Chapter Two: Back-to-School Shopping
Elodie pushed her sunglasses up and shifted her chair to ensure she was completely in the shade of the table umbrella. It was the kind of late summer day that was warm, but not oppressively hot, with a soft breeze that cooled Elodie down when it kissed her bare arms. It was, however, very sunny. Far too sunny for someone as light sensitive and translucent pale as Elodie. She pulled her elbow into the shade and wrapped her hands around the coffee — really it was more of a strawberry milkshake with a bit of a coffee aftertaste, but it was good — in front of her.
Across the table, her Uncle Jean mirrored her, pulling his forearms out of the path of the shifting afternoon sun, while her Aunt Adora lounged back in her chair, completely unconcerned with the possibility of skin damage. But why would she be? Adora was Solarian by birth with honey hair and bronzed skin that made her far more suited for Magix summers than her husband or niece. Jean leaned forward, keeping one hand on his coffee — an actual coffee, not a milkshake masquerading as coffee, which Elodie honestly thought was a waste given how much an actual coffee cost at her aunt's favourite café — and tapping the fingers of his other against the table.
"I still think you should consider transferring to Cloud Tower," he said. In the weeks since Elodie's meeting with Faragonda, her aunt and uncle had respected that Elodie wanted to continue at Alfea, but now that the new school year was only days away, they had started broaching the topic more and more.
Elodie swirled the straw around in her drink and took a sip, as though considering her response. "Nope."
Her aunt laughed. "You heard her, Jean. Being a witch isn't as cool as being a fairy." She sipped her drink, taking a few seconds to noisily suck on air as she hit the bottom. "Let her live her sparkly fairy dreams."
Jean smiled despite himself. "I guess we are both getting very uncool in our old age."
Adora laughed again and smirked at her husband. "Speak for yourself, old man."
Elodie shot her aunt a grateful look and Adora smiled in return. She had always felt closer to her uncle than her aunt in a lot of ways, but sometimes Adora just had her back.
"Fair enough," Jean said with a chuckle. He swirled his coffee, likely in a vain attempt to resuspend the obscene amount of sugar Elodie had watched him put in. "Besides." He turned to Elodie. "Your mother would want you to do what makes you happy, even if she would also disagree with your choices." Jean smiled as he said it, but Elodie knew that he probably felt the same soft pang of grief that she did at the mention of her mom. He might have felt it even more acutely.
Jean wasn't her mom's brother; he wasn't actually a blood relative of Elodie at all. He and Adèle had grown up together, close friends and fierce rivals matched in both ambition and skill. But while Adèle had stayed on Norroux, becoming its Guardian Witch, a successful politician, and, eventually, matriarch of one of its five noble houses, Jean had left to travel the magical universe. He had found adventure, happiness, and love abroad, and returned to find his home changed. It was Jean who had rescued Elodie after the death of her family, keeping a promise he made to Adèle to protect her children should anything happen to her. That he had only managed to keep one third of that promise was something Elodie knew he would never forgive himself for.
"Now that the mood has been so thoroughly killed, don't you need to get back to work?" Adora asked. There was nothing left of her drink, but she took another noisy sip of air.
"I suppose it is," Jean said, shooting Elodie an apologetic look over his sunglasses.
"I think we can keep him for a bit longer," Elodie said, accepting his silent apology. "After all, there's only a few more days to question my life choices before school starts again and I move back to the dorms. You both need to take every opportunity you can get."
"Hey, leave me out of this," Adora protested. "I think you're old enough to make your own bad decisions. If you value sparkles over success, then so be it."
Elodie grinned and across the table, Jean laughed.
"I think our Elodie will succeed no matter what she does," Jean said. He spoke with a confidence that Elodie, who hadn't made any progress in figuring out her magic (she wasn't avoiding the problem, she told herself; she was just taking the short rest of the summer off), lacked. "She'll simply brew some strange new potion to tackle any problem that comes her way."
Elodie rolled her eyes, but Adora nodded in approval.
"Very true," Adora said. "There's no problem that can't be solved by pouring acid on it."
Elodie opened her mouth to protest, to tell them that acid wasn't even a potion to begin with, but stopped when her aunt and uncle both laughed. Instead, she puffed out her cheeks and finished her drink. They knew her too well; it was too easy for them to tease her. Jean pulled out his pocket watch — an actual old fashioned pocket watch and Elodie would never stop making fun of him for it until the day he died — and checked the time.
"I do need to get going though," he said, pushing his chair away from the table and standing. "I have a meeting in fifteen minutes." Elodie marvelled at the way her uncle, a powerful wizard and fearsome warrior who had travelled across the magical universe, spoke so casually about working an office job and worrying about being on time for meetings. The image of her dad — or worse, her mom — working a similar job had they also survived to go into hiding briefly floated into her mind, but she banished it as quick as it came. Maybe one day she would be able to see only the humour in those thoughts, but today was not that day.
