#anywhere

"Oh! I wanted to meet her. She sounds nice. And I'd like to meet - well, really meet, your mom again. Arty remembers her fondly."

"Maybe you could come over for not-Christmas."

"Boxing day." He nods.

"Sure!"

"Why do you think it is called that, anyways?" He ponders. "I bet I can look that up somewhere."

"Well, the gifts come in boxes... so..."

"True. I wonder if it's more than that, though. After all, aren't the gifts opened the day before?"

"Yeah. We'll have to look it up..."

"...at the library?"

"Art, you need to learn how to google."

"I know about Google!" He protests. "But I don't have a computer. That is," He amends, "We have a computer, but there's always a line, or someone needs it for homework or something. There's not enough time in the day for 'fooling around'."

"Gotcha. Okay, so the library has computers. Can't your phone do it, though?"

"It can, if there's wifi. Otherwise the... something about data? It's too expensive."

"Yeah, it can be."

"But you should have wifi at home? We might have an old router..."

He offers his phone to Thistle with a sheepish look. It's a smart phone, but barely - a step up from Flip Phone, but the kind that still has an actual key set on the bottom, and a crack across the screen.

"It doesn't work that great. I can text..."

"Mmm.." She glares at it.

"Can I borrow this?"

"Sure." He agrees readily - which if nothing else, proves he's not a normal, every day muggle teenager.

She takes it and flips it over to poke at it. "Maybe I can improve it?"

"You can't really make it worse."

"Exactly!"

"This thing is so old it thinks skinny jeans are hip."

"As long as I get it back. I need it to text you, after all. And, uh, Gwen, and Mother, I suppose."

"Well, I'll mess with it while we're soaking up the fire..."

She grabs her satchel and roots around - pulling out snacks and notepads and a sketchbook and a battered novel and a half-knitted hat and a mcdonald's toy and...

He beelines for the novel, "What's this?"

Another Never comes out of the bag! And grabs the toy back.

"Uh... Good Omens? It's about the end of the world. It's fun."

"Do you mind if I read it?" He's already paging into it.

"Sure, go ahead, I've read it." Oh yes - the spine has creases, and there's signs of dogears.

"The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch...." He reads. "Huh. Interesting. Not much like what I have at home..." But soon he's deep into it, curled up in his chair by the Bale.

Meanwhile, his phone is being disassembled with a leatherman and a paperclip...

He doesn't notice! The bale fire burns merrily