"Lira!" the girl turned toward her brother's voice, blowing her hair from her eyes in irritation.
"What? We're in a library. Stay quiet."
"It's the family's library. No one else is here." He sneered at her. His attitude changed immediately when he remembered why he had called her. "Look! I found an alchemy book!"
Lira gasped and snatched the book, plopping down on the thick carpet, not bothering to sit in one of the polished mahogany chairs several feet away.
She opened the thick volume to a random page and skimmed it, running her index finger over the words as she read them.
She looked up, her eyes shining. "This is it, Dom. This is the serious stuff, not like things from those lessons we've taken."
He sat down next to her and she lay the book flat on the floor. They read feverishly until the rays of the setting sun shone through the window into their eyes.
"Oh my. So that's where you two have been! Goodness, have you been lying on the floor all day?" Lira and Dom looked up to see their mother, Raeshelle, standing in the doorway, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She looked tired, but who wouldn't, carrying a baby around inside them, Lira thought.
"Yes, Mum. We've been reading. We found an alchemy book!" Dom blurted.
Their mother laughed. "So you want to learn more, huh?" They nodded eagerly. "I guess I'll have to teach you some tomorrow."
"Really?" They asked in unison, hardly daring to believe that their mum would teach them serious alchemy.
She laughed again. "Really. Now, go wash up for supper."
Lira and Dom cheered and hugged her -gently- and ran down the hall, shoving each other into the walls, laughing. Their mother sighed and straightened a wall hanging that had been knocked askew as the children crashed by.
* * *
Lira and Dom stared at each other. "Guess Mum's not going to teach us any alchemy today," he said as they sat on the swings outside. The midwife had shooed them out as soon as she had gotten there. Dom scuffed his shoe in the dirt.
"Probably not," Lira said glumly. She brightened. "Let's write a letter to Papa and tell him that Mum's having the baby!"
"Okay," Dom replied, smiling.
* * *
Smiling dutifully at the camera, Dom and Lira sat on either side of Sara, who was now four and chattering like a monkey. Lira was thirteen and Dom was twelve. Raeshelle and her husband, Lukas, sat somberly behind their children. Lukas's hat was tucked under his arm, and he and Raeshelle both wore military uniforms. The camera flashed, temporarily blinding Lira. Blinking owlishly, she relaxed her shoulders and she and Dom stood up. Lira picked Sara up and handed her to her mother, then shoved her hands in her pockets and she and Dom wandered off, heads together.
Raeshelle looked at Lukas. "They're up to something."
He nodded, taking Sara from her and giving her a peck on the cheek. "They're probably practicing alchemy again. They really want to follow in your footsteps."
Raeshelle looked strained. "I don't want them to become State Alchemists," she said softly, rubbing her temples.
Lukas looked at his wife sadly. "They'll do it with or without our permission in a few years. We might as well encourage them, so they'll be more prepared."
Raeshelle sighed. "I'll talk to them."
* * *
Concentrating, Lira breathed out as she and Dom crossed wrists, careful not to smudge the alchemic circles drawn in ink on their skin. He created the poison within her body that she shaped into a cloud in her lungs, and released from her mouth, careful not to breathe it back in. It floated toward the spider web in front of them. The spider stiffened, and within seconds had died.
Raeshelle stared at them. Lira wasn't sure if she was afraid or impressed. "Oh," she whispered. Both, Lira concluded.
"We worked it out ourselves. What do you think, Mum?" Dom asked eagerly.
Raeshelle gathered them both into her arms. "You won't be turned down by the state when you're older, darlings." Dom beamed at Lira around their mother's hair. Lira smiled back but she had heard the note of sadness in Raeshelle's voice. Mum didn't want them to do this.
* * *
Lira looked at the wrist bands she and Dom had recieved for her seventeenth birthday. They were the transmutation circles they had developed for their alchemy. She smiled. Mum may not have liked it, but they were being allowed to follow their dream.
* * *
"Dom what?" Lira cried, sure she hadn't heard right.
"Baby... Dom...he...he's dead." Mum said quietly, wiping her puffy eyes. "He was trying alchemy alone and he breathed in the poison."
Lira felt numb. "I told him he couldn't do it alone. He didn't know how to control it right. I don't even do it without a gas mask anymore. Not since I made myself sick," she said, trying to hold back the panic crashing toward her with a wall of words. She glanced at Raeshelle sharply. "Where is he?" Her mother took her hand and led her into his room.
Lira stared down at her brother's waxy face and took his hand.
She couldn't cry. She felt icy fingers slowly encasing her heart, hardening it. She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb, then, without thinking, took his wristband and slipped it onto her wrist, the one that didn't have one. She stood, turned and left, barely noticing when Raeshelle called to her.
She went into her room and stuffed some things into a bag. She grabbed her gas mask. Sara stood in her doorway.
"You're leaving to become a State Alchemist, aren't you?" she asked. Sara was uncannily good at guessing what she was thinking, especially for a ten-year-old.
"Yes," Lira said, tightlipped. "Don't think you can stop me, Mother." She knew Raeshelle was standing right out of her line of sight. She took the lack of response as assent. "I'll write."
Lira stepped past her sister, and walked out of her house for the last time. The iron gate at the edge of her property creaked as she closed it. She headed toward the train station and only dared look back when the train was underway, tears streaking her face.