Hey my favorite people! I'm a little ill as I'm write this, so I'm going to keep it short. I love all of you, and I hope you love yourself. 

Todays play list: 

Fight Song by Rachel Platten

Everybody Talks by Neon Trees.

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I wait until both my parents are out of the house before I get ready. Quickly, I shower, get dressed, and take a few bites of the breakfast my dad made before I snatch up Milo's jacket, the material worn and thin from age, then I head out the door. After a short walk, I stand at the entrance of the gate, a dial tone in my ear as I wait for someone to answer their phone. No matter how badly I want to bust down their door, I'm willing to give them a warning I'm coming.

"Thea?" Nya answers, sounding truly worried. "Thea, are you okay?"

"Can I come up?"

A brief pause. "It's 9 in the morning."

"Nya, I think I deserve some answers."

"It's okay, she needs to know." I hear Levi over the phone. I go to the gate punching in the numbers I was given, slowly it starts to open. "Let yourself in when you get here."

I take the trek up the hill, glancing at the houses. How many people in those places died last night because of me? When I reach the highest point, I open the door and enter, allowing it to close after me. Levi comes out from the kitchen, Nya right behind him.

"You're right, it was unfair to not prepare you for what happened." Levi comes over to me. "But that, that wasn't all because of you. There have been many wars, and many will still come, we don't want to fight, we're dwindling in numbers as it is."

"I want to learn how to fight."

Levi looks shocked. "We don't let humans fight. We're significantly stronger than you, you wouldn't stand a chance.

"Teach me how to fight, so I'm not defenseless, I was useless when I was attacked. Those things," I shiver. "I want to protect myself, protect my family."

"I wasn't even out there," Nya steps up. "Levi wouldn't let me fight, and I'm a kite too."

"Please, I hated feeling that way, I hated being that weak, and pathetic, please."

"Let her learn." Everyone turns to Milo, who stood leaning against the wall, framed by the doorway. "She's got it in her."

"And you'll teach her?" Levi scoffs at him. "You? When I had you to teach that training class, everyone quit after one class, and several of them cried."

He closely observed me as I approached him, offering his jacket. "If you cry, I'm not going to teach you." He plucks it from my hand.

I grin, taking a step back. "Deal."

"Can you teach me?" Nya cuts in. "If Thea can learn, then so can I."

Milo shrugs and turns to go down the hallway. "Fine, but if you cry, you're out, too. Be ready in an hour."

"Yes!" Nya celebrates.

"What about those answers?" I look at Levi.

He shakes his head, his eyes still on where Milo stood. "That will take more than an hour after. You two better get some practice in, he won't go easy."

"I got cute outfits." Nya pulls me down the hallway into her room, where we spend most of the allotted time picking out outfits to wear, trying on, then taking off what didn't work. In the end, we settled on shorts and T-shirts. Nya is almost 2 inches shorter than me, and thin, whereas I'm curvier, so when I decide on an outfit, it is shorts slightly too short, and a shirt that hugged me a bit more than I felt comfortable with.

I lay on my back on her bed, my head hanging upside down off the side, observing as she removes one shirt and put on another, scrutinizing herself. "So, if they aren't your adoptive family, are you and Milo..."

"God no." She laughs. "No. He truly is like a brother to me, and Levi is like a father. Milo can be mean, for the first three years I lived here, he wouldn't even talk to me."

"That's not nice."

"But then, I don't know, he selflessly saved my life. He can be mean to me, but I know he cares about me, and I really do care about him, but only as if we were siblings. I get the appeal Milo has, especially towards the feminine sex, but I've never been tempted to cross any lines. Plus," she grins at herself in the mirror. "There is a guy I like."

I roll over on my stomach. "You're holding back on me. Tell me more." I tease.

"How about you?" She laughs. "This Abraham guy?"

"Way to change the subject." I stand up behind her, looking at the two of us in her full-length mirror. "He's a friend, well, at least right now. But now, I'm kind of scared of getting people hurt."

"The old if I let him in, then they will get a hurt motif." She beams at me through the mirror. "Honestly, I doubt it. I mean, kites are extremely particular about keeping the human species out.

"10 minutes." We hear Milo call out from somewhere outside her door.

She sighs and leads me to a place I had assumed is a closet, but as she opens it, I see I'm mistaken. Stairs led down into a tunnel deep into the ground.

"Where exactly are we going?"

"They build a system for kites to move between houses, these underground tunnels." Nya rolls her eyes. "But Milo is a drama queen and needs his own space, so Levi constructed him a shed. This one only leads one place, so you have to go through the main house to get to it."

We descend a dark hallway, feeling like we're walking downhill. It must be tucked into the woods behind the hill. When we emerge, we step into a vast space that looks fit for any gym.

"Shed? It's bigger than the downstairs of my house!" I looked around.

She laughs. "What should we do?"

"Practice?"

Five minutes later, we are sitting, our legs open, and rolling a weighted ball back and forth to each other. "I'm confused about the rules here?"

"I think he gets off on making people cry."

"No, the kite thing."

"Oh, well, see, there were magic workers in the world," she explained, her voice tinged with a sense of wonder. I could hear the excitement in her tone as she continued, "I don't think magic is the word Levi would use, but to me, it's magic."

As she speaks, she gently pushed the small ball back towards me, the smooth surface cool against my fingertips. She brings her hand to her forehead, her fingertips grazing her skin. "There was mind," she says, her voice soft and melodic. Her finger then traces a path down to her chest. "Soul," her voice carries a sense of depth and mystery. Moving her hand further down, just below her ribs. "Body," Her voice has a sense of groundedness. Finally, she lays her hand flat on her stomach. "And nature," she concluded, her voice carrying a hint of reverence. "They were more sensitive to these senses and could use certain abilities."

"Like you?" My curiosity is evident in my voice.

She smiles, her eyes sparkling with a mixture of joy and pride. "Yes, I'm a mind worker. I can compel better, and even kites, which is impossible for most, as I showed on Milo. Well, how the original story goes, two people were born, one under the sun and the other under the moon. The sun gifted her baby the gift of life, and the moon gifted her baby the gift of death. This is ancient Egyptian folklore," she adds, her words tinge with a touch of awe, "but how I was told to me was that there came to be two more kinds of workers." She touches her right shoulder, her fingertips brushing against her skin. "Life," Her voice fills with vitality. Then, she gently touches her left shoulder, a sense of solemnity in her gesture. "And death." She whispers, her voice almost fading into the air.

"Together, they began to experiment with their work until they made something immortal. Father Death took it, after Mother Life begged him not to, and in the end, he killed everyone in a frenzy." Her words seem to echo in the moment's stillness, the weight of the tragedy palpable in the air. "And when he woke and saw his love's dead body drained of her blood, he hid away for centuries. One day, 12 apostles found Father Death, and fed him blood, and he rose once again from death," she said, her words carrying a sense of both hope and uncertainty.

"Is he still alive?" I ask breathlessly, but Nya looks up.

"It's a story older kites tell the young, someone for them to idolize for no real reason." Milo comes in.