Who is Magpie?

He didn’t wait for further questions, leaving the room and waving goodbye to Magpie, who didn’t even lift her hand as she said goodbye. When Kay returned to her, the girl seemed to be taking stock, checking over her arms and hands and even legs for injury. Kay sat beside her again, noting the empty cup on the table beside her.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

Magpie nodded. “All seems functional. I should go change for morning training.”

“Training? You’re kidding, you suffered a major concussion. You blacked out.” Kayreminded, quite pointedly.

Magpie stood up regardless. “I’m not useful if I’m rusty.” She moved toward the hidden panel to the servants halls. “Are you going in? …. I… could show you the way to your room.. t.. to avoid the crowded halls?”

Kay thought the offer sounded forced, but also that it sounded like the tea hadn’t filled her personality yet. So she accepted the offer, wondering how she knew which room was hers. The halls seemed to go on forever, each cross road opening up to all directions and she wondered how they were considered a shortcut. As they walked on Magpie told Kay how she had learned all these corridors in the hours that she couldn’t sleep to avoid the other Faes.

Deep down Kay knew that, though she had valid reason for wanting to avoid others in the halls, it hadn’t helped her reputation. Not many knew of the servant’s hallways, due to them no longer being used before most of the younger residence were born. So when Magpie appeared in a class or lesson having never been seen in a hallway, people tended to make up tales of the haunted human.

Magpie had mentioned as much as they walked on. She knew all about the horrid stories, unfortunately having been in the walls while people spoke of her often, but she told the other girl how she found it humorous.

“I may only be human, but I still have higher scores now than them. They say such idiotic things about me all the time, refusing to see the truth, but they are somehow scared of me, not for how I beat them, but for how I get around quietly and unseen. Which they all should be able to do.” No laugh left Magpie this time and a smile was hardly what you could call the expression, but Kay thought she looked quite pleased.

“I’ll admit.” Kay said after a moment. “You’re not like who I thought you were.”

Magpie’s foot only halted for a moment, but Kay thought she saw her pupils readjust, like an out of focus camera, in that moment. “I get that a lot.” She said as she pressed on.

“You do?” Kay wondered, feeling somewhat relieved.

“No.”

Kay erupted into laughter. She expect that Magpie would have laughed at her joke as well just half an hour ago, before the tea. Instead she nodded towards a door, set into the wall like all the rest, and probably just as thick. All of the corridors were made from a pale wood, probably to help the low level lighting carry better, and this door was no different, except that bright, hot pink paint drips ran down the top of the door.

“I came by here on my way to a class on the same day I over heard you saying you had rented a spray paint machine to do your room. I figured this was likely your door, but I never went in.” She assured, but Kay hadn’t been worried. “You should try it, … the door I mean. To make sure. I wouldn’t want to leave you in the walls at the wrong bedroom. You.. you could wander around down here for hours.”

Kookaburra opened the door, not at all surprised that Magpie had figure it out. Of course it was her room, most of the rooms had two people sharing but Kookaburra and Magpie were among the few with their own, although for very different reasons. Magpie seemed to nod in approval as Kookaburra entered, satisfied that she had done as she said she would, and turned to go.

“Wait.” Kay called after her, and then hesitated. “… you’ll.. you’ll be late if you go all the way to your room to change. We’re about the same size, why don’t you just borrow a gym set from me?”

Magpie stood for a moment, stunned speechless at the offer, before she shook her head, but the words took another moment to follow. “… yours…. Mine…. My gym set has seen more… more weather than yours. They would know it wasn’t mine.”

There was a sort of sadness in her. She couldn’t pinpoint why this tension built in her chest in admitting this to Kookaburra when it had never bothered her before. She wanted so much to just agree, to accept her kindness and gestures without a second thought, but part of her feared that, more than the judgement from others, it would all stop when Kay saw that judgement. Magpie was afraid that she would accept, and then it would end, leaving her feeling emptier than before.

