It was an incident I'd never forget.

Years later, I asked Mother and Bethany if they remembered that day.

They didn't.

Father would have remembered.

It had just been a spark.

I hadn't meant to shock her.

I was excited over the new trick, proud I'd discovered it all on my own.

Proud that I could do what Father only did in secret.

Magic.

I remember Bethany's loud wail and my own eight year old self, frightened and watching my younger sister's face contort and turn red with her fearful wailing.

I hadn't meant to hurt her.

Mother rushed out the back door of our home, ears acutely attuned to the sound of her youngest child's anguish.

"Bethany?" she exclaimed as she briskly rushed over, shooting a suspicious glare at me. I stared back, wide-eyed and speechless. Mother searched a still bawling Bethany and discovered a small burn on the palm of her pudgy hand. "Taea! What have you done? How did this happen!?"

Back then, I equated her shaking tone with anger. Now I know she was only afraid of what it meant for us.

So I started running.

"Taea!" Mother called, as I ran for the trees behind our home, the fear in my sister's eyes and the sounds of her whimpering permanently burned into my eyes and ears. "Taea!"

I remember tearing through the thick brush to hide until Father was to return.

I remember my brother appearing hours later, looking up into the branches of my favorite tree, where I'd settled myself in hiding.

"Father's home," Carver announced, with the hint of a smirk on his face and 'you're in trouble' in his voice. Even at age five, he'd been unbearably smug, the little prig.

I remember being terrified to cross the threshold of our home, terrified of what Mother might have told Father.

I remember entering the room and seeing him sitting in his favorite chair. I immediately burst into tears, blubbering an incoherent explanation before he could even get a single word out.

"Taea," he said, when I'd finished with my tearful apologies. Instead of yelling like I'd fully expected, he rose from the chair and gathered me up in his arms, wiping my face with his sleeve. "Don't cry, love. Bethany is fine. I need you to show me what happened. You won't hurt me, I promise."

After more coaxing, I hesitantly tried to bring back the tingle of electricity into my fingers while he watched carefully.

He gave a small smile once I was able to produce a small sparkle.

All I could do was nod meekly as he explained what was happening to me, what I must and mustn't do, and how we were going to make sure no one else got hurt.

"Do you understand, Taea?" was all he asked me before taking me to apologize to Bethany, whom he'd already healed.

"Yes," I answered, and I did understand.

While Bethany had forgotten the incident merely a few weeks later, I held the guilt over my own head for much longer.

Within the year, I accidentally shocked the boy who worked on our farm and we had to run away for the first time, to the outskirts of a village too small to even have a Chantry.

Soon enough, Bethany began having her own 'incidents,' as we came to call them, which all eventually floated away throughout the years, forgotten in the dusty corners of our minds, just like all the homes we've had since then.

It's funny, in a twisted way.

I haven't stopped running since then.