Oracle (Book I)

For Freedom

     The cauldron bubbled softly in the quiet courtyard. Peering inside dubiously, Thierry slowly and carefully dropped in a pinch of billy blade grass.

Caprice leaned over the cauldron, examined the color of the potion and inhaled the vapor wafting off it.

"You got it!" she clapped, beaming at him.

Her brother's shoulders dropped as the tension drained out of him. Relief shined from his face.

He grinned, "Yeah?"

"Yes!"

"Bless it all," he sighed.

"No, I knew you could." Caprice hugged him. "You'll be a potions master yet, Wizard Bilberry! You wait and see." As Thierry's back straightened with pride, she hugged him then bustled around inside his bag for phials and flasks to bottle Professor Gleddy's assignment in. She felt him watching her, felt his jubilant smile melting away.

"Caprice, what's going on?"

"What do you mean?" she busied herself with the phials.

"I can tell there's something you're not saying. Something's on your mind."

Denying it outright with him was pointless, so she didn't.

"Don't nag me, Thierry. I know what I'm doing," Caprice replied sullenly.

"Do you?" he demanded. "You can't go back there alone. Don't do anything reckless without—"

"I'm tired of watching people die. I'm sick to death of watching people get hurt. Before I couldn't do anything about it, but now...now I can! I can't let them do this to my family! Our family! Did you really think I was going to leave them there?"

"Did you think I was!" Thierry exclaimed.

They locked gazes. Anger and hurt blazed in Thierry's eyes. That she would keep this from him and go it alone. Meeting his glare with equal fervor, Caprice was just as angry, maybe more so, that her brother might try to stop her or interfere and put his life in danger when that was exactly what she was avoiding by going after their family on her own. She didn't want to keep secrets from him. However, the alternative was him butting in and trying to protect her. Where Thierry felt somewhat betrayed, she felt ironclad determination to follow her path to the end.

Thierry sighed, releasing some of the tension in him in an effort to be reasonable. He dropped a hand on her shoulder.

"Let's think of something together. We can work it out, Preece. Yea?"

How she longed to be told everything would be all right. It was that very desire that reminded her she should be at the Library working on her plan. There could be no part of her that wanted Thierry's help. Caprice wanted to do this alone.

She nodded and wiped at the moisture gathering in her eyes. "Yea," Caprice lied. "I have to go. Have something I want to give Bossa."

She wasn't putting her brother's life in danger for something that might end badly. Maybe she'd come back with their parents and little brother. If not, she would at least die knowing she hadn't brought him along. It wasn't a comfort to imagine him being there. He should remain safely here at Oracle.

"I love you, Thierry. My brother." He frowned as she hugged him again. Leaving him there with pretty decently concocted Wierwimeir Potion, Caprice walked away.

Goodbye.

     Pouring excitedly over a stack of open books, Caprice would never have guessed there was so much to read about kin. Much of it written by kin, too. What she read was so familiar though she had never known any of these spells or stories. It just...fit deep in a place inside of her.