“Someone’s at the door.”

Jelro glanced up from where he was cleaning a small owl’s wound. The bird had gotten caught in the wind and thrown into a thorny bush.

Oireug was looking at the door in an expectant way.

“What? Who would be here at this time of day?” Jelro wondered.

“Smells like Adif and Shayrow,” the rabbit remarked.

“Why would they be here?” Jelro mumbled, carefully finishing his cleaning job before placing the last bandage on the owl. “There you go. Try not to fly for a bit, okay? Just hang around here. I’ll get you something to eat.”

“Thank you,” the owl—who was named Liaj—hooted. “It feels better already.”

“There’s guests—it’s Adif and Shayrow!” Breek exclaimed, circling near the window.

“Why are Adi and S’ay here?” Jelro asked, baffled. “They ought to be with their groups, getting ready to go on some kind of mission, or...” He trailed off.

“It’s not just Adif and Shayrow,” Refi said as she peered out the window. “There’s more than just them.”

“What?” Jelro glanced up again. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Refi said. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“Maybe those are the ones in their group,” Cove suggested.

“Oh. Yeah, that would make sense. Kind of.” Jelro frowned to himself.

But why are they here?

Someone knocked on the door a moment later. Jelro went to open it—right as Eiss got himself tangled around a chair’s legs and knocked the whole chair over.

“Eiss!”

“I’ll help him,” Refi said. “Greet your guests, Jelro.”

Jelro turned back to the door and opened it, moving his unkempt hair back from his face.

I really ought to get a trim...

“You didn’t say your friend’s a merf,” someone said, making Jelro wince at the slang. Only merfolk from mid-ocean regions used the term merf.

The one who spoke was a boy with pointed ears, a mop of curly strawberry-blonde hair and round, persimmon-orange eyes. He looked quite frankly unimpressed at the sight of Jelro.

Standing next to him was a girl with mallow-purple eyes and long, auburn hair. Her posture was impeccable and she had a sort of graceful air about her.

And standing in the front were Jelro’s friends—Adif and Shayrow. 

“Uh, Adi? S’ay?” Jelro glanced at them. “What’s going on?”

“Do you want to join our group?” Adif asked.

Jelro fell back a step.

“What did she just say?” Cove asked.

“What’s a group?” Breek wondered.

“Jelro, what’s going on?” Oireug worriedly asked.

Jelro glanced back at his animal friends. They were all watching him with concern, able to sense his distress.

He turned back to Adif, Shayrow, and the other two.

“Why?” he whispered.

“We were all unchosen,” Shayrow said, his voice clipped and bitter. “But there are only four of us. We need a fifth member.”

“You were un’tosen?” Jelro spluttered. “But-- You’re the top of the swordbearer class!”

“I was,” Shayrow quietly corrected.

For some reason, the girl with the auburn hair looked surprised at Shayrow’s words, and almost confused.

“Who are you two?” Jelro asked, glancing at the girl and boy that he didn’t know.

“I’m Kestek,” the girl softly said, seeming afraid to say anything more.

“Call me Luss,” the boy said, casually sticking his hands in his pockets, even though he was wearing gloves that were tucked in to his long sleeves.

“I’m Jelro.”

“Yeah, we know,” Luss said. “Adif’s told us all about you.”

Adif blushed.

“Although she didn’t tell us that you’re a merf,” Luss added.

“I’m a halfling,” Jelro amended. “My father is human, and my mother is merfolk.”

Kestek made a funny face, but it faded away almost instantly.

“Well, yeah, you’ve got leg-es,” Luss quipped, saying “legs” with two syllables. “Obviously you’re not a full-blood merf.”

Jelro wasn’t sure if he should glare or be taken aback.

“This is great.” Luss rolled his eyes, then he started to point at everyone. “Our group is gonna be an elf, a dhampyr, a sprite, a merfling, and a human.”

“You’re a human?” Jelro said to Luss before he could stop himself.

“Why is that so hard to believe?!”

“Your ears--”

“—are normal.” Luss scowled.

“Sorry.” Jelro turned his palms up. He had been about to question Luss on the color of his eyes, since he was sure that orange wasn’t a natural eye color for humans, but he refrained.

“Am I allowed to be a part of your group?” he asked instead.

“The headcaptain told us to bring you back to them,” Adif explained. “They said something about seeing your skill, so you should probably bring your bow.”

Jelro went back into the shed, hastily explaining to the resident animals what the situation was. They could understand Segaugnal—the official land language in the Yaruid Kingdom—well enough, but Adif tended to talk faster than they could easily understand. 

None of the resident animals seemed to know what to think as Jelro grabbed his bow and fastened his quiver crosswise over his torso and shoulder so that it was on his back and out of the way. 

Then as Jelro glanced around the shed, he hesitated.

“They can come, too,” Adif said, easily catching on to what Jelro was thinking.

“All right,” he said, then he gathered up the resident animals for the field trip. 

