Secrets are the only real magic, anymore. The only, lonely, things worth keeping. What one knows that nobody else does. What one sees as the rest blink their blind eyes behind pigeon glasses. Gaps in the clouds, cracks in the pavement, pauses in a song where the Dust falls through. I am the miser of secrets. I scramble about, clutching at wisps of smoke which curl lazily between my fingers before I stuff them in black velvet bags and lock them all up in a crocodile skin trunk. Peeling telegraphs, cross stitch hearts, books in ancient greek with hemlock seeds pressed between the pages. Ebenezer never knew that all the gold in Threadneedle street is nothing to silver secrets.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Rose said “it’s messy and meaningless, a cosmic excuse for anything too difficult to explain.” She bit the blade of grass in half, savouring the bittergreen flavour.
“Then what do you call it,” asked the red haired boy “if it isn’t just an accident?” He liked the way the sun fringed her eyelashes, which were unusually pale and long. If he could he wanted to keep this conversation going forever, just the two of them on the bridge, but the sun would set eventually.
“Magic!” she whispered, with a frightening intensity. “I believe in Magic, and Fate and golden apples and Hades and unicorns in the glen.” She looked at him, waiting for a response. He didn’t laugh, instead he tossed his leaf in to the stream and watched it drift lazily beneath them and out of sight.