Ravela’s next morning thankfully didn’t start with an obnoxious petitioner and her brother. Safora didn’t show up and from Laena she learned that she was preparing to convince Ravela by doing exactly as she was told and talking things through with Markus.

Ravela would have been impressed with the following orders part if it wasn’t specifically to get something she knew she shouldn’t ask for.

So Ravela and her only remaining dutiful student ran to the opposite side of the lake.

Ravela sat down on the stone and looked at Gradjia for a while.

“Tell me about Markus, Laena.”

“What? Well, um. He is Safora’s big brother and for as long as I can remember he was always treating me like his sister. He’s very protective of his sister without coddling her. He tells her off more than her parents. Hm, well I suppose that because in school she only has him and his parents put a lot of pressure on him to keep Safora on the right path.”

Ravela listened to the girl.

“How is he toward other children? To kids that are not you or his sister?”

“Well, he isn’t like his team members. He’s smart and doesn’t need to bully some other kids to get his grades in order. He even got the other team members to stop doing that. They thrived under him. Became more honest and a different kind of team. Now they get help when they ask for it. It took some years and pushing on his own but he got the team to a point most other districts can only dream of.”

“So he stopped the bullying, hm? How did that come to pass?”

“Well, one summer I think two years ago I told him off. He took a look at himself and his friend and decided that he wanted them to change for the better. And ever since he’s been pushing hard to get everybody to be better on their own. Some quit the team because they didn’t want to change but once he got the team in line the school closed ranks with him and ever since then the mood in our district at least became way better.”

Ravela knew a sales pitch when she was given one.

“And what are his weaknesses? What are his worst characteristics? Is he a wrathful person? Violent? Does he overindulge? Does he have a bad temper? Tell me truthfully about his bad sides.” Ravela gave Laena the side eye. The reaction to her words was a downward glance. ‘So there were downsides to Markus, huh? Who could have guessed?’

Ravela got up from her bolder seat.

“If you can’t even tell me his weaknesses I must assume they are so severe that he doesn’t even qualify to be considered,” Ravela stated outright. “Now let’s spar then.”

“Wait, wait. No, it’s not like that. He’s kinda prideful. He is a bit of brag and doesn’t like to lose. He doesn’t plan that often and if he’s not on the field he is a bit clumsy.”

Ravela gave her a probing look. “That is all? No, burning ants with a magnification glass, exploding frogs with firecrackers, or killing mice for fun? No, flirting with girls who told him off? No roughhousing with his boys while sneaking out to hit the town and drinking too much?”

Laena made big eyes at Ravela and shook her head.

“Really?”

Laena seemingly tried to come up with something else but couldn’t and shook her head once again.

“Alright then, let’s spar. Again kicks and grapple. Try to get me to lose balance, make me fall, or even throw me.”

Lena looked like she wanted to sell her Markus some more but stopped herself and instead said.

“You know that isn’t fair your abilities make it impossible for me to get you off balance.”

Ravela took offense to her accusations. “Okay, listen here, little one. I haven’t used my telekinesis so far and I would tell you before I used it in our spars. You may be gifted, you may be a fast learner, but don’t think for a minute you are fighting me giving it my all. I would wipe the floor with you, Laena and it wouldn’t even be close. How about you stop making excuses and try a little harder?”

Laena stood there, mouth agape, ego bruised, and speechless. Seconds later she went on a ferocious attack trying her hardest to make Ravela fall, get a hold of her, or at least trip her up. Laena failed to do so for a full twenty minutes in which Ravela put her on her butt more than once.

The spar culminated in Ravela calling it off after those twenty minutes. For the rest of the round, both ran quietly beside each other. Laena without a doubt would need to nurse her bruised ego at breakfast and Ravela would need to consider what she had learned about Markus just now. The information she had wrung from Laena would make it back to the siblings after breakfast. There was no question about it. Ravela wondered what their reaction would be.

They returned just before breakfast. No sign of any men watching the house hidden in the bushes. Ravela told Detective Gell as much, he took the report with a hint of relaxation on his shoulders.

Ravela changed her clothes and got to her spot at the breakfast table. She was glad that the police officers and their crown witness ate in their room.

Laena made some excuse to Ma stone after eating surprisingly little and made her way toward her cheerleader training to conspire with Safora and Markus.

Ravela was irked by the blatant effort of these teenagers. At the same time, her thoughts returned to Markus and what she had learned of the boy so far.

After breakfast, she once again was left to her own devices. The library room gave her the peace she craved. Pushing her troubles aside, Ravela pulled out her sketchbook.

Laena might not need a visor, as Ravela hypothesized that Laena’s perception would suffer from frames or glass between her and the world.

