Blowing Embers

Chapter 20

            The whirlwind Shuu appeared in was fiercer than normal, shoving her knickknacks back on their shelves and blasting book covers open so the pages fanned back and forth in the tugging winds. Kallai only watched from where she sat in her bed, closing and marking her spot in the book she’d been reading, and leaning further back into the pillows that were between her and the cold of the her room’s walls.

            Shuu stalked over to her, blue eyes blazing, fists clenched at his sides. His winds continued to swirl around him, messing up the order of her room even as they set his hair to waving in every direction. “Sparrow,” he hissed. “What happened me do tell!”

            Kallai sighed, gently putting her book to the side of her. She patted the spot on her bed beside her legs. “Do you want to sit down?”

            “No, I not do wish to sit,” he snapped, beginning to pace from one end of her room to the other. “I what happened to know wish!”

            She shrugged then winced slightly as one of the bruises on her shoulder protested the movement. Magi Althan had done what he could, but between healing her cuts and her fractured rib, her body hadn’t been strong enough to take anymore, so her bruises had been left to heal with some poultices. She was glad that these ones smelled far better than the last ones she’d been forced to wear. “Some of the others came to bother me during lunch. It happens sometimes. I’ll be alright in a week or two.”

            That stopped him for a moment as Shuu whirled around to glare at her. “You like this is normal do act! For yourself up you must stand! If a sparrow you continue to be, one day you dead will become! Clear that no restraint they know it is!”

            Kallai shook her head. “It’s best to just leave them. They know if they did anything worse, anything they can’t explain away as magic practice, that they’d be one punishment duty for the rest of their time here, if they didn’t get expelled. There are things even they can’t hide from the faculty.”

            “Why angry you not are,” he shouted, hands going white knuckled as his nails dug farther into the skin of his palms. “Why you not them do hate?”

            She hushed him, glancing around her room as if she expected a teacher to materialize the same way Shuu so often did. After a moment of silence, she met his eyes for a moment, before looking back down at her blanket. She traced abstract patterns with a finger across the dark blue wool, keeping her gaze down. “I ran out of anger a long time ago,” she said, voice quiet. “When people really started in on me when I was in White, and it didn’t stop, I only really had three choices. One, I could hate all of them, and end up poisoning myself, so all I saw was the darkness around me. Two, I could learn to understand them and the reasons why they have to attack me. Or three, I could have killed myself. I went with option two. I couldn’t bear the thought of the other two.”

            While Shuu only stared, Kallai continued. “Sevilen helped me a lot, especially with explaining the why behind what the others were doing. Like Eran’s terrified that if he doesn’t help Azaz that he’ll become Azaz’s next target. I know Laji’s not very good at magic, and she’s afraid that she’ll be in the same position as me if she doesn’t prove herself to be different, and Sidra’s incredibly insecure and the only thing that makes her feel like something other than a complete failure is to make me look like one.”

            “So you them have forgiven?”

            Kallai shook her head again. “I understand them. I didn’t say I liked them. Azaz is the only one I do hate, but he’s needlessly cruel. He has no deeper reason behind his actions that I’ve been able to see. He just seems to enjoy seeing me in pain.”

             “His death none would mourn,” he growled.

            “His family might. And they’re powerful enough to make anyone who did that suffer for years before dying. Not that it really matters. I’ll be free of him as soon as I graduate, and as long as I avoid him as much as I can. I’ll be fine.”

            Shuu let out his breath in a long hiss, glaring at a point just over Kallai’s head. He stood still for a moment, only the swirling air around him keeping him from being motionless. Finally, he turned back to look at her. Shuu crossed the distance between them in a few, long strides. Before she could even form the words to ask him what was up, he leant down and scooped Kallai up, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back.

            With her mouth open and her eyes staring up at him, Shuu only nodded once. “On do hold, Sparrow. If pain I cause, immediately me tell.”

            She didn’t even have the chance to speak before the winds closed in around both of them.