Mersallee: Chapter 1 (Title may change)

“Come on, Lily, let’s go,” Tristan whined impatiently.  Lily rolled her eyes at him and willed her feet to move faster.  Tristan was in a hurry to go to class, something Lily could never make herself want to do.  “Aren’t you excited?  We get to learn how to fly,” Tristan wondered aloud, his voice nearly breathless with anticipation.  Lily rolled her eyes again and realized even her light footsteps were heavy in the ancient marbled hallway of their school, The Harahel Magus School.  All around them older students were milling by, some of them even attempting to fly in the hallway.  Tristan was watching them will unbridled longing on his face.

         The Harahel Magus School was an ancient, hulking structure that reminded Lily of a demon.  By human standards, Lily supposed the building was beautiful.  The eight story stone structure jutted out of a valley, the soaring towers rising high into the horizon.  Stone angels watched over the valley floor from the tops of the four towers.  Inside, smooth cold marble floors and stairways were flocked by cedar paneled walls.  The legend among students was that the angel Harahel began the school during the last war with the demons in an attempt to develop a human army to fight for Earth against Hell. Lily wasn’t sure if she believed this but she could feel the astonishing well of power that the school held. 

As the two of them nearly flew down the hall, Lily smiled to herself.  The beautiful, talented, hugely clumsy Tristan would never understand why Lily was in no hurry to learn to fly.  Lily had met Tristan two years earlier on the first day of school.  Lily still remembered how angry she had been that her mother had forced her to come to this school full of mortals.  She had been walking through the hallway, head down, forehead wrinkled in consternation when Tristan had nearly knocked her down in his rush to explore as much of the school as possible in the first two hours.  Lily had not been kind.  Looking over at Tristan from her place on the floor, she had sought to wound him.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  Think you could maybe tear your eyes off the walls for a minute and pay attention to reality, oaf?”  As Lily picked herself up, stinging backside and all, Tristan did something that surprised her:  he laughed.  Not a gentle, awkward sort of laugh.  No, this was a full blown I-do-this-sort-of-thing-on-a-daily-basis type of laugh.  Through her intense glare, Lily noticed that while Tristan was not particularly handsome, at least not to her, he had a smile that could light up a room and, in the end, found herself laughing with him.  Within days, the pair had become inseparable, best friends for life. 

         Now, though, Lily thought she might change her mind.  As much as she cared about Tristan, as much as he was her best friend, she could not tell him the reason she didn’t care about learning to fly:  Lily was a fairy.  Not just any fairy, no, that would be too easy.  Lily was the headstrong daughter of a fairy queen banished to a mortal school at the tender age of 203 years old in hopes that she would learn to control her magic.  Even now, thinking about the queen’s rage that day in the meadow made Lily want to cower. 

         Lilly shook her head and pushed the dark thoughts aside.  She realized with a start that they were already standing in front of the door to their classroom.  Inside, most of their classmates were milling about, whispering anxiously.  “I heard that last year a kid tried to fly and just kept floating up and up.  He never came back.”  Lily sighed in exasperation at the rumors and sat down next to Tristan. 

         “I can’t wait,” Tristan whispered.  “I’ve been wanting to learn how to fly ever since we got here.”

         “Yes, I know.  You tell me that every day,” Lily snorted.

         “Why aren’t you excited?  Never mind, you don’t get excited about anything,” Tristan retorted.

Lily prickled, but refused to let Tristan goad her into an argument.  Lily’s apparent lack of interest in anything magical had long been an issue for Tristan.  He simply couldn’t understand why Lily wasn’t thrilled to be at the most prestigious school for mages in the United States.  All he had ever dreamed about was being here, studying with the best teachers that the country had to offer.  Not for the first time today, Lily wished she weren’t bound to keep her secret.  Her mother had cast a silencing spell on her before she became a student here and time had not eased that binding one bit.

Lily bit down on her bottom lip to keep herself from being harsh.  Really, it wasn’t Tristan’s fault that she had no patience for mortals and their lack of magical skill.  Lily had only ever met a handful of mortals that contained any real amount of power, and most of them weren’t exactly good company.  Lily sighed but before she could answer, the teacher swept into the room in a sea of robes commanding silence with a wave of her hand.  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Lily mused.  “Even if he knew, he still wouldn’t understand.  No one ever has.”

         As Lily walked out of the class three trying hours later, Tristan strode beside her, beaming.  “Wasn’t that awesome?  I did really well.  I almost got my feet off the ground twice.”  Lily smiled at him, but held her silence.  Tristan droned on and on…and on all the way up to dinner.  Finally, Lily could take no more. 

         “For the love of the angels, Tris, you didn’t even manage to levitate.  Why can’t you just shut up about it?  I don’t get what the big deal about flying is anyway.  We can only do it for a short time, it takes up tons of energy, and it would just be easier to find a freaking broomstick than it is to actually cast the spell,” Lily spat.  Tristan could only stare at her, his wounded pride marring his normally jovial features and causing his eyes to darken. 

         “Wow, Lil, I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about flying.  I’m sorry, I’ll be sure never to mention it again.  As a matter of fact, I’ll be sure never to mention anything to you again,” he whispered as he rose and sulked off. 

         As she watched his retreating form, Lily suppressed a growl.  A small voice behind her urged, “Why don’t you go take a bath, Lily?  You’ll feel better.”  Lily nodded but didn’t need to turn around to see who spoke.  The only person in the school that knew about her was the headmaster, Professor Gabriel.  Lily assumed he had been watching her and that this was his way of giving her permission to head out to the lake in the woods.  After taking her belongings back to her room, Lily struck out across the clearing, making for the dark forest on the edge of the schoolyard.