It was a blustery Tuesday afternoon where, given that we’d be working this weekend, I had elected not to show my face at work, same as I had done Monday. I earned that well-deserved break, and I was going to make the most of it. Naturally, I was curled up on the couch with my laptop, engrossed in research with a nice warm cup of chamomile tea by my side. I may generally be a coffee drinker but even I know, admittedly after massive lectures from doctors about sleep hygiene, that it’s best to avoid having too much caffeine in the afternoon.

Besides, who doesn’t like chamomile? Especially “magical” chamomile... it was really just store-bought that I cast a spell on to enhance the plant's innate properties, the only difference between this and a placebo being the amount of “oomph” behind it. Knowing it “should” work really enhances the amount it actually does work, which probably does explain why reports of weird and wild events were more widespread in the past. But the extra kick of knowing it should help me relax was pretty great even if it’d be explained away in a lab environment as pseudoscientific pish-posh.

One reason I’m so confident the tea is enchanted is naturally because of the woman sitting across from me, sketchbook in hand, scribbling away furiously. I suppose you couldn’t prove the tea has any weird effects above normal without an elaborate double-blind study. You probably could design an elaborate double-blind study and I know as a matter of fact that such an experiment has been done before, albeit with blessed tea rather than enchanted tea. But I don’t need someone to prove or disprove magic to me when a walking, breathing, and transforming anomaly is living with me.

That anomaly was currently in pajama pants and a band shirt purchased at either Hot-Topic or a thrift store. I honestly couldn’t tell you if Hot-Topic still sells band shirts, but last time I saw one it was full of pop-culture Disney and mainstream anime merch, so I’d assume she thrifted it. The oversized zip-up hoodie she was wearing was one of mine, purchased at the Camp Geiger PX because even North Carolina gets chilly in winter and I hadn’t packed much clothing before going to MOS school.

I was on the tall side, and gravitated towards oversized outerwear so the smaller Daliah was downright swimming in the garment. Legs tucked beneath her, and eyes rapidly darting back and forth from me to the sketch book, she resembled a house cat hyper focused on a flashing light and waiting for it to try and flee far enough to make it worth pouncing on. Back and forth her eyes went, with an almost predatory gleam as they-

“Could you keep the thinking down? I’m trying to draw.” She huffed out, frustrated.

“’Thinking too loud’ must be a first for complaints.” Am I supposed to just, not think?

“It’s the narrating everything bit that’s a bit weird. At least when it goes off on tangents about magic or history I can zone it out a bit, like listening to a lecture at school. But the weird description of me… oh, and I’m not even wearing a band shirt.” She unzipped the hoodie to show yet another shirt she had grabbed from one of my drawers, some beer shirt I had gotten as a Christmas present from parents unsure of what I’d actually want as a present.

“If you don’t want to wear this one, I’ll gladly wear it. This fabric is amazingly soft. Now that you remind me of it, shouldn’t I meet your parents at some point?” A valid question, but…

“Where to begin… having my parents wondering why I got married out of the blue, my parents not knowing I’m gay, or my parents asking any number of weird questions like “how did you meet?” That last one would be a doozy to answer.

“Fair point on, well, most of them, but have you even given any thought to it all?” Her sketchbook down, drawing practice put aside, she shot me a judgmental glare.

“Well… Maybe if I ignore the problem, it’ll go away?” I asked hopefully. The exasperated sigh she let out removed the brief illusion she might let me go back to my research. It was into terminal ballistics, by the way.

“How did someone as otherwise brilliant as you end up so twisted? You seriously haven’t come out to your parents, even? You’re a grown-ass adult!” Her tone, although raising near the end, was less angry and more annoyed but resigned. The actual emotion I got over our bond was affection and concern. What I was about to say next probably wasn’t going to help with that concern.

