Blue — Majik Free

He crawled to the bathroom, trailing blue blood from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes. He stared at his reflection. The blue was fading from his skin, replaced by a mottled gray. His eyes were no longer cornflower. They were white. Blank. Two empty pages.

Not metaphorically. Literally. In the air between objects, thin filaments of iridescent blue connected everything: his coffee mug to the sink, the sink to the pipe, the pipe to the earth, the earth to a woman on the subway who had lost a child, whose grief was a knotted black thread snaking from her chest. Kaelen could see her thread. And, for a terrifying, glorious second, he could touch it. blue majik

He slept less. He ate only raw vegetables and, bizarrely, salt. The craving for salt became an obsession—him, standing at 3 AM, licking pink Himalayan crystals from his palm, feeling the minerals sing as they dissolved on his tongue. The Blue Majik, he realized, was hungry. And it was using his body to feed. He crawled to the bathroom, trailing blue blood

He began to see the threads.

With a trembling hand, he reached for the vial. Not to drink. To pour. His eyes were no longer cornflower

The vial was gone. The threads were quiet.

Within a week, he was a phenomenon. His code became poetry; he refactored an entire legacy system in a single night, leaving comments in hex that formed haikus. His skin took on a faint, pearlescent sheen. Colleagues stopped him in the hallway. “Did you… get work done?” they’d ask, staring at his eyes, which had shifted from muddy brown to a startling, clear cornflower.