Red Mountain Chronicles: The Illusionist

Chapter 23

      "Alright, Elena. Are we ready to go?"
I was trying to stay optimistic that Mary would come by soon. The past few days have been agony without her. Not that I really went to class, since the board wouldn't let me until I had gotten settled with the guild. But it would have been nice to have her meet up with me.
But she didn't. I guess she really wasn't coming.
      "I guess," I replied half heartedly. It seems silly, but part of me hoped she would come at the last minute. But I guess this is what I get for thinking like this. Because even though this place seems like it is from a fairy tail book, it was reality. And in reality, you don't usually get what you want.

"I thought that was amazing what you did the other day. I've been wanting her to get hustled like that since the first day I met her. "
I smiled. Ariah was very friendly, but for some reason as legitimate as her actions felt, it seemed like a facade.
It's probably because she's still trying to be cautious with me. I almost forgot. Probably because at this point, it was common knowledge that I would get treated differently. Just how breathing is common knowledge yet we often don't notice until we think about it.
I tried not to think about it and instead tried to focus on remembering the landscape. We were heading south of the school to the guild house I would be staying at.
Once we were halfway there though, there was a figure sitting on an incredibly square boulder about ten yards away. As I got closer I noticed that this humanoid figure had ears on the top of its head. Could it be?
Mary stood up and walked toward us, with only her backpack sitting square between her shoulders. Certainly not enough to pack everything. But that wasn't important. She was here.
She strolled up to us, as if she were meeting us for a regular hike. I didn't know what better thing to do than to hug her.
It took her a moment for her to embrace it. I then pulled away.
"What are you doing here? You picking cherries?" I asked in a joking tone. I tried not to get my hopes up. For all I knew she had no good reason to join. She could very well be here to pick a bone with the guild. Luckily, she took the joke and laughed.
"No, actually. I thought long and hard about this and I just couldn't bring myself to leave you like that. If I had the chance to do this for my brother, I would have. And he would want me to do this now.
I had to hug her again. This time she was quick to hug back. A moment later, Ariah decided to introduce herself. "Hello," she stated plainly. "I'm Ariah. And who might you be?"
I pulled away to look at her. "This is my friend, Mary. The one I wanted to bring with me."
"Well I'm glad you could join us." Ariah responded cheerfully, reaching her hand out for Mary to shake. She took it, making sure to give me a look that read this girl is weird.
"Well then, let's keep going. We don't want to be late for breakfast."

