Like anyone the Fog twins had good childhood memories and bad, and a few that were both at the same time.

Those early memories like photographs remained only glimpses and snapshots: a family of four sitting around a kitchen table humming as they worked, a tune that occasionally turned to lyrics, to singing; a ring paced on a small hand and tears because it was scary when Mama reminded Malyssa and Daia every time to never, ever forget to take it off before leaving the table, leaving the kitchen; how the room felt warm and Mama and Dad kept the lights low sometimes, telling the girls no when they flipped the light switch.

With his smiling, chill way of keeping them from getting scared, Dad would keep his voice quiet and say, "There could be a camera we don't know about." Whispering, in case of microphones.

It wasn't that Mr. and Mrs. Alafoggiannis couldn't hold down a job. At times each had had three — it took that many to pay the rent, and zero of them had health insurance. Their first pregnancy brought twins, and the budget stretching thin for one now emptied their joint bank account. Diapers were damn expensive, and daycare when they both did work, and rent on the one-bedroom in the Inner Mission they had been holding down for the rent control and now seemed too small by far for two children and two grownups.

Only the jobs that used magic for a little advantage paid enough for them to get out — start their own business. A restaurant. Only the magic jobs kept their restaurant afloat.

Magical gigs were aplenty, but very illegal. Spells to multiply produce could end world hunger, but had been ruled illegal because of the unfair advantage it gave to point zero zero one percent of the population. And because of the other uses to which magicians could put their skills — currency manipulation, burglary, revenge killings, curses. Realistically, no one could stop a magician from doing anything she or he had learned to do and wanted to, but the blanket criminalization created a false sense of security and a level playing field.

Though it was difficult to catch and arrest a magician, once it was accomplished, officers of the law had learned, all that was necessary was to keep rings of any kind away. Without a ring, a magician had no power. It would be a terrible idea to sleep with a ring on because dreaming magicians could cast unconscious spells. And so, raids took place in the middle of the night. Magicians had no rights — cameras could be installed in their places of residence for a mere accusation of magic-use, allowing the officers to know exactly when they took their rings off.

After a long day of turning one apple into five hundred, one avocado into dozens, one potato into thirty crates, Mama and Dad would sit around in the dark teaching their daughters to help multiply produce to sell to grocers.

"Hold it in both hands and keep your eyes open," Talia Fog told her daughters. The bright red apple was so shiny it practically reflected little Dianthea's face; when she blinked, her doll lashes made shadows flash over the ruby skin.

"Try to notice every detail of the apple. Every dimple, every shade of red. Inhale it in, get its smell." Rosey, earthy, tangy, sugar. "Think about the soil it might haven fallen to when it left the tree and all its brothers and sisters around it, those left on the branch too. Now, you can't taste this one, because then every new apple we make will have a bite taken out of it." Mama gnawed toward Dian's little face and she giggled. "You can extrapolate from the smell, because smell amplifies taste anyhow."

Their whole lives she used big words even if her children wouldn't understand them yet.

"Imagine the flavor, remembering the taste of apples past. And that's all I can really tell you. Like all magic, you gotta discover how to do it yourself. Every spell is different for every magician — but it starts with creating a perfect, ideal copy of this first apple in your mind. Notice every detail, hold it in your mind's eye, and take a snapshot. Like capturing a photograph, or hitting print on a printer. All right now. Race your sister. Whoever produces a second apple first wins the prize. First to five gets a bonus."

Three years of age, neither would remember who won, just as neither could recall who came first down the birth canal (The running joke in the family was that Mama swears it had been Malyssa, but Daddy thinks the babies were switched a dozen times before anyone could say which was which with any consistency, so how could anyone ever know?)

The toddlers had the intuition, just as Mr. and Mrs. Fog had predicted, to help them conjure thousands of fruits, hundreds of root vegetables, uncountable berries, bushels and bushels of herbs.

