How did I get on Wattpad? — 3 — The ring

The funeral was organized; there I was with my face buried in the magazine, family crying, me facing my grief in my corner, isolated, when my father came to see if everything was okay. We talked a little about the brevity of life, about time and some other random matter. Then he asked me if I was hungry and we left the place to eat at a bakery across the street. We ordered and he went to the bathroom, I sat at the table, with the feeling that someone was watching me.

There were two people at a table across the room and they were looking right at me, like a movie scene. The man was white, in a dark blue suit and a gray tie, which matched the gray of his hair and neatly trimmed beard. He also had flashy green eyes and exchanged words with a tall woman with wavy black hair.

This woman wore ordinary, black clothes, which made me think of the warmth of the beach, but she didn’t even bothered. There was something else about her, it must have been her eyes, or the way she moved, as if she had all the time in the world at her disposal.

When my father returned to the table he ended up in my line of sight, I had to lean over to see the couple, who were still there, but were not watching me anymore. The strange thing about all this is that this air of magic and mystery had been broken and they were so mixed up with the public that if it weren’t for this exchange of looks I would never have noticed them.

We had lunch and I went to the bathroom, while in the stall I heard someone come in and use the toilet next to me. When I left there was no one around, but on the counter, next to the tap, there was a ring.

If this were a fantasy story, this ring would have a mysterious symbol, something like a serpent or a dragon carved in it or the magic initials of its owner. But it was a very common ring, with three scratches in low relief in a different metal, as if someone had applied gold to silver.

I went out with the ring and showed it to my father, then I talked to the manager and gave him the ring, who promised to keep the item in the “lost and found” in case someone came back looking for it. In my head, even today, I have the perfect image of our conversation, thanking him and him putting the ring in his shirt pocket and saying he was going to keep it. I also have the feeling that the mysterious couple passed us at that time and the man smiled making a quick gesture with his hands.

We went back to the funeral, which was held in a building inside the cemetery and my father went to talk to the adults. In the meantime, I returned to my solitude and sat with my magazine in some corner.

The moment I moved I felt something in my jeans pocket.

It was the ring.

I could have ranted, returned the ring to my father, gone back to the bakery, or thrown it away. But my fertile imagination reasoned the following: it will be the same as the movies or books, this crap will always go back to my pocket, so screw it, I’ll keep it.

I put the ring on my finger with all the property a 13-year-old boy could do and something magical happened. I was transported to another dimension, where I found myself heir to great magicians, but my throne had been stolen by a dictator and I needed to defeat him if I wanted the throne back.

Lie.

I felt a cold in my hand and that was it.

I went back to my magazine and was so engrossed that I hardly felt anyone sitting next to me, only realizing the situation when I heard a voice.

“Enjoying it?”

“Yes,” I replied disinterestedly, thinking it was one of my cousins ​​or another of my uncles coming to talk to me. The voice continued.

“Beautiful ring”.

I felt a shiver and raised my head, there he was, the man of the bakery, watching me. His gaze was not only deep, it was like a giant x-ray that unfolded me into a million pieces and could count every mistake and success of my life so far. The man touched the magazine and read the cover, speaking.

“Do you like these subjects?”

“I like it a lot, but it’s hard to find.” I replied between closing the magazine or talking to him, the woman was also close, in fact she was talking to my mother and they waved in my direction.

“What’s your name?” I immediately asked when I realized that he was some kind of distant relative.

“Sandro” he offered me his right hand to greet, he wore a ring identical to the one I had found in the bathroom, I wanted to greet with my left hand, but I ended up getting confused and stretched out the right hand, where my new ring was.

“The ring is yours, take it” I immediately offered, thinking I was going to get scolded.

“Finding is not stolen, whoever lost it was stupid” Sandro replied playfully. “But, can I ask you something?

‘Yes you can.” I replied, almost forgetting my magazine, Sandro got up and went back to the wake area. I followed, tripping over a piece of brick on the sidewalk.

“Would you like to learn magick?”

When we see these proposals in films and books they always come with a dramatic pause, a soundtrack or a close up on the face of the guest character. In my case, I just answered.

“I wanted to, but it has to do with my mother.”

Sandro laughed, hugged me by the shoulder and we continued talking until the end of the funeral. After a while he disappeared, but at the end of the afternoon we said goodbye to family members and my mother called me to talk to two relatives I didn’t know. I mean, one of them I already knew who he was, the other would reveal himself in that conversation.

“This is Sandro, he is your father’s second cousin” my mother said when I got close to the group.

“Wow, how big he is now.” Sandro’s wife, the mysterious woman in black, spoke. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

My desire was to answer “Yes, I remember, you and your crazy husband were looking at me at the bakery”, but all I said was.

“No.”

“Amabile is Sandro’s wife, they moved to our neighborhood.” my mom explained “I was talking to her about private recovery classes and she offered to teach you a little after school.”

“She?” I SWEAR it sounded like a surprise in my head, but it seemed rude.

“Amabile is graduated in philosophy.” my mother replied, “If she doesn’t help you with your grades, nobody does.”

The adults laughed, I kept looking at my new cousin-in-some-degree, he looked back. My parents ended up walking away and Amabile uttered a phrase that caught my attention.

“Whatever you do, you will come back three times.”

“What is it?” I returned it, but Sandro answered.

“Do you really want to study magic?” it was the second time he asked me, and I had a feeling it meant something and because Amabile spoke the number three just a moment before him.

“I think it can be, after classes with Amabile?” I proposed and they both laughed.

“Can be.” Amabile led me around the room, we were going towards their car, which was next to my parents’ car. There was no sign of my father over there and my mother was talking to some distant relative.

“I thought there was some initiation, some ritual for us to start with magick, that needed to be special to learn.” I talked to Amabile opening the car door for her to get in.

“To be honest, it is much easier to enter the world of magick than to continue in the world of magick.” she replied sitting on the bench and taking my hand. “A magician needs to be observant, attentive, connected with the details that no one else sees.”

“Do you know how long that ring was in the bathroom until you got it?” Sandro said, he was beside me, leaning on my father’s car. “Almost an hour, I put the ring there when you arrived, not even your father noticed and there must have been seven people in that bathroom in the meantime.”

“When the magician focuses, the magician does.” Amabile opened the glove compartment and took out a small book, with a yellowish cover, which he handed in my hands, then buckled his belt and said “Reading is an important step, knowledge is fundamental, but it is the action that will form you.”

“Check out this book, just the part of the moon.” Sandro added, “But you don’t talk to anyone about it, there is a reason why real magic remains hidden.”

There was no author or publisher name, in fact the book was ugly and worn, stuck with bad glue and with a “forbidden” stamp on the cover above the title “How to start with magick” I could have sworn that this book did not exist and was written by Sandro and Amabile.

“You have until the beginning of classes to decorate what’s there, it’s not that much.” with the door closed, Amabile had to lower the glass to speak to me. Sandro, about to enter as well, added.

“Imagine that magic is a forest, first you take a look at the trees, then you decide if you want to enter.”

“What if there are animals in the forest?” when I was a teenager, I was very cheeky.

“What if it has a treasure?” luckily, Amabile was much more.

The car started and I went back to my parents with the book in hand, my mother was happy to see me reading and even made a joke.

“Wow, Amabile doesn’t waste any time.”

“Not even.” I replied enthusiastically. “Neither.”

Little did I know that my “cousins” would be the good masters and that in the future, my life would be a mixture of Supernatural with Sabrina and very sarcastic hints of Constantine.

The craziest part of this story?

I would love it…