The next morning, Airya stared at herself in the only mirror she had ever known. The dull warped reflection it held did not allow the room it was in to be seen through its mirrored glass, but she could see her blurred yellow eyes staring back at her.

She touched the oval solid metal casing holding the twisted reflection as she opened the book in her hands. Pulling her hand away from the mirror, she traced her fingers down the words that had been etched into the pages of the book in some kind of orange ink. Each line held a deep grove that showed her a symbol she didn’t understand. That introduced to her multiple lines that somehow told a story. She touched the mirror again and looked at herself.

Then everything started falling into place. The language in the pages opened to her, blossoming in her mind for only her to read and understand. An imprint of the symbols and their meanings making their way into her brain.

She took a deep breath soaking it all in, and then sat down with the pages near all the other reading material on the floor. Books, pages, stones, and many other things stacked high in piles where the symbols looked close to the same. Items with language that had appeared in multiple spots in their world that held some deeper meaning that only the mirror could understand.

Airya crinkled her nose when she saw that this book was about bodies and how they functioned. Creatures with three feet were described on one page that had long gross snouts. Closing the book, she went to pick up another that she had already used the mirror for long ago. One in a completely different language it had helped her understand.

It was interesting to her how her mom had said that Stilk and his people had thrown these odd things into this room along with the mirror long ago. All to get them out of the way because the items were different and frightening. Something they didn’t understand. It wasn't until the Yellow Eyes came that someone had adventured in here and found out just what the mirror could do. But although it taught Airya more than she needed to know when it came to the skill to read all the works around her, her mom still insisted on teaching her like she had taught others in her own home world long ago.

“Airya!” Her mom called from outside the room.

Airya threw back her head and closed the second book she had wanted to dive into.

“It is time for your lessons!” Her mom called again.

With a sigh, Airya got up and went to find her mother.

Airya sat with her mom on the stone floor next to the river doing what they spent most of their days doing. Her mom held up a slab of white bark that she had written something on with a dark rock. The traces from yesterday's teachings on the slab were gone, washed away overnight by the river that ran through the temple.

"What does this say?"

"Dream, mom." Airya said, annoyed, "I haven't missed one in a long time. Can we do something else?"

"Airya, all I’m teaching you is important. You have all the time in the world to goof off later. Learning comes first."

"But my mind is all full. We do this all the time, and I was just in the mirror room," she rolled her eyes.

"Fine. Is there another subject you would rather learn right now?"

"No, I just want a break."

"Really? There is nothing?" her mom coaxed.

"Really, nothing."

"Fine. Let's go to the lake and pick some berries."

Airya jumped up and hugged her mom with glee, "Really?"

“Yes, but just his once, Airya. It won't happen again. Starting tomorrow, no more breaks when it’s time for lessons to be learned."

Ignoring her mother, Airya turned, crossed the inner temple bridge, and ran down the stairs into the grass. She stopped and looked back to see her mother taking her sweet time. Not being able to hold onto her patience any longer, Airya smiled, took in a deep breath of purifying air that rested in her lungs, then scampered away across the field to the lake. She watched her footing to make sure she did not step on any rocks like she had done the other night. Strangely, she didn't see any at all the whole way across the grass plain.

When she reached the lake, she plopped down and sunk her feet into the lake, waiting for her mom. Unable to sit still, she bounced up and down while waiting. She was so surprised that her mother was willing to take the day and do something else instead of lessons. She had never done that before.

Unless her mother had another reason for giving into her this one time. The thought made her stop bouncing for a moment. Her feet in the lake stung, cold as ice, as she curled her toes.

But when her tall mother sat next to her and put her feet in the lake too, Airya grinned and started kicking her feet. Her mother's old yellow eyes hinted at relief for only a moment before they morphed into that judging look that Airya was used to again.

"Do you feel like you’re ready to be aged again? Maybe that would help you open your mind more and you would be more willing to learn."

Airya stopped kicking, "No, I don't want to change yet. I'm not ready."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because. I don't want my friends to see me differently. I want to stay the way I am."

