Magnolia pulled off her bloody dress and dropped it to the floor. The training session had been hard, they always were, but they made her better. Always made her better. Train. Fight. Die. Life’s path for her.
Silly, frippy things like hope and dreams didn’t enter her mind. Those were for regular people. People who didn’t have feathers growing out of their arms and back.
Her mother’s feathers. The things that marked her as a freak.
The ones on her arm were easy to get rid of. It was like clipping a chicken’s wings - cut them at the top and they’d take a while to grow back. It wasn’t like they were of any use. She couldn’t fly, she couldn’t swoop, she couldn’t dive off a tall building and be unharmed at the end of it.
She fell slightly slower than gravity would have liked. Such a useful power. In her experience, it didn’t make the landing any softer.
She held up one of the clipped feathers and twisted it in her fingers. Black and white and sometimes red all over. Blood matted feathers and made them uncomfortable, just another reason to clip them.
Clipped feathers quickly filled the vanity in front of her, no matter how many she cut, there always seemed to be more. Sometimes this was actually true - they would regrow while she cut others. Just another aspect of the curse of being her mother’s daughter.
Not even a treasured daughter, just a joke. Her mother had thought it amusing to have a mostly-human child, just to see what it would be like. Not a bird, not a useful halfbreed with all the benefits of being of mixed blood, just…a joke.
She stared at the mirror and wondered if she’d prefer to be staring at a beak, a pair of wings and a small brain.
There was a single knock at the door before it opened.
She didn’t bother to cover herself up, there was nothing visible that he hadn’t seen before. She turned and snapped a salute. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’
‘Well, recruit, I want you. I’m going to take you with the same force and power I use to beat you every day during training and give you the best lay of your life.’ She suppressed a smile - she had the fantasy so often that it didn’t cause her to break out in schoolgirl giggles anymore.
He looked at her for a moment, and for a moment, she hoped he was taking stock of her assets, not her injuries. ‘You will be needed later.’
‘Sir, yes sir. What is the mission, sir?’
‘Reconnaissance. We need to know how much competition we will have for the mirror.’
‘Are we expecting more trouble than normal, sir?’
‘It’s a mirrorfall, recruit, they are always more trouble than is expected.’
‘Yes sir. Was there anything else, sir?’
‘No, now I’m going to take advantage of the fact that you have no shirt on.’
‘No. That’s all.’
Damnit.