"Of all the irresponsible things you could have done!" Lylis paced around the room, her pace as frenzied as the movements of her hands. She was full of frantic energy. "He could haved died while you tried to apply your magic to him. Worse, you could have killed him with your-"

"But I didn't-"

"But you could have!" Lylis nearly screamed the words at her. Her wide eyes seemed all the wider in her fury, the irises mere pinpoints of wild color. "Not once did we tell either of you to attack anything while surveying the area. I don't care who it was who threw the apple," she cut Noellyn off when the girl would have argued. "You should have known better. Common sense would have said to run for assistance immediately. Yet, you two fools stood there, open targets, and now Recht is in the healing ward for a side wound that could have turned out deadly."

The teenager shrank guiltily into herself, making Lylis want to shake her harder. She stared at the golden head that had fallen forward, took note of the few tears that had slipped down Noellyn's cheeks. "Got the point, did you? Good." She finally came to a standstill and still trembled with furious energy. "For your punishment, you'll be cleaning dishes for the remainder of the month. You will no longer be joining on the goblin hunts, so you'll have extra time to work with your hands and elbows on cleaning up the eating room, underside of the tables included. In your spare time, you will be working with me on concentration. If you mean to use your abilities, then you are going to finally learn how to use them, and not toy with them!"

Noellyn nodded meekly. Lylis made another round about the room, trying to calm her frayed nerves. Since Noellyn had helped Recht stumble in, she had been nothing but nerves. The boy had been her responsibility since he'd been sent to them. Now, Lylis felt she'd let him and her best friend, his mother, down. A small part of her tried to understand that Noellyn had tried to help. She had mended his injury enough to keep him from bleeding out, something she'd barely succeeded in doing for herself. That was some form of forward movement.

That tiny thought was squashed out by the maternal feelings Lylis endured for Recht. She is dangerous. She could have hurt him. Emotions were overcoming rationality, a curse from her human side. Lylis struggled for calm. "You are dismissed," she bit out with a finger pointed to the exit, eyes squeezed shut.

"We need to speak of Student Noellyn," Lylis said to her brother hours later. The day had finished and he'd returned with his crew of student hunters only minutes before. His brows loped up, then fell complacent as he followed her from the practice ground to their shared home. He worked his boots and socks off, and waited for his sister to stew in her thoughts.

"I think she should be removed from the other students to train alone," Lylis finally said.

Arlis again reared his brows. He stayed silent, thoughtfully watching her agitated movements, watching with curiosity as a full head of steam built. She'd explode soon. She always did. Then she would move to rationality.

"She is going to kill someone. She has a violent power with no idea of how to use it. Hence, when she does, she becomes dangerous - even if unintentional, Arlis. She can't be kept around the others until she has learned what she's doing." Lylis clamped a hand around her throat to withhold a sob. "She doesn't even understand what she's done, either. No matter how I try to get my mind past it, thinking that she tried to help him, she could have done far worse. She could have made him bleed out."

"Who," he finally asked.

"Recht. She ...," Lylis paused to draw in a deep breath. "They were sent out today to do some goblin hunting. Recht decided to fish one out by throwing some apples around. I don't suspect he thought he'd actually get one, but he did. He found two of them. One had a spear and got in a lucky shot that pierced his side." Lylis had to flex her hands to stop her nails from biting into her palms. "She somehow caused one to - to explode. The other ran away. She should have helped him back, or run off to find help instead of trying to heal him. She was lucky that she stopped the flow of blood at all, but now he'll need to recuperate."

Instead of turning to a rational turn of conversation, she began to pace. Arlis watched with open concern as her speed increased. "So your decision is to cut her off from everyone," he asked her, incredulous. "Lylis, stop. Stop!" He had to shout the word at her as he grabbed at her shoulders to still her. The muddy eyes so like his own were damp. "I understand your concern for Recht. He is near like a son to you as your friend is as close a sister as you will have. He is seventeen and soon will face the war that has begun, and there's nothing you can do to stop him. Your only censure toward this girl is that she didn't protect him, and don't shake your head at me, saying it isn't. I know you, sister. If she had left him, the goblins could have killed him."

