Silent

It was late in the evening when the Munroe’s left the hospital. As they walked through the car park to find their car, Madeline and Joseph Munroe argued about the doctor that had just seen to their daughter.

“Can you believe that they would dare to send a male doctor? A male doctor to look at our daughter? The nerve of the people at this hospital, I tell you,” Madeline spat.

“Why couldn’t they have given us that lady doctor we had last time? At least she didn’t ask questions!” Her husband replied, with a harrumph.

The daughter in question walked behind them, her head down, silent as usual.

“’What really happened?[i/]’” Madeline said, attempting to mimic the doctor’s gruff voice. “We told him what happened, our daughter is a klutz and would trip over a flat surface.”

When they reached their car, they unlocked it and the three of them climbed inside, the couple continuing their argument as they made their way home.

“Doctors these days,” Joseph argued. “They have no respect for their patients, whatsoever. He had absolutely no right, asking her all those questions. Asking if she want us to leave, why her medical history was so extensive, who does he think he is?”

His wife nodded in agreement from the passenger seat.

“We’re her parents, we know exactly what she needs, and it’s not some nosy doctor, poking around where he’s not wanted.”

In the back seat, their daughter sat quietly, watching the city of Lotus Falls pass by her window. As her father pulled up at a stop light, still arguing about the doctor, she spotted a young man standing on the sidewalk. As she watched him, he turned around and she gave an inaudible gasp, her eyes widening.

His eyes were a bright, luminescent green, with a flash of gold in the centre that seemed to be constantly shifting as they caught her own eyes.

Such eyes marked him as a mage. Though, she had never seen a mage so young in Lotus Falls. The youth in his face could have passed him off as a high school senior, like her. But, the young woman knew that he could be even older. A mage’s aging process was a lot slower than humans. He could be anywhere from seventeen to one hundred years old.

As he caught her staring, his own eyes widened slightly in surprise at catching her staring at him. Embarrassed, she pulled her head away from the window and into the darkness of the car. But, of course, the mage could still see her, his night time vision was excellent. He grinned and waved a long pale hand in front of his chest, making small violet swirls that matched the colour of her eyes almost perfectly.

The girl smiled briefly in reply to his magic, her own eyesight also undeterred in the darkness. She wiggled her own fingers, sending out silent swirl of magic, green with twinkling bursts of gold, much to the other mage’s delighted surprise. Then, the stop light turned green and her father sped away, leaving the green-eyed mage and his violet magic behind.

As they continued their way home, the girl sat in the back seat, her thoughts of the mage drowning out her parents’ continuous complaints about the hospital, traffic and modern youth. Of course, she would probably never see the mage again. Young mages rarely stayed in one place for too long. Even if he did, she was rarely allowed to leave to house, with the acceptance of school, hospital and family outings.

As they pulled up in the driveway of their two-story home, she forced herself out of her reverie, before her parents had a chance to and silently got out of the car, following them inside, ignoring the stinging pain in her side. At the hospital, her parents had told the doctor that she had fell and hit it on the edge of the kitchen counter while getting something out of the top cupboard for her mother.

But it hadn’t been. She’d been late to serve dinner and, as a result, her father had disciplined her. He didn’t normally hit so hard, but he had had a bad day at work and wasn’t in the mood for a late dinner and the excuses his only daughter had given him. Usually, he would just yell at her and lock her in her room for the night without any dinner.

But it wasn’t as bad as she had first thought. Her bruised ribcage would heal in about a week or so from where he had pushed her against the kitchen counter and the small bruise on her arm where it had hit the refrigerator was hardly noticeable.

After making her parents a cup of tea each and apologising for the impromptu hospital trip, she made her way upstairs, being careful not to make too much noise. At the top of the staircase, she turned walked to the end of the hallway and opened a door that revealed a small set of rickety stairs leading up to the attic where her room was located.

Closing the door behind her, the teenager hung her thick woollen trench coat on one of the hooks by the door. She slipped off her boots and sat down on a small stool to clean them, placing them on the floor under her coat once they were spotless, as her mother demanded. Then, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the painkillers the doctor had given her. She crossed the attic to where her bed sat, with its rusty metal frame and worn out mattress, covered by a large yellow floral duvet and perfectly fitted sheets, underneath the large, slanting window that dominated the wall. She shook two pills out of the bottle and swallowed them with a mouthful of water from the water bottle on her night stand.

Placing the pill bottle on the night stand, she slipped out of her clothes and into her nightgown, before placing her worn clothes her laundry basket. She crossed the attic again to the small bathroom in the corner, brushed her teeth and washed her face, before returning to the bed. Lowering herself onto it silently, she pulled her mousy brown hair out of its braid and brushed it until her curls were smooth.
Turning off the lights and laying silently, the youth waited as her parents got ready for bed.

Once they were asleep, she sat up and crawled across her bed to sit in the window sill, gazing quietly out at the dimly lit street below and the distant, blinking lights of the city centre. Listening out carefully for any sounds from the bedroom below, she gently eased opened her window, just enough to let in the cool night air.

She sat there for almost an hour in complete silence, revelling in the crisp night air on her pale skin and the sounds that it brought, with a smile on her face as she thought about the young mage, his brilliant green eyes and swirling magic. She held her hand out in front of her, the green and gold fireworks springing once again from her hand. Then, the girl let her hand fall into her lap, the fireworks dying mid-air as she shut the window and climbed back into bed, being careful of her bruised ribs as she snuggled down under her blankets.

***

On the streets of Lotus Falls’ inner city, the young mage wandered aimlessly, taking in the sights of his new home, his thoughts occasionally wandering back to the girl in the car.

She had been pretty. Her skin, just as pale as his own, if not more so, was clear and unblemished, framed by her mousy brown bangs. But, it was her eyes that stuck out most in his mind. They had been the most beautiful, bright violet eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness of the car she had sat in.

She had smiled at his magic. A mere parlour trick he had conjured to do just that, and it had worked. It normally did, but the mage had a feeling that this girl didn’t smile much, which made him feel almost sad for some damned reason. Though, her own magic had been just as simple, a reciprocating gesture, nothing special.

He hadn’t thought that he would see a mage so young here, for she was certainly only a teenager at most.

He doubted he would see her again. Lotus Falls may not be one of the largest cities, but it was still big in its own right. Judging from her parents’ standard, middle-class family sedan, she more than likely lived out in one of the many suburbs that skirted the city. He preferred the inner city, himself, and planned to spend as much time as allowed there.

The violet-eyed girl would have to stay a mystery, at least for now.