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July 20 - July 20, 2021
no makeup (I don’t own any), my hair is tied into its usual messy bun
Shes not like other girls 😔
“Love poems!” I whisper back, chuckling. I hand the book back to her and smile. “I thought you weren’t romantic.” “Not in real life,” she clarifies. “I guess I like the idea of it, though. But I realize it’s pure, unadulterated fantasy.”
“Do you want to be alone all your life, Elloren?” my aunt coos, leaning forward. “Don’t you want to be fasted someday? To have a family? Do you know how unlikely that will be if you go unfasted for much longer?” She sits back. “Of course there will be a few choices left after you finish University. The young men that no one else wants. But is that what you really want?”
“I have a good sense about these things, and I can sense magic in you. I still think it’s there, perhaps dormant.”
“I can feel it. I can hear it in your music, and...” He hesitates for a moment before continuing, his voice gone low. “I can feel it in your kiss.”
“It seems we have a celebrity amongst us,” he marvels, his mouth tilting with incredulity, his eyes tight on me with unnerving intensity. “The granddaughter of the Black Witch.”
Fancy seeing Severus Snape here
“There will be no preferential treatment here, Mage Elloren Gardner.” The words are matter-of-fact, but etched in stone.
“Elloren, it’s impossible to be evil and uncivilized and love the poetry of Fleming. I’m sure of this.”
“Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,”
Tierney shoots me a look of hard appraisal, her mouth inching up in a coldly sardonic smile.
Like I’m being harshly judged and found lacking.
“Oh, please, Elloren, you must be kidding! Not one of them is worthy to be my mate.” She shoots the watching men a look of utter contempt. “They are weak. I am strong and magnificent. I need an equally strong mate, one of my kind. Besides, your men have too many strange ideas. I don’t understand them.”
“These people will mate with people they don’t even like.” She’s clearly appalled.
“Really?” he asks his sister in a low voice, ashamed on our behalf. “I thought that was just a nasty rumor.”
“But what if you don’t love the person? What if you don’t care for their scent?” Diana seems greatly upset by the prospect of such a thing. “Do you still have to mate with them?”
“This is very sordid,” mutters Diana, embarrassed for us. “Perhaps these shocking things would not come about if you mated at a reasonable age with people you care deeply for, like we do. This is very unnatural, the way you mate.”
“History is a tricky thing, Mage Gardner. What is written about it is usually subjective, and it’s often very difficult to find the truth of the matter.”
“Real education doesn’t make your life easy. It complicates things and makes everything messy and disturbing. But the alternative, Elloren Gardner, is to live your life based on injustice and lies.”
“You haven’t followed politics because you haven’t had to,” she snipes, raw resentment breaking through. “And it shows. You’re incredibly naive.”
“People see what they expect to see,” he says sharply. “Through a filter of their own hatred and prejudice.
“They can’t help themselves,” she says rather arrogantly. “They all wish they could mate with me. It’s not surprising in the least.” She straightens as she chews and tosses her golden mane. “Look at me. I am magnificent. Every male wants me.”
“Of course I have no interest in them,” she continues loftily. “They are weak and pathetic. I really don’t understand how you can tolerate men such as these.
“Aislinn, one does not simply borrow a military grimoire.”
“Nothing,” he says, evading my eyes, his jaw tensing. “You are imagining things.”
Gaslighting
“Flirting with the Resistance, are we?” I let out a deep breath. “I’m afraid I’ve jumped clear into bed with them.”
