“-...Thanks to the creation and export of magical artifacts, The city of Fey Circle managed to keep its independence despite its small size. Each country on the continent is eager for more power, more artifacts, but only we - witches are able to smoothly create them. Of course, their greed is dangerous but…”

The politics teacher was going on and on about her lesson, her voice was so monotonous and boring that Marcelin was struggling with suppressing a yawn. She was in no mood to learn, especially stuff like that, why were they even on this topic? Every young witch knew that! That the primitive nations of the continent are greedy, stupid, talentless and they are jealous of witches' powers. Their mages, wizards or whatever they were calling them were no match to them - it’s a truth that the witch knew, pure common sense. After all, it’s what was in the books, so it simply had to be true. So why were they wasting time on it?! 

After the lesson, Marcelin, in a much more sour mood, was on her way to visit her mother. Once the lesson was almost over, the teacher dropped a bomb - The family matriarch was expecting her after the lesson and she had some big news for her only son. …Yey. No wonder Celin looked like someone going to her own execution. On times like this, the mansion hallways looked even more cold and inhuman, like a museum that no one ever visited, the only indication of life was the occasional servant or a guard, but our witch never paid them any mind. Within a minute the blonde witch was in front of the doors to her mother's office, she braced herself, took a deep breath and knocked. After what felt like eternity but was less than 20 seconds, a voice from within the room told her to come in.

“- Hello sweetie.”

Said the matriarch while sitting behind her elaborate, fancy desk. Marcelin was… saying simply, taken aback. Scared more than before she entered the room. Going with the tone of her mom's voice, it was easy to notice that she was happy, which probably didn't mean anything good for the young witch.

“- Good afternoon mother. What’s the occasion of this summon?”

She replied, while mentally getting ready to receive some bad news, while she moved to sit on the guest chair. Maddelena seemed content with taking her time before answering her child question. First she took a look at all the paper on her desk, then picked one of them, while finally making eye contact with Marcelin.

“- Congratulations are in order son. Thanks to some suggestions from your oldest sister I was able to choose a fine candidate for your fiancee.”

Hearing her mom say that with a straight face, worse with a smile on her face like it’s some kind of nice surprise really pissed Celin off, what was even worse, somehow Sybil was involved in all that! That hurt, the young witch felt betrayed.  She couldn't fathom why her sister would do that just after she was so nice to her!

“- What?!”

Marcelin yelled, surprise and anger clear in her voice.

“- Mom! W-why?!”

She continued barely holding herself from yelling something inappropriate that would get her in trouble. Maddelena meanwhile, simply looked at her youngest with a studious look. The older woman looked calm, collected, like she fully expected such a reaction.

“- It’s very simple honey. Because you need to man up and uphold your responsibilities to our house. Up until now you were free to do as you wanted, while all your sisters are already working in their own ways to uphold our status. At first I was intending to engage you with one of the ladies of the other great families, but then Sybil came to me with a proposition. With her obligations of diplomatic visits to the continent, she managed to get to know many noble families of the kingdoms. Obviously they aren’t of our importance, of any other great witch families for that matter, but an official alliance with one of the kingdoms could still give our house a great deal of opportunities for my child. Thanks to Sybil the talks about your engagement to a princess of Varisink are on its way. In a month's time, if all goes well you will travel to the continent together with your sister to get acquainted with the young lady.”

Matriarch of Le Fey spoke without a sign of emotion, while Marcelin was barely keeping herself in her seat. She felt angry, she felt sad, she was betrayed by her sister! She was ashamed, disgusted even with a vision of having to visit the barbaric continent, worse even! Interact with them! Her whole life she was teached that the humans of the continent are beneath even the lowest witches and those witches were not even worth interacting with for a witch of her family caliber! And now her own mother and sister wanted to marry her off to those barbarians! Those monkies! Celin was fuming, she was hurt and she needed the world to know. Driven with those emotions she stood up from her seat and slammed her hand on her mothers.

“- No! I won't let you can’t make me do it, mother!”

