The mornings weren't always the same. Some good, some bad. Some better, some worse. But from certain vantage points, you could get a little perspective on it all. Try to outdo the maker, and give your own version of the calamity, or the unfolding beauty. Of the thunderous storm that wiped away a village, as you clutched a new born to your chest in a moment of selfless surrender to life itself.

A hill was where Joe caught himself at the seed of this day. It was becoming a spot he didn't mind finding himself. In fact, it kind of found him. A drunk walk out of the lounge on reveal night as most had already left. That was the first time they'd met. But he wouldn't see her face till the morning, when he was pushing himself up from being face down with his pants around his ankles. He only wanting to relieve himself, and if mother nature were a floozy, he'd looked like he'd did that and a hell of a lot more.

And here he was again. Their conversations weren't wordy. Or even made of idle chatter. No ice breakers needed upon reacquainting themselves. The silence spoke a language. It breathed heavenly hymns on the wind, which also threw around casual backhanded dusty remarks all the same. Some moments lingered and with it so too did his soul take flight with the planes, which he thought was the reason he was here again, to admire the metallic majestic marvels that they were.

But it was always her, mother nature, that dialed his number when things got a little too heavy in the office. Discussions about the future, they were nice and all. But scary in the same token. And with the Bordello and the Animal Shelter having more and more trouble thrown at it, like the Gods were just trying to test more and more of the resolve he was already losing, this friend was a welcome change of scenery.

He kicked his legs out as he took a seat on the hill, then gripped at his knees as they edged back towards his chest. The movement of planes caught his attention. Like flightless birds making their way towards the nests edge, most were leaving from a hangar. Some were rolling into one. The ones leaving were either being simply moved for the sake of preparations for flights to come. The ones coming, back into their eyrie they went for maintenance and other routine checks.

No songbirds were humming overhead. None of the fleet were up for a flight just yet. The day ahead was one of mystery, like all were. Joe removed a hip flask from his inner jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap and took a swig. Magick, he thought. Some things were just like that. So natural to you, and yet so much a part of you that you never really cared to see it for what it was.

Joe looked at the dented gift in his hand, running his fingers over the memory of a love shot to the heart. Adontoro, the words inscribed. He tucked it back away as a light breeze caught the back of his neck, sending a chill down his spine. Magick, he thought, as it mixed with the warmth still spreading in his esophagus. The two, polar opposites, coming together to let you know things were always balanced. The yin and the yang, night and day, the fool and the wise.

Without a second thought, he let himself down. As his head hit the grassy pillow, he blinked away any stress of the days before that may otherwise have been clinging to him, like an ex-girlfriend that just didn't know that her packed bags meant she was to hit the bricks, and to take her baggage with her. Magick, he thought, as the energy of the hill beneath him both sucked away his edges and caressed his soul outwards.

The clouds overhead played show and tell with his relaxed state of being. Some formed to offer an image. Some, a symbol. He thought he saw a dragon at one point, breathing its fiery ambitions as it floated across the open blue sky. Magick, he thought. Some things spoke to you in ways words didn't, or couldn't get at. They just entered your being through that gate-less gate, in one of those moments where something either pried it open accidentally in an ironic twist, as those ones were usually not of the soulful kind to start. But when the lessons were learned, and the mind open and readily able, insight flashed its bright smile.

In time, the day would come and go like all others. The planes, come and go like they were suppose to. He'd see a man about behavioral training for Leo. Another about a new drug front property to take some of the stress off the others. And before it would burn his candle out, he'd find himself standing in front of the mirror, as was usually the case, seeing how much soul was left in him and if the Gods still had his favor.

But for now, things were Magickal. Naturally ebbing and flowing and calling him along to join.

Because what's life without a bit of Magick? It certainly ain't got the Midas Touch, that's for sure.