Fire

Lessons With Mother

After Kari left nobody said anything for a few minutes, and the sound of cutlery scraping plates was loud in the silence. Finally Troy and Maria started talking again, ending up in a heated discussion about frost and fire jotun “breeding” as Troy so eloquently put it. Trent rolled his eyes at me and whispered, “this could go on for days, sometimes it does.”

“It should be smooth sailing now,” Louis cut into the conversation, his voice laced with sarcasm, “y’know, now that we have super-teen over here. What a great secret weapon.”

He looked at me when he said it, so I shot him a glare right back, “you have some kind of a problem?”

“Woah,” Troy laughed, “she’s got spunk.”

“Yeah,” Maria leaned past him and stuck her tongue out at Louis, “too bad for you, she’s not a little kid you can bully. You must be so disappointed. Maybe you can go smack some toddlers around to make up for it. You know, feel like a big man again.”

Louis grabbed his plate and shoved his chair back, stomping into the kitchen. We heard the crash as his plate landed in the sink and then stomping as he made his way up the stairs.

Maria grinned at me, “don’t’ worry about him, he’s got a permanent stick up his…”

“he’s unhappy,” Trent interjected, “because he thinks we should be doing something instead of just sitting around,” he shot a look over his shoulder, “but he said as much yesterday and Kari cut him down to size.”

“His poor widdle ego is smashed beyond all repair,” Maria cooed, and then laughed, collecting her empty glass and cutlery and stacking them on her plate, “now, I’m off to meet a new potential, you behave yourselves, you hear?”

Once she left the room I turned to Trent, “what’s a potential? Like, someone who might join the rebellion or something?”

“You got it,” he scooped up our plates and got up, and I grabbed our glasses and followed him into the kitchen. Trent set the dishes in the sink, “Maria goes to meet them, a million questions are asked, we make sure they’re not a spy, you know, all that good stuff.”

“How do you make sure they’re not a spy?”
            Trent grinned, “truth spell. Maria knows a bit of magic.”

“So she’s….a witch, like that Charlotte person?”

“Hah,” Trent shook his head, “nowhere near that power. She just knows a few little things, while Charlotte could…I dunno, I’ve heard she can shape shift and stuff. They say she sometimes shifts into a white hawk and…” he stopped and rolled his eyes, “well, I think it’s probably a rumor, but Kari is always telling us to watch the skies. Like she might be spying on us all the time,” he snorted, and again glanced around, obviously checking to make sure my mother didn’t appear in the doorway and overhear us, “I think sometimes, maybe she over exaggerates things, you know, just to get us all pumped up to…rebel and stuff.” He looked slightly furtive, having said that, “don’t ever tell her I said that. She takes this totally seriously.”

“Because she started it all, right?” I watched Trent run hot water and soap over our plates.

He nodded, “yup. Here, there’s a dish towel over there, mind drying? Cool.” He continued as he scrubbed at the plates, “Kari is…a lot older than she looks. She’s part of a very old fire jotun line. If anything had happened to the prince Loki or his sister, she would have taken the throne.”

“So she’s like….related then?” My brain was starting to hurt, and I grabbed the plate that Trent held out and dried it carefully with the dish towel.