Her mom's chest lifted as she sucked in an agitated breath before letting it out through her teeth. “I’m sorry, Airya, but I’m not giving you a choice. I need you to learn and open your mind a little more. We will age you now and then pick berries after to cheer you up. It will not be that bad.”

Panic at changing, at becoming someone entirely different, had tears rising to the surface and burning Airya’s eyes. “But I don’t want to. I’m willing to learn. I promise!”

With another sigh, Airya’s mother put her hand on her back, “I think it will be best. It’ll be quick.”

Pulling her feet out of the water, Airya stood up, soaking the grass. She looked down at her mother with anger and hatred eating at her heart like the rats did to the berries that fell from the trees. She hated how she had no control and nowhere to go and hide. She hated how her mother always pushed her but no one else. Even Lilla’s parents just let her have fun and continue to be her five-year-old aged self. Why couldn’t her parents be that way too?

“Then why did we come out here if you were just going to drag me back to the temple!?” Airya screamed at her mother.

But her mother didn’t say a thing. Instead, she stood up and took Airya’s hand, not out of comfort, but as a demand.

It was the day she had been dreading, but had known would come. She would be forced to change. Forced to age so her mind could develop more and she could learn and understand things on a different level. She knew that it would have to happen someday, but she wished that she would have been given more warning and that it didn’t have to happen so soon.

Her stomach was queasy and unsettled, she didn't know if it was because she hadn't eaten anything or because of her fear of the unknown. Fear of not knowing who she would be after her mother forced her body to change. She liked who she was. She knew her friends did too. What if they didn't like the new her that the aging spear would change her into?

Her mother dragged her into the aging room and went to stand next to the wooden table. It was a room of nightmares for Airya because it was a room of change. Although it looked like any other room in the temple, this room made her hollow inside.

Her mother took the aging spear into her hands and turned to her.

The spear made Airya quake inside. The long wooden staff had a large Strigiform bone sharpened into a pointed spear. Numerous talons came out of the wood on each side of the rod. From beneath the coned spear on each side were two beautifully carved plates of bone silhouetting each other like a mirror, up and out in a brilliant dirty white and then into a point at the top. The middle space above the spear below the plates of bone was shaped like an upside-down heart with two small slits on each side of the bone plates. If flipped upside down, it looked like an owl's face with the outside point being its beak. Or sometimes Airya imagined it was two owls intertwined together, facing each other in a loving embrace.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She looked into her mother's worried but determined yellow eyes.

"Are you ready?" her mom asked.

Airya shook her head.

Her mom sighed, "Airya, you knew this would happen at some point. Be excited. You get to grow your mind so you can understand and learn new and more things."

"I don't want to change," Airya looked down at her bare feet.

"You won't change, Airya. You will be the same person, just a little older."

"Have you ever done it?"

"Used the aging spear on myself? No, I haven't. But I have used it on plenty of people, and they all turned out fine and the same. It’s part of life, Airya. You have to grow up at some point." Airya could hear the hinted annoyance in her mother’s voice.

"Are you going to age me a lot?" Airya asked, trying to prolong the wait.

"Not too much, but enough. Now, are you ready?" Her mom clenched the rod tighter.

"Will it hurt?"

"Airya!" her mom said, "You have done this before."

"But I don't remember," tears began to build up behind her eyes. When her mom had aged her from a baby to now, everything had not been fine. It had been such a traumatic experience that Airya had passed out and didn’t remember it.

"Airya, if you like yourself now, then you will like yourself even more when you are a little grown." Her mom moved her hands up the staff closer to the bones and spear. She turned it upside down, "Now it’s time. Hold out your hand."

Airya held it out palm up as her mom inched the top point of the spear closer to her skin, "This works both ways. I could use the middle spear by having you put your hand onto it, but I don't trust you to not pull off of it right away. So, we are going to use the top point from the plates. I’m going to put it into your hand, and yes, it will hurt for a second, but you will be fine. But you cannot pull away. I will take it away when it’s time. It won’t take long."

Airya looked to her mom's face, but her mom refused to look at hers and instead continued to lower the spear down to the top skin of her hand. There was a sharp pressure of a prick.

"Do not move."