“I just assumed I’d live out my life as some sort of hermit.” I shrugged. “I don’t have to come out to them if I live a quiet life as a recluse. Like one of those loner researcher characters they have in fantasy novels, isolated, in a spooky, hidden way house, but knowledgeable in all sorts of topics from magic to herbs.”

“I- Holy shit, thank goodness I found you before you actually followed through with that... although on some level it feels that as a witch’s familiar I’m just playing into that fantasy. But have you considered getting a therapist or something?”

“What would I tell them? On top of my job being incredibly sketchy, describing what we actually do for a living would probably get me committed if I didn’t get arrested for breaking the NDA.” The crux of the issue, if you will.

“You...you could at least discuss the clear issues you have when it comes to your parents. I know I have no room to talk, but eventually you’ll have to explain at least some of this to them...And don’t deflect from this by going off on some superfluous tangent to avoid confronting the issue, you do that way too often.” She was starting to sound like a therapist herself. “I’m not, and I’m not going to do that for you. I’m your familiar and your wife.”

“I know. This does feel vaguely intervention-ish though.” Blindsiding me like that does feel like it came out of the blue.

“Really I just wanted to meet your parents. But upon further reflection you really kind of suck with dealing with others. Your first reaction to people annoying you in college was to resort to witchcraft, after all.”

“And you helped with that.” I retorted.

“They were being assholes. I don’t have an issue with cursing those people, but you can not use magic to get out of introducing me to your parents. I know we got the order wrong with how our relationship progressed, but I do want to meet them.” I- “I am not helping you curse them for making you get a job. You wouldn’t even have met me if they hadn’t done that. If anything I’m grateful to them for it. Whether falling in love with a petty curse-happy witch was objectively a good idea, the low-key sexy librarian look you have going aside, doesn’t change the fact that I couldn’t imagine my current life any other way.”

“I can’t imagine my current life any other way either, but explaining that I fell in love with my half-fae classmate who first moved in under the pretense of being a stray cat I adopted as a pet might be a bit too much for my hyper-rational engineer parents.” It really can’t be stressed enough how badly that would go over.

“I’ve known how you felt for a while, but that has to be the weirdest way to say ‘I love you’ for the first time.”

“Oh...it really is… Have we really never actually said it before?” I thought back. The feelings sort of just crept up on the two of us, like a frog in a pot of water being boiled.

“That is not the kind of comparison you should be making! Comparing our love to a dead frog?” At least the serious mood from earlier had been broken. “No, we’ll circle back around to that, but a boiled frog is just…”

“Thematically appropriate?”

“Dammit, you’ve never used anything that gross in a spell before, don’t act like it’s normal for witches to think such gross things.” She huffed.

“Didn’t you leave a dead mouse on my doorstep a few weeks ago?” I suppose I’m not the most squeamish, but…

“That- that was...” For once, I wasn’t the one getting flustered.

“We spoke too soon, earlier. Everyone knows a cat giving you a mouse is the purest declaration of love.” If Liah got any more flustered she’d be outright hissing at me with hackles raised. Which would be a sight to see with her in human form.

You-” She started to argue, before a wave of composure rushed over her in a wave. The remaining blush lingering from her prior embarrassment fit the current smug grin she had adopted oddly well. “You’re saying some pretty high-handed for a witch with a literal cat-girl fetish. Imagine the example you’re setting for magical practitioners, having such...submissive...thoughts towards your animal familiar.”

“a”

“You know, this must be the first time your thoughts have been so quiet.” The grin continued. Slowly, but smoothly, she untucked her legs out from underneath herself, setting her sketchbook on an end table as she walked across the room towards me. As she advanced, cat-ears popped up from her black hair, and from beneath the USMC hoodie a tail slipped out.

I was frozen as she leaned in over me, her grin taking on the predatory gleam of a hunter about to bite into its prey. Her face stopped, her mouth less than an inch from my ear. And she whispered.

“So, we’re meeting your parents.”

And I’m supposed to be the witch here?