"It's not even the new year and they are already trying to kill us," Niska groaned, slumping forward over her workbooks. She let out a loud groan or frustration and lightly head-butted the table, as though it was going to magically teleport her somewhere else entirely. Believe it not, sudden teleportation is not a thing (no, my bell doesn't count).

"If you give yourself a concussion, I'm gonna leave ya 'ere," Joel said, not even looking up from his textbook. It was like he could see through his eyelids or something, seriously creepy.

"Wow, you're a great friend," Niska replied.

The three of us had stationed ourselves in the Library on Thursday after school in an attempt to battle through the rising amount of work. Not only was Mrs Reynolds piling on the work, much to everyone's annoyance, our other teachers had also whacked up the workload. Something about getting through our GCSE's? I dunno. If you ask me, the whole thing was an unnecessary amount of stress and I wanted nothing more than to use my Magic to solve it. I thought the workshop got pretty busy around this time, but school was a whole other level of crazy.

It was times like this when I wished I hadn't made the promise to Granny and I could actually use my Magic without the risk of being caught out. Using Magic would have made the homework deal a thousand times better, just a wave of my hand and the whole thing would be fixed, for a short time anyway. One of the problems wish school was the school work, of course, there were the early nights which sucked, but the work, when it got on top of you, was ridiculous. In a way, it tilted my decision slightly. If I stayed, the workload would get worse, if I went home it would all be relaxing and chilling in front of the TV. That sounded so much better.

Then again, it wouldn't have been too much of a stress if Papa had let me work in the workshop closer to Christmas. That way I would know what stress felt like.

"Snap out of the daydream, Kenz, you better start on that essay for Mr Collins. You are his top student after all," Niska joked. She had been hooked on me being Mr Collins' favourite since I won the Halloween art competition and it was beginning to get annoying.

"Shut up, you haven't started the essay either," I pointed out, pulling the sheets with the details for the essay out of my bag.

"He knows I lack any sort of skill, so I can hand in a tacky essay," she shrugged.

"You know it doesn't work like that. You're supposed to be getting better with your essays, not falling behind," Joel added in.

"Silence. I'm not artistically gifted in any way, shape or form. The essay is simply a critical piece on the work we did in class. I through some paint onto the paper and called it art, not much to it. Unlike Little Miss Arty over here who made a plan. For Art!"

"I wouldn't call it a plan, more like ideas scribbled down on some paper in the space of five minutes."

"Whatever, it still counts."

Our recent Art assignment had been to create something outlandish, unique and obscure but at the same time, in your face and as obvious as Rudolf's nose. Yeah, a little weird if you ask me, but it was fun to see what you could come up with. It's sort of like the painting with all the clocks, clocks everywhere but drawn in really bizarre and strange ways, so the landscape of the art just looks a little odd. Niska found the task to be stupid so painted some really bad cats all over her page and finished there. None of the cats were the same colour, and to be honest, from a distance they didn't look like cats at all. Nor did they look like cats close up. They just didn't look like cats.

The essay was an opportunity for us to explore the creative choices we'd made in the picture, for Niska, well, I don't think she had a reason. Mine was a little more complex. For a while I had seen some really weird puzzles online, ones where you had to spot a singular character amongst a page full of something that looks similar. That was what I had chosen to do. In my piece, there were two snowflakes that looked the same whilst the others were all different. The point was to find the two that were the same. It was a lot harder then it looked. Trust me, I drew it.

Mama said there was a saying that went around the normal world, the idea that no two snowflakes look alike. She always told us that although that might be considered true, no one has ever gotten close enough to tell. Her excuse for the phrase was that it was the perfect metaphor for people. This idea that no two people are the same, nothing about them is identical in any way. I figured that if people thought no two snowflakes looked the same, would they notice it when it was so blatantly obvious? That was what I hoped to achieve with my essay or at least the explaining portion of the entire thing. Otherwise, it just looked like a zoomed in picture of home.

Not that anyone knew what home looked like.

Maybe I overcomplicated everything, maybe I didn't, I don't know. What I do know is that the drawing took a lot of time, a lot of effort and I ended up with more marks on my face than I ever had before, and that was saying something. I had taken a little bit of home, the snow and the snowflakes, and mixed it with a common phrase from the normal world. My two worlds colliding into one, only I was the only one who saw it.

