Written: 7/27/23
Word Count: 1,450

My inner peace squashed under the chilling cheerfulness from the other side of the door, I let my shoulders droop. Just a little. Just for one blasted second.

I turned the long, red handle, its shine doing nothing to quell the sudden weight of my legs as I fought to move them across the threshold.

Headmaster Ralph's office wasn't red. It had probably been red before, under a different Headmaster's reign. But this Headmaster had been here for longer than the twenty-four years I'd been alive, so I guess he had a right to change the scenery from making his eyes bleed every time he blinked.

So it was white. From the cracked, leather loveseat, to the sweeping drapes. Each book spine along the built-in, white shelves was covered in a white paper filament. Each picture frame sitting in a row on the edge of his, you guessed it, white desk, were white. It was all white. Even the ceiling fan. Even the blazing dangly things to control the pressure of the fan tinkled in white pearls that clinked and clanked against one another. The only background noise in a room that was effused in nothing else but white.

It scratched at my ears, the silence so loud I felt I could actually die from it.

"Hullo, Charlotte," the Ice Elf smiled, those pointed teeth patterned after spears or bears or some other yewing thing.

The weight in my legs refused to take me much further than the doorway. They simply gave up trying.

"Headmaster." I dipped my head, unable to curtsy given the unfortunate situation of my limbs. "Have I done something to upset you?"

Headmaster Ralph raised his furry white brows. The only way one could distinguish his eyebrows from his skin was their fluffiness, sticking off his face. Old and wizened, Headmaster Ralph had no choice but to dress in the long, silk-like robes of his position. One single red stain amidst all the white, the inhabitant of the fabric so ghastly pale as to have lost all his blood and pooled it on the robes to give them their color.

"Charlotte," the Headmaster said, his voice like a cold breath on the edge of a dark lake. There was an intimacy, a whispering secrecy about it, one that chilled me to the very core of my soul. "When have I ever been upset with you?"

My lips puckered up against my will, giving the Ice Elf my unwanted reaction that simultaneously gave him pleasure.

"I'm...I'm sorry, sir," I said, my voice thin and weedy like the grass beneath that dying tree of mine. "I, uh, if you just tell me who I need to apologize to..."

"No, Charlotte," Headmaster Ralph shook his head, the white beard hanging off his chin pointing about stiffly as he moved, "this is a new situation. A new, unprecedented, and...sorrowful situation. Please, dear, take a seat. I would think you should be sitting for what I am about to say."

New. The word new could only precede the more silent echo of "orders."

"My—my father," I whispered, clearing my throat grossly. "Does my father have new orders for me, sir?"

I wondered what was taking the elve this long. No way had he intended for his renowned Failure to actually finish university. It's not like I was going to inherit any part of the 11th Ring's throne. Once my brother, Niall, took over as Head of Transportation and Roads, he would need every bit of affluence and influence Father could provide him. No room for the failure of a High Elf.

Will he send me...to Mother?

Tears burned at my nose, but I was helpless to resist them as they puddled in the corners of my eyes. All these years, forcing me to endure school at every turn, forcing me to stay locked up in this cage that made no yewing sense...all for what? All just to ship me off to the rehabilitation retreat he'd hidden Mother away? Couldn't get much further away than the Western Sector unless it was the underwater palace of the Mermaids.

Why did I have to endure any of this at all, if that was always his plan? Why hadn't he sent me away after the first time I lost control? Or the eighth time? Or the twenty more times after that, before I finally realized I was the weird one? It really was just me.

The Loon of the East, coming into her own.

"Oh, Charlotte, don't tell me you've already heard about Rosetta?" The Headmaster's cool voice wasn't cruel. No. How could one be cruel when they didn't care one way or the other?

I sniffled, eyeing the Ice Elf in his loud robes. Then, I sniffled again. "What? What does my aunt have to do with sending me away?"

"So you don't know," Headmaster Ralph concluded, his lips puckering within his beard. "But you got the other half. I really shouldn't be surprised that news travels so fast these days, but I admit it. I am a bit shocked. I didn't think you had any friends who would tell you things heard through the grapevine."

I stayed silent, waiting for the elve to move on. Really, though, Headmaster Ralph was spot on, but he already knew that. So why bother? Harassment was a Loon's cross to bear.

"Please, Beckett." The Headmaster stood from leaning against the pearly-white ledge of his burdensome desk. He gestured to the loveseat, his tone gentler than I'd ever heard it. It didn't feel...cold, this time.

I shoved one foot in front of the other, balancing on my legs like they were made of putty. I hadn't worked with putty in years, but the wobbling was truly reminiscent of those memories. Shaping something one way, then the other. Shape it too hard and the whole thing toppled as if struck from a great gale of wind. So fragile, so weak.

Funny, my heart was pounding a rhythm in my ears. Why was it doing that? Were my senses kicked into overdrive again? But why?

I felt like I could hardly hear through the rushing of my blood moving throughout my body. I usually didn't focus inward when my senses exploded, so I didn't think my usual method of tossing off each noise like a ring would work. I wouldn't want to accidentally force my heart to stop moving, would I? My sensory control was such a mess, I couldn't say for sure I wasn't a harm to myself.

Yet another thing to thank Father for.

Headmaster Ralph sat in a plush, white chair across from the loveseat, the tiniest, flimsiest table sitting between the two pieces of furniture. Steepling his fingers in front of him, he leaned forward, bending in a way that the elverly really shouldn't do. What if he got stuck like that?

"You are leaving Elmhurst immediately, upon Head Carlisle's orders. Your father feels it is unnecessary for you to finish your final semester here at the university. You have demonstrated capabilities more than your original station, and your father is proud of this. He wishes to give you your first challenge, though it comes with more than a little weight. You see, Charlotte, a terrible tragedy has fallen upon your family, and your father has allocated you to deal with it."

I wet my lips, blood trickling back to me from cracks in their flesh I didn't know were there. The roaring, rushing inside my ears couldn't be quelled. I listened to the Headmaster as if a waterfall sat between us, but eventually, I realized I needed to speak. I needed to grant the Ice Elf permission to finish it.

"Go on."

Headmaster Ralph sighed, deflating a bit within the vibrant red robes like a party trick. Like a vanishing rabbit amidst a pile of scarves. The Ice Elf's crystal-colored eyes suddenly looked more wrinkled than the last time I'd been pulled into his office for a tongue-lashing. What had it been? Getting in trouble with some girls from my Warpology class? A small explosion, an unhappy father, and the Headmaster assigned to take care of it.

Yeah. That'd been, what, a month ago? How could Headmaster Ralph's face change so much in that short a time?

"It's Rosetta—your aunt, Rosetta," he clarified, as if we hadn't been talking about the only Aunt Rosetta in my life all this time. "There's been a terrible tragedy at her clinic. She's—she's been killed by robbers, it seems. Your father wishes for you to oversee finalizations of her property, will, and resources. And, of course, oversee the...arrangements...for her burial. You leave immediately. Take only what you can carry."