Triora's Trial

IV

Everything seemed to be going just fine for the twins, apart from school that was quite boring. Tobia and Olivia did not really understand how their ordinary classmates could be so uninterested in every subject that was delivered in class, but they got used to it by then and did not really ask themselves any more questions about it. On the other hand, the twins' aloof behaviour did not allow them to make many friends at school, which they didn't care much about anyway. Their classmates respected them, as Tobia and Olivia were clever kids, but not the know-it-all kind, so they did not attract any problems with anyone in their class, everyone just thought of them as 'the new twins'.

Olivia and Tobia's detachment from their class's dynamics wasn't destined to last for long though, as Bianca, a girl their age who had just moved to Triora, would bring lots of changes in the lives of the two unordinary kids. Bianca and her dad moved to Triora in November and, as luck would have it, they moved right on the other side of the road from the Capponi's.

Bianca's dad moved to Triora for work (at least that's what Bianca said) and, apart from a grumpy aunt, who lived next door to her, she didn't know anybody else there. She never said anything about her mother, but Olivia and Tobia soon realized that her mother was not with her. It was always her father who took her to school in the morning and picked her up in the afternoon, and they never saw anyone else enter the house apart from father and daughter.

Bianca's aunt lived in a separate house right next to hers, and Olivia and Tobia already had a chance to meet the lady even before Bianca moved there. Her aunt was always muttering to herself, looking down on everyone and avoiding all social interactions. Her only friend was a ginger cat, that would follow her everywhere. It wouldn't have come as a surprise to Tobia and Olivia if this weird lady turned out to be a witch herself, but they had talked about this possibility with their parents, and they excluded that... the woman was probably just a loner.

Bianca was different from her aunt, she was different from any other ordinary person that Tobia and Olivia had ever met. First thing, she wasn't an idiot, and this is not to say that all Ordinary were iditos, just... most of them were, and Tobia and Olivia did not blame them for that, they knew that the ordinary society was just kind of messed up, so to them it was only natural that its components, especially teenagers, would be kind of messed up too. So anytime Olivia and Tobia met ordinary folks who were clever, polite, curious and independent thinkers (which didn't happen often), they would be gladly surprised and instinctively drawn to meeting them.

For the most part, the Ordinary had shown themselves to be irresponsible, slick, malicious and cynic too. The history of the Ordinary spoke for itself: the Ordinary had reached the lowest point of human decency many times during several different historical ages. They showed no respect towards life by killing people, murdering children and having entire populations move away from home, and all because of the vilest reasons, like power, greed and that pathetic idea of omnipotence, that some ordinary humans still seemed to aspire to, even in modern days.

What witches and wizards have always found most wretched and pitiful about the ordinary people is that they never, ever learn from their mistakes. It was almost as if, within every other generation, they just erased everything they learnt from their past: that is the main reason why the magic world has stereotypically pinned the Ordinary as irresponsible creatures. They have always shown no sign of remembrance (sometimes not even signs of repentance) and they would just continue with their disrespectful, unethical and inadequate behaviours.

The world governed by the Ordinary had endured much trouble ever since humans developed into a modern society, with the result that Earth would not be able to survive for long at this rythm of exploitation. Temperatures and sea levels were rising, a lot of animals had been pushed toward the edge of extinction (some of them had been completely erased from the face of the Planet already, while others were being kept in captivity for human enjoyment), and humans themselves have been raging against each other countlessly.