Shades of Purple
by Grace Singer
From Chapter One: Oedipal Exile Soup
Nose pressed to the glass, Gaelin gazed out the window as it sped past scenery she wasn't looking at, but through.
She had taken this trip only once before and she had hoped that would be the last. Yet here she was again, speeding toward a destination that felt like a funeral march.
Dade had warned her that this kind of thing happened often enough. A young witch with too much strength was a threat and if he or she wasn't careful whose toes he or she stepped upon...
Someone would get pissed at her feral behavior one of these days and send her packing. Someone would sense her power, hidden underneath tantrums that were nothing compared to her true anger. Someone would come to fear her and send word to the Tribunal.
Her first meeting with them had been a mere brush. A warning they had said.
"Be wary young one," said the ancient woman seated in the middle, her long white hair flowing past her ankles, pooled on the floor in waves. "You might lose control and control is the only ground you stand on."
She had taken that warning to heart, but sometimes her temper got the better of her. There was no intention behind her actions. She simply acted without thought. This action would surely be her last.
They would find her guilty right away. They would send her to the Isle of Cambria. They would sentence her to a punishment worse than death, an exile so final that her family and friends would mourn her.
Dade would mourn her.
Or at least, she had thought so. She couldn't be aware that even now, Dade was playing a game dangerous enough to send him into exile along with her.
She sighed heavily watching the trees whip past, the fast fading flowers blindingly bright in the morning sun seeming like a blurry watercolor painting.
Looking down she noticed how the scars on her arm that had faded long ago burned in warning. She knew then that this was her last journey through Barcaan, the mainland of Aylasia. Her scars had been a gift from a dark witch in her youth, a beacon that would call out a warning whenever she was in danger.
Yet somehow she sensed that the dangers on the Isle of Cambria were better faced than another incident in Barcaan. She couldn't afford any more of those if she ever expected to come to her full power.