Lylis interjected, "If she had found someone once the goblins were gone-"

"Then they could have come back with more and killed him," Arlis rationalized. "If she had helped him back as he bled, then an animal could have caught his scent and killed him. Or he could have bled worse and died on the way back." When Lylis moved to object again, he squeezed her shoulders, then shook her gently. "There are too many what if's in this situation to decide what the right decision is. You will have given her punishment already, yes?" When she nodded, he released her. "Then let her do her punishment and let it be. To restrict her from the others will only shame her, and in time the buds of hatred would grow within her soul. Matteson already had a heavy hand in that action. Don't add to it, Lylis."

Whenever she had felt pain, Noellyn had made it a habit to retreat to her bed. This time, her shame was deep enough that she refused to take the easy path out. Instead, she sought Recht out. He was in a deep sleep when she finally found him, surely under the influence of a sleep potion to help his aching body mend without his suffering the repercussions of it. She sat at the edge of the bed with one hand set over his. Her misery ate at her while her eyes traced over his young face. His hair, sandy brown, fell in a soft curl across his forehead. It gave him an expression of innocence that was quite false. She knew him to be a jokester, always with a gleam of laughter in his eyes. There was no dirt on his thin face like there usually would be when he was digging up his plants. In fact, they had taken care to clean every bit of blood off of him, then placed him in fresh white garments with his middle bandaged up while the healers took time to stitch his injuries up.

In fact, he looked too clean, too pure. Noellyn stared at their hands, noting the grime and blood that still coated around her nails. She looked utterly filthy against him, in fact. She retracted with a wince. It was her fault he was in here. She hadn't been able to save him, and the damage was deep enough that the healers had no choice but to mend his internal injuries with care. They were mindful of potential sickness and other complications - those that Noellyn could have created by using her wild magic on him.

Why did she bother to come see him? "Filth," she hissed to herself. "Dirty, disgusting monster." How often had she been called that by the others? This was the first time she truly believed it. There was a sharp intake of breath from Recht as her soft words stirred him from sleep. With a dreamy smile, he cracked his eyes open to squint at her. "Hey," he sighed out. He shifted toward her with one hand sliding out across the sheets.

Noellyn ignored the hand, her smile strained. "I was just coming to check on the damage. I was told it was severe enough, with all the blood you lost."

Recht worked out a weak laugh. "Yeah, I gave it to the goblin for the spear."

"What do you mean?"

He sighed again and mumbled, "The spear for the apple. Had to throw to get it." He was already dozing off again, his mouth cracked open. With a flush of guilt, she ran her hand across his arm, whispering down to him, "I'm so sorry. I won't ever do that to you again."

"I don't blame you." Perhaps he wasn't as asleep as she'd thought, after all. "I threw the apple. Got two of them, hey." The corner of his mouth crooked. "You were brilliant."

When he didn't add more, Noellyn patted his arm to confirm he had definitely gone to sleep this time. "Thank you, but I blame myself." Frustration tinged her words as she continued on talking to him. She had so much bottled inside her with no one to talk to that it was spilling out now. "I keep trying, but Lylis watches me. She thinks I don't notice when she does it, but she thinks I'm dangerous to everyone. She doesn't really like me being around. I think, if she knew back then what she knows now, that she'd never have allowed me to come here. Maybe I am dangerous.

"I don't know what I'm doing, and it isn't like Lylis can teach me. Merithyn has an inkling, but she struggles with me. I can tell she's frustrated. No one knows..." With a sulky grumble, Noellyn kicked her toes against the floor. "I don't even know. I can't ask anyone here, either. I feel stuck, like I'm the idiot in all of this. I don't think that's true, though. It's not that I'm stupid. It's that no one here knows what to do with me. They don't know how to teach me." Something finally struck in the back of her head. "But I know who might be able to."