Tapping the paper, Ravela thought about the least intrusive way to implement a visor. If she made a retractable screen that would be hidden in the cheek plates… Ravela scribbled a flexible thin screen.

Ravela got giddy just putting these things on paper. She dreamed of a workshop where she could make her sketches into reality. Her mind burst with a million machines she’d need or want in her dream workshop. She began planning her workshop. It grew ever bigger and soon Ravela had an epiphany. She would need a lot of space.

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Ravela put the pen she was using between her upper lip and nose and leaned back in her chair.

“Hmmm. Hmm. Hmmmm.” She hummed. Ravela would need a home base. A place all to herself. Secluded and away from prying eyes. Maybe, Ravela thought, a place outside of the city would be ideal to create a base properly isolated from neighbors and authorities.

She filed these thoughts away for another day. All of these ideas were future music. Pulling out her geography curriculum, Ravela groaned.

“Ugh, boring stuff. States, rivers, mountains, and blergh.” Ravela complained to nobody in particular.

Ravela got up and went into the library to get an atlas from the wide variety of geography books. She couldn’t wait to never study regions and states ever again. To her, nothing could be more boring than geography. Even mowing grass held more entertainment value than learning facts about the way a certain landscape was formed.

Time seemed to slow with every passing moment. If Ravela had a bit less control over herself her entire learning session would be accompanied by one long groan.

And just like that, another day neared its end. As Ravela left the library she kept looking for hints of an ambush by Safora and her brother.

To her relief, nobody showed up. Ravela stopped in the middle of the park. Should she be relieved or worried? She didn’t quite know. Her experience with teenagers was limited, or maybe she just couldn’t remember what she knew when she needed it most.

‘Curse this memory full of holes and unknowns!’

She would trade some of her knowledge potions to remember the life of the body she possessed right now fully.

There were no strangers in the park or around the house. Ravela entered through the front door and spotted Detective Stouts in the hallway sitting on a chair glancing over a folded-back newspaper. He raised one eyebrow wordlessly asking the question he was most interested in.

“No strangers in sight,” Ravela reported from her scouting mission. Detective Stouts nodded and flipped his newspaper back up. Ravela could tell he wasn’t a man of many words.

Ravela made her way up the stairs and could hear the witness, as she had dubbed him, talk Detective Gell into a concussion by rapid-firing of all his worries and changing topics and having doubts. Detective Gell and Stouts were not to be envied for their troubles.

Ravela entered her room and first checked that her suitcase hadn’t been moved during her absences. Thankfully the pen she leaned against the suitcase from the wall side of her bed was still in its spot. Ravela hadn’t the slightest idea how she would even begin to address this betrayal of trust with the teenagers. She didn’t expect them to do something this stupid to their multifold benefactor, but one never knew.

Sitting down on her bed and sighing, Ravela put both of her hands on her face. This situation wasn’t good for her state of mind. She had to solve this problem in a way that would guarantee that she wouldn’t sit here a month later.

Dinner was about to be served and Ravela made her way down the stairs. Letting Detective Stouts pass by with the dinner for his colleague and his ward first, Ravela walked into the dining room.

“Oh, Ramiel. Good that you’re here now. I have to leave you and Laena for dinner today. A friend of mine passed on and long story short their wife needs someone and that someone is me. Oh, what an awful, awful day. Laena, be a darling and get Mr. Roice his dinner. Goodbye, Ramiel.”

Ravela nodded her silent agreement to everything Ma Stone said. She could still hear Ma Stone trying to calm herself down on her way down the hall.

Ravela turned back to Laena. “That is the moment where a good granddaughter offers her distraught grandmother to escort her to her friend. Do you hear that? That is the sound of an important moment passing by.” Ravela tried to get the teenager out of the house to have a peaceful dinner.

Laena put down her plate and ran after her grandmother. “Ma, wait. I’ll escort you over to your friend. Ramiel said he’d be fine without me.”

Ravela didn’t hear the rest as she took her plate to the kitchen and filled it with a ladle of fruit soup that already passed her on the way down the stairs.

Peace and quiet were what the doctor ordered for Ravela today.

As she sat down, Detective Stouts returned to get his dinner.

“Today is open kitchen day.” Ravela greeted the man. The good detective took it with his usual nod and no comment.

To her surprise, once the detective had his plate filled, he sat down at the table. Ravela welcomed him with a curt nod since the man seemed to appreciate the silence more than the conversation. So Ravela indulged him and they quietly ate together.

Inevitably Ravela finished her dinner before the detective and left him after one last nod on her way out.

Once inside her room, Ravela took off her ring and went to the bathroom. Looking at her reflection, she realized that her eyes were still overflowing with the same amber brightness. A month had passed since she experimented with the crystals and the effect persisted after all this time.

