*Five years ago*

Snow fell gently to the forest floor all around the log cabins, earthen houses, and the eclectic smattering of more modern buildings throughout Oakheart. The government had a presence here, to be sure, but this night was for the miners, the loggers, the farmers, and the shepherds. At that time it would be quite easy to walk in almost any direction and find untamed lands on which a flock could graze. In one house, full of those who embraced this bucolic treasure, children were opening presents. Emilia had made a trip to Jarion this year, so the gifts were wrapped in red and green paper, just like they were supposed to be in the stories. Earth traditions died hard, especially in families like Emilia’s. Looking at it all set down around a tree Darin had felled, lit by mana bulbs of a dozen colors, the children marveled.

Ariel felt confident that she had been very good this year, so she didn’t need to rush towards the presents. Instead, full of anticipation, she insisted that little Isaac - barely school age now - open his presents first.

The boy perked up, looked for his father’s smiling nod of approval, then hurried over to the largest box. He didn’t quite take to the tradition of tearing the paper to shreds, though - instead, opting to pull off each piece of tape patiently. The boy’s bouncing on his knees as he worked was the clearest sign of his excitement. No one said anything about the delay - that was just Isaac’s way of doing things.

Inside the wrapping was a large cardboard box and within that, a bicycle. It was purple - the boy’s favorite color. It was clearly second hand, but Emilia had worked hard to find one in good condition, and Darin had meticulously polished off the superficial rust and touched up the paint. It wasn’t perfect - the family didn’t own almost anything that fit that description. But Isaac hugged it - and then wrapped his arms around his father that smiled with pride.

Then, there was a gift from his mother. Wrapped in glittering paper, the first thing he saw as he opened up the gift was the beautiful form of a dolphin. It was cover art - one of several books about marine life. Darins’ friend was an assistant librarian in Jarion, and he had recommended a variety of fiction and nonfiction titles that she’d sought out, from encyclopedias to adventure stories.

A number of children - including little Ariel, nearly vibrating with anticipation a few feet away - might have considered this a boring present. But for Isaac, for whom internet access was a limited commodity and the ocean was the greatest fascination, this was just right. He hugged his mother, who tousled his hair with fond affection.

Then, there was a last package. Ariel waited with excitement as he opened the package. A backpack, brand new from Jarion thanks to a clearance sale - and on the front of it, Ariel had sewn in a design his favorite flower - the pinkish ‘curious lotus’. It’d taken a lot of work, and she’d spent a lot of her own money, hard earned on yard chores, but…

“I don’t want it,” Isaac said, his voice weak. The room went quiet - and then quickly devolved into the children arguing back and forth before screaming at each other.

***

“He’s such a brat!” Ariel spat. She was pacing back and forth across the hardwood floor loudly. Darin sighed. He’d landed himself in a rough situation - he’d felt sure that Isaac would like the present - but if he didn’t, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Christmas shouldn’t be a chore, least of all for the children.

“Ari-girl, take it easy. Maybe we just don’t know the whole story.”

“What story?” the girl said, sitting down and crossing her arms. “He just hates me. He hasn’t been playing with me since he started school.

“Not at all?”

“I mean, not really,” Ariel said. “He just plays along. Tells me to do whatever I want,” she continued, tearing up. “I think he’s just bored of me.”

Darin pulled up a chair behind his daughter, starting to braid her hair. This was something that he’d picked up from Emilia - a few moments into playing with it, she seemed to relax back into the chair, though her little arms remained crossed. Ariel had gotten his dark skin, but her mother’s hair and eyes - Xexen babies were that way. It was always interesting to beautiful mix a child would get. Her hair was a little curly, but wove together easily enough.

“Isaac isn’t bored of you, Ari. You’ve been to kindergarten. It isn’t that exciting.”

Ariel stifled her laugh, and Darin grinned. “You can laugh, Ari-girl. School is important, but it isn’t something we can’t joke about.”

Still, the moment passed, and she was silent for a long time.

“Why doesn’t he like me anymore, dad?”

Darin gave the issue a genuine moment of consideration.

“I don’t know why he’s acting like this. He usually isn’t very moody. But you know how many times Uncle Lamont and I have fought?”

The girl didn’t answer, so he continued.

“At least a hundred. To start with, there’s the time he set me up with… no, your mother wouldn’t want me telling you that story. Anyway, I was real mad. Wouldn’t forgive him for weeks. But that’s how it is with siblings. When most people grow up, they start falling into a role in public. Pretending. Following a polite script. Saying stuff they don’t mean because it’s easy. But with brothers? It’s not like that. You yell at each other. Cry at each other. And that’s how you get to see a person’s guts - how they really are.”

“I don’t want to see his guts. That’s gross.”

