MAEGYA | x. "I'VE GOT AN IDEA." ALL SPELL BREAKS LOOSE
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THEA VALARYEN WAS, by no means, a glass-half-full kind of gal. She would inspect the glass, sniffing poison rather than hope. Her best friend and (literal) soul sister, Bex Ortega, would spit in the cup. Peter Parker... well he was staying strong.
Slowly, the glass was filling despite their lives' current, toxic climate. Thea tried to remember her oasis, her motivation to keep going on (and not raze down the world). There was Peter and Bex, her pillars and soulmates. Her dragons, the lights of her life as tender as they were ferocious. The people of First Hearth, her metaphorical children who regarded her as a goddess, were thousands of tiny, tickling raindrops against her fire-scorched skin.
Especially now, with the free flow of rejection letters drowning her, Peter, and Bex.
Smith College's rejection letter was the latest in a long line of provocations to tip Thea over the edge. The University of Cambridge, her brother's alma mater had no hesitation to deny her admission either. Thea saw right through the pity on Serafina's face. Of course, she was disappointed.
Peter got rejected from Virginia Tech and the doors to Berkeley closed in Bex's face, but they all strived to look past those minor bumps. These were backup schools anyway. MIT and Columbia were their white whales, hidden in the dark waters of doom and despair.
Bex had struggled to keep a lid on her anxiety and she shifted from stress-baking to working out for almost seven hours a day. Serafina was impressed at first, but later slightly concerned. Though Thea's Sovrani blood and her Dragofyre enabled her to physically endure more than a human being (or so House Valaryen boasted), Bex was plainly and simply human. It was still unclear as to whether her energy transfusion was a variant of Fyre or simply another magic of Thea's unknowing creation.
In any case, Bex poured her energy into everything she could find. But with Columbia's decision date finally here, it was like the world was glass and her application was a wound-up rock, ready to destroy everything with a single toss.
Then the walls shattered and Bex was rejected from Columbia.
The heartache went beyond fear, bordering on sheer disappointment. For Bex, it rang deeper. It was always her dream to go to Columbia, to become something great, and repay her mother and grandmother for their hard work. She wanted to change lives and in some way, as Azura, she did. But it came at a terrible cost like a double-edged sword.
The apprehension didn't stop at Columbia. There were still two more letters to arrive: MIT.
By the time early November came, both Thea and Peter were nervous (and emotional) wrecks. Though she was oddly obsessed with the holiday and had, in past years performed her most spooktacular feats yet, Thea hardly touched bowls of candy corn and skeleton decorations for Halloween. The nightmares were reserved for the the Sovrani political district. It was like a cord was wrapped around the polity with the Magisters' distrust and blatant dislike of their Maegya growing more fervent. But Thea, for Peter's sake, tried not to be so pessimistic. She saved those twisty feelings for the witching hour. And her Pocket World.
