Post by Dominique nó Mandrake (D) on Aug 15, 2006 3:28:50 GMT -5
I can remember even now, how I watched the Adept, mistrustful of the seeming simplicity of the task. He was slowly moving in front of the line of six year olds, in which I stood somewhere left of center. All children my age born in Valerian House, as I was, were in that line, along with a few singled out from the other twelve Houses as likely candidates. Each child in turn was being offered a small, hard candy which, we had been told, would help them determine if we were built for the canon of submission.
So far it seemed that only one girl would make her marque here, for the other children had spit out the highly spiced candy with varying degrees of alacrity, despite the scrutiny they were under from the Adepts who were present. Some had been so unprepared to deal with the burn had actually yelped at the shock of it, when they had been expecting sweetness.
The boy to my right had quickly grown nervous watching the reactions of his playmates and, to my great annoyance, he had begun to fidget. Taping his toes and wringing his hands in my peripheral vision. I was quite seriously considering kicking him in the shin by the time the pale, blonde, Adept had arrived in front of him, and presented him with the candy. Only to have it spat back at him a second later with such force that it actually bounced off the man’s chest.
Arching one thin eyebrow at the boy, now studiously examining his toes, the Adept took one step to his right to stand in front of me. I took the proffered candy and popped it quickly into my mouth, feeling the pain and heat of it, and knowing immediately that I hated it. I did not, however, immediately spit it out, for even so young I was proud, and I was loath to admit that I could not enjoy the pain, as I knew I was expected to. But I waited only a heartbeat or two before I plucked it out of my mouth, keeping it by my side, pinched between my thumb and forefinger.
I looked up at the Adept still before me, his brow was slightly furrowed and his eyes were dark with thought. He recognized something in me, but was having trouble placing it, I think. I know now, of course, what it was that gave him pause. But, at the time I merely thought that perhaps I had done wrong, which only served to aggravate me further.
A thought I found very appealing had popped into my mind the second the candy left my mouth. My fingers practically twitched at my side as I watched the Adept move on. I delayed as long as I could manage, but the distracted, tuneless humming coming from right beside me had me about ready to snap.
Once the Adept had put three children between us I moved. Hooking the legs out from under the vexing boy to my right, I laid him out on the floor, flat on his back. And as the children around me raised cries of alarm and excitement, I fell upon him like a wolf on prey, flushed from cover. When he parted his lips to shout for help, I shoved my own candy into his sensitive mouth, and then clamped my tiny hand tight across his muzzle.
He flailed at me, ineffectually. He was, in fact, quite a bit larger than me, but surprise and panic kept him from organizing himself into any kind of useful defense. I grinned as he writhed beneath me, but I didn’t have long to savour his discomfort. An Adept, quicker than the others, was on her knees beside us. Pulling me away from the sniveling boy, who just sat there wailing as I snarled and lashed out at him. Struggling in vain to escape the tall Adept who held me suspended. She, it appeared, was of a much cooler mind than my lost quarry.
I bucked, and screamed all the way to the Dowayne’s chambers, where I was dumped unceremoniously to the ground. I did manage to calm down enough to kneel properly abeyant, eventually. One of the Adepts gave a recitation of the recent event, which was followed by a rehashing of various other transgressions from my past. The Dowayne first, cast her judgment and set a punishment for later that afternoon, and then she asked her Second to arrange a meeting with the Dowayne of Mandrake House.