"This is pointless. I can't concentrate on what I'm doing because of the nerd kids on the computers," Niska groaned shooting a glare towards the younger years who were playing Minecraft rather loudly.

"Leave the Year Sevens out of it, it's not their fault they don't have taste in real games," Joel said, laughing to himself.

"And you have taste in real games, do you? I caught you playing Nintendogs less than two weeks ago."

"You leave my Nintendog alone. I'll have you know, Honey has been thriving for many a year and I intend to keep checking in on her until the day my DS stops working."

"Okay, stupid question, what's Nintendogs?" I might have developed a pretty good idea of pop-culture references over the years, but there are somethings that cannot be learnt by popular books or binge-watching TV shows, and Nintendogs was one of those things.

"It's a game on an old hand-held console. Basically, you adopt a dog, name it and then have to take care of it by feedin' it, givin' it a bath, takin' it for walks, that sort of stuff. It was one of the coolest games when we were growin' up but since there are more high-tech games they've been abandoned. I still play with my dogs though, I'm not gonna leave them."

"Only because he's a big softy and can't bear to leave his fictional dogs in the past. Seriously, I don't think I've looked at mine in at least five years, when was the last time you checked in on your dogs?"

"Shut up," Joel said, groaning slightly.

"Sounds like a game Nick would like, he's always been into those sorts of games," I said, tapping my pen on the top of my textbook.

"I'm sure you could get one somewhere for a low price, it's an old game so second-hand shops will sell 'em. Could make a good Christmas present," Niska said, shrugging her shoulders and looking everywhere but at her textbook. She even stared out the window for an entire two minutes.

"Christmas present. Huh, not a bad idea."

I had never bought a Christmas present for my brother. To be honest, I had never bought a Christmas present for anyone, I never had the need to. Normally, Nick and I would tell Mama and Papa what we wanted, and the elves would do their thing. We'd wake up the next morning with presents under the tree and not a penny being spent. Some of the gifts were even signed by each other and we had no idea what was hidden underneath the wrapping. When we were kids, we had no idea what was going on, but as I got older, I saw it and in all honesty, the joy of it all just faded away. I knew that whatever I asked for was going to be under that tree and all of it came from the elves. The making of the presents might have been Magic, but nothing else was.

As for the games console, well we both had one of those. Every year the elves would make us something that was viewed as popular back in the real world, and a few years ago, that happened to be a Nintendo DS. We were both given a small selection of games and could trade them as we saw fit. That never happened. He was too young to understand about trading, but he wasn't too young to play the games if that makes any sense. So, I was stuck with a rather hefty supply of girl games, or games that were considered right for girls in comparison to the games Nick got. I'm not saying it was blatant sexism, but it was. Though I doubt the elves would have known anything about that.

The game sounded like a great idea for a Christmas present, especially since he was a complete nerd over those sorts of games.

"This is a waste of time, I've been staring at this French work for three minutes and none of it has gone in. I still don't know the difference between these verb tenses," Niska said, throwing her pen onto her workbook.

"I agree. The Year Sevens have gotten louder, and I can't even hear myself think," Joel said, making the last bit louder so the kids behind him turned around. The looks on their faces were priceless.

"That's more like it! What should we do instead? I don't know about you, but it is way too cold to do anything outside."

"My grandparents are out for the afternoon at some council thing, so we could go and binge-watch a few episodes of The Walking Dead or something, pretty sure we have popcorn."

"You always have popcorn or various other forms of junk form," Joel said, shaking his head and resisting a laugh.

"That's true."

"Sounds like a plan," Niska said, hastily shoving her notebooks into her bag, creating a mess. How she was going to find anything in the aftermath was beyond me, but whatever worked for her.

Once our stuff was packed away, the three of us made our way from the Library to the cold outside, the harsh winds forcing me to put my snow jacket on. I was used to the cold, after all, it was the only temperature we had so you'd have thought it wouldn't bother me. But this cold was different, this was harsh winds, treacherous ice patches and feeling as though you're part dragon every time you breath out. It was weird, the difference between the cold I was used to and the new cold I had been exposed to. I thought cold was cold no matter where in the world you were, but this just proved me wrong on a grand scale. Who would've thought that the cold could feel different in different parts of the world.

