“Do you think a dragon promise would be a good goal?”  I asked hesitantly, fiddling with my seatbelt.  “Like…getting everyone to promise that the feud is over?”

Toph looked at me for a second, surprised, before turning his attention back to the road.  “Yeah, sure, that could work.  You’d have to plan out what you want said in advance, to make sure you don’t allow loopholes, but it could definitely work to make sure the feud ends even after the curse is lifted.  But you think you can do that?  Already?  Not that I’m doubting your abilities,” he added swiftly, “it’s just that it took Rebecca probably another decade of her life to learn that, and she started really learning dragon magic earlier than you.”

“It’s one of the first things I asked Diana to teach me,” I explained, feeling a bit embarrassed.  “It was the only thing I could think of to deal with Terium, so I focused mostly on that.  Well, that and learning the basics of controlling and using my magic, because Diana really wanted me to know that.  But the promise magic, that was my main goal.  I’m pretty sure I can use it, but Diana said if I wasn’t confident in my magic being able to bind the whole town, she could come and help.”

Toph looked surprised again.  “Mom offered to come out here?  She doesn’t leave campus much.  Actually, probably only a handful of times in my lifetime.  She guards that gateway thing, you know, and the whole library, really.  It’s her magic that helps keep it hidden from humans.  She doesn’t like to be gone long.  She must really want to help you if she’s willing to leave to help with the promise magic.  Which makes sense, really – I know she loved Daphne a lot, and you’re her legacy, so it makes sense that Mom would want to see you thrive.”

I got distracted by the mention of Mother.  “Is it weird, you having large age differences between you and your siblings?”  I asked hesitantly.  “I gather it was like that for Mother and Diana, but they were still close, too.”

“Hmm, I guess.  My oldest brother, the dragon, I haven’t spent a lot of time with him.  He’s like, what, 2,000 years old or so?  When we do see each other, we get along great, but he lives on the other side of the world and is heavily involved in politics and stuff.  He’s busy with his own thing.”  Toph shrugged.  “Then there was my second brother, the one who died before I was born – a shifter, he didn’t live as long as us.  Mom talks about him sometimes, so I felt like I knew him even if we never met.  My older sister, she was about 150, 160 years older than me – also a sphinx – and she was actually still at the library when I was young, but she left before I hit my teen years.  We haven’t seen each other much, either.  She’s busy doing…actually I don’t know what she does these days.  She was an elementary school art teacher last I knew, but I don’t know if she’s still doing that.  She likes to play pranks,” he added thoughtfully.  “You know, sit around in sphinx form and startle people who don’t realize she’s alive.  Nowadays that doesn’t work as well, too much of a likelihood of people taking pictures or videos or something, but she could be a lot of fun to have around.

“Anyway, then Rebecca’s almost 100 years younger than me.  I was living at the library, though, mostly because Dad wasn’t doing so great and I wanted to stay to help him and Mom.  Rebecca was kind of a surprise, then extra so when she turned out to be a dragon, because Mom wasn’t expecting a second dragon kid – it’s not entirely common.  There’s a chance, but it’s low.  Anyway, I helped a lot with raising her and that was a great experience, to be honest.  I was glad I got the chance to spend time with her while she was young and get to be closer to her since I never got to spend that much time with my older brother or sister.”

I knew dragon siblings were pretty rare, but I hadn’t thought about how surprising that might be for Diana.

“But you were basically old enough to be her parent?”

Toph made a face.  “Sure, technically.  But she had both of our parents still alive, so I didn’t exactly need to be a parent.  I tried to just be her brother and let her have a proper sibling relationship.  Sure, we’re like 100 years apart, but I’m closer to her than my other siblings.”  He paused in thought.  “I’ll be honest, long-lived supernaturals sometimes have a harder time with sibling relationships, because we don’t often have kids close to each other.  You’ll find some exceptions, but a lot of us kind of want the time to get to know each one and give them undivided attention, I guess?  I suppose it depends on the person, actually.  But with Mom, she’s had, what, three partners so far during her lifetime, I think?  And how often she had kids depended on her partner.  The first one, the shifter, she had two kids closer in time.  But my dad, he was a sphinx, so they kind of knew it would be hundreds of years together, so no rush on their end.  Which means siblings with several decades between them.”

“Mother only had me.  In her entire life.”  I bit my lower lip, remembering.  “Almost 3,000 years, and only one child.  She said she was never really attracted to anyone and her interest in Dad actually surprised her.  But then after I was born, once she realized the full extent of the feud in Terium, she couldn’t stay.  She also said she didn’t know how she felt about Dad after that.  He’s a very passive person.  He never really said much about how the rest of the family got involved with me and treated me and kind of just let things be.  Mother said he was more active in courting her when they met – in another town – but when they came back, he kind of settled back into his passive self, just sitting back and letting whatever happen.  Mother tried to convince him to leave with her, but he wouldn’t.  She never said it, but I think she felt sorry that her one romance just sort of fizzled out like that.”

