Finding Magyk

I stared at them, my finger still poised on the light switch. It wasn't a sight I was expecting to see anytime soon, Max pinning down an unsuspecting faerie. The faerie itself looked rather terrified, clearly having not anticipated Max being here. I stood and stared for a moment more, then realised she'd asked me a question. "Yes, that's a faerie. Who I'm sure means you no harm?" I directed the question at the fae, who nodded, her blond hair falling over her shoulders as she did.
Max frowned and let her go, stepping back and looking pointedly at the fae. "Mind telling us what you're doing here, and why you attacked me?"
I gave the fae an apologetic look. She could be too forward sometimes. "I didn't mean to," the fae said quietly, covering the wound on her arm with her hand and shifting her weight. Her voice was light, airy, musical, as all fae's voices were. "I smelled you, and you didn't smell like you were normally here. I heard what he said just as I came in, and thought you were intruding."
"Pfft, fine. Why are you here in the first place?"
"Max..." I warned softly, but I didn't put any stone in the warning- it was more of a tired, I-don't-really-care-just-trying-to-be-practical warning, so she ignored me, shooting daggers at the faerie girl.
"I came here for him," she said, her turquoise-hazel eyes meeting mine for a brief moment.
Oh, wonderful. Max said, in a surprised tone, "Him?" at the same moment that I asked in a similar note, "Me?" The girl just looked at us, and sighed.
"And the closest one is an idiot. Lucky me."
"Closest what? Art, what is she talking about?"
It took me a moment to piece it all together, to figure out what she wanted. The glass on the floor, the slightly green-tinted blood coming from her arm, the fact that there was a faerie in my laundry. "Because I'm Listed?" I asked, and she rolled her eyes.
"Nice work, Sherlock. Give the man a prize."
Wow. She was even more sarcastic than me. I didn't think anybody like that existed. My eyes looked her up and down, and, not sure I was making the best idea, I said, "Sorry about this all, Max. Must be very confusing. Watch her for a moment while I go fetch a dustpan or something, please?"
She nodded, then furrowed her brow in confusion. "Wait, her?"
"Yes. Her."
"Oh. I thought you were a guy. My bad."
The fae scowled and looked away. "I get that a lot."
"You do look like a guy. Especially because you're so flat-chested."
"Flat-! I object to that slur on the nature of my cleavage!"
Wanting to save myself the argument, I slipped out silently, sighing as I heard them starting to argue, their voices carrying down the hallway. I took the dustpan out of the cupboard at the end, taking it back with me. The fae was rather heated up when I got back, Max clearly enjoying it.
"Ladies, ladies," I said, and they both looked at me. I waved a hand in the general direction of the doorway. "Clear out. Do some female bonding in the lounge room. I have to clean this up. There's bandages in the bathroom cupboard if you want them. Some under the sink that are more suitable to your... er, species. Down the hall, third on the left. Max, try not to get yourself killed."
The fae left the room, silently creeping down the hall. Max huffed, turning to storm out. "Most authority you've ever taken," I heard her murmur, as she stormed back out to the lounge room. I sighed, running a hand through my hair, crouching to begin sweeping up the glass, muttering under my breath, 'I don't need a faerie, why now? Why did I ever sign that thing? So do not need faeries...'
I came back out to the lounge when I was done to find a socially awkward setting. The girl, sitting on the far end on the long couch, examining my collection of books on the shelf of the adjacent wall, and Max, sitting on the floor, leaning against the complete opposite end of the couch, looking into her half-empty mug. I rolled my eyes, grabbing my mug off the kitchen bench and going over to sit between them, leaning back into the suede cushion of the back of the couch. "So," I began, looking at the roof instead of either of them, "Why did you seek me out?"
She looked away. "You know how there's a group of us that are like... Um. What do you call them? People that see the future?"
"Seers? Prophets?" Max suggested helpfully, taking a sip of her hot chocolate."
"I'll go with seers. You know them?"
She directed the question at me. I nodded, looking into my mug. "Yeah. The Relicum, right?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Well uh, I'm one of them, and I kind of maybe saw something I didn't think was good. So I thought I had to tell one of your kind, since they're involved a lot. So here I am."
I glanced at Max, wondering what she was thinking of all this, but I couldn't read her expression. "Alright- What do people call you?"
"Lola."
"Lola. What exactly did you see?"
I watched her as she played with the ends of her blond hair. "It wasn't that great a vision. I'm not as developed as most."
"'Specially in the chest," Max snorted quietly. Lola glared, but I offered her a thin smile before turning back to the faerie.
"Anyway. It was just a brief flash. It was on this huge stretch of land, a steppe or something. Plains. Whatever you want to call it. Big, covered in dirt. No grass, which was weird. I was standing right in the middle, looking out over it. To my left were people from the royal land, and to my right people from the shadows."
"How many people?"
"I don't know. Millions. I couldn't see the backs of the groups. But it wasn't just humans- fae and golems and hippogryphs and griffins and elves. You name it, they were there. Then they started charging at each other, screaming, battle cries. And that was it."
I fingered the handle of my mug nervously, glancing at Max. "And... Do you know what time it was? Roughly?"
She shook her head. "Nuh-uh. It was probably late fall or early spring, because of the dead grass and the temperature. That was the only indication."
I took a sip of my chocolate, mulling it all over. It wasn't much of a surprise. I thought about whether or not she would have anything else to tell us, and my eyes meet the band-aid now on her arm. "And how'd you cut yourself?"
She made a face, kind of between a pout and a scowl. "Coming in. Who the hell keeps glass bowls in the laundry?"
"Oh. Yeah, I forgot I left that there." And by that I meant 'I put it in there when I moved in and have been meaning to move it for ages but could never be bothered'. She just flicked her hair out of her eyes.
"Yeah, whatever. I've said all I need to say, so I'm outta here." She stood, hesitated for a moment, then headed back for the laundry.
"Lola," I said, and she paused. "You do know I have a front door?"
She flipped me the bird, then turned and stormed out the back anyway.
"And I thought I was weird," Max murmured. She set her empty mug down on the floor, leaning back and looking rather at home on my couch.
I stood, picking up her cup and heading into the kitchen. "Now you know how annoying you are," I said quietly, poking my tongue out a little at her on my way past so she knew I was joking. She scowled, but smiled.
I rinsed out our mugs, setting them on the basin to drip dry. I stood there a moment, looking out the kitchen window to the backyard. It was pretty dismal- I hadn't done anything with the yard in ages, and the rain made it look grey and dull. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. Acting like an authority figure was not something I was good at. At all. I rubbed my temples, had a glass of water, then headed back into the lounge room.
Max was reading the blurb of a novel I'd left on the coffee table. I sat down next to her, looking over her shoulder. She finished reading it and put the book back down, looking at me. I thought carefully about what I was going to say to her next, hoping I was making a good decision. "Hey, Max."
"Yeah?"
I hesitated for a brief second. "Do you think Ben would let you be away from home for a month?"
She gave me a confused look. "Probably not. A month? Why?"
"Well... A portal opens on every continent once every month, you see. The one that's opening in twelve days is one of those." She arched an eyebrow expectantly, and a smile was beginning to spread across her face. "And... Erm. Want to see the world of magyk?"