She started with a loud yell, but then her voice fell apart, as tears started appearing from her eyes.

“- No! ...Mommy, please don’t make me go there. I will do better, I will stop borrowing Marie’s clothes.”

She added a few seconds later, sobbing already, now her voice seemed quiet, almost non-existing, scared,  one could say that it sounded like defeat.

Then something unexpected happened. The cold hearted matriarch looked to be in genuine pain. She raised her open palm and with it touched Celin's cheek.

“- Oh honey… My sweet boy. Don’t cry, you are breaking your mother's heart. I understand that …interacting with the barbarians from the continent is scary. That’s why I made your teacher remind you about them. But those interactions are necessary. For years, it’s been Sybil’s responsibility, but soon she will have other responsibilities and in a few years someone else will need to take her role, and that will be you.”

“- Bu-but..”

“- Shh… hush now child. Listen, the engagement with nobility from the continent was Sybil’s idea. At first I was opposed to it, but she had some great arguments. But… I can’t let you suffer like that… How about that, you will go visit the princess as planned. We will give it a try, but if she is too barbaric to your tastes, we will cancel the engagement and find you some lovely lady from one of the great witch families. That is… if you will be a good boy and make mommy proud. So, what do you say honey?” 

With those last words Maddelena withdrew her hand and smiled, in some light it may even look like a smile of a carrying mother, but to Marcelin it felt hollow. She still felt as she felt before she gave her proposition or rather the ultimatum. She was supposed to hide a part of herself, pretend to be someone else, only to be given the right to choose between marrying a barbarian or one of the older witches that her mother held in high regard? Just thinking about that was upsetting her stomach. In the end, unfortunately it didn’t seem like she had a choice. And it was all Sybil’s fault!

“- I… I understand mother. We will do it as you said. If… if that’s all I'm going to take my leave.”

With that quiet response, with broken spirit Celin waited a few seconds for her mother to signal that she was allowed to leave, and then she simply quietly moved back to the hallway, closing the door to her mother’s room behind her.

—————————————————————

Few hours later

It was going to be a sleepless night, the amount of negative emotions surging within the young witch just wouldn't allow her to shut her eyes, so instead of even trying, she opened her window and allowed a few friends to come over. And so Marcelin found herself on her bed, three small fairies flew around her while one took a seat on her shoulder. Most of the fey, Celin had a chance to interact with, rarely talked, it had something to do with how strong their individual connection was. The more visible and less see-through a fairy was, the more one could interact with the human world. From the distance fairies were like the famous wisps, just colorful balls of light, but when they got close, our witch could see their humanoid appearance, small human-ish, with pointy ears a varying amount of insect-like parts - antennas, limbs, eyes or different body elements. No two fairies had ever been the same, at least none of those Marcelin had seen. Why was she able to see them, when all the witches she knows seem to completely ignore their existence? The few times she tried to speak about them to her family, they told her to stop speaking nonsense.

Celin was in the middle of explaining her current anger towards her mom and oldest sisters to the happy small folks, the flying three didn't really seem to react to her story, but the most visible fairy a green-skinned fairy, with dragonfly wings and legs like a grasshopper was sitting on her arm, clearly listening to the rant, more even - they suddenly opened their mouth and started talking! That didn't happen with any fairy in months!

“- ...Yeeeeah, I don’t get it my lil’ Dame, like… what difference does it make on a pile of dirt will you be living for a time? Pretty random worry, if you ask me. ”

That checks out. It was quite frustrating - interacting with those tiny, precious things. They never seemed to take anything that goes on in “human world” serious, like everything that happen there was one silly game for them. Still, the young witch sighted, before giving a response.

“- Of course there is a difference! Out there, the continent - it’s a whole different world! The barbarians there-”

Marcelin sounded offended and glared at the continuation of her rant was just beginning.

“- Gonna stop you there lil’ Dame. Sure there may be a sea separating you, but aren’t they basically the same? Just like you they breathe air, eat foodstuff, drink water, poop and get all complicated over the simple stuff!”