Toph gave me a compassionate look.  “I can imagine that would be tough, knowing that their relationship didn’t end up working out.  But at least she loved him for a time, that’s still something.  Maybe not ideal,” he admitted, “because then it might have hurt worse when the relationship failed, but at least she got you out of it, right?  And it sounds like she really was happy about that.”

“She was.  She loved me a lot, I knew that.”  I felt a bit of a lump in my throat, the hills on the horizon ahead of us the same ones where Mother hid for years.  “It helped, really.  It was my only anchor for years and years.  My family…it wasn’t that they didn’t care about me.”  I struggled to figure out how to describe this.  “I was never good enough.  I wasn’t a proper kapra and they were always trying to lecture me about how to be better, how to follow Marilyn properly, and so on.  And Dad just let them say whatever, or sometimes joined in.  They never understood me or even tried to.  They just…they wanted me to be something else.  Someone else.  They cared, but at the same time, they wished I was different.  And I could never really explain anything to them, not when I knew they wouldn’t understand about Mother, or Mark, or how I felt about the stupid war.”

“Are you hoping to say hi to them while we’re in town?”  Toph sounded a bit hesitant, like he was trying to feel me out.  “Hoping to mend the relationship a bit now that they know you’re a dragon?”

I thought about it.  “I imagine most of them will be mad at me, to be honest.  My family was pretty much die-hard Marilyn supporters.  I can’t imagine they’d be okay knowing that I called her out, said she was a bad leader, and ultimately ended up cursing the town.  Well, Mother did, but because of me.”

“We’ll see how it goes.  Maybe since they’ve had time to consider, they’ll feel differently now.  At least we should give them a chance and see if they’ve changed,” he suggested.  “And don’t worry, I have your back.  I know this isn’t going to be easy for you, but maybe it’ll give you a chance to see some good changes, maybe even get some closure in dealing with people.  And remember, at the end of the day, you have the upper hand – Daphne made sure that you got to decide when the curse was lifted.  You’ve seen these people at their worst, and you recognized the problems they have.  So now, you get to see if they’ve changed at all and whether they’ve even started to earn your forgiveness.”

As the outline of Terium appeared in front of us, I took a deep breath, my fingers tightening slightly in my lap.  Toph was right.  This was my chance to face this town and the people I’d dealt with growing up.  I wasn’t the same now, I’d embraced my dragon side and learned dragon magic, and hopefully the people of this town weren’t the same, either.

It was time to find out if anything had changed or if the kapra vs. hydra feud was as strong as ever.

~~~~~

“We’re going to stand out,” I pointed out as Toph pulled onto the main street of the town.  “Most people here don’t have cars – there’s not far enough to travel with one.  And there probably isn’t a hotel unless that’s changed.”

“No worries.  Since it’s a supernatural town, I can just sleep in sphinx form, you in dragon form, I guess.  It won’t be an issue.”  He glanced out the window, noticing the looks we were receiving.  “So…ideas on where to park?  Who to talk to first?”

Excellent questions to which I had no answer.  I was busy looking at the town as he parked and we got out, which looked pretty much unchanged since I’d last seen it eight years ago.

Before, I’d have gone to the school.  That was the most likely place to find Marilyn, at least.  But now?  I mean, if I wanted to find Marilyn, I could probably check at her home.  But maybe it was best to talk to more “regular” people first, before talking to Marilyn or Bill, to see what other people felt the town was like now.

I headed towards the general store on the kapra side, not really sure what to do, while Toph trailed after me.  I bought a couple of things, ignoring the looks from the cashier, someone whom I recognized as a few years older than me.  They didn’t say anything specific to me, but as we left, I saw them calling someone on their phone.

But this trip had reminded me of something.  There was someone I could talk to who might give me as neutral a response as I might hope to get from anyone here.

I hesitated, still feeling weird about this, then glanced at Toph, who was waiting for my verdict.  “I think there’s a hydra we can talk to.  I don’t know where to find her, so we might just have to wander around for a bit.”

“Sure,” he responded easily.

He didn’t know how weird it felt for me to step across the unmarked line that delineated the kapra and hydra sides to town.  I’d never been to this side of town, and if it wasn’t for Mother’s curse, I might be more concerned about the dangers of walking into the hydra part of town – there was a good chance I wouldn’t come out alive.  But now, with them not having magic and me being a full-fledged dragon…yeah, not a concern anymore.  Though it still felt weird to me.