Fiction Friday: A Far-flung Blog Collection

I want to go to university.

Originally posted by Moira "Moe" Gray to alexisdonkin.com blog, 4-1-16

I was only 12 and my brother went. We didn't know if he' d come back. Sometimes students didn't. It was possible. Between bandits and wild weather, anything was possible. Sometimes there were accidents on campus...

When I looked at my parents during the three years Rowan was away, they had that far off look in their eyes. Sometimes they'd get letters and the look disappeared for weeks. They'd light up when the post came. Really good days were when he radioed the town. Someone from the mayor's office would run to our house, before the sun was up or well after sundown, banging on the door and yelling until we answered.

Then we raced to the mayor's office for a twenty minute monologue of the most public kind. Rowan never said anything really interesting. He couldn't. It was just a way for us to hear his voice. And then he'd finish, and the radio went back to static.

I was 15 when he came back and I didn't recognize him. I mean, you can't miss him in Lancaster – I've never seen anyone who looks like my brother – but he wasn't the same person. His face was hard, his mouth tight. His jaw always seemed to work. Sometimes I'd catch him staring into the distance.

"You have some place you want to be?" I'd ask.

"No. Nowhere." He's sigh and look down before throwing me a tight smile.

The new Rowan spent a lot of time alone. It was understandable considering his friends. Cailey choked every time she saw him. Tim smiled nervously, and he always avoided Rowan's eyes. There was no one else. Azra didn't even try to talk to him, which confused me, because I thought they were close...

But my brother's changes didn't change my mind in the slightest. Rowan was always outside of things – the kind of person others crossed the road to avoid – but when he became a graduate, he earned a special kind of respect. People in town asked things of him. Sometimes they requested him for a persistent illness, or a difficult structural fix. There was always some advice he could give – some suggestion he could offer that may as well have been magic compared to folk knowledge.

I wanted that. I wanted to go to the university. I knew there was only a slim chance it would even happen, but I didn't care. I had to apply. I was the right age. My brother had already graduated so there was a higher chance of acceptance for me. I took the tests at the mayor's office and sent them in. I got all the forms and information required.

They even took a sample of my blood! I thought that was just gossip – but they did it with a syringe and everything! Who knows what they need it for...

So everything's in and they're reviewing it. I just have to wait.

I didn't tell Rowan. I can't let him know I applied to the university. I know what he would say – whatever he's going through he wouldn't wish it on me. But I'm not a little kid anymore. I can take care of myself. I can make my own choices. I'm strong and smart and all the things graduates should be. If Rowan can do it, I can too.

Well, if they let me in...

Otherwise I'll just run the mill and marry the most eligible match in Lancaster.

It would be okay, but I want more. I want to go to the mayor's office and on salvage missions. I want people to call me for magical fixes to their problems. I want everyone in Lancaster to look at me with respect – the kind of respect that would make them call Rowan, the person they fear the most, in a time of need. That's something that you can't buy.

It has to be earned.

*****

Moira Gray is a character from the work-in-progress novel, THE CHANGELING TREE.