Magic

I don't believe in magic. I never have. I'm a scientist; magic deals with the mystical and the unseen. How could I have been so swayed by reports of a magic that I have never seen or held in my hands? Where were the reports of such sightings of magical events that were to have occurred? Who ran these studies? Whose accounts were they based upon?

Not mine.

Nonetheless, the scientist in me was stifled by my overwhelming curiosity and naive trust that people have good intentions, and so, I embarked on this study with much reluctance at the goading of this man who believed in magic.

For the past two months, I have witnessed first hand, said magic and was full of wonder and excitement. It took a slow start. In the beginning, I wasn't able to see all the things my research partner told me were right in front of our eyes. I kept asking him where to look and if he was sure it was there. He was persistent, and told me I needed to loosen up. It was so great, and he was sure that if he could get me to see it, I'd be a believer forever.

Finally, it happened! I never would have believed that I would be sitting in a magical forest, recording the slow migration patterns of unicorns, recounting the various magical abilities the different berries in the forest gave a stubborn scientist like me, or sitting at the dinner table (and rather awkwardly) with a family of gnomes. It was great, it was spectacular, I was caught completely off guard. I was so excited by my findings that I abandoned all scientific inquiry and began to just enjoy my time there: my notebooks were left untouched and left to the tiny corner in my hut that was never visited, I began to forget to record the different rituals of the creatures and inhabitants of the forest, all moderation was tossed to the side when sampling the delicious mushrooms found just about everywhere you went!

And it's exactly at that moment of blind bliss and content magical gorging that my research partner confessed that it was not real. I bargained with him, asking him how that could be--what about these phoenix feathers I made into a cute little barrette? What about the long talks with the overgrown toad that lived in the pond near the hut, who actually had a weird thing about musicals? What about the magic beans that grew into gigantic stalks when given a little tender love and care? What about all of these things? What about all of these THINGS?!?! Weren't you the one who kept saying they existed? Weren't you the one who had fought for me to come out on this expedition in the first place? Didn't you promise me that I would see magic?

Apparently, he had been pouring LSD into my water canteen for the past two months.

What a fuckhead.