Trist of a Tale pt.2

“Trist!”

My mother calls over from the table,

“Stop gaggling at the girl and come inside you creep!”

The girl giggles at the last comment and chimes in with a smooth but higher pitch voice,

“Really Trist, come sit! I don’t bite.”

She finishes her statement with a wink and another laugh at my expense that is shared by my mother. I try to gather myself and enter the home but as I do so I feel like I’m walking through a fog made of molasses and my mind begins to weaken alongside me.

“Stella, why did your eye shift? There’s no one like you around is there?” My mother says this while almost jumping out of her seat. The girl’s right eye had indeed shifted to a violet color and it looked about the room, finally resting onto me. My mother’s eyes following along with Stella’s and as they looked at me she gasps and tears begin to well up into her eyes, but Stella continues to look at me in a similar way that she looked at the well.

“Mother, what’s wrong?” I ask her, “Why is she looking at me like that?”

I take a couple of steps back and then turn my attention to the girl.

“And who in the world are you?”

She continues to smirk at me and turns to my exasperated mother.

“He is the thing I’m here for Penn, sorry.”

My strong, oppressive, and emotional rock of a mother began sobbing and falling to her knees at the table at those words. Then Stella continued speaking,

“I will have to take him it seems.”

“Why do I have to go with you? Why are you looking at me like that? Why is Mother crying?”

I manage to sputter out while thousands of questions ran through my head so fast it would make Marion seem like a slow speaker. Stella then walked towards me and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

“How long has your right eye been violet-colored?”

With that, my mind came to a halt abruptly.

“What?”

I think back on what I looked like in the stream by the house, a hazel set of eyes. Yes, hazel. No violet. She must be confused.

“I don’t have a violet eye! I have hazel eyes, like my mother.”

As I stand there in utter disbelief at this girl's commentary on my body she pulls out a small and ornate looking silver hand mirror from the pack slung across the chair she was sitting on previously.

“Take a look for yourself.”

She then reaches out and hands me the mirror. I give her a look of concern as it looked too rich for a wanderer like her to own before looking back at my reflection.

“Probably a thief of some skill…”

I tell myself before really looking at my face, same familiar nose, same messy light brown hair, same dimple on my right side cheek and not my left, same hazel and violet eye. I pause there for a moment, I look again, nose, hair, dimple, hazel and violet eye. As I start to stare at this version of myself I don’t recognize my breathing pace quickens significantly.

“What’s going on here? Why do I have a violet eye as well?”

I look at my mother hoping for answers but instead, Stella speaks up.

“As you can see Penn, he has the gift and the potential.”

My mother looks back at me with sorrow in her eyes and takes a deep breath, as if to calm herself instead. She turns away from us both and walks to the stairway entrance before stating.

“I will pack his things then.”

I am shocked. She would let me be taken away?

“Why are you letting her take me? Why am I being taken?”

I cry out, desperate for an answer for the quickly devolving situation I found myself in. Stella pipes up first.

“You don’t get a choice kid, the world had chosen people like us to be the ones to make history. That eye is a sign of a greater destiny in store for you.”

She says it so matter-of-factly that I barely catch the twinge of sadness in her expression before she continues.

“Keep packing Penn, we need to get this boy out of this town before sun up.”

She takes the mirror from my hand and puts it back into her bag, taking a look about this room while she does so.

“Wait, we are having to leave tonight as well?”

I stammer out in disbelief. Stella nods her head and gives me almost an annoyed glance over her shoulder.

“Of course we do, did you not see that well cracking under the weight of your latent magical power? You gotta be taught to control that kid, until then we keep moving.”

The verbal jab takes the air out of me leaving me stunned there for a few seconds before I sulk up the stairs to where my mother was already packing my belongings. I can smell the roasted potatoes, lamb and thyme coming from the stew she had made for our dinner tonight but I head upwards knowing there wouldn’t be time for dinner.