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With a huff, Arya kicked a stone down the road, watching as it bounced over the pavement and disappeared underneath a hedge. Muttering under her breath, she angrily tugged at the straps of her school backpack.
Everything was just so stupid.
Fine. Her father could do magic and her parents had told her that it was a secret. And suddenly it was not anymore, but at that point everyone else had so much cooler things to tell. Or to show by themselves. One of her classmates actually had wings! Wings! And Lyreth could run so fast that he became a mere blur. But then again, Lyreth liked to brag about it way too much, which made it far less cool. Also, one of the others had said that he was only from a line of turned vampires. Arya wasn’t sure what that meant, but it had made Lyreth nicely angry instead of annoyingly smug.
Yet, here she was and could do nothing. Being an elf really wasn’t that special anymore now and she couldn’t even do magic. Her father said that it might come to her later – but what if it didn’t? And to top it all off, she couldn’t even get a cat! Even Vanir’s family had a dog and that idiot thought that dragonflies could bite.
Stupid!
She roughly started tugging at the zipper of her jacket as she stomped up the steps to her home. She was just doomed to be boring, wasn’t she. And it was all her mother’s fault; all she wanted was a cat! Or a rat. Or one of those fuzzy spiders maybe.
Stepping inside, Arya almost slammed the door behind her, but caught it at the last second when she heard her mother working in the kitchen. She might be angry, but she wasn’t looking for a fight. Even if her mother would certainly deserve it.
After kicking off her shoes and hanging up her jacket, she stomped on towards the kitchen, dropping her backpack on the way at the bottom of the stairs.
Thoroughly heralded by her loud steps, Islanzadi looked up from her cooking, gracefully ignoring her daughter grimacing at the sight of the peas.
“Did you have a nice day in school, blossom?”
“No.”
Arya liked honesty in these situations. Her mother, as evident by her flat expression, did not.
“Did you wash your hands?”
Turning on her heel, Arya dragged her feet to the bathroom. This was fine. She was sure that even vampires, fairies and werewolves washed their hands.
Blowing over her soaped-up fingers to make bubbles fly, she wondered if demons head to do that too. She had never met one, but one of her friends had said that they existed and were very scary. Going by what she knew and heard, they would likely burst into flames instead of washing their hands. Simply burning dirt to ash. Her frown tightened. But that would leave the ash, wouldn’t it?
The sound of the front door opening made her jump off her small stool; hurrying to dry her hands and almost ripping the ugly pink towel down in the process. She was still angry, sure, but her dad always told her funny stories and also wouldn’t give her looks for her mood like her mother often did.
Bolting back to the kitchen and almost knocking over a tall flower-vase on the way, she idly noted that it was oddly quiet. But then she was already hugging her father’s legs and he tussled her hair with a chuckle. As she raised her head to protest, the words got stuck on her tongue with wonder as she spotted an odd white bird on the back of her mother’s chair.
Then her eyes went up to the positively thunderous expression of said chair’s usual occupant. Islanzadi had her arms crossed and her brows furrowed tightly, green eyes almost as dark as forest at night.
“Evandar. We spoke about this.”
It was that tone that often prefaced a ‘go to your room’ when directed at Arya. Her father only shrugged though.
“Can’t I give the sun of my heart a gift?”
Islanzadi made an odd expression, her cheeks going a bit red. Although it wasn’t the red that Arya knew from when her mother was muttering bad words about her mother-in-law. This one was the odd red she sometimes got when Evandar said something weird.
“This isn’t-”
“I even enchanted him a bit.”
Islanzadi’s expression shifted to an unimpressed flatness. “What did you do to the poor raven?”
Evandar reached up to his chest, gasping dramatically and making Arya giggle.
“You wound me, my love.” He shifted his weight, tugging at a strand of his hair. “Nothing big, really. Just the ability of speech and a biiiiit of a longer life.”
“Did he already have all white feathers before that, or only afterwards?” She squinted.
“Huh, would you look at that… I can’t seem to remember.”
He raised an eyebrow at the raven as if the bird was about to answer the question. Which, while he didn’t answer the question, he indeed opened his beak and started to speak.
“A chicken, you won’t believe, ate the leaves off a rubber tree. Then it went to the chicken coop and laid a gummy hoop.”
There was one second of silence, before Arya burst out with laughter, leaning against her father who was trying to hide his own chuckle behind fake coughs.
At the other side of the table, Islanzadi’s expression turned from a rising thunderstorm to exasperated fondness.
Arya quietly wondered if ravens were allowed in school.