She wondered how this energy inside her would finally be reduced. She missed small amber orbs inside their black sea. If someone saw her like this they’d probably think her a divine aberration instead of an alien species. Ravela considered whether she should use her current appearance to declare to the teens that there would be no further experiments.

She laughed and her mirror image laughed back at her. Both scorning her for the childish thought. Like her problems could be solved by a stern ‘No.’.

Drawing herself a bath Ravlea kept studying her face closely. If she looked carefully there still was a hint left of her irises in the amber glow, but it was so faint and unsatisfying that to Ravela it didn’t count.

The bath water was warm a soothing, yet it failed to soothe her troubles.

Safora and Laena had thrown a wrench into her plans for a new start and now she was stuck dealing with demanding teenagers who did understand nor seemed to care for the risks they took on her back.

“Not that I had a good plan, to begin with.” Ravela mocked her take-it-as-it-comes attitude. Things had to change, drastically.

After drying herself off Ravela looked one last time into the mirror over the sink before she put Ramiel’s ring back on. She went to bed with worries on her mind, but those didn’t haunt her dreams. Instead, she dreamed of children laughing.

Ravela sat amidst others like her. Pointy ears but white eyes. She watched on as she played with them. Throwing a ball between each other. Ravela felt warm cozy feelings warm her dreams.

“Sister. Sister.”

Ravela turned and saw a little girl running toward her. They embraced with laughter and genuine cheer. They walked away from the other children and sat by a small pond.

Ravela was weaving braids into her sister's hair, humming a melody she recently hummed to herself.

Tears streamed down Ravela’s face as she turned on her bed.

“Ombia. Beloved sister.” Ravela whispered.

But in her dream those words didn’t cross her lips instead they talked about the braids Ravela weaved for her sister. Ombia looked herself over critically in the mirrored surface of the pond. Ravela pressed her cheek on her sister’s and said. “If you don’t like them I can start over, you know.”

Ravela saw her face in the pond and nearly woke up from the shock.

Her eyes were as white as her sister’s. More than that their faces were identical to one another. Were they perhaps twins? She couldn’t understand but the dream went on and Ravela had to leave her confusion behind. Clinging on to the dream, not willing to let of her vision.

Family, something Ravela always wanted was coming to her in her dreams. Her heart ached.

*Bzech*

A zing rang out, as an energy blast zoomed past her head. The scene of her and her sister turning into concrete dust whirling from a shot being fired.

She hid behind a pillar that was dangerously close to getting collapsed by the next shot.

Beside her at the next pillar, a young man was firing back at the people that barely missed her.

There was a lot of cursing all around.

The tears on Ravelas cheeks dried a fury filled her heart. Stupid warehouse raiding with her the gang she got herself into for survival.

Stealing rations to survive.

Ravela felt the rage of her young self as the private army gunned down her only way of survival in this shit world. Looking down at one of her dead friends, she picked up his pistol. It was garbage, but far better to have with her than her current weapon. She dropped the piece of pipe and slid across the floor to the next best cover.

The curses turned into pleading and whimpering. The guards took no prisoners, so Ravela decided she would respond in kind. Sneaking around using her small size, the cover, and rows of shelves to maneuver between the mercs lines.

Placing a shot to the neck there. Slipping through the shelf there. Coming back later to steal a grenade from the dead merc. Used it after sneaking through to the other side of the warehouse.

She wished she had dreamed of something else but the scene replayed without mercy. The emotions in her heart no longer aligned with her dream self.

But the dream didn’t change. Instead, it went on to its grim conclusion.

Ravela tried to escape alone after murdering every guard in the warehouse. She jumped back into the sewer pipe her gang had used to gain entree to this treasure trove turned graveyard.

She carried all the rations she could manage. When she came out of the other end of the sewer piper she found herself surrounded by mercs that were armed and armored to their teeth. She felt her jaw drop thinking she met her end. Lasers all trained on her

And just as she remembered a voice swelling with authority and the certainty that their order would be followed said: “Hold your fire. This one, I want alive.”

Ravela opened her eyes. It was too early for her morning run, but she refused to fall back asleep with this imbalance in dreams.

“Ombia. I have a sister. Ombia, where are you?” She didn’t know why but the tears began to well up and her heart contracted painfully. She had never known such love for anyone. Never expected to feel this terrible over a stranger in a dream. She sobbed she felt nothing but envy for the woman she possessed. And yet the sadness tore her apart. This wasn’t fair. ‘How dare she have what I couldn’t?! That woman was gone and yet she felt more love and had a better life than I ever had. I even use her name, couldn’t I at least have dreamt my name?’

Ravela balled up around her pillow coiling around it like a protective mother. Dreaming sucked, Ravela decided.