The Price of Feathers

Idiot

"Hold on. Hold on, right there. You're telling me that the girl that you are here for. The girl that you are literally fighting to the death to return to used to bully you?" Dagne asked her idiotic friend while slapping her between each syllable. Raven cringed and hopped while trying to shield herself from the ongoing assaults.

"Ow, fuck, Dagne. Ouch!" Raven yelled while swatting the Russian's hands away from her. She saw the group disperse and watched herself sit in the mud for a few moments before finally getting up and straightening up her school uniform. Raven remembered this day like it was yesterday, although watching it unfold before her eyes definitely helped to jog her memory. All the same, she remembered how dejected and numb she felt, but there was also something else from that moment. She recognised a peculiar look in Sage's eyes. She didn't look evil... more like she was wounded, and Raven couldn't describe it, but she felt drawn to the girl like she wanted to heal her. Again, it might just have been the orphan's suppressed saviour complex.

"come on," she told Dagne, walking towards the school's main building.

As they took their first steps, the world rearranged itself around them, and they were suddenly in the school. They were in Raven's first class of the day. Her grade 10 English class. Raven had a stern look about herself, and the older Raven walked into the class with a firm stance and rigid posture, but that didn't change the fact that everyone was looking at the orphan with disgusted faces. It was definitely because she was marked as poor scum coming into their prestigious school to muck up its reputation, and the others were probably judging her for how dirty her uniform was. Either way, Raven felt like complete trash amongst her polished, privileged classmates. Before she could even reach her seat, the teacher, Mrs whatever, screamed that she needed to leave the class and return when she was more presentable. Dagne glared at the red-haired girl smirking at her friend's misfortune. She stepped forward to slap the bitch, but Raven grabbed her arm and nodded towards the door.

"Let's just go," Raven suggested with a defeated look on her face. She was not the girl that walked into the school grounds. She looked meek, small, and depressed. Dagne hated seeing her this way, but they were in another room altogether before she could say anything else.

"Hi, um... They said that I can come here to get a fresh set of clothes," younger Raven said while staring at the floor.

"Hey, keep your head up, girl," a rough voice came from the darkness of the basement-looking room. It was musky and damp in the room, but for some reason, Dagne felt a wave of calmness and warmth wash over her. she looked to her side and saw that her Raven was smiling at the man.

"Who's he?" the blonde asked her teammate. Raven's hazel eyes shinned through in the darkness. She had a soft smile on his lips.

"Oi, I am speaking to you, girl. You come here to ask for a clean uniform, but your face is all messed up with your eyes glued to the ground," the older man said, holding a blazer in his hand with a clean and neatly embroidered crest on the blazer's breast pocket. Dagne recognised that look in his eyes and posture. It was the same way her father looked when he spoke about the fatherland.

Young Raven slowly looked up, and the older man grunted his approval while handing her a fresh set of clothing. He had a good knack for picking out sizes, little to the girl's knowledge; he had 4 daughters at home, so he was more than aware of how clothing sizes worked and also how absolutely messy girls could be. That was another reason that he preferred to hand out the clothing himself. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of teenage girls messing up his inventory. He failed to tell the orphan something that made the older Raven smile because she found this out a few months later, but he was supposed to charge her for the new set, but the man never did. He just grunted and set her on her way.

Raven smiled at him and muttered, "Thanks Mr Du Plessis," under her breath. Dagne heard it. She almost scolded the girl for not remembering that they were literal dragons, but when she saw her face with the rarest of innocent smiles, she decided not to and allowed her friend this moment of peace.

It wasn't long before they were not in the school and were standing back in the road; they started in. This time they walked up to the door to a modest yet elegant house at the end of the road. A taller man, Raven's foster father, was walking behind them, and a beautiful woman, presumably her foster mother, was carrying bags into the front door. When they entered the house, a familiar strawberry blond-haired girl shouted, "Mommy, did you remember to get my Nesquik? The pink one... the chocolate is so miff!"

"Wait? Why is she here?" Dagne asked.

Raven had another opportunity to giggle at how in the dark Dags was about her and Sage's past.

"I guess I never mentioned that Sage is also my foster sister, Tada," she joked and offered her arm to be bunched by the infuriated blonde this time.

"You are a --!" Dagne started, but Raven finished her insult but saying," идиот?"

The Russian glared at her and was slightly confused, but perhaps she called her an idiot enough times for the South Africans to memorise the insult by now. Raven chuckled and motioned for her to walk further into the room. There were only really a few moments left from the day worth reliving.

Dagne and Raven watched from afar, Raven's choice, as her foster father asked her to be patient with Sage. This was also the moment when she learnt about Arno, Sage's older brother, who unfortunately passed only a few years prior. Apparently, that was why Sage was acting up and based on the conversation younger Raven and her foster father was having, he heard about the incident at school. Raven was more than happy to sweep it under the rug if it meant she could keep her foster family. The last thing she needed was to suffer twenty times worse in the group home.

"What happens now?" Dagne asked her. She wondered what they were still doing here if younger Raven was so determined to be at peace to keep her spot in her new family.

"Just wait. I know where we're going, but we're gonna have to wait until nightfall," Raven said in an ominous tone that Amara would be proud of. Of course, nightfall was only a few seconds and a blink away, but it still built suspense for the older dragoness.

Raven knew that there was the more unavoidable thing to face before the final horror of the evening, and it was not one that she looked fondly back on. She begrudgingly went upstairs with Dagne tailing her every move. She entered her room and left the door ajar as she packed things in order. It only took a few moments before the vicious red-haired girl stormed into her room. Raven recalled that her foster parents had left the house by this point because they needed to visit her foster mother's sister in the next suburb.

"Ey, bitch. I don't care what my dad says. You're trash, and you're never gonna be my sister. Got it? I'll make sure you're out on the street by next week like the berggie you are!" Sage said and then marched out of the room as she'd entered. Raven fell back onto the bed and sat there for a few moments with her face in her hands while Dagne pondered if illusions conjured from memory could experience pain. They barely had a moment to breathe before they slid out the bedroom window. Dagne was finally happy. Raven was escaping her fucked up situation and escaping from that bitch of a foster sister. There was a part of her that wanted to believe that they never saw her again but given the sheer number of times that Raven name-dropped the bitch on a daily basis, it was highly unlikely. Either way, a girl can dream right.

Dagne followed the girl in confused silence as she stole one of the family bicycles and chased after a green and gold vespa with a stag on the side.

"Where are we going?" Dagne asked. She did not like how the South African was peddling and pushing haphazardly. When they got to the first red light, she pulled Raven out of the driving seat and onto the back wheel so she could cycle instead.

"I know, I know... follow the scooter" She knew that was the objective, so she shushed any objection her trainee might have about her taking the reigns. She couldn't deal with the wobbling anymore.

They stopped just shy of the house that Sage parked in front of. Dozens of teenagers were in, out and around the face-brick house.

"Why the hell are we at a high school party, Ash?" she asked her trainee, and Raven had a dark look on her face.

"This is where it happened."