We cuddled together on the couch with the leftover pizza and beer as we enjoyed the slowly fading daylight. Or at least thats what we did until I asked a question.
	„So, now that we’ve officially moved in together…want to invite your parents over so I can, you know, meet them?“ I said, more in jest than anything else but Ann’s smile immediately faltered. Lowering her slice of pizza down she leaned back deep into the cushioned back with a sigh.
	Realizing my foot had found my mouth with uncaring precision I raised my hands to wave her off the topic but a soft glare the rim of her glasses stopped me cold. We’ve had that topic before, but to me her insistence on keeping distance to her parents was simply something I had a hard time getting my head around. Still, I nudged my head against her shoulder with a murmured ‚Sorry.‘
	Ann gave me a sardonic smile again as her hand found mind and we kissed softly.“
	„Its complicated.“ She sighed, giving the old answer.
	„Then explain it to me?“ I coaxed. „Its not like you have to go home tonight?“ I added, hoping the joke would cheer her up and we exchanged another kiss before Ann unentangled herself and sat forward on the couch, obviously wrestling with herself.
	„Its…“ She began before stopping for a moment. „I love my parents. I want you do understand that. I love them and they love me. I know that. But…we’re not close. Its simply the way it is. They do their thing, I do my thing and thats it.“
	After another heartbeat she continued.
	„Its simply….we’re not a family. Not really. My parents met when they were about eighteen, at a party. They were young, they’ve had a few beers and they found each other hot. The fact that they were part of competing magic traditions…lent a bit of sexual adventure to it. And the only reason there’s more to that story is because they were too horny to get a rubber before they did the beast with two backs. My mother got pregnant and…it changed their lives.“
	She leaned back into the cough and I once again cuddled myself up to her, rubbing her shoulders as she closed her eyes, her voice tense.
	„Before - well me -, both were at the cusp of their wild adolescence, school finished and ready to come into their own. Finding their own. But instead of being able to do that, they had to become parents. Separated parents at that.“
	„To be fair to them, they did rise to the challenge. They raised me well, provided support and help where I needed it and I dare to say I grew up to be a, for this city, well-adjusted adult. Well, save my taste in sex partners, maybe.“ She added with an open eye at me, causing me to snort.
	„But there was a price for that. My mother had to ask my grandparents for help and you know my grandmother is a card carrying member of the Old Covens. Every help from her came with strings attached. And in turn, my father had to get support from the more established Voodoo congegrations because in the early years he was honestly afraid the Covens would try to freeze him out of my life if they could. Which I am honest enough to admit is what they probably had tried. But in turn they expected him to get more involved in the community.“
	Ann shrugged.
	„He apparently did find faith in doing that, so he’s happy I guess? So’s my mother, she’s even managed to get to join one of the more conservative New Covens without my grandmother throwing a tantrum but my point is…they hadn’t much choice. Ever since my birth, I defined the course of their lives. Thats not something a child or a teenager really realizes, but…“ Ann bit her lip and adjusted her glasses as I rubbed my cheek against her in a gesture of solace.
	„They never blamed me, never gave me crap about it…in fact one of the few things they ever agreed was that I didn’t face the same issues. I’ve probably got one of the most…comprehensive sex ed in my age group. Twice. But once I graduated school, once I was no longer a child but a reasonable facsimile of an adult…they were done? Not in a bad way, but their job was ‚finished‘? My dad started to focus more on his work as a Hougan and my mother on her job, accepting a promotion that allowed her to travel more. They started to have their own lives…which they deserve, they do.“
	She was nearing the core of the issue, by the way her voice got tenser.
	„But there was never really an effort of them to get to know me as someone not their child. The person they made. And part of it, a large part, is my…magic.“
	Ann, the child of a strong witch and gifted bokur, had any chance to grow into a powerful practitioner herself, I knew that. But in a strange twist of fate, Ann had never displayed magic talent in her adolescence, making both factions of her birth assume the talent had waned in her. On her own, years later, she had found out that she did have magic but it was a more…complicated issue.
	Ann could work magic. In fact, with the right circumstances she could cast Wizard-scale spellcraft which outstripped any other practitioner in the city save myself and Marie Lavue in terms of potency.
	At least as long as she had direct access to proper literature explaining what she was about to do, a strange form of magic talent called Bibliomancy. Apparently there was someone in Vegas who had the same.
	 Personally, I found this intriguing but Ann could be touchy about the fact that I could do magic without needing to lug a two hundred year old tome around.
	„My mother, and grandmother, expected me to be a witch. When I didn’t show magic they were disappointed but there was nothing they could do. But when your entire identity revolves around witchcraft, then its a bit hard to relate to those who don’t.“
	Having spend enough time with the notoriously self involved witch covens of New Orleans, I had to agree.
	„My father on the other hand…had a solution. If I was not having the talent to be a bokur of my own, I could always train to be a mambo. The loa would gift me magic for faithful service, he explained to me.“ Ann’s voice had almost dropped to a whisper. „But by then, I had spent years being defined over my magic, or lack of it…and I was done. So while my mother was simply disappointed…to my father I *was* a disappointment. And neither had much reason to involve me in their life’s going forward. We kept going through the motion for a few years but by now…we stopped bothering.“
	Ann stopped and looked me in the eyes, her amber showing a mix out of more emotions that I could count.
	„Jess, you want to meet my family….and I don’t have that. I only have parents. And I’m not a child anymore.“ She sighed and I hugged her thighs.
	„Well“ I muttered into her ears. „You do have me?“
	„Yes.“ Ann laughed weakly. „And I’m not sharing you with them.“