I opened the door on a crisp morning and was met with the green scenery of the mountains. A blast of frigid wind billowed my skirts and somewhere from inside the cottage my brother yelled, “Ey! Shut the door!” Ignoring him I walked away from the little house towards the edge of the cliff. I stood there breathing in the last fresh air I would probably ever experience before going back into the city. I turned back around to look at the cottage one last time. The dull, brown color of the walls, the vines growing around it, the almost caved in roof. The roof had been my brother, Talcum’s, fault. We had been scaling trees near the cottage and he had seen a spider on the branches of his tree. Next thing he knew, he was on the roof of Granny Marigold’s house. Granny wasn’t too happy, but Keagan and I had laughed so hard that we had almost fallen off too.
As I smiled to myself with all the memories that we had had at this place, Keagan crept into my line of view. Apparently he was trying to scare me, so I let him. Keagan tip-toed behind me and I turned around and whispered, “I got you!” He screamed and tripped over a rock landing on his back. I was laughing so hard I was rolling on the ground when Granny and Talcum ran out to see what had happened. Talcum helped Keagan get up and Granny looked really worried. Keagan was a boy a year older than me. He was lanky, but you could tell he had muscle slowly developing. He had blue-greenish eyes and a shock of dirty blondish hair. Standing next to my brother, I realized that he was almost as tall as him. Talcum was a tall, broad-shouldered 16 year old, with reddish-blonde hair. As I crossed over to the three of them, Talcum and Keagan towered over Granny and I.
“Hey Keagan, when didja get so tall?” I asked as I put my hand above my head to measure how much taller he was than me.
“Oh, I dunno. When did you get so short Lyra?” he retorted.
Granny interrupted our friendly competition by saying, “Both of you, go wash up, your father’s going to be here soon.”
In the quiet of the washroom, I looked into the cracked mirror. I wiped my bangs out of my face to reveal my violet eyes. They attracted too much attention whenever I went out, so I covered them with my bangs. My blondish-brownish hair was a little longer than shoulder length and I tied it up into a ponytail. I tossed the dress I was wearing earlier into the washtub and traded it for leggings and a comfortable long sleeved shirt. I slipped my boots on and yanked a light dress over the clothes I was already wearing. I grabbed my satchel as I headed out the door and checked to make sure I had taken everything I brought with me a year earlier.
Keagan, Talcum, and I had come to stay with Granny last year, when I was thirteen, for training to inherit the family business. We did everything from scaling trees, learning patience, and going undetected as we crept through the forest. Today my dad was finally coming to pick us up from the desolate mountain.
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