Niska was being extra cautious when it came to the ice patches that scattered the pavement. She took them as slow as possible, tiptoeing around the bigger ones and trying her hardest not to slip over and land on her bum. Again. Watching her move so cautiously around slight patches of ice was hilarious, but it meant that it took us longer to get home then it would have if it wasn't icy. At least it gave me an idea for her Christmas present, the most anti-ice thing I would think of. Snow Boots. They worked on snow, they worked on ice, they were just great for the Winter period, plus I had a second pair lying around that I didn't need. It would do good to get rid of them.

The present for Joel, however, was still a mystery. I hoped I would have figured it out by the time Christmas rolled around, but I was having no luck and, to be honest, it was frustrating. I needed everything to be bought and ready in case I decided to return home. If I didn't have a gift in mind, then I would leave without having anything to give him for Christmas, and I didn't think I could do that. The pair of them had been the best friends I could have hoped for since turning up at the school all those weeks ago, I would hate to leave without having anything for them. Though I didn't even know if I was going yet.

"When this ice melts, I am going to be a very happy bunny," Niska complained, avoiding yet another huge patch of ice in the centre of the pavement.

"This is England, Nisk, it's cold all the time here and ice in Winter is expected. How you've never slipped over until now is beyond me," Joel said, shaking his head and waiting for her to cross the ice.

"One, it's still Autumn, two, it's never been this cold before, it's been cold, yeah. But this is a new level of cold. Mum even suggested that I get a pair of ice skates, so I could cross the road and not risk falling over, I'm pretty sure she was joking, but you never know."

"Ice skating sounds like a fun way to get to school, even if I suck at it," I added in, laughing slightly.

"We should go to the outdoor rink when it opens in December, could be fun since none of us can skate," Joel suggested.

"Sounds like a plan, I'm safer on ice skates than just walking on ice. Did you skate back home, Kenz?"

"Yeah, me and my brother used to go out on the pond at the back of our house and skate there. He was always way better at it than me."

Nick had a strange habit of being remarkably good at everything first time and ice skating was one of many. The first time he stepped out onto the ice, he was pro, and he must have been about three, maybe four. I had been skating longer than he had yet I still couldn't stand up for longer than two minutes. By the time he turned seven, he could do all these fancy jumps and spins after watching them on TV once or twice, whereas I could do none of those things and I still couldn't. Sometimes it sucked watching him be amazing at everything Christmas related whilst I struggled from the sidelines. I felt left out, on the fence so to speak. But there were a few things I could do that he couldn't, so I had the upper hand occasionally.

When we reached my place, Niska, Joel and I dumped our stuff by the front door and proceeded to raid the kitchen for whatever tasty delights Grandpa had hidden away. No matter how often Granny told him to stop buying junk food, it just appeared in the cupboard, as though it was attracted to him. It was hilarious when she would open the cupboard and find an overload of biscuits and chocolate when she was certain they hadn't been purchased when they last went food shopping. That and a fair bit of it was left over from Halloween. Both my horde and the leftovers for the Trick or Treaters. There was no escaping the sweet things when you're a Claus, no matter how much you may want to.

"What episode did we get up to? I can't remember," I said, flicking through the long list of episodes trying to find the one we had gotten up to. The three of us had been binge watching The Walking Dead at every possible opportunity, but remembering where we had stopped was a bit of a struggle, though it shouldn't have been.

"Neither can I. Somewhere around season three?" Joel suggested though he didn't sound particularly certain.

"That's so helpful, thank you," I replied, rolling my eyes and continuing to flick through until I found season three. Glancing briefly at the synopsis at each episode to gauge where we had gotten up to.

"I thought it was around episode five, but don't quote me on that, I'm probably wrong," Niska said, not even glancing up at the TV screen to see what the synopsis was.

"No, that sounds about right," Joel added in.

"Right, we'll start there then." I hit play on the TV and settled back into my sofa space, ready for an afternoon of zombies.

To be honest, The Walking Dead was not a show I would have considered watching back home since I probably would have only been able to watch it on the TV in the living room rather than on my own and away from Nick. He would have had nightmares for weeks if watched even the first episode. Most of the time, the things I got to watch to watch on TV were either Christmas related, or a kid's program, there was never anything I would have liked. Just getting to choose what I watched on TV was a big difference and one I found rather enjoyable, especially if it involved zombies, aliens or anything else I wouldn't have been able to watch back home.

It was the little things that made me remarkably happy

"Question, Kenzie," Niska said, speaking the moment the episode had ended.

"Yes, Niska?"

"How is it you never sneeze?"

