Chapter 331: Before You Turn Sixteen

Chapter 331: Before You Turn Sixteen

Elsa changed her shirt three times before the representative arrived, and then changed back into the first one.

"It’s fine," Jin told her from the doorway of her guesthouse room.

"You said that about the second one," Elsa complained.

"The second one was also fine," Jin said.

Elsa went to the window, where she could watch the guesthouse entrance. Elena had reserved the small visitors’ lounge and borrowed extra cups from reception. Arthur had checked the time twice in five minutes. Jin decided against pointing that out; he kept checking it too.

Jin had come straight from the clinic. His arm still had a cotton ball taped inside the elbow, and the nurse had said results tomorrow in a voice that told him nothing.

"She’s here," Elsa said, and then, in a smaller voice: "Oh, she’s young."

The representative’s name was Talia Morrow, and she was perhaps thirty, with cropped dark hair and a traveling coat she hung beside the lounge door. On her shoulder sat a slim gray bird Jin didn’t recognize, with long tail streamers that lifted slightly in air nobody else could feel.

His appraisal flickered up by habit.

[Driftwing Swift — Silver (High)]

[Affinity: Wind]

The swift looked at Jin, then settled on Morrow’s shoulder with its feathers puffed.

"Thank you for having me," Morrow said. "I know I’m a stranger turning up with a lot of paper. I’ll try to leave most of it in the bag."

She was as good as her word. She accepted tea from Elena and asked Elsa about her awakening. Elsa described the papers lifting, the sudden burst, and the difficult few seconds of holding a leaf above the doctor’s hand. Morrow listened without interrupting.

"That’s a strong first release," she said. "It sounds frightening."

"It was a bit," Elsa admitted.

"You did well to follow the doctor’s instructions," Morrow said. "Have you had any trouble since?"

Elsa shook her head. "I’ve been resting like they told me. But I’d like to learn."

"Then let me show you where we’d start." Morrow opened the academy’s presentation.

"We’re in the national top tier. Not the top of it — there are academies above us that everyone’s heard of, and I’d be lying if I pretended otherwise. What we do better than almost anyone is elemental instruction. That’s the whole reason we exist."

She turned her tablet around. The photographs showed a long hall with a ceiling three stories high and vents set into the walls, a gallery full of students standing in controlled crosswinds, and an outdoor range under a shelter dome much brighter than anything the Outer Ring had.

"Our wind hall," she said. "The vents let the instructors build currents you can practice against. Six dedicated wind faculty. I was trained in that room." She reached up and touched the swift, who ignored her. "This one too."

Elsa was leaning so far over the tablet that her hair was nearly in the tea.

"Shelter 2," Arthur said. It wasn’t quite a question.

"Yes. She would board with us from enrollment at sixteen. Visits home need to be arranged around safe transport and the school calendar." Morrow looked at Elena as she said it, not at Elsa. "I know that’s a big thing to hear."

Elena asked about supervised travel, and Morrow showed her where those arrangements appeared in the information pack. Jin watched Elsa turn a page back to the wind hall before the representative continued.

"Now," Morrow said. "The beast."

She brought up a new image.

It was a fox, but not a fox like the one in the market case. This one was slightly larger, with a long lean body built for running, and a crest of pale fur that swept back from its forehead. Its tail was thick and pale-edged. In the photograph it was mid-turn, all four feet off the ground, and the air around it showed as a faint silver curl.

"Galecrest Fox," Morrow said. "Gold (Peak)."

Nobody spoke.

Jin reread the Quality label. Meridian’s Gold (Low) had been generous. This was three grades higher, on a wind-affinity beast Elsa already seemed to love from one photograph.

"Peak," Arthur said quietly.

"It’s a fox," Elsa said, and her voice cracked slightly. "It’s actually a fox."

"You like foxes?" Morrow asked.

"She nearly chose one the other day," Elena explained.

Elsa hardly seemed to hear her. She enlarged the picture until its pale crest filled the screen.

"What does it do?" she asked. "When it’s grown?"

"Galecrest are ground runners. Very agile. They learn to throw directed wind blades — thin, accurate cuts — and to ride their own currents through turns and leaps, so they change direction faster than anything their size ought to." Morrow put the tablet down. "But I want to be careful. That’s what the species can develop. The egg doesn’t know any of it. It’ll hatch as a very small fox that falls over its own feet, and everything else comes from growth, training, and you."

"That’s how it was with Glitch," Elsa said, and looked at Jin.

"He had to learn," Jin said. "He didn’t arrive knowing what I wanted, either."

Elsa lowered the tablet enough to look at Morrow. "Would someone help me with that? Before I actually join?"

The representative brought up the preparation schedule.

The offer was an A-level agreement. It covered the egg, feed support once the fox hatched, a monthly allowance for Elsa herself, and preparation before she enrolled — a beginner training plan, remote wind-control lessons once a week with one of the hall instructors, and scheduled beast-care consultations through a licensed clinic near home.

"So I’d stay here," Elsa said. "Until I’m sixteen."

"You’d finish middle school locally and raise the fox at home. We’d teach you what we can through a screen, and you’d come to us at sixteen already knowing your beast."

"Why A?" Elsa asked. "I’m S."

"Your talent is S-Rank," Morrow explained. "A describes the support we’re committing." She tapped the tablet. "There’s a level above it. S-level. It means more training resources, a larger allowance, and one-to-one specialist instruction. If you place in the national top one hundred at the entrance exam, the upgrade is guaranteed."

"The national top hundred," Arthur said.

"Yes," Morrow replied. "Out of every candidate in the country."

"And if she doesn’t?" Elena asked.

"Then she keeps everything I’ve just described. Her place, the fox, the A-level support. Nothing is taken back." Morrow looked directly at Elsa. "The top hundred is hard. S-Rank talent helps, and you’ll have more preparation time than most. It doesn’t hand you the result. I’d rather you hear that from me now."

Elsa looked at the exam provision again. "Would the lessons help me prepare for that too?"

"They’ll help you learn properly," Morrow said. "You’ll still have schoolwork, beast care, and plenty of practice to do. We can set goals after your instructor has met you."

Elsa saved the schedule, and Jin cleared his throat.

"Can I see the egg? The actual one. Before anything’s signed."

Morrow opened the inspection details.

"Certainly. We work with a licensed partner hatchery here in the commercial district. If Elsa shortlists us, the egg matched to her readings comes to them, and you can inspect it there. Nobody signs anything first."

Morrow left at five, taking her swift and most of her paper.

While their parents cleared the table, Elsa downloaded the photographs and a video onto her tablet. She replayed the fox’s sharp turn until Jin knew exactly when it would leap.

Jin, on the other end of the couch, noticed when she switched pages.

She had opened Meridian’s brochure. She studied the familiar yards before returning to the fox, then switched back again.

"You’re allowed to like both," he said.

"I know," Elsa said.

She was quiet. Outside, a transit car rattled past at the end of the street.

"I just thought," Elsa said, then tried again. "Once you got into Meridian, I started imagining going there too. You’d show me around, and I’d come and find you in the stalls after class." She pulled her knees up. "And now there’s a fox, and a wind hall, and it’s in another shelter."

Jin had imagined those afternoons too. For a moment he wanted to tell her Meridian could still be enough.

Instead, he moved closer so they could look at both pages together. On one was the training yard outside Brooke’s office. On the other, the fox hung in the air with all four feet tucked beneath it.

Elsa touched the picture of the fox, then let her hand fall.

"Would you mind if I went?" she asked.