“Magic users require education and licensure. Children learn to use their magic starting between the age of 3 and 7. Most are unaware of their abilities until that time. Generally, the later someone becomes aware of their magic, the less powerful it is. Why? Well, otherwise, wouldn’t they have noticed sooner?”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

"No.” Silver turned her head slightly, shifting on the cold wood of the park bench where she had settled with her two best friends, Kerie and Skye.

Kerie was the more serious of the two. She was, in Silver’s experience, hot-headed, stubborn, and ambitious – it was possible those traits coexisted in her because she was Chinese, and her parents had what Kerie called stereotypically high expectations. Nonetheless, so long as she got good grades, they ignored the crimson streaks in her jet-black hair, and the clothespins folded into her heavy, uniformly rock-band-swag sweatshirts. When Kerie narrowed her dark eyes, as she was doing at the moment, she started to look like a shark that had scented blood. She had the tenacity to follow that look.

Skye was completely different. Pale and waifish, she was petite, but surprisingly self-assured for her stature. Her wispy blonde hair and copper-rim glasses made her bright blue eyes twinkle, and gave the impression of seeing right through everything. Silver was sure it was because she had grown up on a farm, and was used to working with animals.

They sat on either side of her, and the still chilly March air was made warmer by their presence.

“I don’t understand. You’ve lived here since you were eight or nine. I mean, that’s long enough, right? What’s the big hurry now? You can’t even finish high school here?” Kerie complained, rolling a clothespin from her backpack between her fingers, back and forth. “I mean, I was looking forward to walking with you, you know? Thought we’d go out and have a big celebration afterwards. Maybe you could even come to my grad party, so I wouldn’t be stuck with my family. All. Day. Long.”

Silver felt herself nodding in agreement, not quite sure how to respond with words and knowing the motion was enough. Rather than looking at either of her friends, she had taken to staring down the grassy plain to the park river that shimmered like glass beneath the steely sky. Skye had said nothing so far, but Silver sensed the girl watching her through wiry copper glasses, as if waiting for her to make a move. Complain or resign herself, which would she choose?

“I’m sorry, guys. You know I want to stay at least until we graduate,” Silver finally said.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Skye said, still watching her.

“It’s not your fault,” Kerie stated flatly, as if there could have been any doubt to Skye’s meaning, and threw the clothespin disgustedly into the dirt at their feet to grind it down with her toe. “You could stay with one of us.”

“You could, just for three months. I know my parents would be fine with it,” Skye offered for the hundredth time. Silver smiled, watching as several ducks took turns diving into the lake, tail feathers bobbing above the surface. A cold breeze picked up, and Silver saw Skye pull her red windbreaker tighter around herself out of the corner of one eye.

“Nah. I’ll go with them. I bet they’ll let me visit this summer, or you could come see me. A new town, new places, new faces…you guys need to get out more anyway.”

Silver was not entirely sure when she realized she was dreaming, or that the conversation she was dreaming about had happened months ago. Not soon enough to change anything.

“What are you looking at?” Skye asked softly, following her gaze out across the lake.

“Nothing.”

“You always say that.”

“Ducks,” Kerie said, still grinding with the toe of her shoe.

Suddenly, Silver wanted nothing so desperately as to be transported back to that moment. In it, she was straightening, turning back to the two girls she had grown up with.

“Catch you guys later,” she said, lifting her backpack onto her shoulder.

“Hug,” Skye said firmly, standing and extending her arms. Kerie stood, too, unwilling to be left out. Silver hugged them both, but as she did so, her gaze fell over their shoulders, and she felt herself freeze.

The wolf was there. Green-eyed, it watched her in silence, patient, still, calm.

Stepping back, Silver realized Kerie and Skye were gone. Other images replaced them, replaced the park, the wolf. They were hazy at first, and then increasingly clear.

First was a beast grander than any she had ever before seen in her dreams, as great in berth as a small house, scales like molten gold, talons black as midnight. It turned its crystalline eyes to her, and she saw in them the depths of the world, but a world she did not know. Then she saw herself, reflected in the rich daylight of a land lush with summer. When she shifted her gaze away, the image seemed to follow after her, caught in her mind.

No one in the world could mistake the golden beast for anything but a dragon.

And then she was staring at the ceiling of her room in the MASO. Utterly blank, cool, and empty. Silver sat up, held a hand for a moment to her chest as if in pain, and then swung her legs out of bed to dress. There was another uniform in her closet, and beside it, two sets of workout clothes. She determined to ask Bek about blue jeans, and then donned the workout clothes. They were, of course, black.

There was not much else in the room, but she did track down crosstrainers – like everything else, mysteriously her size – and a few different accessories that looked like they were meant to keep her hair out of her eyes. By the time Bek knocked on her door, she was ready for him, if not feeling a little overly sporty.

“Good, you found the workout clothes. You’re going to need them,” he said, glancing at her feet in a way that clearly said he was checking what kinds of shoes she was wearing.

“I thought we were grabbing food?”

“We will,” he said, motioning her down the hallway. Silver eyed him dubiously while she closed her door, checked that it was locked, and started ahead of him. In the end, he took her to the ground floor in an entirely different wing of the building, apparently to an area reserved for training. Her first hint that they had come to a gym were locker rooms. From there, they walked through a fairly standard gym with a few stands of free weights, squat racks, treadmills, and the usual. It was pretty busy for four o’clock.

“A lot of people use this place?”

“Yeah,” Bek observed, seeming to notice the other people for the first time, “the gym gets a bit busy around five.”

At the other end was another door, and inside of that something that looked like a gymnastics gym. It was larger than she had expected.

“Just what kind of training do you do in here?”

“Defense training, mostly,” Bek told her, ushering her through the door and bringing her to the edge of what her feet told her was a springboard floor. “I would say right now you’re pretty much at your worst, right?” She stared at him. “Just woke up, stressed, hungry, probably exhausted,” he ticked items off his fingers like they were something to be proud of. “This is the perfect time to see what your baseline is. We’ll do some warm-ups, and then get straight to it.”

It took some effort for Silver to hold her tongue on just what she thought about his plan; she was unimaginably stiff and sore. There was an ugly bruise the size of her head across her hips where she had been slammed against the wall when the fire threw her backwards. Her lungs still burned every time she breathed, and her voice cracked irritatingly whenever she tried to string two sentences together.

“Straight to what?” she asked, staring around the room for any indication of what exactly they were going to do.

For once, he seemed to be enjoying himself a bit.

“Sit-ups.”