"We'll walk with you," Adora said. "We're headed in the same direction, right?" The question was directed at Elodie.
"That's right," she replied, standing and grabbing both her and Adora's empty cups.
"One more errand to run?" Jean raised his eyebrow as Adora stood up, revealing just how many shopping bags she'd been hiding under the table. She and Elodie had gotten most of their back-to-school shopping — Elodie needed new clothes to wear to school, as did Adora, even if her kindergarten aged students wouldn't actually care about what she wore — out of the way before meeting Jean. Elodie tossed the empty cups in the nearest recycling bin before taking a bag from her aunt.
"A very important snack errand, yes," Adora replied. "Can we get you anything?"
Jean shrugged, careful not to spill the rest of his coffee as he did. "If you see something good, sure. You know what I like."
They talked about nothing in particular as they walked Jean back to his office. It was a nice reprieve from the topics of school and Elodie's parents. Not just from the talk of them, but the thought of them as well. Ever since her conversation with the Headmistresses, Elodie had found herself being dragged down by thoughts of her parents, especially her dad, more than she had in years.
Griffin wasn't the first person who had said Elodie reminded them of her dad, but in the past, the comparisons had mostly been physical. She shared his straight dark hair, rounded face, soft features, and button nose. She even shared his left handedness and lopsided smile, though her dad's smile had been natural rather than a result of nerve damage. All she got from her mom was her purple eyes and even then, Elodie had managed to lose one. She raised a hand absentmindedly to her face and felt the roughness of her hypertrophic scarring, the smoothness of her adhesive eyepatch.
"So, have you listened to the new Mars album yet?" Adora asked, speaking for the first time since they'd said goodbye to Jean. She looked at Elodie with concern. Elodie suddenly became hyperaware of the hand on her face and swiftly dropped it. "I know you were a pretty big fan of Thornes."
Elodie flushed. Pretty big fan was putting it lightly. Thornes had really hit their stride as a group around seven years earlier, when Elodie had first moved to Magix with her aunt and uncle, and she had been thoroughly caught up in the hype. It seemed silly to her in retrospect, but their music was one of the first things she had been able to get excited about after leaving Norroux. Mars had been Rose Red, their leader, and the only one of the three members who had pursued a solo music career after the band broke up two years ago. Cinder Rose had cultivated a successful acting career while Winter Rose, Elodie's favourite, had done an effective job of disappearing from the public eye.
"I've listened to it a bit," Elodie replied. Actually she'd listened to the whole album three times and had had her favourite songs on repeat for the last week. "It's different — more like EDM than girl pop — but I like it."
"I don't know if you've heard, but Mars is doing an autograph signing soon."
"Is she?" Elodie had not heard.
"Yep," Adora confirmed. "There's a new independent music store opening downtown, so I guess she's doing it to give them some publicity." She paused for a moment and continued when Elodie didn't add anything. "You should go. Alfea is still letting you out on weekends, right?"
Elodie laughed. "Letting me out on weekends? Like I'm a dog that needs to be walked?"
"You're enjoying this walk," Adora said. "You're enjoying it enough that you decided to pass our turn off."
Elodie stopped and looked around. She caught sight of the nearest street sign and realized her aunt was right. They had gone way too far when Elodie wasn't paying attention. She flushed with embarrassment and Adora giggled, but didn't rub it in when Elodie turned around and started leading her back the way they came.
"Really though, if you're able to get out, you should go to the signing with some of your friends," Adora said. "You've been so anxious lately and getting back to school isn't going to help. Doing fun things like going to autograph signings and shopping will do you some good."
"I'll think about it," Elodie said with a shrug. She could think of at least one person who would be interested in going with her. "You know what they say about meeting your heroes though."
Now that she was paying attention, Elodie was easily able to guide them to their last stop of the day: Millennium Macarons. It had opened up the previous winter and had quickly become Elodie's favourite bakery. It was also quite close to the apartment she shared with her aunt and uncle, so she walked over fairly often during the summer. But it wasn't often that she could convince Adora to buy her macarons, so she was fully prepared to take advantage of this opportunity.
They entered the bakery and their presence was announced by the soft ringing of a bell. Opposite the door was a display case filled with a wide selection of colourful confections with a small space on the bottom shelf reserved for discounted boxes of cracked and broken macarons. On the far wall behind the display case was a sign that advertised several flavours of ice cream sundaes, all of which came with a macaron on top. It was a cozy place, and completely empty other than a dark haired girl behind the counter who Elodie didn't recognize. Strange, given that Elodie knew everyone who worked there — other than the owner and head baker, anyways; a woman named Manabe who was soft spoken and shy according to her employees, and not the kind of person who would be keen to get behind the counter and interact with customers.