“I don’t care.” Kay laughed, digging through a drawer and pulling out one of her ‘more worn’ sets. “If you’re really worried this one shows more wear, but I think it’s dumb that it matters at all.”

Reluctantly Magpie entered her room and closed the door, rationalizing that she couldn’t possibly miss wearing hand-me-downs. Kay was already stripping off her old clothes, reminding Magpie that they both still wore there plain clothes from the mission the day before. Kay

had really sat with her all evening and night, and there it was, that small tea light glow inside her chest again, but this time it felt stronger.

Magpie turned her back as Kay pulled off her undershirt, noticing her perfect, soft skin with a tad of jealousy before looking away. Kay had been right, they were almost the exact same size under all the layers of clothing. Magpie thought, as she removed her own clothing, that in the shadows they could almost be mistaken for each other, despite the differences in their hair and skin.

Kay gasped suddenly and rushed over to her, and Magpie felt a warm hand touch her bare back. “Your back! What happened?”

Magpie turned to look over her shoulder, and then turned further to look at herself in the mirror. Her back, like a lot of her skin, was covered in a variant of raised and flat scars. They were all different, like snowflakes she had thought, but that thought was only to distract from all the different ways they had been obtained.

Magpie allowed the other girls fingers to trace over the dots and lines as she spoke. “I was a slow learner.”

Kay was horrified, but did her best to hide it. She could only imagine how each one had occurred but the ones she knew... Whips and blades, a taser and a burn.. a nine tailed whip snaked over her shoulder and a raised line, likely from a cane, ran across her lower back. As she traced the lines with her finger Magpie shivered under the touch, no one had ever touched them before and she focused on the sensation as it came and went where the scars were thicker and sensation had been lost.

“Do you still receive this sort of training?” Kay asked, working to relax her jaw and release the anger building within her.

Magpie shook her head. “Not at all. The last one was…” She hesitated before she spoke and it looked like she wished she hadn’t. “Last year, when Pigeon died.”

There was a moment of silent exchange when they both just looked into the others eyes. They knew how that conversation would go without even saying it out loud. It wasn’t your fault, I know it wasn’t, the mission was priority, I did my job but it could have been done better,… They could go back and forth but in the end Magpie would still believe this was part of the job, and her responsibility to take, while Kay would know that it had been an excuse to take out their emotions about the death on someone who would take it.

Kay rubbed some Sanaberry gel over the area, despite Magpie’s protest. She knew it wouldn’t erase them completely, but she hated knowing that such bold scars covered her.. her friend, and that she had gone through each one healing slowly without medical aid.

“I don’t feel them anymore.” Magpie insisted. “The pain stopped long ago…”

“Pain? I thought you didn’t feel pain.” Kookaburra demanded.

“I don’t, not anymore. Shortly after this one.” Magpie rest her hand over the nine tails scar that wrapped over her shoulder. “Something changed, like my body finally understood what all the training had been for and just turned it off. Everything that came after just felt like.. like a high five against my skin.”

The lighthearted comment seemed like it was meant to be a joke, and it was from Magpie, but knowing the truth made Kay want to cry. Wondering why they had made her feel so much pain before it ‘magically’ went away wasn’t something Kay needed to think long about. On top of Magpie being able to train and work harder, she would be grateful for the reprieve and they already had other ways to control her.

Kay had finished with the gel and turned to put it away. Once turned away Magpie continued to take off her clothing to change, hoping Kay wouldn’t turn back to see the scaring over her legs and front before she could get the other clothes on. She wasn’t lucky, as Kay began putting the rest of her own clothes on she caught site of the other scars in the mirror.

The more she learned the more she wanted to confront her grandfather, but with each new thing she knew he had put too much thought into it to change his mind now. The most disturbing thing for Kay was knowing she couldn’t do anything until she took over, and with each passing day Magpie’s body became more attached to the tea making it harder to taper off.