Somehow the conversation was quickly becoming an angry argument, the three silent fairies ran towards the window leaving the room and the talkative one, flew from the blonde shoulder and was now flying in place, just before the witch's face, face that was quickly getting red. Just before youngest Le Fey was about to explode, the door to her room opened and in it’s frame stood an amused looking Sybil.

“- Again? Speaking to yourself sis? I heard you were fighting with mom today, but that’s no reason to be losing your mind.”

Sybil’s voice sounded happy as she invaded herself and closed the door behind her. Marcelin meanwhile, jumped out of the bed, trying to ignore the fairy that was now giggling at her while slowly flying towards the window, probably to let siblings speak to each other in private.

“- You! How dare you Sybil! I trusted you! I-I was sure you wanted to help! You even gave me enchanted jewelry! But behind my back you are marrying me off to some barbarians?! Why!?”

If the blonde sounded angry before, while fighting the fairy, now she must have been furious. With clenched fists, she stood and glared daggers at her oldest sister, who betrayed her thrust. Sybil's face meanwhile went from amused to confused.

“- Huh? What are you talking about? I'm simply helping you, just like I promised.”

Sybil answered, while slowly moving closer towards her little sister. She talked and moved carefully, like she was on a minefield. In contrast to that, Marceline stomped towards her.

“- HELP?! That’s what you call helping?! You are just like a mother, insane! You told her to sell me to some barbarians!”

At this point, Celin yelling was most likely well heard in the neighboring rooms, but she simply didn't care. She stood just before her big sis, glaring at her, and then she tried to push her but Sybil, being well trained in combat, simply intercepted Marcelin hands and took her into a forceful hug. 

“Celin, sweetie, stop and think or better yet - listen. After your last disagreement with mother she got quite set on the arranged marriage thing. If this was up to her, she would marry you off to some Witch in her social circle. That way she would secure an alliance between two families and have you at arm's length. Don’t you want some freedom? You can get that if you get far away from her claws, so somewhere out of Fey Circle, somewhere like the continent.”

Sybil was basically whispering, while still holding Marcelin close in her arms, not letting her leave. Her voice was calm, maybe a bit condescending. 

“- B-but the continent…”

Celin tried to defend her righteous fury, but before she could start with another rant about “barbarians”, Sybil hushed her.

“- Ugh, really. Stop with the barbarian and witch supremacy talk. It makes you sound like our sisters, worse - it makes you sound like mom. Listen closely as I don’t want to repeat myself on that topic. They are human, just like you and me. People from the continent aren’t worse than us just because we know some fancy magic tricks. Repeating stuff like that simply makes you sound like a bigot. That word means, someone bad to put it lightly. I doubt it appeared in your lessons. The engagement is simply a trick to buy you time, get you some time outside of our mother and our sisters, explore yourself. Maybe you could actually learn something about being a better person and less of a witch while at it. The princess is a great person, if you give her a chance you could even become friends and I will be close by if anything happens. Out there, without the prying eyes I could help you with your… development, so just trust me sis, okay?”

Still whispering, Sybil sounded a tiny bit angry, but also worried. The young witch wanted to protest at least a few times while her oldest sister basically monologued, but every time was hushed down with a finger to her mouth. After Sybil finally stopped, Celin remained quieter, all those words slowly sinking in. Oh, she was still angry, and quite confused about some of the stuff she just heard that went against everything she learned, but she couldn't deny it - if the whole trip and engagement could give her a chance to be herself, then it was definitely a good opportunity.

“- I… I will think about it, Sybil. But now leave. I'm still angry at you. And I had guest.”

The blonde finally answered while taking a peak behind her to see the green fairy sitting on the window frame, looking all smug for some reason. Sybil’s eyes followed, but she didn't see anything and just gave Marcelin a confused glance while she finally freed her.

“- Alright Celin, have fun with your imaginary friends, and …just think about all I said, okay?”

And with those words, Sybil left in complete silence, while Celin waited in spot until she was free from her sister's presence and moved to the window to take care of the eavesdropping fairy.