"Welcome to Millennium Macarons," counter girl said, smiling at Elodie. Whoever she was, she was cute.
Elodie nodded in response and quickly looked down to examine the display. It was well stocked, but there was one very important flavour missing.
"Do you have any of the raspberry matcha in the back?" Elodie asked.
"A woman of fine taste, I see," the girl said approvingly. "Give me a sec to check for you." She slipped through a door behind the counter, leaving Elodie and Adora alone.
"Is that your favourite?" Adora asked.
"One of them, yeah," Elodie said. "I also really like the strawberries and cream, and the mango." She pointed to them as she spoke. "All of the fruity ones are delicious though."
Adora shook her head. "You have extremely poor taste." She put her bags down by the counter and squatted down to look through the display case herself. "Is the tiramisu any good?"
Elodie opened her mouth to say that yes, all of them are good, but at that moment, the counter girl came back through the door, a tray of macarons in hand. There were several different types on the tray, but front and centre were her half green and half dark pink raspberry matchas.
"There was a whole bunch freshly filled in the back," she said, putting on a disposable glove and starting to arrange the macarons into the display. "Just let me know if you want any recommendations. I'm a flavour expert."
Adora laughed. "I think Elodie is also a flavour expert."
Elodie flushed.
"Oh, do you come here often?" She peeked over the top of the counter to look at Elodie. Her grey eyes sparkled.
"I uh yeah, I do," Elodie said, feeling heat creep up her cheeks and to her ears. She knelt down next to Adora and looked intently at the macarons, hoping that the angle would hide her blushing. "This is my favourite bakery."
"Nice, so we'll be seeing a lot of each other." She stood up, stripped off the glove, and tucked the now empty tray under her arm. "My name is Lihua," she said. "I just started working here a couple weeks ago."
"I'm Elodie. You're a Cloud Tower student, right?" First years at all of the big three schools were usually too busy to get jobs and Elodie felt reasonably confident that she would recognize any returning Alfea students. Lihua — lithe rather than muscled — didn't look like someone who had been through a year of Red Fountain training, so witch was the best guess.
"That's right." Lihua nodded. "And I don't recognize you, so you're either a first year or a fairy."
"Fairy," Elodie confirmed. She supposed she wasn't exactly built like a specialist either. (And that was perfectly fine.) "I'm starting my second year." That was only half true, but Lihua didn't need to know that.
Lihua grinned. "Me too."
"This is cute and I hate to interrupt, but I think I know what I want," Adora said, nudging Elodie to get up.
"Oh, me too," Elodie said. Her cheeks had faded to a soft pink and she stood. "I'm getting six."
"Me too," Adora said.
Lihua grabbed a flattened box from under the register and deftly assembled it. "Go ahead," she said.
"I'll take two raspberry matcha, two strawberries and cream, and two mango, please," Elodie said. She glanced down at Adora.
Lihua picked out the macarons as Elodie spoke and lined them up in the box.
"I'll take four of the tiramisu, one brownie, and one more of those raspberry matcha," Adora said. She stood and started digging through her purse for her credit card.
"You don't want to get anything for Uncle Jean?" Elodie asked.
"He's going to have tiramisu and he's going to like it," Adora replied.
Lihua snickered as she finished boxing up the macarons and rang them up. "Have a good afternoon," Lihua said after she handed the box of macarons to Elodie.
"You too," Elodie said, picking up her shopping bag. The box fit nicely on top of a fuzzy sweater. "I'll uh see you soon." She immediately regretted saying that, but Lihua smiled and waved in response.
The bell rang again on their way out and Adora led the way back towards their apartment.
"So," Adora said when they were waiting for a light to turn so they could cross the street. "Are you still sure you don't want to transfer to Cloud Tower?"
Elodie sighed. "I thought we'd moved on from this," she said.
"We did," Adora confirmed. "But I thought you might have reconsidered after meeting one of the cute witches you'd be in class with."
Her face immediately turned bright red again and her aunt laughed. "I'm sure there will be many opportunities this year for uh inter-school cooperation," Elodie said. "I've heard that there might be shared field exercises this year." She doubted that her first year applied classes would ever pair her with a second year witch, but Elodie had started digging herself into this hole and it was too late for her to stop. "The headmistress also invited me to check out the Cloud Tower library any time, so I might see her there."
"Going to the library together sounds like a very romantic first date," Adora agreed and Elodie could not tell if she was being sarcastic.
The light changed. "Well, I better get home to start packing," Elodie said. "I'll be heading back to campus soon." She started walking without checking to see if Adora was following, but she could tell based on the sounds of her footsteps and her laughter that she was.