To Come Home

Chapter 10: To Leave Home (Part II)

*Two days before Phentyssa's escape from Phentyllia*

 I was awoken by the sound of a servant lightly knocking on my Bedroom Chamber doors, the sun wasn't up yet. I dragged my tired body to the door.

Aylahr was at the door with a note in hand, he bowed deeply when I opened the chamber doors, "Sorry to bother you so early princess, but you've received a Bird-Note from Elina, it has a white seal," he informed me. Aylahr was one of the servants I trusted the most, he was around my age and we sometimes stayed up together late at night laughing about my father's never-ending look of anger, which seemed to be his tattooed emotion of choice.

My father had strict surveillance on all incoming and outgoing messages to the castle – when Bird-Notes arrived to the castle, the servants were to bring them directly to the Royal Advisor in charge of Message-Supervision who would read them and determine if the contents were illegal or inappropriate, and of course he would inform my father of any incoming, especially alarming, messages. Elina, Aylahr and I had a system – usually messages came with seals, so most of the time we'd send each other unsealed messaged when they were of low importance, but when Elina needed to send me a message my father couldn't see, she would put a white seal on it – white seals generally represented messages of low importance, while red seals represented messages of high importance, so white seals didn't draw as much attention. Then when Aylahr would see a sealed message specifically from Elina, he knew to put it apart from the other mail and bring it to me directly, very early in the morning, before the sun would rise and anyone would wake up. We had never been caught.

"thank you very much Aylahr, reliable as always," I said warmly and took the letter from his hands.

"give me one second," I said before disappearing into my Dressing Chambers to a small, blue marble box with golden rims where I kept my allowance, I grabbed two small pieces of silver and handed it to Aylahr, "remember, don't spend it anywhere near the vicinity of the castle,"

"yes of course princess," he said eagerly, "thank you so much," he bowed again then proceeded to walk away into the distance of the hallways.

I used a Fire-Ignition spell to turn on the candle by my bed; pressing my fingers to the candle's wick I chanted,

"To the element of fire I call,

All I request is something small.

Ignite a flame to these pressed fingers,

A flame that will burn and lingers."

It always made me giggle to myself when I did this spell because it reminded me of the first couple times I tried it when I was first learning to practice in Simple School – I kept burning my fingers trying to turn on the candles because I didn't fully grasp the unpredictable and dangerous nature of fire back then, I had always thought that manipulating fire required the most amount of focus, and though I still do, such a simple spell felt natural to me now.

I opened up the note from Elina in her messy cursive writing and read it:

Tyssa, you need to meet me at the R.C. later today, at the time when the sun burn's brightest, our usual spot.

It's extremely urgent; I found something hidden in the book Mr. Monto gave me that you absolutely have to see.

Bows and kisses, see you soon.

I burned the letter in the flames of the candle and threw the ashes out the window.

It fell conveniently that Elina needed to talk to me, because I really needed to talk to her too. I couldn't leave the castle till I had the daily breakfast with Pherio and father, but after that I headed straight to the R.C. in Phoki County.