what happened after unlocked

chapter forty-two ~ oralie infinite

"Aurora!" Sophie said by way of greeting. "It's...been a while."

Keefe gave the girl a suspicious look. It was like he recognized her from somewhere, but couldn't place where.

Aurora quickly smiled, but they could all tell by the way she was acting – and the huge dark circles under her eyes – that she wasn't doing very well lately. She looked at Inde with a pleading look on her face, and it was obvious she wanted to go.

Inde reluctantly waved her off, so Aurora hurried up the staircase.

Inde busied herself in the corner, pouring five mugs of a strange smoky liquid, which had an amethyst-colored gas rising off it in billowing puffs. "So, everyone, what are your names? How are you able to speak our language?"

"Well, me and Keefe are Polyglots," Sophie said, pointing to her friend. "I'm Sophie. And that's Sir Tiergan."

"Just Tiergan," Tiergan said, smiling tightly. He raised the dark drink to his lips and took a cautious sip.

"Polyglots, did you say?" Inde mused, waiting for their nods. "How interesting. I'm a Psychic, and my husband is an Empath, but our daughter didn't get mine, she got my husband's. And became famous. And ran away."

"Wait, wait, wait," Sophie said, closing her eyes. "You're a Psychic? And do you mean Councilor Oralie is the one who finally returned after eighteen years to visit...her daughter?"

"And her parents," Inde chuckled. "But she was a little too ashamed to say that."

The jolting realization suddenly brought Sophie tumbling out of reality.

Keefe took her hand under the table, sending her a few gentle calming breezes through her head, but it didn't much help, because this meant Oralie had another huge lie...

It meant Sophie had a sister.

It meant that Sophie's Empathy, albeit weak, had been handed down from two, or more, generations.

It meant that those dreams she'd had weren't a coincidence.

"Are you alright, dear?" Inde asked her kindly. Her eyes brimmed with concern.

"Yes, I'm fine," Sophie said faintly. "So Aurora's her daughter, right?"

"Yes," Inde said regretfully. "As much as I love my granddaughter, I still think we should have monitored her behavior more closely."

"What happened?" Sophie asked. "All those years ago?"

"Well, we all know Ora must have met someone, because she came home every night with a big day-dreamy grin," Inde recalled. "It must have been someone at Foxfire, because no other elf in the village was acting strangely around her."

Sophie anxiously stared at her smoky tea brew like it was a portal to another world.

"And then one day we were asking her who it was, but she got all defensive and weird," Inde sighed. "She accidentally admitted she was pregnant. She'd only graduated Foxfire a few years before that."

Sophie rubbed her head.

"She gave birth nine months later to a little girl who could see the future and know certain things people were thinking," Inde smiled, but it dropped as she continued. "And then Oralie abandoned the girl, to be raised by us, and became a Councilor. She'd always seemed pretty desperate to make a difference.

"That's why we sent her to Foxfire. From a very young age, she'd always been eager. She was a very bright kid, so we allowed it, but we rarely visited the school because we didn't want people to find our village and turn it into an elven hierarchy like the rest of their cities."