"So, first off, we're glad to have you on the team,"  Ariah cried cheerfully. "I'm sure everyone is going to love your guy's company."
      Mary and I exchanged looks. "I don't know," I answered nonchalantly. "Seeing me as pleasant seems to be very hard for people these days."
      Ariah shook my comment off with a laugh, clearly taking it as a joke. "Well maybe everywhere else, but guilds... they're like family. Especially here at Coyote Azul."
      She then opened the door to the Hacienda, and I look to see what I imagine purgatory looks like.
      "Iggy, what's taking you so long in the kitchen!"
      The question then followed with loud clanging of dishes. There were people everywhere, and all of them seemed like they were either fighting, destroying property, or ignoring the chaos altogether.
      I heard Mary chuckle to herself. "Home sweet home."
      The same female voice shouted again. "Iggy, we're all waiting for food, and you said you'd be done with it an hour ago!" This comment was followed by footsteps heading away from us, like someone was storming toward something with great impatience.
     A male voice answered. "Well, maybe if you helped me, this would go by a lot smoother!"
       "Why should we help you?" The girl voice asked. "You insisted on making dinner yourself!"
       "I never volunteered for this manual labor!"
       The girl responded again, this time more quiet at first. "Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I mistook your one-man-show monologue the other day for you volunteering."
       Ariah looked at me. "I know how this may look, but they're all very friendly."
      The boy spoke again. "Fine. You want your food so badly, here's your food."
      "Finally— what in the Nether Realm is this?"
      Ariah then grabbed my shoulder and said, "duck".
     Before I knew it a bowl was flying at my head. Luckily, Mary and Ariah dragged me down in time.
     "Oh, great! That was a waste of a perfectly good meal!"
     "You call that heap of jackalope droppings a meal? It's not even cooked!"
     "You want cooked? Fine!"
     "Maybe it's just a bad time. We can meet them later," I suggested. Unfortunately, that was not an option, because Ariah dragged me and Mary into the house, toward where I suspected the ruckus was coming from, the kitchen.
     As we rounded the corner, I see a tall, flustered boy wearing an apron painted in... some mysterious substance. Across from him were a bunch of kids around my age yelling and banging their fists on the table in disapproval. But in the front of the pack was a girl with slick black hair tied up in a ponytail, pointing her spoon angrily across the counter.
      "You can stop your grumbling. It's not that hard to do. Especially for you." She then stumbled on her words as she knit her eyebrows. "What are you doing?"
      The boy in the apron, apparently called Iggy, was fiddling with the antique stove, which for some reason had strange parts and attachments to it. "Cooking it," he answered. "It's probably better to control the temperature than—"
      "That's gonna take forever! We want our food now!"
      The boy in the apron went silent, clearly trying to bite his tongue. Then suddenly, he turned around and soon after, a large red flame emerged in front of him, almost catching the room on fire. Luckily this fire only had a life of a few seconds before immediately dying down to nothing.
       The boy then turned around to present a few charred bowls, wearing a smile of satisfaction across his face from ear to ear.
      "Here you go. Cooked just how you like it. Happy?"
      The few people in front of the crowd looked at their bowls in horror. The angry head of the mob spoke again. "Is this a joke? It's just ash!"
     The chef slammed his palms on the table, looking the girl dead in the eye. "It's not ash! It's FLAMBÉ!"
Just as we managed to sneak into the kitchen, the same girl picked up the bowl, and twisting her body, pitched it toward our heads. Luckily, we managed to duck in time. While we were down there, I noticed a sudden silence take over the room. We slowly stood up to see eyes on us.
Clearing her throat, Aria began to speak. "Good morning." She continued. "Like we have discussed, we have new guild members." She gestured to us accordingly. "This is Maribeth, a first year, and Elena, also a first year."
Someone in the back shouted, "Which one of you is the Illusionist?"
Immediately, everyone turned to chastise him. He looked way too young to be a student at the school, since he appeared to be only thirteen. He put his hands up, leaning away from everyone's harsh judgement. "Hey, you were all thinking it. Might as well get it out of the way." This comment was met with multiple grumbles of disapproval.
I sighed, looking down at the floor, bracing myself for what was going to come. I raised my hand, and the room went quiet once again.
I heard what sounded like shoving, which followed with someone saying. "Wow, Kenneth. Now look what you've done." I then heard footsteps coming closer. There were gasps and murmurs around the room. Then the same voice, which was now closer, said, clearly annoyed, "Chill out! She's not going to do anything. She has restriction cuffs on."
I was shocked. This was the first time since I found out about my wield, that someone genuinely came up to me without any fear. Needless to say, it was because she noticed the cuffs I was wearing. But still, it was nice for no one to approach me like I wasn't a pipe bomb.
It was nice, to be treated like a human being from someone other than Mary. Ariah seemed to respect me, but I could tell she was still doing so with a slight amount of caution.
I looked up to see the head of the mob herself, with her grey eyes on me.
"Sorry about them. Some of them clearly don't understand manners." She then turned to sneer at the kid who commented earlier. The kid grumbled to himself, clearly mocking her, but she paid no attention to him.
I let out a faint chuckle, and grinned. It kind of reminded me of what I imagined having a brother would be like. In fact, now that I looked across this room, it seemed like they were some sort of big, close knit family. Something I have always wanted.
"I'm Bianca." She then smiled ever so slightly, and then turned around. "Well," She said. "What are you waiting for? Let's get the table set up and pull up two more chairs. C'mon!"
Everyone began shuffling about to do their duties of helping out, talking amongst themselves like a noisy class would when told to clean up.
She then directed her attention to Iggy. "And you. Just make a salad or something. There's no way you can mess that up." He then waved a hand at her, as if to say yeah, yeah before ducking underneath the cabinets.
      Bianca turned around again. "Well, let's get you settled so you can eat something."

