Hope, A New Adventure

Chapter VIII, The Apprentice

Weeks went by, I was getting a routine down. I had found the perfect ratio between not lying and still not telling my parents the full truth when I was getting magic lessons.

The first week my parents seemed happy that I was hanging out with "friends"- as I called them, after school. After about 2 weeks or so they became a bit more confused why I always went out with people on those specific days in a very specific time frame. I lied and said it was because of their after school activities and their families and such. I got away with it for about two more weeks. Then it got difficult, I never had any friends before, well I had friends but not anybody I would actually spend time with outside of school. This made my parents very exited, so they wanted to meet my new - apparently very close friends. That kept telling me to ask them over for dinner, or who their parents were. I kept changing the subject to avoid lying - I absolutely hated lying to my parents, I felt so guilty.

Meanwhile I had been doing my magic lessons, I had no idea how difficult it could be. My whole body was sore and I was absolutely exhausted every day coming home. I wasn't really improving and it made Regina and Zelena super annoyed at me. "Come on Hope, it a simple teleportation spell - just move the cup from the trunk to the table" Regina said trying her best to be supportive. Some days one of them wouldn't even show up cause I had pissed them off so much the lesson before. Even though all of this was happening they were still the people who believed in me the most, they didn't give up on me and certainly didn't let me fail.

About 3 moths after my first magic lesson it all clicked. We were at Granny's after closing hours one night researching Artemis. Regina and Zelena were sitting in a booth with their noses stuck on the books. I was sitting at the bar concentrating on two cups. "BOOM - Granny's to-go, I should open up a franchise" I said as I slapped my hand on the table and the two cups appeared in front of Regina and Zelena. I laughed as I turned on the chair and walking over to the table. "Impressive" Regina said. "Enough with the foolishness, we need to find the story about how to get to Olympus" Zelena said. "Excuse me?!" I half yelled - and with my brain racing about the subject the pages in Zelenas book started flipping and landed on a page with a big grand door and a mountain, peaking miles up behind it, at the top of the page the heading spelled 'Mount Olympus, Home if the Gods'. "How did you do that?" Regina and Zelena said in unison. I looked confused about what had just happened "I - I don't know" I said with their eyes piercing me down "we can't even do that without knowing which exact page we are flipping to." Zelena said with a smirk, "you are certainly powerful" she continued.

My next week of lessons flew by, I was getting the hang of everything they wanted me to do within the first few tries. We tried more and more complicated spells and I got it. "Can I please tell my parents about this now?" I asked when the last few pieces of paper stacked themselves after my flick of my hand. "No, it's still to dangerous, we don't know what your connection to Artemis is yet" Regina said not even looking at me, "You said I could tell them when I wasn't a threat to anybody" I say getting kinda upset, "Hope, if they find out that you are connected to some Greek Goddess that are gonna freak" she said laying her hand on my shoulder. "But" I sighed, "fine, but can we hurry up and find out what is happening so I don't have to lie to my parents anymore" I said as I sat down opening one of the books we had found when we rigged the library of any books on Greek mythology.

Hours went by, it was Sunday mid July. It was so hot outside, we were dying in the vault, as my head felt more and more dead and my body feeling like a waterfall my eyes slowly closed and all went black.

3rd person POV
"Hope, Hope wake up!" Zelena and Regina did their best to wake her up. She just laid there totally lifeless. "We have to get her to the hospital" Zelena said as she put her hand up to teleport them all to the hospital. "wait - we have to tell her parents".