Airya tightened her muscles in preparation as her mother pushed the large point into her skin. The force was similar to when Airya had stepped on that rock but sharper. A slicing pain that ran down her arm as her mother dug and twisted the spear even deeper into the palm of her hand, bringing blood. Airya gasped, trying to stop herself from pulling her hand away out of instinct. She tried to focus on the red warmth running from her hand onto the floor, imagining it was water from the river. She tried to ignore the growing pain in her hand muscles as they began to split apart. Her mom dug the spear deeper once more and then held it still. Airya found herself mimicking her mom’s steady breathing as the pulling and splitting pain moved up from her hand to her arm and then throughout her entire body.

She screamed.

She was being pulled apart. Everything splintering. Skin, bones, joints, and vision. Everything. Her nerves began shrieking a high-pitched hum that rang in her ears out of agony. Even the hair on the top of her head roared as her pores opened wider and painful ropes of thicker thread started stringing through too fast. Head pulsing, she tried to think of anything else, needing it to be over. Desperate to be anywhere but where she was now. She looked to her mother for comfort, but she only shook her head in frustration.

"Airya," she whispered, "You’re almost done."

Airya relaxed and searched her mom's eyes for a release. Her mom’s love for her was there, disguised as worry, but shaded in a hazy cloud of distance. Her muscles released as her mom pulled the spear out of her hand, and there was a snap. She realized she was closer to her mom's eyes than she was used to and looked down at her hand. The open sore was smaller than a moment ago, or was it that her hand was bigger? She didn't feel any different.

"Are you OK?" Her mom asked.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know, "Do I look different?"

Her mom nodded, "A little. You look like you’re about thirteen now. Your hair is longer, as expected. We can go to the river, wash off your hand, and you can look at your reflection and let me know if you want me to cut it. Do you feel different?"

Thirteen? Airya gulped, wanting to cry. That was such a huge jump in age. There was no way that she looked the same. She took a step to the door and wobbled, "Yeah.”

"It takes a bit to get used to managing your new height and weight."

She continued walking out of the room, holding onto the temple walls when she needed to. Her mom followed her patiently, letting her find her own footing. She had left the spear back in the room on the table.

Airya made it to the river in the temple and tried to sit down. It was a longer way down than she was used to. Before putting her hand in the river, she looked at her reflection, leaning over the water. Her cut stung when it was pressed into the stone to hold her up.

She let the brown wavy ends fall into the river. She shook her head for a moment, realizing that before, she would have thought that her hair falling into the river was funny and that maybe her hair needed a drink. But her first thought was not that, instead, it was simpler and a little less creative, touched with a slight amount of inconvenience.

She still had her enchanting bright yellow eyes set in perfect ovals. Her nose was still small compared to her face. Her face was longer, though, and her bones above her cheeks poked out a tiny bit more than before. She could actually see them now. It didn't look like much had changed. She just looked a little older and felt small in this body. Like her inner-self still had to grow into it.

"You ready to pick berries?"

She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway.

Her mom gave one half nod, helped her up, and started walking alongside Airya to the small lake at the bottom of the mountains. Constantly, her mom had to put her hand on Airya’s shoulder to steady her as they walked, which for no reason at all bothered and embarrassed Airya. It was forever until they got to the bottom of the mountains to the tree line that grew the green berries that Airya loved. She remembered from things her mom had said before that her mom wished they were pink instead of green and a little tarter like the crimsons she loved from their home long ago. But Airya thought they were perfect and sweet.

Silence persisted as they walked. Airya found herself unable to think or enjoy being here like she normally did. She felt wrong in her own skin, unable to escape her mind and the fact that everything felt off. Crooked. She hated how she was a stranger to herself.

The dull green berries lingered off the branches. She was actually tall enough now to get some of the berries she wouldn’t have been able to reach before. She grabbed what she could and put them on a decent-sized piece of scratchy bark that her mom had taken off one of the trees to carry them back on. She then watched her mom reach up and get the ones that were higher up and hand them to Airya to place next to hers on the bark.

The bark now full of berries, her mom picked it up and started to head back to the temple without a word to Airya.

