. Her parents continued to ignore her, she doubted they had even realized she had lagged behind. Their behavior didn’t even bother to change in her own dream.

“I guess so.” Her words came out slowly, but still hiked up just a bit at the end, almost like she was wondering if her own words were a question. Wearing a decidedly non-Jason expression because of its seriousness, he shook his head, his eyes boring into her.

“No, not fully.” His face changing back to his normal smile. “That’s okay, you will.” James yawned and covered her mouth. With the world fading away, she woke up.