Darin laughed. “I don’t know about that. You’re one of the most honest folks I know. I’ll bet you’ll be blunt no matter how old you get.” He tousled the girl’s hair, which she suffered with a small grumble. “And I’m glad for it. Just… try to give your brother a chance. A person you really know, is the only kind of person you can really trust down to your bones.”

Ariel just sat there, not saying anything, but the little girl was trying hard to listen right. Empathic integration - the magical Xexen ability to feel the emotions of others as their own - was a double-edged sword with kids. If a parent felt dependable, they’d listen, but if they were fake, kids would disregard them entirely. When Darin figured that out just right, being open and honest and patient, Ariel hung on his words.

“Why was he so upset?” she finally asked.

“That’s the right question, but I really don’t have a guess. At times like this, though, you have to think of what’s most important. The disagreements? Our regrets? They don’t matter. I love Isaac. So to me, what matters more than anything in the world is making sure he’s okay. What do you think?”

“I wanna help him too,” the little girl said distantly.

“Good girl. We’ll both have to watch and listen. A quiet kid like Isaac will still tell us, just probably not all at once. Can you help me with that, Ari-girl?”

The child scrunched up her face, like her mother did when she was thinking, before nodding. Darin felt overcome by gratitude. He was so, so blessed - now he just had to figure out what was making his son hurt.

***

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do anything with the backpack?” Emilia asked her son as he shouldered the schoolbag he had gotten so down about. “You don’t have to like a gift.”

“It’s great,” Isaac said unconvincingly. Emilia frowned, but gave him a kiss and wished him a good day at school. She didn’t have any more tolerance for bratty behavior than her parents did, her being the youngest of five. But Isaac wasn’t a brat. He was an earnest, quiet kid. Her only clue so far was that he’d been eating more at dinner recently, clearly ravenous. She’d taken that as a good thing, that maybe he’d hit a growth spurt, but now she wondered. Whatever was bothering him, she hoped he’d just tell her soon - or that she could put the pieces together.

***

Isaac made his way to school, and for a little while, everything was fine. He went through class, listening as the teacher taught about language, then math, then science. Biology was the focus today, and Ms. Siranosian was passionate about the subject.

“It’s usually risky for an animal to be too focused on an energetically expensive trait. Take the Terran hummingbird - it can move in any direction with its rapidly flapping wings letting it hover, but it pays dearly for it. A hummingbird can starve to death in hours when food isn’t abundant.”

Objectively, the lesson was… ambitious. This wasn’t uncommon in little remote towns. They couldn’t offer pay competitive with bigger cities, so the teachers tended to be an eclectic bunch with quirks that might or might not mean a bunch of children sleeping through their lessons. Even Isaac, an unusually good student, was confused. But her enthusiasm connected and resonated with him, so he listened the best he could.

“Now, take the Learsian myrde. Its evolution invests it into one singular thing - sharp outer feathers. If you look at the DNA of a myrde, there’s nothing that makes it special. Combine the heavy feathers with its emphasis on dive-bomb attacks, and the myrde shouldn’t be able to find enough food to sustain this lifestyle.”

“However, there’s one crucial difference. The souls of myrdes are magically active. And that changes everything. Their muscles are stronger than they should be for their bulk and energy use, so they can afford the expensive cost of flying up high to attack. With their intuitive magic, they can propel their powerful feathers as projectiles, allowing them to hunt from a distance in a way few predators can. Their magical nature makes the impossible mundane for them - and as a result, they are the dominant predators of all known deepnight forests, instead of being a largely irrelevant overspecialized hunter.”

“The myrde is illustrative of how magic changes lives. How many dozens of cures have been developed in the last hundred years by nanoparticles with delayed-cast transmutations on them? They can get into corners of the body and activate at just the right time in a way that’s impossible otherwise! And what about the explosive innovations in overnight housing? With spatial manipulation, nature magic, and the incredible Magnetic Resonance spell, it’s possible, if expensive, to get a well-insulated log cabin with electrical outlets up and running in a single day! What the myrde tells us - as magical beings - is to challenge what’s possible. Find your ‘sharp feathers’ - that one thing you can’t give up on, no matter the cost. You just might find it less impossible than you think.”

A boy in the back of the classroom raised his hand, and Ms. Siranosian called of him excitedly.

“Yes, Arslan?”

“Ms. Sirasan, is it snack time yet?”

She sighed. “Yes, Arslan, I suppose it is.” The principal was right; Ms. Siranosian thought. They needed to get someone else to cover Andrew’s former class. She’d thought she could tone her enthusiasm down, but whenever she got to a topic that made her excited, she’d just run her mouth. She wanted these kids to be excited about magic. She’d missed that boat herself, but if one of them put in the painstaking hours a day it took to build a good foundation, they’d be likely to find incredible success. If they climbed high enough, maybe they could challenge the systems that kept them poor in the first place. But she didn’t know the first thing about how to reach them.

