Maryse had asked Magnus to wipe the girl's memory before she went back to California, despite Jonah's protests. The former dissuaded him from trying to see Briggs before she left Korea, saying it was for the best.

He had plenty to keep him busy – after all, the rogue monsters weren't going to stop what they were doing any time soon – but he sort of missed the small Mundie. Their interactions had been brief before he rescued her from the half demon, but he could still see her bright eyes looking at him when he showed up, her shy smile when he called her "baby girl", and how excited she would get about her little translation device making a difference in the world.

Shortly after she left, he passed stores and companies who carried and promoted the translation device, often looking in windows to see people testing them out and looking surprised, but excited when it translated phrases immediately into other languages without much hesitation.

"Uh-oh," one of the coven members muttered when he saw Carter holding knitting needles.

Carter ignored him and pressed Play on the video to start the tutorial he found online for how to knit a scarf as a beginner. He grabbed the ball of yarn and searched for the loose end, frowning when he couldn't find it easily.

----------

"He's what?"

"Hayley, he's trying to knit! With knitting needles! Who allowed him to buy those?!"

One of the other coven members guiltily raised a hand and explained that he and Carter went to an estate sale. "They had a deal on these fancy yarns and the needles and I also bought my ring there. The owner only did knitting the old school way, otherwise I probably would have suggested one of those magic scarf knitting machine kits for kids."

Hayley sighed as she shook her head. "How much trouble could Carter get up to with those? At least they're not sharp and he's not going to hurt himself..."

----------

"Make sure to count your stitches each row," the video instructed. "It's always possible to lose or add a stitch by mistake. When that happens, try to analyze your work and find the mistake, then undo the stitches and redo them."

Carter winced as he stared at the small block he had hanging off the needles. The bit he had finished was lumpy and uneven, due to him dropping and adding stitches by mistake on the rows. While a few other coven members told him to simply use magic and cheat to finish the scarf, he insisted on continuing to learn from the video. The nice lady running the estate sale patted his cheek and said scarves were super easy and he'd have no trouble making his first one. So why was his looking like a disaster?

Hayley knocked on the door and stepped to the side to show that Seb was here. "I know you're engrossed in that knitting video, but Seb's here and he only has a couple of hours," she noted.

Carter dropped the needles and scrambled to clean up his bed, which had the laptop with the tutorial on the screen and the entire ball of of yarn spread across his bed. (He had unraveled the whole ball, thinking it would be easier.)

"You um, you knit?" Seb asked as he gestured to the tangled mess of yarn that Carter was trying to collect in a pile.

"No, I wanted to learn," Carter sighed. "I fail – this was supposed to be a surprise for you, because you said your grandma's cat ruined your scarf."

Seb shrugged and offered a small smile. "Y'know, it's the thought that counts, right?"

x | meme status: accepting!

After Seb’s father meets Carter and the coven, he does take a liking to the group. Naturally he’s oblivious to the fact that the group has magic abilities, but he reassures his wife and tells her they are decent kids. 

If Seb does accept a letter and any funding from a school outside the UK, (and it happens to be in the US), Hayley and Carter send their congratulations and they also reassure Seb’s parents that they’ll look out for Seb.

Someone else in the coven accidentally ate some of Seb’s British candies and Carter gave that individual a lot of grief. Thankfully, Carter and Hayley were able to find the same ones in nearby shop and they replaced the candies quickly before Seb could discover that anything was missing. 

Around Lunar New Year, Seb finds himself being roped into making traditional dumplings with the coven based on his grandmother’s recipe. There were a lot of imperfect dumplings with too much filling, too little filling, etc. It made for some comical, but delicious results. (As well as some of the coven members teasing one another if they did a bad job on their dumplings.)

“Yeah don’t tell my mum that you Americans eat a lot of “Chinese” takeout,” Seb once commented. “She tried the stuff from that Panda chain and spit it out after one bite.”  “So, she doesn’t like orange chicken?” Carter asked.  “No she’ll probably make a proper traditional dish and it will not taste anything like the chains,” Seb groaned. 

“Can you explain to me why there’s an entire bag of sugar in this tea?” Seb demanded one day after trying a single sip of a traditional American Southern iced tea.  “Yeah it’s a thing in the American South – they put sugar in their tea drinks,” Hayley explained.  “How has no one died from drinking this stuff?!” Carter is trying not to laugh at the completely disgusted look on his boyfriend’s face from drinking the very, very sugary tea. Mental note: brew an unsweetened version next time Seb comes over.

FATCDRCAM.

A small boy clung to the seam of Eunsae's trousers as a foreboding stranger stood in the doorway. Eunsae could only guess that rumors of a ‘winged beast’ who stole children had begun to spread & this man had tracked him down in response.

“Wait upstairs,” he told the boy, who followed the order in a trance.