Briar woke up surrounded again. No one recognizable, but all of them staring at her with mixed expressions of stern and smiling. She was no longer bound, smoothing the wrinkles of the stark white comforter that laid over her in a hospital-like bed she realized that she wasn't in her expensive white party dress anymore.
Her throat heart and her mouth felt like a desert. "I'm thirsty" She said to no one in particular; her voice a painful croak. Someone nodded and left the room. Others quickly scribbled something in their clipboards. "I want to go home." She added, knowing that once you're a mage your new home is decided for you.
Mages weren't allowed to make any decisions important to a twelve-year-old. They weren't allowed outside, shopping at malls or picking their own clothes. It seemed boring, and awful and scary.
Slowly the child felt something small brush up against her strawberry blonde hair—Something furry. Briar nearly smacked the small animal but stopped herself. "Good morning" said a sweet voice in her ear. It was as clear as a bell. To her horror, Briar followed her hair down to her shoulder until she found a small fluffy body.
With what little strength allowed her, she lifted the small body and to her face. It was a mouse.
Chocolate colored and fur longer than any mouse she had seen in a pet shop, it's little whiskers flicked curiously at her. A small paw reached and touched Briar's freckled nose as their eyes met. That moment of pure connection brought her to tears. She had thought she used them all up during her surgery but they still flowed. She knew that no one would ever know her so completely as this little mouse staring at her with such tenderness that nothi
Emotions swirled as she looked at her Familiar. She had never imagined such a cute little animal in all her life, if it wasn't breathing in her hand it might of well have been a stuffed animal.
She shielded and cupped the familiar in her hands, as she tried to focus on all the figures in the room recording her waking.
Suddenly she was filled with a feeling other than her confusion and terror. Through her tears she felt a deep pit of anger. Anger at not knowing where she was, how everyone was ignoring her and just scribbling nonsense, angry that she got tricked into answering the bird familiar. It wasn't fair, she was tricked and she needed to go home to her party and family.
"I need to go home right now." She said the man who gave her a glass of water. He ignored her request. Because of course he did.
She chugged down the temperate water trying to re-hydrate her parched throat. It hit her stomach like a brick and she felt like she might need to puke.
Which she did unceremoniously in a basin that appeared beside her. "Easy, easy" said the stranger, petting her matted curls down on her brow. It was clear and full of bile. "You've been out for a week. But you're home now."
"Is that supposed to be comforting" She seethed.
He laughed and continued, "Your welcoming team is late. We have about a dozen of you babies checking in. You're one of the last ones to wake up. We thought you might have been lost."
"I didn't know there was a schedule." She spat. Briar had lost everything and everyone she knew. She didn't know who or where she was so she figured she had nothing to lose. Briar wretched the rest of the last of water into the bowl.
"There is a schedule for everything." In twirled a young woman with the body and grace of a dancer.
She had long thin legs and her black hair was tied tightly into a bun on top of her head. Her robes looked familiar to that of the man who tricked her into answering his bird.
Her robe was outfitted differently, it was shorter, flowing above her knees in a dusty blue. The sleeves and neck were straight with a high waist like she was out of a Jane Austin novel. A very delicate Victorian vibe surrounded her. Behind her, a robust green luna moth flutter before landing in her hair before stilling, looking like a gorgeous hairclip.
"I'm like, super happy you're here." She pulled up a chair, replacing the man holding her puke bucket.
"I bet this is, like, super crazy, right?" she clicked her tongue. It struck her off guard how this Ballerina of a woman talked like she was a stereotype of a California valley girl.
She stared blankly at her, wondering where this was going.
"So, like, I imagine it all happened really super-fast, right?" She twirled her pen. Briar narrowed her eyes at her.
"Yeah, not very talkative? Probably the shock, that's like, totally normal."
"So my name is Claire. And I have been assigned to like, greet you and stuff." She turned a page on clipboard.
"So you heard like, a bell, and a familiar when you turned the big One-Two, huh?" It was framed as a question but read like a statement. "That's how we answer, we respond to it. You can choose to feel like, super special that you'll be able to do all sorts of cool stuff when you get older." A giggle. "The Mission helped.. like.." She pondered her wording, "Stimulate, your familiar into appearing." That was one way to word it thought Briar.
"Apparently in like, the super old days they'd do really crazy stuff to force your familiar into appearing." She emphasized the 'crazy' and that made Briar wonder exactly the history of this cruel organization she was now forced into.
"That light thing? It hurts but it just kind of hurts your brain? I think? They don't really tell us, and you learn, like, super quick which questions are okay." The child's mind wandered back to her older brother, and how he'd joke with his friends when something was repetitive in a TV show how they'd make "Drinking games" out of it. Briar was sure if she played one with how often said 'like' and 'super' she'd be dead.
"And than after we summon your familiar for you, it takes, like, a lot of energy. So most people sleep. This is when we transport you here, to the Familiar Academy."
Briar's mind swirled with confusion. She's not back in her hometown of Arizona? She didn't know exactly how long she'd been asleep, but the thought of being man handled into different clothes and forced across states, like everything that happened to her when she woke up on her birthday, sent shivers down her spine.
"It's pretty neat how they do it." She placed her clipboard on her lap and motioned with hands, "They use armored trucks, like how they transport cash to banks. They drive until they hit an airport where like, a super special plane is waiting for you—" Briar stopped Claire right there, it was making her sick. The mouse in her hands wriggled uncomfortably.
"Where am I now?" How she got here was irrelevant.
Claire put on her plastic smile, "Welcome to The Familiar Academy."