Just to clarify: Molly has not yet rung the Purple Bell. She hasn't even found the shrine yet.

Chapter Fourteen: Blue Flashbacks

Molly had never been the moping type. She was a woman, and had the capacity to become decently depressed, but she wasn't about to sit around her house doing nothing. For the past week she'd been down in the mines, smashing rocks until she couldn't feel her arms anymore. She'd found some pretty decent gems, too, but she wasn't in it for the jewelry. She needed to get her mind off of…well, she just needed to clear her mind out, and the only time when she could let her thoughts go blank was when she was mining. It was something about the dark coolness of the caves, but they really let her just go blank.

"We've never been up to the upper mine before," Finn pointed out as Molly strolled into the mine entrance that morning. She really wasn't talking much these days; she barely had much to say since the…incident with a certain white-haired someone, so she just nodded, deciding she'd poke around in the upper mine and see what she could find.

Climbing mine shafts felt weirder than going down them, but she was finding tons of topaz and rubies right and left. But it wasn't until she hit the forty ninth level did she really strike it big: there, in the smashed remnants of a boulder, she saw the glittering, shiny white stone.

"It's a diamond!" Finn squealed, as Molly picked it up and examined it. Yup, it was definitely a diamond, and the biggest she'd ever mined! Stowing it in her rucksack, she knew it would bring in a pretty penny once she shipped it. She was about to turn and walk all the way back down to the ground floor, seeing as it was nearing sunset, when Finn tugged on her shirt and pointed to a small opening in the wall at the far side of the cavern. "Look! There's light shining through, I think that's a door way!" Molly wasn't so sure, but after thirty seconds of intense whining, she was ready to do anything to get Finn to be quiet! And when she approached, she found that it really was a doorway, and it led out onto the top of the mountain!

The scenery up there was beautiful and snow capped, even though it was almost summer. Up one staircase was a big pedestal, for who knows what, and down another was a little hot springs. The whole mountain top was strewn with boulders and lichen.

"Wow! It's beautiful up here!" Finn exclaimed, flitting about, and though Molly said nothing, she nodded in agreement. It was breathtaking! It was a view even Wizard could enjoy…if Molly even cared what Wizard would have enjoyed. Which she didn't. Or at least, she told herself she didn't.

"C'mon," Molly sighed, speaking her first words all day, "I've got things to do. Let's go home."

"All you do is work!" Finn squeaked, putting his fists on his hips. "I want to stay and play up here!"

"Finn…" but just as Molly was about to snatch him out of the air and drag him back down to the ground, a bright blue feather floated down out of the sky. When Molly looked up, she was just able to see a blue bird, flitting about over their heads. The feather landed on her boots, and she stooped to pick it up.

She didn't know why she wanted it; she'd sworn of men for life. They'd only caused her nothing but trouble. Why would she need a blue feather to propose with? But as she dragged Finn home, she held the light little feather against her chest, and didn't let it go for the rest of the day. She even fell asleep holding it.

"If only I'd been more observant," she sighed to herself, once Finn had dozed off. "I could have seen what was wrong with him. None of this would have happened." Molly didn't realize it then, but at that moment, no matter what she told herself, she loved that Wizard more than ever.

Wizard held the frame in his hands. It had been a while since he'd seen the picture; he'd hidden it away at the bottom of a big pad-locked trunk. But something made him want to dig it out, and now that he had it, he couldn't stop staring at the perfect faces on the piece of paper.

The Man's face was strong and square, his wide grin stretched across his boxy jaw. His eyes squished as he smiled, and Wizard could just make out the sea-foam green tint to them in the faded photograph. The woman that stood by his side was beautiful; her long silvery hair trailed behind her in a meticulously wrapped braid, little strands falling around and framing her face nicely. Her face was round, like Wizard's, and her eyes were a soft honey color, just a shade away from amber. She wasn't smiling right at the camera, instead, she turned her gaze down to the three children who stood between her and the man.

