Follow Your Heart

Part 1

All people in this town are lead to the crossroads just outside the limits in the week of the full moon to new moon and given a choice to make. All people in Thislewood understands this choice as a fact of life, because no one had ever taken a path that didn't fit what others expected of them. It became such a formality to assume what a coming-of-age person would choose that none would be surprised that it would happen there after.

That was why when Lyla Rosevine was left at the crossroads, standing in nothing but the white, jagged hemmed, calf-length fairy dress, with her dark wild hair being blown around in the breeze, she felt tremors start inside her. She looked down at her light colored hands to judge her shaking but could barely see beyond the two paths to either side of her. She could hear her heart thrumming in her ears with panic, pure panic, and feel it trying to escape her.

The crossroads was not a true crossroads and had not been for centuries before the War. There was only the path behind her which was closed off at the gates around the town to prevent people from turning back and was not an option. There was of course, the ones to her right and left, the ones that everyone always took. Light, or Dark. That was the choice of all people when they turned eighteen and the choice she faced now. To accept the Light Magick or the Dark Magick resting within her.

Looking back the way she had been carried here, she gazed at the town with her eyes watering. She hadn't wanted to come, had dreaded this day for far too long. Faulkner and Bax, two of the strongest men of the third-year class of Myrid High, had been ordered to lift her up and bring her out here since everyone had expected a spectacle. That was the only thing expected of her that Lyla had done so far and as the moon climbed the sky, the tremors got worse drawing out the panic and the overwhelming need to choose. It was bred into her people now, who spanned multiple towns and a few cities, but it wasn't so simple for her.

Lyla's father and mother were not widely known by many people, only just to some. Her mother who had chosen Dark Magick, and her father who had chosen Light Magick, and that was not commonly accepted. How they kept the whole town from knowing was anyone's guess, but the result was that Lyla had a more difficult decision to make. To become one or the other, to accept one nature and suppress the other and fight it her whole life. This was her problem to face alone for however long she could stand the mounting pain, because the longer someone went without choosing, the more painful it became to breathe and stand.

"Why must I be in this position?" Lyla whispered to herself in a small voice. "Why must I carry this burden and hide it when my heart is so conflicted?"

"A simple matter of the heart," The teachers had always told her, like that made any sense. They would walk around the rooms, up and down the rows of desks, acting like everyone's choice was always easy. "Every heart leans to one side or the other, craves one over the other, so it is your duty to listen to it and follow it."

"All of us are blank slates before this day, this night of choice," Others would sagely lecture, "For when we decide, we are truly born. Never prolong the change, as prolonging it will poison your blood and turn you to stone."

Lyla could feel her body working against her, feel the fire of the poison beginning its long, slow journey through her veins. Could hear the calling of the whispered voices in the trees trying to get her to join them, those who'd perished without following their heart. The damned and the nameless. Many of her town had forgotten the names of loved ones the moment they wandered off course, to become a lost whisper in a chorus of dozens. The magic of this place could make a person or break them, and Lyla would not join them no matter what they said or what memory they tempted her with.

Should she choose Light like her father? Become a healer, caretaker, a person of knowledge? He would be so proud to have her follow in his footsteps, be able to show her his profession in hopes that she would want to be a scholar like him. He got to scour the most scared tomes with the most influential to determine the fate of their people.