The Vortex: Prophesies

Chapter One

Everything is loud, and my ears are ringing from the abrupt travel, that has me pressing one hand against my swirling stomach and the other pressed against my mouth, fighting against the urge to be sick. It briefly crosses my mind that this will be my first memory of this new school and I hate myself for having such a weak stomach at molecular travel.

I don't remember what I felt on my first day of middle school, or even the more recent freshman year of high school, but does anyone? For middle school think I was far too young to recognise anything more than excitement and hurt, maybe longing when my mother and father left me with people, I didn't know in a place that was new. They had been talking up school for months prior, I think they were excited for me to stop running amuck inside all year, finally I had reached an age where independent play meant more stress than relaxation for them.

We have never lived on a crowded suburban street, it meant that there was never an opportunity for me to make friends that way or have the typical childhood full of friends that I grew up with and had over in our pool during the summer heat waves. It always felt like the stories lied to me.

Mum and Dad had me young, which meant that my Grandmother Rosaline insisted that we lived with her, luckily the house was big enough that I didn't have her breathing down my neck for the entirety of my childhood.

It was a big house, three stories and mostly obscured by the giant trees that lined the property line. My grandparents lived through more wars than most people should have too, and after surviving the Great Battle of 1947, they built the house with the idea of keeping everyone out of it.

That tactic worked well enough until Grandfather was drafted in the Vietnam War in 1963 and never came home, Mum was only three at the time. I suppose that's why I have always felt mostly indifferent whenever my Grandmother would wipe her tear stained cheeks while telling me how proud Grandfather Leslie would be of me.

Things were lonely in that big house, Mum and Dad had to work so that we could continue fixing the house in ways that magic wasn't meant for, I still think that it's ridiculous that magic can't fix things everything. I have always thought that was the whole point, though Dad says that's just because I'm a sixteen-year-old who hasn't learnt the reality of being a witch.

I made a bet with him that when I turned twenty, no longer a teenager, that I would still think it ridiculous that there would be some things that magic just wasn't made to fix. He wanted to make the bet for twenty bucks, but I bargained it up to fifty because if he is correct then I'll need the extra help.

I made friends easy once I hit first grade, getting over the shock of no longer being surrounded by my parents or Grandmother was easy enough once the bright colours and pictures were in front of me. I had never seen so many kids in my life, instead of kindergarten I was home-schooled like both my parents had been.

Grandmother was less than happy when she heard I was going to be attending middle school with hundreds of kids my age, mixing with the likes of those kids was something she has never been comfortable with. Mum likes to tell me that things were different for her when she was growing up, that's why she reacts the way she does.

When Grandmother was growing up, it was just after world war one, things weren't good for anyone, much less the magical community. They were taught at home and there was rarely any large gatherings, in fact it was common for people to completely ignore their magical side and opt to remain 'normal' in an entirely unnormal time.

The thought of me going to school with so many people that weren't like me, that didn't carry my unique abilities pissed her off. Dad says she's stuck in her ways, but Jai has taught me a lot about racism and classism, and I think that makes more sense than Dad's half-ass excuses, but I guess that's what you do when you love somebody.