The Atonement of a Writer

3. Brief Respite in Ensoria

"Brother! Brother!" Colette, with her platinum blonde hair reflecting the sunlight, and golden eyes shining inquisitively, rammed straight into Clovis in the garden.

Clovis, in turn, hugged his sister tight. "What is it, Colette?"

Colette grinned excitedly. "Look what I did today!"

She held her hand out to the air. After frowning in concentration for a while, a lick of flame appeared on her palm. Soon, it condensed and grew in size into a fireball as big as the three-year-old's head.

"Wow!" Clovis exclaimed in heartfelt admiration. "This is great, Colette! You're going to be really powerful one day!"

Colette giggled at her brother's praise. "I already am powerful, silly!"

Clovis grinned fondly and ruffled her hair, knowing what would happen next.

Indeed, Colette yelped and grabbed his arm. "You just ruined my curls!"

As the siblings squabbled on, neither of them knew what the future had in store for them. They had no way of knowing that this would be one of the only moments where they were genuine towards each other.

~*~

Lili managed to stay in her room the rest of the day. To be honest, she didn't even know the day had passed. In a few hours, she managed to convince herself to roll with it, panic, doubt her own sanity, panic, worry about the life she left behind, and, oh yes, panic about this new one. Somewhere along the line, Killian had come up to check on her a few times, but he never opened the door again, which was fine with Lili--the last thing she needed was to fall prey to his good looks and charm. Something like that could impede her return to the real world.

She rotated between eating, pretending to sleep, trying (and failing) to think of ways to get out of this hopefully-temporary arrangement, and organizing what she already knew about this world, which, as the creator of the world, was pathetically little.

The country she was in, Ensoria, was a place where everyone had magic. Sometimes, magic manifested in the eyes, giving them an unnatural purple hue. Those were specially given the title of "mage". Arielle was a mage, even though her power was beast taming, a seemingly harmless type of magic passed down by the Dumonts for generations.

Lili, of course, was already plotting how to avoid all the confrontation that Arielle would face just because of her eye color. It had been fun when she was writing, but now? No, sir. Though how to avoid half the book was another question altogether.

Especially when Lili realized she had no idea how magic worked, because she had never gone into the specifics and mechanics of magic when writing.

As society does, magic was given a hierarchy. Ensoria was a country where magical ability determined status, but that was only most of the time--it was not without patriarchy. Clovis and Colette Lamoreux were a prime example of that.

The siblings were on top of the food chain, if one didn't count the king and queen. Clovis was the Crown Prince of Ensoria, on the merits of seniority--in age, and in gender. Traditionally, the rulers of Ensoria were fire elementalists, but the role of heir was given to Clovis, a water elementalist who got his powers from the queen, instead of Colette, his younger sister, who actually was a fire elementalist like their father. This was one of the reasons behind the "evilness" of the royal princess--Lili scoffed. More like a royal pain. Nevertheless, elementalists were at the very top of the hierarchy, and added with the fact that the siblings were royalty, they held an unquestionable position of power in society.