The tallest and oldest of the children had his father's jaw and his mother's eyes. The second oldest was a girl, and almost as lovely as her mother. But the third child was the loveliest of the bunch; he was so like his mother in every way. His face was small and round, with one eye the color of a sunset, the other the color of the sea. His hair stood out among the children; he was the only of the three who possessed his mother' hair color, and the only of the three who inherited her kind, dreamy eyes. He did not smile, but instead looked up at his mother, eyes fixed to hers, as if she were the only person who mattered in the whole world.

Wizard didn't realize he'd started crying until a fat tear rolled down his nose and splattered on the frame, obscuring the picturesque family behind the glass. He wiped away the tear and continued to gaze at the family, his family, until the sun went down. How long it had been since he'd seen them. Too long, in his opinion.

The book the boy held in his hands was heavy, but he dared not drop it; it was a family heirloom, and his mother would have been sad to see it damaged. He curled his tiny fingers around it as he hoisted it up, and walked over to the table in the center of the room, setting it down gently and looking up at his mother for approval.

"Thank you, Gale," the woman said, patting his head and smiling. The opened the ancient book to the first page, and with the smoothest of handwriting, wrote down Gale's four letter name on the inside cover, alongside his mother's name, his grandfather's name, his great-aunt's name, and so on.

"What are you doing, Mommy?" Gale asked, peeking up over the edge of the table to watch her print the loopy letters on the page in dark ink.

"I'm setting your name to the paper," the woman answered, setting the quill down and showing him. "To commemorate your membership in this family."

"What about Kestrel and Faviana?" he asked, looking out the window to where his older siblings were playing. "Shouldn't you write their names, too?" The woman lifted him up to sit on her lap.

"I'm not talking about our little family," she said, her voice just as soothing as honey. "I'm talking about our magical family; the long line of Witches and Wizards in our extended family." Gale looked up at his mother with wide eyes, and she chuckled. "You have much to learn. But I will teach you, my son. The job of a senior Witch or Wizard is to pass their knowledge onto their descendants. When you grow up and have children, if any of them have our magical abilities, you will be teaching them what I am about to teach you."

"What if I don't have children who are magical?" Gale asked, worry creeping into his voice. His mother smiled again, and nuzzled her cheek against the top of his head.

"Then you will teach your grandchildren. Do not worry, son. All Witches and Wizards have magical descendants."

"What if I married a Witch?" Gale asked. "Then I'd be guaranteed to have magical children."

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way, sweetheart. All Magic Casters are related in some way. To have children with a witch could cause…complications. That is why our kind intersperse ourselves with humans; it guarantees the purity of our magic. But this isn't something you need to worry about. You are just a child."

The flashback had been so vivid, that when he finally snapped out of it, he was sent reeling, his breath completely knocked out of him. He hadn't remembered his past so vividly in so long, that it was honestly a shock. But what was more shocking than just remembering the conversation, was what his mother had said to him.

For so long, the only thing Wizard ever remembered about his childhood was the harsh instruction from his Master, who had found him after the…fire. But now, with this memory, things were…changed.

"The purity of our magic," he mumbled to himself, standing and looking at his upturned hands. "My father…was a human. My Mother married a human, and that had been…normal. She'd told me it was normal." At that, he stood and went over to the trunk standing open in the middle of the room, and dug around until he found what he was looking for. The book was burned and crumbling, but most of the pages had managed to survive, and as he flipped the crumbling cover over, he teared up again, and traced a finger over the swirling handwriting adorning the page. A long line of names ran down the side of the page, but at the very end, right above his own name, was the name 'Calypso'. His mother's name.

"I'm sorry, Mother. I've let you down," he said, wiping his eyes. "I've done something awful, and I know you'd be ashamed of me. As if you're not already." He snapped the book shut and threw it back in the trunk, too upset to read it further. He was a disgrace to the family name. He was a disgrace to every name written in that book, and not for falling in love with a human. That had been the only thing he hadn't done wrong. But the way he'd treated Molly, all because his Master had told him that it was wrong to love a human, that was what disgraced the memory of his ancestors, and most of all, his mother. But saying he was sorry wasn't going to fix anything. If he was going to restore any semblance of his honor, he was going to have to set all of this right.