Airya and her mom sat on the cool stones in the temple right next to the soft babble of the river. When they had gotten back, Airya had gotten the rock that her and her mom always used to smash the berries. She pushed the rock into the berries repeatedly, watching them squash into a mush of green sweet-smelling jam.

When she was done, she looked up at her mom. Her mom nodded and leaned over to dip her hand in the river and search around blindly on the side of it until she touched one of the swalak plants. Her mom grasped it, giving it a yank until the beautiful neon green plant with glowing pink tops gave way from the mud. She put it next to the berries that Airya had squashed and went for another. Taking a thinner rock, Airya used it to scoop the jam up and layer it onto the swalak.

With almost all the jam off the slab of wood and now onto the two plants, Airya chose one and rolled it into a nice tight cylinder to keep the jam inside from escaping. She brought it to her mouth and took a crispy bite. Her taste buds exploded instantly with the sweetness of the berries and then the afterthought of the swalak that brought about an earthy full flavor and gave her something to chew. Her mother did the same with the one Airya had left for her.

Smacking of big flat feet against the temple ground drew Airya's attention away from her swalak roll. It was Stilk waddling by them, walking to his room. She could tell he was trying to ignore them. Possibly irritated with himself for making so much noise when he walked. He was dressed in a rundown, softened bark tunic with many of the longest feathers Airya had ever shoved into it. He had what looked like two parts of a sharp giant beak curved and dangling from a long line of swalak that had been tied together and laid dangled around his neck. They laid on each side of his torso. His head was huge, but it looked proportionate to his short thick torso and his trunk-like muscular arms and legs. When Airya had stood beside him before, he was about as tall as she was and had not grown any taller as long as she had known him, which was as long as she could remember.

Almost making it past them uninterrupted, Stilk winced when her mom called out for him. He stopped and turned, giving Airya the meanest glare. His small beady eyes scared her, the yellow buried deep in his head under a very definitive eyebrow that looked like a large caterpillar.

"Stilk!" Her mom called out for him again.

He turned completely around to face her, clenching his fists tightly and pinching his thin chapped lips together that were placed too close to his thick long nose that ended in a bulb-like structure and didn't show his nostrils.

"Give me a second and let me come with you so we can talk!" her mom's words were rushed as she bent forward to push herself up from the ground, leaving half of her swalak roll on the wooden slab.

A stab pricked Airya’s heart. She couldn’t believe that now after her mom had made her change, she was leaving her to run after Stilk and try to entertain him the way she always did. Airya didn't understand why it wasn't obvious to her mom that Stilk only wanted to be left alone. He gave Airya one last look full of hatred before her mom looked his way. He diverted his eyes back over the river once again, paying no attention to either of them. But he did stand and wait for her mom to run to his side.

Airya watched as they began walking away together, her mom not even saying goodbye.

Frustrated, Airya flipped up the wooden slab with her finger and let her mom's swalak roll fall to the ground. A little green jam made its escape onto the grey stone. Pulling her legs into her chest, she sat there for a moment, looking at the flowing river.

Why would her mother leave her at this time? Couldn’t she tell that Airya was upset? That she was uncomfortable? That what her mom had forced her to do had put her on edge?

Wasn’t the whole reason for the berries to help Airya feel more comfortable with the transition and with herself?

The desire to get back at her mother rumbled through her. She was going to do something that she would know that her mother would hate for her to do.

She would go to the other Soloc town.

She would go across the river along the mountains to Atta.

She had never ventured that far before. She wasn’t allowed. But since her mom would rather spend time with Stilk, Airya didn't see anything wrong with going and seeing why the Solocs in that town hated them.

A rush of excitement for a new adventure flowed through Airya's veins. Or maybe it was anger mixed with the thrill at the opportunity to defy her mother and do what she had been told not to do many times. She jumped to her feet, leaving the swalak roll on the ground, and ran out of the temple, down the stairs, and into the field. She kept up her pace, running along the river nonstop, stumbling only a couple times. She hoped her mother caught her. Maybe then it would make her mom feel as empty and misunderstood as she had made Airya feel.