Twilit Mage

Chapter 20: Not My Problem

It was late when Mercury finally returned to her room, her mind still buzzing with new knowledge, knowledge that she wished she had never had to learn. Her head was heavy, and yet she had never felt more awake, every part of her swirling with confusion and blank terror.

So much. So much horror, so much suffering. There was so much the Light Mages had done, so many crimes they had committed, so many that had found their way into her old history textbooks that were so perfectly unaware of the existence of magic. This was bigger than anything she had expected, even bigger than anything she had ever dared to fear.

So there had been that many Dark Mages once...so much more than she had thought, once, before they had become hunters' prey, a group of refugees with nowhere to run. First nowhere in Europe...and then, as they fled to other continents, nowhere in the world as the hate-mongering spread throughout the planet, disrupting places where mages had all lived together in peace, until they no longer had a place to call home anymore.

How could two peoples with a history like that ever get along again? And...how on earth could someone from one group fall in love with someone of the other? It shouldn't be possible. Forgiving someone for all this suffering shouldn't be possible.

And yet here she was. And here was Raoul. And maybe there were more people just like them in the world. No, probably.

How?

Mercury stared at the dark sky, watching as clouds passed slowly over the crescent moon. The longer she thought about it all, the less sense it made. Her parents had always looked so happy together. How could they be so happy when her father's ancestors might have killed her mother's family?

She wanted to ask them. But it was too late at night for that...wasn't it? Her mother didn't work the night shift today. She and her father had to be asleep already. Disturbing them wouldn't help anyone.

And still she needed to talk to someone. Someone who might understand...

Of course.

Picking up her phone, she opened her contacts and picked out the newest one among the few she had saved. More grateful than ever that they had exchanged numbers earlier, she typed in a message and sent.

Raoul...are you awake?

Of course he wasn't, she thought. It was too late at night. But even so, as she looked at the sent message and waited for it to deliver, she started feeling a little better.

Raoul didn't answer. Mercury waited and waited, wondering if she should send a second text or if that would look too clingy, then she thought of Raoul's cheery face and typed in another message.

Have you read up on mage history? Because I just did and there's so much I'm thinking about. It's all...so big, you know? Way bigger than I thought.

The message sent but didn't deliver. Mercury gave a small resigned sigh, half wondering if she should go on and tell him about her fears and confusion. Then she shook her head. No need to knock Raoul out with all that first thing in the morning. She should wait for him to signal her that he was ready to talk about it, then she could vent in peace.

With a sigh she crawled under the covers and closed her eyes to fall into an uneasy sleep.

~ ~ ~

The first thing Mercury did when she woke up early in the morning was reach for the nightstand and grab her phone. She knew it was early, way too early for anyone but her to be awake, and yet she couldn't help the faint, distant hope that somehow Raoul might already have read her messages and replied.