After I got back home I opened the door to see my father sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. “Orion, you weren’t fighting again were you?” he asked with a stern voice. 

I closed the door. “Uh, no I was reading.” I held up the book. 

“Is that why I can smell blood?” He asked, getting up. “I can’t keep healing you everytime you come home from gods knows where.” 

“Well I wouldn’t have to if we moved.” I replied as his hands started to glow white and the slash on my leg was healing. 

“You know we can’t move, your mother won’t allow it, even if we had the money to.” he looked at me with his pale cyan eyes, his hair was a snow white that just covers his eyes. 

“We can sell the house, hell we can even just leave and build one, it would be better than living in this hell hole.” I argued back.

“Yes, but this is the place where your mother and I grew up, and your mother doesn’t want to leave so that’s final!” He argued back. 

I rolled my eyes and went into my room. I tossed the journal onto my bed and put on a different shirt as the one I was wearing now had holes in it. I walked out and down the hall to my little sisters room. I knocked on the door. “Shiro, time to get up and go train.” 

“Mmmm five more minutes.” her voice was groggy. 

“Nope, time to get up now.” I tried opening the door but it was locked. “Open the door or it’s coming down.”  

“Mmmm I will in five minutes.” I could barely hear her as she was probably talking into her pillow. 

I counted in my head to three before I broke the door open with a little bit of force. “Orion!” both my father and sister yelled. 

“Get up, get changed and let’s go.” I said while fixing the door, or attempting to. 

I walked away and into the living room. “Orion, I swear to the gods if you break another door in this house.” My father yelled at me. 

“Maybe she should stop locking her door.” I said before my mother smacked me in the back of the head.

“It’s called privacy” My mother said as she sat on the couch and hugged her husband. 

“Yeah, yeah. Make sure she gets up and goes up the mountain.” I said as I started to think about how to teach her to use mana. 

I left the house after saying goodbye. I walked back towards the mountain that I was reading at. On my way there I passed the market and while no one was looking I stole an apple and took a bite. “Hey! You need to pay for that.”  The owner yells at me. 

“Pay for what?” I took another bite of the apple. 

“You dirty Half-Blood” he said under his breath.

It took all of the fibers of my being to not completely destroy the stand. I took a deep breath and continued on my way. Everyone stared at me like I was some rabid beast. After countless stares I was finally out of town and hiking up the mountain. 

Once I got to the top the three idiots weren’t there. I sat down on a log and waited, and waited. I must have waited for thirty or minutes until Shiro finally showed up. “What took so long?” I asked. 

“I had to wake up.” She responded. “I don’t know why we have to do this training, you know I can't use mana and I never will be able to.” 

Even though she was probably right I still have to try. “You don't know that, maybe if we..” I paused “I don’t know, but we will figure it out.” I’d pat her head.

“You don’t know that.” She pushed my hand away. 

“Can you at least try?” I said empathetically.

“Fine.” She sighed.

“Okay Shiro get into a comfortable position because we will be here for a while.” I told Shiro.

She sat with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap. “Okay now do as instructed.” I stood behind her. "First you need to close your eyes and concentrate, second you need to know where your Mana Heart is, and third imagine tunnels throughout your body.”

“How do I do that?” She asked

“Close your eyes and find you Mana Heart.”

“Ok.” She closed her eyes and after a few minutes she opened her eyes. “I found it, it is near my sternum.”

“Ok now focus on your core, and then imagine it filling up with something.”

“Ok but what?”

“I don’t know water or something.”

“Ok now what?”

“Ok now imagine your core is a dam and I want you to slowly open the dam walls and let the water flow.”

Shiro closes her eyes once more and after a minute or two, she opens her eyes and sighs. “What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She answered

“Don’t give me that.” I poked her forehead.

“Ow- no literally nothing happened. I can't feel mana or control it, I'm worthless in this world.” She snapped.

I hit the top of her head. “Don’t give me that shit, who was the one that nursed me back to health when I was sick. Who was the one that cheered me up when I had my first break up. Who is the one that keeps me sane when people are throwing shit at our house.” I snapped back at her. “Shiro you may not be able to use mana, but you're not useless you are my little sister, and I don’t give a shit what people say. You are the light of my life in this shit hole.”

She was silent. “What about mom and dad?” sha finally asked.

I pulled her into a hug. “Of course, they helped me too, but you did most of the work.”

We stayed like that for a while. Before I finally let go. “Ok Shiro, practice a bit I'm gonna take a nap. Wake me up if you make any progress.

***

As I was asleep my instincts screamed at me to wake up, as I opened my eyes, I was greeted by the sight of flames engulfing the forest around me. Panicked I looked around for Shiro but she was no where to be found.