"What sort of a question is that?" I had been asked a fair amount of strange questions since I had turned up in the middle of October knowing very little on normal society, but that question was the strangest.

"Ya know, when people get cold, they sneeze, or just sneeze generally. I have never heard you sneeze before."

I regarded Niska with a simple tilt of the head and a furrow of my eyebrows, finding the question to be completely and utterly insane. There was a reason, of course, there was, the reason being that I don't get sick, I've never been sick, and I doubt I ever would be. It was one of the many, many perks of being a Claus and living in such a cold environment for so many years. You get used to the temperature and with that comes the not getting sick aspect. Sneezing came into that, so it was something I never did and something I never planned on doing, well, that was the aim, but it didn't last as long as I hoped it would.

Having something happen to you that has never happened before is an alarming experience, to say the least, especially if you don't expect it. That was exactly what happened when Niska had put forward her strange and rather unusual question. You know, it was sort of like she jinxed it, saying I never sneezed and then having the horror inflicted upon me for the first time in my life. This is why you never say something never happens, because it will, and you will be horrified by it. As well as minorly concerned.

"I dunno, I just don't. Must be my magical qualities," I replied, waving my hands and trying to make the comment seem more ridiculous than it actually was. Joel looked as though he was laughing to himself, though I don't know if it was about my stupid comment, or if he was laughing at something completely different. I hoped it was the former.

"You know you've jinxed it, right Nisk?" Joel said, throwing a sweet wrapper at her.

"Nah, I don't sneeze so how can she jink something that never hap-" Mid-way through my sentence, I was rudely cut off by a rather violent noise that sounded like a sneeze.

"Ha! There it is!" Niska exclaimed, clapping her hands and jumping up and down like an excitable child. Honestly, she reminded me of Nick when he got his own way, or when he had eaten too much sugar and was annoying the tinsel out of everyone.

"That was the weirdest sensation I have ever experienced," I said, feeling a little disorientated. Sneezing in itself looks like a really weird thing, but when you have it happen for the first time, it's majorly disorientating and feels as though your brain is going to explode or at the very least, come flying out of your nose.

"If that was your first ever sneeze, it could mean you're getting sick," Joel noted, though I don't know if he believed that himself or if it was just a comment.

"I don't get sick."

"You said you didn't sneeze and look what just happened, the more you say you don't do something, the more it seems to happen."

"Shhh, let me have this moment, it's all I've got," I said, laughing.

Truth is, the laugh was mainly for my benefit since he had a point. I had never sneezed, yet I just had, I had never gotten sick, yet that was looking more and more like a possibility as time progressed. It was scary, to say the least. My life had been so simple before, no illness, nothing out of the ordinary, I had even become immune to the constant cold weather. But being here, being away from home turned out to be a huge difference. I felt the cold, I could have been getting sick. The fact of the matter was that I was freaked out by it all.

Things were going to be different, I knew that from the get-go, but this was beyond insane. This was different on a whole other level. Living a sheltered life, away from fear and well, reality, was alright for a while, but the moment you're placed in a normal situation, everything changes. Everything becomes harder, more complex than it looks from the outside. Outside perspectives are not always the best, it's always good to have a man on the inside, with experience, but I never had that. Not even Ivy got sick when she left home and that made the whole thing all the more terrifying.

I once read in a book that the more we moved away from our Magical side, neglected what was so known to us, the more we became normal, human. Although I didn't want to admit it, it like that was what was happening to me more and more as days went by and I didn't know if I should enjoy it or fear it.

Being normal was an interesting experience, to say the least.

~~~

A/N - Okay, so I just finished this chapter since I've had my first EVER Uni Assignment due in so that was slightly more important, but that won't happen again. If you follow my message board you would have probably seen that for the time being I have put Veritas on hold and I'm still deciding whether or not to discontinue it fully. If that happens, I will keep you all up to date on whatever new works I have, including a Historical Fiction I'm excited for.

Anyway, this is an interesting chapter, to say the least, what with Kenzie experiencing her first ever sneeze! That was really hard to describe so I apologise if it reads a little strangely, it was such a weird concept. As for her getting ill, it certainly is an interesting concept, what do you guys think? Is she forgetting her Magic?

Don't forget to comment and vote if you enjoyed and add to your reading list so you never miss an update from me!

Dedication - This weeks dedication goes out to itstimetodance who is writing an amazing book called The Silencer that you guys should all check out!

First published - October 26th, 2017