The money was good, but limited. The ability to yield infinite apples, avocados and potatoes was a cost-saving measure — the store could pay Mr. and Mrs. Alafoggianis less to multiply one apple into hundreds than they would spend buying from farms, but no magic could make customers buy more apples. The bottleneck was at the point of sale. All day and night they spent expanding their business, discovering the spells to multiply more kinds of goods, bringing more stores in on the take. (Simpler crops were easier to get right than complex processed foods, vegetables more straight forward than meat). The small hours of the night were spent trying to cut out the middle man and multiply straight cash.

Just as they couldn't perfect a box of Cheerios — the flavor and texture of the cereal itself, the exact counterfeit of the inner bag, the color, size, and details of the outer box — they couldn't get the spell right for counterfeit bills. To reproduce or copy any object — so far as Mr. and Mrs. Alafoggiannis's discovery and research had determined — one had to hold every detail of the object in the mind at the same time.

Sensory memory can hold one's entire field of vision for approximately 250 milliseconds. For that short period of time, visual sensory memory can store a relatively high capacity of everything in sight with up to 12 specific details. One side of a 20 dollar bill, however, has hundreds of details. Perhaps thousands. It would take one giant brain to memorize the intricate weave of raised ink making up the border pattern, not to mention the texture of Andrew Jackson's cloak, hair, and face. Yet seeing was the equivalent of processing in the mind — the eyes sent signals to the brain, after all, so by staring unblinking, holding the bill in one's upright palm and snapping the copy at just the right moment — like taking a picture — Talia Fog was able to create a shadowy vague memory photocopy that looked as if it had gone through the wash.

On one side. The other side would be blank — though with an uncanny representation of the feel of paper money because that side had been touching her palm.

Rumor had it, currency counterfeiting was magically possible, but no one went to the trouble of teaching Mr. and Mrs. Fog how to do it.

Producing unlimited produce, they fed themselves, stocked the shelves, and could always make more for the neighborhood — supplying soup kitchens so long as it didn't cut into their bodegas' sales.

"Always keep this ring on you," Mama said when she dropped them at school. "Keep it in your pocket in case anything happens, but never, ever let the teacher see it. Don't let anyone see it. If you need to cast a spell, keep your hand hidden — for emergencies only. If any of the kids on the playground cracks a skull open, it's good healing practice if you can get at them fast."

One day at Aunt Sophia's, their cousin Aries fell out of the big silverbirch in the backyard and broke her leg. The bone poked out of her jeans and she screamed and screamed. The twins both raced like Mom and Dad taught them, but the healing spell just didn't click for either of them. The whole crew tagged along to the hospital since Sophia couldn't leave them alone and Grandmama was at a weekly euchre game. In all the shock and chaos, Dianthea forgot to take her ring off.

Aunt Sophia's eyes blazed but she didn't start shouting until her brother and sister-in-law came after the sun went down, and then from behind the closed door in Aries's hospital room, with the twins playing on the other side. Still, the shouts punched through the door. "Can't believe you would start them this young, you want to lose those children to child's services? Start their permanent record while they're still in pullups?"

"I can't believe you haven't started yours, isn't Tyson almost eighteen? Isn't Aries old enough? It's a miracle she hasn't gone to bed with a ring on and had a dream that made her burn the house down — and you got three more little arson hazards."

"They know the rules: no rings. And they will be able to choose for themselves when they are legal adults, when their brains are fully formed. Aries can't choose a boyfriend who isn't a knucklehead, she's supposed know how to choose the spell that won't get her killed or incarcerated?"

"Mooom," Aries groaned from the hospital bed.

"Because you raised her that way. You make every choice for them, they won't know how to choose for themselves."

The words smacked Sophia silent. Never had anyone seen her offended, embarrassed, but now she couldn't look anyone in the eye; she dropped her head and her whole gaze. No one knew how to break the awkward atmosphere, so they stood around paralyzed.

Sophia broke it herself, mustering her pride. "If I noticed a three year old with a ring on her finger given the state I was in over Aries's leg, no doubt any number of adults, security guards and nurses, the doctor, dare I say perhaps the police out in those the halls, could have noticed."