Refi walked on her own, but Jelro had to drape Eiss over his shoulders, and put Oireug in his special satchel-like bag that had multiple sectioned-off “pockets”. Jelro had used an old bottle to create Cove’s pocket in the bag, so the chameleon could see everything through the clear glass. Breek had a spot in the bag, too, which could have fabric drawn over the window if she wanted to nap. 

He paused, unsure what to do with Liaj.

“Liaj,” he said to the owl, “are you feeling up to coming with us? I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Can I come?” she asked.

“Of course.” Jelro scooped up the owl so she didn’t have to fly, letting her perch on his shoulder.

“We’re going to be making quite the entrance,” Shayrow observed, glancing over all the animals. 

Jelro wasn’t sure if that were a good thing or a bad thing.

When they got to the place where the choosing of groups had taken place, Jelro decided that it was a bad thing.

Every eye was fixed on him as he strode up to the captains. He hadn’t faced his former teacher in years, and now she was staring right at him with her soul-piercing gaze.

The headcaptain made sure Jelro was aware of what was going on, then they created a target on the field with magic, instructing Jelro to shoot until he either hit the bull’s-eye or ran out of arrows.

Jelro eyed the target. It was standard size, but it darted this way and that, moving quickly and haphazardly.

“Well, Jelro? Please show us what you can do.” The headcaptain gestured for him to take the field.

Adif, Shayrow, and the others moved back. Adif took Jelro’s bag and became a perch for the resident animals—except for Eiss, whom Shayrow kindly held.

Jelro gripped his bow, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. 

He wasn’t nervous about the task. He knew he could hit the target with his eyes closed.

But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

If he succeeded, he would be put in a group that would head off to travel the continent and experience all kinds of things. He knew he should’ve been happy about getting such a chance after he had dropped out of The Academy, but he had dropped out for a reason.

Jelro pulled out an arrow and nocked it the way he had so many times in his life. Everything was in his muscle memory. He shifted his feet slightly, turning his body and head, not taking his eyes off of the moving target. 

The headcaptain had cleverly given the target no pattern with its movement. Jelro was used to that, though. Real targets rarely had a pattern to their movement.

In the distance, Jelro could hear the singing of two birds before one of them stopped and loudly complained that the other bird wasn’t harmonizing correctly. The second bird stopped singing, carefully matching its pitch as the first bird started singing again.

Then he heard something unfamiliar to him—a voice that spoke in a snake language of some sort, but one he hadn’t heard before. It was low and mocking, and it sent chills up Jelro’s spine.

“Won’t this be fun—a whole crowd to scare... A perfect spot to strike and slither.”

Jelro kept his attention on the target, careful not to give away where his attention was really focused. He knew how snakes—particularly venomous ones—tended to think. The more deadly their bite was, the cockier they tended to be.

They also tended to be malicious and engaged in what were essentially “hit-and-run” attacks, biting multiple times for no real reason except to cause panic and pain. Then they would slither off, eager to find their next victim.

Jelro could understand if a snake was biting something because it needed to eat. It was a death that gave life, and the two balanced out.

But anyone that killed for fun was breaking the balance, creating death when it was unnecessary and therefore wrong. 

“They’re all so distracted, aren’t they? Oh, this looks perfect. Plenty of skin. Say your farewells, stupid tengu.”

Jelro reacted in less than a second. His body turned before his brain could process what he was doing—and the arrow snapped from his bow’s string, hitting its mark nowhere near the target.

“What in Firmament’s name--?” Captain Yuuf spluttered, his eyes wide with shock. Jelro’s arrow had buried itself in the throat of a viper that had momentarily frozen in preparation to strike.

The snake spasmed, trying to strike before it met its end, but Jelro’s arrow had been angled so that it pinned the snake to the earth, where it twitched and flailed before going still.

Jelro knew he did what had to be done. The snake would have killed the swordbearer captain, and perhaps a few others. It was a death that saved a life.

But that didn’t mean it felt right to him.

The students that were watching began to whisper among themselves, obviously confused as to why Jelro had turned away from the target and shot an arrow at Captain Yuuf’s feet.

The swordbearer captain jumped into action, unsheathing his sword and slicing the snake’s head off just to be safe. 

Jelro couldn’t watch.

“Well,” the headcaptain said, picking up the snake and holding it up, “that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I believe you just proved you have even more skill than we were testing you for.”

“And I believe I owe you my thanks,” Captain Yuuf said, bowing his head towards Jelro. “You just saved my life.”

Jelro bowed his head back.

“Join the group,” the headcaptain said to Jelro. “We’ll add you to the roster.”

Jelro shakily made his way to where Adif, Shayrow, Kestek, and Luss were watching with the resident animals flocked around them.

Just for good measure, Jelro nocked another arrow and immediately loosed it, barely watching out of the corner of his eye as it hit the center of the still-moving target.

He heard Captain Awre let out a triumphant whoop, which was all the praise he could ever ask for.

~ ~ ~