Megan’s Story
I wasn’t sure whether I would ever actually finish Megan’s story since I didn’t play her a great deal, but I’ve had most of this roughly planned out since I first created her blog. Since it seems I will not play through much of it and a significant portion occurs offscreen out of necessity, I’ve written it up below for closure. Under the read more for length.
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It was on her twenty-third birthday that Megan came upon the strange pond of magical water in the woods. When she discovered that contact with the water could induce powerful visions, she collected a sample and took it back home with her. Her blurred vision returned to normal after several days, and for a time, all was well. She was left with happy memories of her birthday outing with her best friend, Mia.
That Christmas, her father appeared. She hadn't seen him since he had walked out on her family when she was only a child, and although he had been vilified by others for his absence, she harbored no negative feelings for him. She had been hoping all along that he had found some happiness in his life, something that she and her mother had been unable to give him.
And then he stood in her doorway, dressed in a nice coat and slacks, looking around her tiny apartment with something like dismay, the apologies streaming from his lips.
He apologized for everything. For abandoning her, for running when he learned that his wife was some kind of strange sorcerer, for being unable to cope with such a shift in the reality he had thought he'd understood. Most of all, he apologized for never returning for her.
And he had tried, it turned out, but by then it had been too late. It had taken him years to determine his family's whereabouts after they had left Canada. He had only been able to locate them when he had discovered his wife's obituary. Distraught by the news, he had abandoned his search and had tried to leave his old life behind.
But Megan had always been on his mind. Even when he remarried and had a son and daughter with his new wife, a pretty and ordinary woman with whom he never discussed magic, he had always remembered his first daughter. Eventually, he knew that he had to find her, and to protect her from the dangers of that strange, unnatural magical world to which her mother had undoubtedly exposed her.
Megan cried in his arms. She called in sick and spent the rest of the week with her long-lost father, her only remaining parent. She told him everything--all about her best friend, Mia. All about the cute and charming boy named Kai that her heart tugged her ever closer to. All about her new job for Orchid, a real Seer. All about the purple-haired mechanic that she looked up to who could seemingly fix everything. The list went on.
And she told him, too, about her own magic, and how she had finally learned to See properly. Not just vague feelings and impressions now, but true visions, the kind her mother had had. She told him of the vampire and the siren that she had seen, and she told him how she wanted to become just as strong as her mother, and his heart broke once more for his lost wife. He took his daughter's hands and promised to help her and support her, and he promised never to leave her again.
Overjoyed and eager to demonstrate her talent now that she had come so far, Megan went out with him until she found a dead squirrel in the woods. He watched her poke at it, first with a wary sort of bemusement and then with consternation as he realized the one thing that she had never been able to see: she was no practitioner. She had always been so desperate to follow in her mother's footsteps that she had been unable to see the truth that lay right in front of her eyes.
Gently, he assured her that it was okay if she could See nothing. She didn't need to be a haruspex like her mother. She refused to hear it. She just stared back at him with a mounting determination, undeterred by her failure to summon a proper vision, and promised him that she would succeed at this. He begged her to return to Canada with him, unable to bear the thought of leaving her here all alone. He begged her to stay with him, to meet her half-siblings and the woman he had married, but she knew that the time wasn't right.
She would come, she promised him. But first, she needed to finish her task here. This was where her mother had wanted her to be, to learn and to grow. She would find her dad as soon as she could call up real visions regularly, the way her mother could.
Knowing that he couldn't walk out on a second family, her father had no choice but to return to Canada alone, promising that he would visit her in Chicago as often as he could until she returned with him. Eager to expedite the process, Megan finally quit her part-time job at McDonald's and focused on her training.
For a time, she made no progress, and she became increasingly and uncharacteristically distraught. But then she remembered the pond water that she had collected with Mia. With some experimentation, she found that it would induce visions just as she remembered, and she began to test further. She discovered that the volume of water used would impact the strength and clarity of the visions, and found that with every use, her vision grew more blurry and took longer to recover.
Heartened by her progress and desperate to improve quickly so that she could be reunited with her father permanently, she returned to the forest pond when she ran out of water and continued her training. Yet without the water, it seemed that she could do nothing at all.
Her father returned to visit her, just as he had promised. Every few months he came to check on her, bringing her trinkets and gifts in an effort to make up for the childhood that he had missed. She demonstrated her work with the pond water, thinking her progress a gift for him, but immediately he knew that something was wrong. But without any magical knowledge of his own and without ties to the magical community, he could not truly confirm his vague suspicions that these were forces with which Megan should not be meddling.
When he returned on Megan's 24th birthday, she was blind.
Her vision had not recovered from the intensive use of the water. She could no longer find the pond on her own to collect more of it, either. She had locked herself in her home in her desperation, trying to find some means to summon the visions. She barely ate and barely slept. She begged him to fetch her more of the water, but he could see what it did to her and refused. He tried again to bring her back home with him, to look after her. She would not leave Chicago.
This time, it was not because of her need to improve. She felt drawn to the water. She felt as if she needed it, and she could not fathom the idea of it being a country away, so far outside of her reach. No, as long as she remained in Chicago, she would find a way to return to it, over and over again, as long as she needed to.
Several times she tried to make it back to the pool in the woods despite her impairment, and at last, with the aid of a helpful Uber driver and long, sleepless nights of blind stumbling through the trees, she succeeded. She submerged herself in its waters again, and it felt like home. It did not matter that she couldn't see the world around her. Here she could see everything. Here, she could see the universe. Here, she could truly be a part of the world that she had always loved so much, and she needed nothing else.
She was smiling as her eyes drifted shut, the word dad on her tongue.
And she dreamed. She dreamed of so many beautiful things. She dreamed of her friends whom she loved so deeply. Of her dad who had finally returned to her and who still loved her after all those years. Her mother's face was the last thing she saw drifting through her mind, and it smiled proudly at her.
Her remains were discovered more than a month later, lying in a discolored patch of grass in the woods that looked like perhaps water had once pooled there. The CPD was unable to determine a cause of death.
When her father learned of her passing, he was brokenhearted once more. Megan had been his last link to his old life and to his first wife. He returned to Chicago one final time to see to the arrangements and to ensure a small plot at the cemetery for her. It rained the day he left flowers on her grave, brightly-colored bouquets of daisies and carnations.
He returned home alone, leaving this world of dangerous magics and unknown evils behind forever, vowing to protect his family from such unnatural hazards by any means necessary. Even after his departure, the little plot at the cemetery remained. Each week, fresh flowers were left on her grave, brightly-colored and cheery, just as she had always been.
