Everyone finds their spark at different times. Some people begin their journey when they are young because they had an older brother who introduced them to the Multiverse, and some Planeswalkers find theirs later in life. I still remember when I found mine, so to speak, and it has been an interesting journey since.

Firstly, I know of course that simply playing Magic as a “Planeswalker” doesn’t mean I have a real spark. As much as I would love to be able to travel the Multiverse, the perils and suffering that tend to precede Spark Ignition, are not something I want to endure. Additionally, the Blind Eternities really aren’t that appealing either. All of that aside, lets begin my story…

I was sitting in the room of my then boyfriend, now husband, helping him clean it out so that he could move in with me. From inside of his desk drawer he pulled a single box. I would later come to learn this box is called a Fat Pack, but at the time it was just a blue box, with what appeared to be a dragon and a figure in a beautiful blue cloak. He took a brief moment to look at the box and a look of reminisce slid across his face. I still didn’t know what the contents of this beautiful blue box were, but I can honestly say I wasn’t that interested.

Naturally, finding this box lead to my boyfriend taking a break to sit and take a moment to go through it. I was continuing about my business when he began to tell me about his Magic cards and how much he missed playing. As he explained to me, with words I didn’t understand at that time, how much he loved the game I heard words like Planeswalker, Mirrodin, Zenndikar, Jace Beleran, and mana.

Suddenly, for no particular reason at all, I found myself rifling through his blue box of cards. In the front of the box were several cards, with black backgrounds, and some fairly Gothic and dark images. It was love at first sight. As someone who has always been drawn to the more macabre things in life, I found the images on these cards darkly beautiful.

When I inquired about the loose cards in the box, he explained to me that those were cards he wasn’t using in a deck, and wasn’t collecting. They were simply his left overs. I couldn’t help myself, I started picking out the cards I liked the most based on the images and putting them in a pile by my side. Eventually, I had a small collection of nearly fifty cards, mostly black, but I found a few in green, blue, white and even one or two red cards.

I hadn’t even realized as I lost myself in looking at the loose cards that he had pulled out more boxes and was setting them down near me so that I could go through them. A white box with a beautiful Gothic angel, a dark red box with a beautifully deadly woman depicted on what looked like a throne, and a box that was all black and simplistically designed to say Magic 2013, were just some of what caught my attention.

I took my small pile of cards, verified I didn’t have any doubles, and safely stashed them so we could continue packing. I asked my boyfriend what was the best way to keep them safe, but available for me to look at. I had seen he had book with built in card sleeves and a beautiful blooming flower (which I would later learn to be the notorious Black Lotus) on the front, but I ultimately ended up with a plain black, three-ring binder, and a pack of card sleeve sheets.

As I organized the cards into their new home, I couldn’t help but start to actually notice the other features of the cards. The small symbol in the middle right of the card was different on some. There were numbers down at the bottom right of the card, and symbols up top. Some cards said Creature, while others said Sorcery, Instant, or Enchantment.

While curiosity may have killed the cat, my curiosity would eventually kill my wallet. I started asking questions. What’s deathtouch, trample and hexproof? What is the difference between an Enchantment and an Enchantment Aura? What are these symbols and numbers up at the top? You can only imagine the questions and the hours my boyfriend was more than happy to spend answering them all for me.

It wasn’t long before I was building my own deck from his pile of left-overs and a few booster packs I had bought. My first deck was a modern mono-black; weak, unfocused, had about 80 cards, and I was killed in only a few turns by his far superior deck, but I felt like I couldn’t give up. My determination was only solidified when I got my first Planeswalker, Liliana of the Dark Realms. I tweaked that deck over and over again. Every time we dueled, I lasted a little longer.

Eventually, I was holding off his attacks better, and actually getting damage through to him. Finally, the day came when I won a game. His jaw dropped to the ground and I was rattled with disbelief. My persistence paid off. My stubborn need to build my own deck without his help had paid off. My tenacious need to play a game that I wasn’t even good at paid off.

And just like that, my Spark was Ignited.