Written off
Catherine
I stared at the bowl of soup on the wooden table. The bowl itself was made of old ceramic but had been passed down for generations in my talentless family. The spoon, however, sitting inside, was wooden, just like the table, something my father had fashioned from the leftover wood, if I remembered correctly.
I stared at the liquid, watching the way the oil separated from the liquid itself and the minimal vegetables and protein sitting on top, floating inside the dark tea-colored substance.
It smelled absolutely divine, but somehow the color took me back to Orion. His skin, very much like this color, my mind told me. Slightly lighter, however, more like a deep shade of caramel. His dark hair had been pulled away from his face, kept in his family’s signature long braid that was then sealed off in a tie bearing his family crest.
And then, of course, those other necromancers, someone whom my mind had failed to remember. Why was I in their group? Why was I a part of their cohort? Why did the professor deem it fit to put me together with them?
Then again, putting me in another group might mean my sudden and impending doom, and frankly, the way he had smiled when it happened made me realize that perhaps there was something else at play that I couldn’t quite see.
Oh, how I hated being the one person who didn’t understand her place in things. Master would always talk about the grand game of things and understanding where you fell in those weaves of fate, but none of this made the least sense. I frowned, glaring at the tea as though I should find the answers.
“It’s not tea, Catherine,” I told myself. “It’s soup, right? Tea.” I smiled inwardly. Of course, I could read my tea leaves, tell myself what fate would have in store for me.
I suddenly heard a bang beside me, startling me and causing me to jump.
“Catherine!” my father yelled. “You have been staring at it, it’s cold now! Will you please eat?”
I cleared my throat, straightened my back, reached up, and scratched myself behind the ears before I dug into the now lukewarm soup. But I would have to tell them at some point that I needed to leave. They would need to put Gillians ready for my trip, Gillians that would cost them much, Gillians that I knew they didn’t have. But knowing my parents, they would find it.
I slurped on the soup slowly and then once more began to stare. But how would they get the Gillians? I paused from eating. I dipped the spoon back into the soup and looked up toward the ceiling. The entire house, except the foundation, was made of wood.
The farm we had could theoretically support my trip, but being that we were not planting using magic, it made harvest slow and painful. Most great families used magic in growing food, harvesting vegetables in record time.
They, after all, had the Gillians to spend on research and development, while we could simply just buy the seeds they provided and wait, as “black bloods,” they called us.
“Catherine.”
I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. “Please,” I raised my eyes at the sound of my mother’s plea.
“Forgive me,” I said, lowering my eyes. “There is much on my mind.”
She smiled, bearing a face very similar to my grandmother’s. “I can see it,” she said.
I did not look like my mother. They said I looked like my father’s grandmother, with my pale, nearly translucent skin, as far as I was concerned.
I had a very wide mouth, as everyone said, which frankly, in my opinion, didn’t look right on my face. I had large, wide eyes and a nose that I found too small. If I had enough Gillians, I would put it into making my face look more presentable, but Gillians, after all, were only needed to survive, and that, we had a shortness of.
“Will you tell me what it is?” she asked softly, an answer to which I gave a nod.
“Then eat first, please,” she nodded toward my now probably cold soup.
Instead of using my spoon, I raised the bowl and slurped it down, drinking the residue of vegetables that I didn’t swallow, grateful that it was all soft enough.
After dinner, my father and mother sat in the tiny space that was our living room in front of the flickering flames of the stone fireplace. That was another part of the house that was stone, my mind reminded me. I stared at it for a good minute until I looked at my parents and huffed out a breath.
“Some changes have been made,” I said slowly. “The council met, as I’m sure you have heard, and one of the things they have decided, at least for now, something I’m sure they’ll put in there as a resolution by tomorrow.”
I mumbled the second part under my breath. The resolution would simply make what had been spoken into law. Of course, it would be taken up toward the Final Thirteen for their assent, and if the Thirteen did not give an assent, they would have to reach another resolution.
Why didn’t the Thirteen just give their assent? Why did they have to make everyone wait for so long trying to gather their apprentices? This all made things pointlessly futile.
If the resolution was passed, it would then become an actual binding rule, one within which everyone was to follow and structure their lives anew. My mother nodded slowly, her eyes wide and expectant.
They lacked the glow that was associated with magical users. It was an extra ring of something around the irises that only seemed to glow a little brighter the stronger one was.
My father had a bit of it, showing that he had a little bit of magic in his blood, and that was perhaps everyone’s speculation as to where I got mine from. But it wasn’t enough to mean anything for him, as it only meant that perhaps his life would go a little longer than my mother’s, which was most definitely why he was much older than her.
“I’m to leave,” I said, regretting the decision to tell them as I watched their faces.
“Leave to where?” My father leaned forward, his eyes wide, his eyebrows forming the signature roof shape while the wrinkles on his forehead seemed to deepen. They had been doing that lately, deepening. He had no smile lines recently, as it seemed like his smiles had fallen, replaced with frowns of deep confusion and wonder. The man, after all, needed to feed his family one way or another.
“I have been put into a cohort.”
My father shook his head. “You’re too young for that,” he said. “You’re not ready for that. You are barely to be an enter,” he said. “You’re just an apprentice, you have at least half a decade of learning to do, don’t you?”
Of course, Father was well-versed in all things from within society. He, after all, tried to get into the magical academy but failed when his magic had refused to show up and simply helped himself by reading and learning all that he could.
Mother, being the one without the rings in her eyes, preferred to stay ignorant. “It’s better I don’t know. It would not help my life,” she would often say.
Mother looked back and forth between myself and Father, her eyes wide with fear, but it was clear she knew precisely what was going on. Her daughter would have to leave. Her only child might not return alive.
Yes, unfortunately, 80% of all apprentices who left on quests did not return alive. It was known as The Culling, and perhaps it would take me, which was more than enough to tell based on my parents’ faces.
My mother’s shoulders began to quake as her body began to be rocked by silent sobs. My father simply watched me, his eyes filling with tears, one falling from his right eye to disappear into his beard. My own parents had written me off, but even I had written myself off as I felt tears also running down my face.