Dad bent his head, still cowed from telling too much truth before, but not done fighting. "It's not illegal to wear a ring."

"Thank heavens for that, but it's the first sign that will arouse suspicion. Some folks don't even wear wedding bands anymore — I notice you two aren't. If you all weren't magicians maybe you could wear a ring. If you weren't magicians maybe you'd give one to your baby daughters — but no one does, because no one wants to be a target of a witch hunt. No one wants a wrongful accusation of magic use because that's all it takes to be a suspect for anything, anytime. It can happen to anyone, and it happens all the time to people like us. How much savings do you have to throw away on a lawyer? All the tabloids last week had a soap star accused of magic, do you think she got prison time? All down the line, though, people got paid off. Do you have the cashflow to keep accusers quiet, to keep a lawyer on retainer, the authorities placated?"

Dad's answer came somewhat mumbled. "Maybe if we could get the business expanded we would. Widen the margins, get more customers, more sales. We can make infinite produce but there aren't infinite buyers. Maybe you would like to help us instead of bowing to prohibition."

"Oh, I'm bowing," said Sophia. "You had better believe I'm bowing. I'm in supplication, on my knees, because my family needs me here. They need me, not infinite potatoes, not a bank account full of money from a criminal enterprise. They need me to make decisions, keep them on the path, and I can't do that from a cell. If you can't pay off whoever makes an accusation against you, even for a reason as flimsy as your daughter wearing a ring and you earning a better living than anyone else on the block — they're going to come for you in your sleep. They'll come when you take the ring off, and you can't sleep with it on."

Her warning effected one change: Mr. and Mrs. Fog began to sleep in shifts. Mom during most of the night, and Dad when she awoke early, with plenty of catnaps through the day.

It didn't matter. When the SWAT team came, they chose to come when the whole family was awake at the table in the kitchen. Their tactics were not what the magicians had expected.

The door crashed in. The toddlers jumped in their seats and covered their ears with their hands at the shouts. "Police! Special Magic Control Unit!"

They shouted loud. They stopped outside the kitchen and yelled. No one entered guns drawn. No one came in until the shouts delivered more instructions.

"Place your rings down on the table! Rings off, place them on the table, and back away. The kids, too.

"No need for a standoff, your assets have already been frozen, your eviction notice served as per Code 2197, possessions to be repossessed. If you want to ever have a life under your own names, if you want a trial to reclaim your assets, not to mention your children, you will need to come with us willingly."

One man's voice delivered the instructions from a place unseen beyond the tips of high-powered military-style guns. A man's. "Now, one person, myself, is going to enter the room. No weapons. If you do as I say, and surrender, no firearms will be necessary. No harm will come to your family, your kids."

Talia Fog and Don Fog had a silent conversation, and now Talia sent to her husband's mind, "You believe that?"

Shaking his head, Don sent one more mental message before he took his ring off. "They've got us. It's over. They won't kill us now, it'll make them plenty happy to take everything we have and lock us away." He placed the ring on the table and told his daughters to do the same. They did. The three rings rolled until they clattered and fell still. Don stood and backed away, the little girls mimicking him until they circled the table, backs to the counter and wall.

Shaking, Talia couldn't move. Her ring still on, she said to Don mentally, with a spell, in her head, "How can you give up your power to them?"

An eye on the kitchen door, Don saw the negotiator in his vest — and caught the man's eye, who nodded. "They already have us. They will send bullets flying in our home in thirty seconds."

He crept to her, lifted her ring hand with his bare one, and wedged the band off millimeter by millimeter. It was as if Talia were paralyzed. She never stopped shaking, and she wouldn't stand until Don lifted her by the underarms and pulled her from the table.

Inspector Calazans came in and said, "Ladies and gentle man, before I place these cuffs on you, which are not the perfect circular shape that would allow you to cast spells, I'm going to need to see your toes. Socks and slippers off, please."

Thank you for reading Frost and Fog. This story updates often! More chapters are out now. If you liked the story, please leave a star behind ⭐️ Have a nice weekend, fam!