Fated (On Hold)

Chapter 12 - Raising Darkness

The child's loose brown hair billowed in a fan behind her as she ran through the meadow, the hem of her summer dress catching on the wildflowers. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky of aqua-marine and the only sound - but for the child's cries of glee - was the rushing water of a nearby stream. The agorflowers and rinweeds whipped at her calves as she darted past - cutting her own paths. She was a storied adventurer setting out into the wild, a great warrior running towards a battle. She was a lord's daughter, running from the manor in the hope of escaping pianoforte lessons.

"Tanera! Lady Wileum is waiting for you in the music room!"

She ignored Ana's calls. Her silly nursemaid was always running after her, yelling one thing or the other. Tanera wasn't badly behaved, oh no. In fact, she loved dresses and dancing and reading and a great manor of other things a young Fenvigor lady should. However, the pianoforte was so incredibly boring; the only sounds it seemed to make when she pressed the keys were that of the shrieks of the birds so often nesting outside her window.

"Tanera Fenvigor! I can't follow you much further, you have to stop!"

And so she did stop, because she was good and really rather fond of Ana - and because standing just steps in front of her was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

***

Ana was still a far bit behind the little lady. Close enough, however, to hear her high-pitched scream. Close enough to see something slithering in the grass at Tanera's feet.

"It's just a meadowsnake, Tanera!"

The little girl continued screaming nonetheless. "It's chasing me! I think it wants to eat me!"

Ana could run no longer, and stopped to bend over, bracing her hands on her thighs, feeling the sweat slide from her forehead. She was built for brushing hair and teaching Tanera correct etiquette, not running through fields after her at a ridiculous speed. It was in this position that Ana felt a slight shift in the atmosphere, as though the light had drained from the meadow, vanquishing the shadows once projected by a now vacant sun.

She looked up in time to see a small, sharp beam of light hit the snake. The slithering in the grass stopped. So did Tanera's screaming.

***

"The snake's death had nothing to do with you, Miss Fenvigor, you were merely there at the wrong time. Even so, you have to forget about what happened today. It is very important that you keep this to yourself and don't mention it again, even to me. Okay, dear?"

Tanera was neck deep in a bath of bubbles, music lessons having been forgotten for the day, her tiny face full of confusion.

"Do you understand, Miss Fenvigor?"

Wide-eyed, Tanera merely nodded and Ana returned to scrubbing the muck from her lady's porcelain skin. She made a vow to never touch on the matter again, and most certainly not bring it up with Lord and Lady Fenvigor. They were good parents, never doing anything to intentionally hurt their children, but where magic was concerned, anything was possible.

Magic. Or something very like it, anyway.

Pure magic had been extinct for almost hundreds upon thousands of years, and yet Ana had heard about a rare few people with a tiny inkling of the stuff in their blood. Good magic, different from the Algren across the sea. The magic Tanera possessed - and would never know about truly, for her own protection - originated from the first inhabitants of Esereen. The books in the Fenviogor's great library - of which Ana had read only a few - described them as fallen angels, cast down from the land of Gods to walk upon this earth and form it anew. That was rather common knowledge, though, as was the fact that these angels - or whatever they may be - were long gone, their great empire destroyed by mortals in a war that raged throughout the first ages.