      "You're kidding! She messed with Nira? Nothing ever gets past that girl." Iggy said excitedly, turning towards me. "How did you manage to do that?"
      "Well, I, uh..." It was definitely nerve racking being put on the spot like this. Especially given all that has happened recently.
      "Well," Ariah jumped in for me. "Basically she gave us three sets of questions. I don't remember what they were, but the last one was 'how do you feel about werewolves?'." The majority of the table grumbled and muttered amongst themselves, fully engaged in the story. She smiled, "and I told them that we had no problem with them. And then Nira spoke next. We all know what she had to say." Again, another wave of murmurs came across the table.
        She then gestured to me, "So then she says, 'I sure hope so," she then paused, noticing that Mary was starting to get up from the table. Luckily, Ariah stopped her from getting up from the table. "Oh, no. It's not like that. It gets better."
        Mary looked at her, confused. She sank back down, directing her puzzled expression toward me.
       Realizing the tension at the table, Ariah decided to clear her throat and continue with the story. "So, Nira picked up on this, thinking she hated werewolves. Nira then said something offensive about them." She then pointed in my direction, holding in most of her laughter. "And this girl, she just stares at her dead in the eye and says, 'I choose Coyote Azul."
         And just like that, the whole table erupted with laughter.
       I looked toward Mary's direction to see luckily a look of shock on her face. But it was a good shock, since she was also chuckling.
       "Sorry for giving you a heart attack with that story earlier, Mary." Ariah said.
       "Well I think that's really amazing that you stuck out for your friend like that," Bianca said.
       "Man, could you imagine the look on her face! I would give anything to see that!" Iggy yelled.
        "Well, that was the best part. I didn't get to see her whole reaction, but she looked like she had just been had by a Kokopelli. Isn't that right, Elena?"
The whole table directed their attention toward me. And I was nervous to answering because I had no idea what that meant. But I assumed they meant shocked, right?
I cleared my throat. "She was pretty shocked," I said in both admitting and suggesting tone.
The whole table laughed, and gave each other high fives. I let out a sigh of relief. I guess I passed.
As the crowd began to settle down, the boy who created the disaster in the kitchen took his long, scrawny arm and scratched his head. "So, I hate to pry, but have we figured out who is going to be monitoring her?"
The girl who sat next to him snapped at him, immediately shushing him. She looked very similar to him— in a way. They both had strawberry blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and freckles all over their fair skin. But she definitely seemed shorter in stature, and had a normal build. Are they related?
Iggy smiled nervously, defending himself. "Not that it's a big deal. She seems very nice. I was just saying it would be good if someone with a little bit... threatening powers took the responsibility."
Bianca spoke up this time. "Like who?"
As I guess many expected, he began to straighten himself in his chair slowly, obviously signaling to everyone he was talking about himself. And the reason why I believe many suspected this was because as he was doing this, I heard many scoffs and groans across the room. I could practically feel everyone rolling their eyes.
The girl sat next to him spoke again. "Wow, Iggy. How stupid can you be? You're not fit for that job. You lack responsibility."
"What do you know about responsibility, Aggie?" He spat back.
      Iggy and Aggie. Go figure.
"Who forgets to clean the dishes when it's their turn? Who fails to help during clean day? Who decided it would be a good idea to let Kenny stay in the creek all day last week?" She gestured toward the kid who asked the question about me earlier. Whom I have now noticed had a few sun blisters. And was super red. Ouch.
"What? He said he wanted to get a tan. And that's not the point."
"If you're gonna mention fire, then there are two other people at this table that can do this job just as well according to you. But considering responsibility, and the fact that we're both girls who are relatively the same age, I would be a way better fit than you."
I am an only child, but if I had to imagine what a sibling rivalry looked like, these two seemed to fit the bill.
As the argument between the two grew to be too much, Bianca slammed her palms down on the table. "That's enough, you two." As expected, they both settled down, giving the head of the mob their undivided attention. "Everyone that is Elena's age and older will monitor. People her age will keep an eye on her in class. And older members, such as me, Ariah, Cole, and Aaron, will be the ones to monitor her outside class. You will also report to us if there are any problems. Understood?"
The whole table was quiet. And I could not blame them. As friendly as Bianca was, she was quite scary at times. That made her quite an affective leader.
And with that being said, she sat back down, and continued eating.
      Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.