Merigold Lee

24 years old

Died of Boredom

So stated the tombstone Merigold stood over, hazel eyes stormy. Her frightfully frizzy red hair had come loose around her eyes, leaving curly wisps to tickle her in all sorts of irritating places. It did not matter that she pulled it back severely every morning, securing it with dozens of pins and a steely glare. By the end of the day, she always looked as she did now; like she had hung her head out of one of Hakarth city’s many trains while it whizzed form one end of its tracks to the other. Only her hair disobeyed her so flagrantly. Her clothing was never in such disarray; a turtleneck climbed to precisely halfway up her unadorned neck, and tailored slacks with a light but noticeable crease fell to her ankles. Her thick, dark-rimmed glasses gave her an impression of bookishness, which was exactly what she wanted them to do. She did not need glasses.

“What is this?” Merigold asked, peering from the tombstone, which was made of fondant piped with tiny block letters that must have been a dire waste of someone’s time, to her sister, Reese. Reese met her gaze, grinning.

They were a study in opposites. Reese had their mother’s jet-black hair, let loose in a wooly cloud above her head. She had their mother’s near-black eyes, and their father’s thin lips and uncomfortably sharp eye teeth. Unlike Merigold, or either of their parents, Reese did not enjoy books, nor quiet time, nor carefully curated meals and a schedule known a week in advance. Instead, she dabbled in photography and rode an airboard through the city with her friends, sampling food from the dozens of restaurants that lined Hakarth’s busy streets.

And her dream, of course, was to be anything but a Drafter. Reese had no interest in following in the footsteps of their parents and take on perhaps one of the most illustrious jobs in the city, formulating the contracts that kept society running smoothly. She did not see the appeal in inflicting order on the chaos that was humanity, with their wonton desires and incurable penchant for self-gratification. To her, it was all just boring. That boring life was what Merigold wanted above all else.

“This,” Reese said, still smiling, “is your birthday cake. Mint chocolate chip. Your favorite. I had them decorate it special for this year because, you know, the Awakening is in three days and all.”

“So you got me a birthday cake with a tombstone on it?” Merigold asked archly. “Did that seem appropriate to you, Reese?"

"I thought you would like it. You want to live the rest of your life in absolute, soul-sucking boredom,” Reese said, smearing a finger through the green icing around the tombstone and sticking it straight in her mouth. Her eyes were laughing as Merigold sighed and put a hand on her hip.

“Cut the damn cake, Reese. I’m hoping the rest of my life is more than one year long.”

Reese shrugged, snatching a knife off the table and plowing it into the cake. Crumbs rolled everywhere as she haphazardly rolled the mint-chocolate monstrosity into position and pushed it towards Merigold. Reese rolled her eyes when Merigold picked up her fork, twisted it back and forth as if inspecting it for any sign of grunge, and delicately took a bite.

“Seriously though, Meri, are you excited? Three days and you’ll finally find out if you’ve wasted the last 24 years of your life with your bull-headed insistence on being a Drafter.”

“Genetically-speaking, I have a ninety-eight percent chance of following in mother and father’s footsteps,” Merigold said factually. “I wanted to be prepared, and I am.”

“And what if you’re in the what, two percent remaining? What if you end up like Derek, an elemental born to two lightbringers? What then?”

“What then?” Merigold asked. “I suppose I’d figure it out. Even elementals have reasonable, well-paid, quiet jobs that they can do to keep society running smoothly.”

“Well, what if you’re…you know, something that doesn’t have a chance at a nice quiet job?”

“There is absolutely no reason or us to be having this conversation, Reese. I will be a Drafter. So will you, whether you like it or not.”

Reese thrust her lower lip out, pouting. Thrashing the remains of her slice of cake with her fork, she muttered something under her breath. When Merigold demanded to know what, her sister did not answer. She did, however, reveal an actual present, wrapped tastefully in copper paper tied with twine. It was a book about the history of local law, the inner pages clearly illuminated by an elemental with water-based magics and an eye for real beauty. Mollified, Merigold settled in to run a movie reel with her sister until their parents returned for the night.

The evening turned out lovely, despite starting out with a tombstone. It should have remained lovely.

But it did not.

The lightbringers rode through the streets of Hakarth on the evening train every day at precisely four, and again at nine o’clock. They were magic users singularly gifted with control over light and, in its absence, darkness. Their job was thus obvious – they brought light to the city as the twin moons rose above the distant mountains and the sun slid down beyond the horizon. Then, they rode through the streets once more to put out said lights, and the night rode behind them, a great velvety blackness that blotted out the city in a wave of black.

As everyone did, Merigold lay in bed when the lightbringers’ second train roared past. She and Reese shared a room in their beautiful but small home. It was the kind of space poorer families dreamt of. The windows were real glass, forged by fire elementals from the sands of the mountains. Silk drapes hung across them, stifling the cold from beyond. The floors were not wood, which hosted pests and was prone to rot, but tile, painted by elemental water users in a rich shade of lapis lazuli. There was furniture in the room, a desk made of wood shaped by hand and held together without nails of any kind. Dozens of beautiful books rested on that desk, some of them treated rudely by Reese.

Merigold stared at the books as the lights winked out and the throaty roar of the train faded into the night. She could already hear Reese snoring softly, sound asleep. Unfortunately, her sister did not know how right she was. Merigold, despite herself, despite the chance of her not being a Drafter being absolutely miniscule, was terrified.

The Awakening was not a mysterious affair. It was carried out in the massive great hall of the university where they studied all that there was to know about society, city management, and magic. There, each student would, upon reaching their twenty-fourth birthday, write their name in a great book under the watchful eye of an Illuminator – someone capable of writing magic into runes, shapes, and sigils. The Illuminator would then write a rune into the book, and mirror it on each of their hands. Upon putting their hands together, their power would finally be awakened, and they would be able to use the magic they had, in theory, been born with.

It was said that once, long ago, children had been Awakened at a younger age. But many of them were irresponsible, not mature enough to handle the abilities they had been given. Thus, the legal age for working magic had been raised to twenty-four, some hundreds of years ago, and so it remained. There was no test, as of yet, to determine what magic someone might have. Thus, they were all treated equally until that fateful day…a day which would decide their careers and futures. Obviously, a lightbringer could not do the job of an Illuminator, after all. Nor could anyone do the job of a Drafter but a Drafter born…well, a Drafter.

Merigold bit her lip, feeling tears blur her vision.

There were some types of magic that were incredibly rare. Elemental fire wielders, for one. Nearly all of them were pushed into the engineering guilds that used steam to power most of the mechanisms of the city. Those that remained had no real choice but to join one of the combat guilds and protect the city from the erowits. No one knew what, exactly, the erowits were – spirits or monsters or both of those things – but they had been around Hakarth and across the country of Venerith for as long as anyone remembered, and so their were combat guilds full of people whose sole purpose in life was to do battle with the erowits. It was a career for the powerful, and often the short-lived. Those who joined the most prominent guilds lived even better than most Drafters, honored as heroes. But, again…they did not live long.

What would she do if she Awakened with such a power, and was forced into one of the combat guilds? The only thing worse would be to end up in the mines…

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Merigold stared resolutely at the bottom of her sister’s bunk. Did Reese worry about such things, she wondered. Or did Reese merely worry that she would end up Awakening as a Drafter and live a boring, uneventful, long life.

Merigold had no idea. She did not know how to ask. So, she forced her eyes closed, and she remained with them like that, scrunched against the night, and the uncertainty it brought until she fell asleep.