The Elixir

~Pyke the Tyke

"Can she hurry up?" His sister, Pyke, scowls at Vieva Bestel's back. Lord Bestel has been holding up the line and Owain's sister, impatient by nature, has been getting more agitated by the minute. Owain shrugs half-heartedly. The Bestels can hold up the line as long as they want for all he cares. The Snagsnout family has been dreading registration this year; it's the same spectacle each year.

The Bestels move and Pyke plants both her hands on the table. The leprechauns take one look at her and begin to whisper, laughing. His sister is famous to all the regions, mage or not.

Pyke glares at the sniggering leprechaun. "Do it!"

Owain looks at the deep scar on her palm, reopened again and again, time after time.

The leprechaun slices the skin open and Pyke hardly flinches. She stares intently as her own blood drips into the bowl, laser focused. She stretches her neck, eyes bugging out so much it's as if she's willing it to fizzle the same way it did for the others.

But it doesn't.

The blood turns brown as soon as it touches the bowl. Ripples of laughter come from the crowd; Pyke's desperation is a joke for them. Owain moans and shrinks. Why can't his sister be normal for once?

The leprechaun sneers. "You're a common, girl. Go on, git. You're holding the line." Pyke visibly winces when the leprechaun says common.

"No, no, there must be a mistake! I heard it, I swear!"

"Where's your ticket, then?" With a cry, Pyke slams her fist on the table. The leprechauns roar with laughter. His cheeks heat and he bodily drags Pyke away.

"Come on, then. I need to get in line myself. Dad'll be waiting in the front of the square."

Pyke laughs mirthlessly as he pulls them away.

"Right, then you can come bragging about how you got in."

Owain draws back. "Pyke, you know I would never do that."

His older sister just looks away.

They push through the crowds, bodily pushed this way and that. When they finally squeeze through, Pyke recoils.

"Great, just who I wanted to see." Owain follows her gaze and sees Kayd Wyvern, veritably from the second most richest family in the world. Kayd catches them and breaks out into a grin, loping towards them.

"Look who it is. Come to watch your little brother get in, common?" Kayd doesn't tease him but still, the thought of an encounter with Kayd Wyvern makes his stomach flop.

"No. I came to get my blood tested." Pyke sniffs.

"Waste of your time, Tyke." He smirks. Even though his sister is four years older than the both of them, Kayd still manages to somehow get under her skin.

"Why do you care, Wyvern?" Pyke snarls, face going beet red. She hates being bullied about her common blood.

Kayd leans in for the kill. "I care because commonbloods like you shouldn't even be here."

Owain can feel smoking tendrils of anger curling tightly in him but tamps it down. Messing with a Wyvern is like asking for a death sentence.

"Bug off, Kayd," says Pyke lamely, with lack of a better response. Keeping his eyes downcast, Owain tugs on his sister's arm again. Kayd laughs as they melt into the crowd.

"You can't let him get to you, Pyke." She jerks her arm out of his grasp.

"What do you care, Owain?"

"I'm just trying to be nice."

"Well, I don't need it, alright? I don't need to be reminded that I'm just a common blood, nothing special, when you'll be like Mom and Dad and go to Ruxnorth. I don't need to be reminded that I'm a let down, that my own parents even turn their backs on me. I don't need to be reminded that I'm a tyke, a disappointment, an abnormality. I don't need any of it!"

People look curiously their way but Owain is too shocked to care. One would think he would be used to his sister's rants by now but it still stings deep. Owain has never looked at his sister in any of the ways she just described. But if that's how she cares, then it's fine by him. He's got to register, anyway.

"Fine, then. If that's how you feel, I'll leave you. I have to go register."

Without a second look back, Owain leaves his sister alone in the crowd. He knows it's wrong, that he should be with her until she gets to Mom and Dad, but he's too wounded to care.