But even though no one in the classroom properly understood the diatribe, at least one child was inspired that day, more by empathic integration than anything she said. He could tell how much his teacher cared about the magic, and the things it made possible. She had talked about medicine. His parents had said good things about medicine - his mommy might be dead if not for doctor that had helped him be born. Maybe Isaac would be a doctor when he grew up.

He walked through the halls still thinking about the class, poking at words he could remember but didn’t know what they meant. He’d tried to take good notes. Maybe mommy could help him find them in the dictionary. He wasn’t very good at spelling, but she was a good guesser.

“Hey, short stack!”

Isaac cringed, walking faster. Maybe the loud voice booming down the hall wasn’t directed at him. He was close to where the hall split. If he could just get away -

The boy stopped like he’d hit a brick wall. His pack straps pulled on him without any give, so finally, he turned around.

The boy holding his pack, Big Ben, loomed over Isaac. He was in sixth grade to Isaac’s kindergarten, but to Isaac, it seemed he either must have started school late or hit a growth spurt, as he towered over even his own friends, glaring at Isaac in a circle. Ben’s tank top showed strong muscles shaped in the fields, which made Isaac wonder why he needed to take time coming after him. He had things to do. But he was here. Isaac swallowed hard.

“Why’d you ignore me, short stack?”

“I didn’t realize you were talking to me,” Isaac said unconvincingly.

“I don’t like being lied to,” Ben said.

“You should take his lunch money as punishment for lying!” a blonde boy said.

“Hey man, maybe we should just split. Our lunch isn’t that long. I don’t want to be late back to class,” said a boy with dark, wavy hair and a farmer’s tan like Ben.

Ben turned and stared daggers at him, standing half a head above and staring into his eyes with shoulders squared. He didn’t say anything, but farmer’s tan looked away first. Then, Ben looked over Isaac’s bag, pulling it away from Isaac’s hands to inspect.

“Nice bag,” he said with genuine appreciation. Then, his eyes landed on the lotus, and he scowled. “I thought I told you boys aren’t supposed to like flowers.”

Isaac’s eyes went wide with fear, and Ben gave a predator’s grin. In many places, the children of Learsi would come to find bullies who acted out of insecurity - a lack of confidence in their core identity or suffering in their personal life that caused them to lash out. Big Ben was not one of these people. Empathic integration normally served an intuitive function in Xexens - people who could feel each other’s emotions would often understand each other and cooperate better, forming a positive feedback loop of mutual admiration. However, a parasitic relationship was equally possible. Ben loved the way his peer’s dread and subservience tickled his brain, and he did everything he could to chase that feeling, finding just the right corners of the school with just the right quiet victims. There were some teachers that couldn’t be bothered to get involved in a children’s ‘disagreement’ - and with his unusually strong empathy, Ben could tell intuitively who they were.

“Maybe I should take this off as a favor,” Ben said, fingering the stitching of Isaac’s flower. “I don’t think the girls will take a second look at a loser with flowers on his bag.”

Isaac’s eyes flashed with something different this time, and in an unbelievable moment, he had grabbed the bag, pulling it by the straps out of Big Ben’s hands. Ben blinked. Even if he’d only been paying half attention, a boy like that should be puny. Not strong enough to take anything from him. Ben snatched for the bag, but Isaac ran. The little boy didn’t get far, tripping over the blonde kid’s extended foot. He curled up around the bag protectively, what he remembered of his teacher’s words booming in his head.

Find that one thing you can’t give up on.

Meanwhile, this was the part where Ben would normally back off. Ben’s empathic integration and thus, his ability to read people, was overdeveloped. He had a sense of what he could get away with - what many teachers would overlook to avoid the hassle of paperwork and angry parents. But Big Ben was still reeling from the fact that this little nothing, this little shit, had gotten one over on him.

“Get up, little buddy,” he said, his angry voice contrasting the words. When Isaac didn’t move, he kicked him in the ribs. Isaac landed in a heap a couple of feet away from the bag, eye overflowing with tears.

“Give it back! That’s a gift from my sister!” Isaac screamed, crying openly.

Ben glared daggers as the little shit crawled towards him, towards the bag. The kid with the Farmer’s tan walked towards Ben, trying to talk him down. Ben swung and hit him in the chin, dropping him with a single punch. Yelling filled his ears. Were they all such fucking cowards? He’d show them all who’s boss. He brought his leg back to kick the little shit grabbing for his backpack, then flinched as something hard hit his head. A history book? What the -

He turned just in time to catch Ariel’s punch in his stomach, staggering from the force of it.