With no other options, I hesitantly opened the door to my house. Immediately, I could see my startled mother on the couch, looking extremely confused and worried. I hadn't even had time to take off my shoes before I heard, "Crow? Why are you home early? What happened?" She looked up to my face, seeing it looking crestfallen and ashamed rather than angry. "You- you didn't get fired, did you?"

I sighed. Walking over to the couch, I sat down, tossing my backpack aside. I brushed my hair out of my face, only for it to stubbornly bounce back in place as I looked away from her. "I- I don't know."

"What happened?" She seemed so concerned, then I saw it. Her face shifting from concern to disapproval. Her emotions dying down a little to show her thinking of how it possibly could have happened. What I could have done to screw up this badly. "You did not get into a fight with a customer, did you?"

"No, nothing like what happened the other day." I shook my head. "It's just... Eileen sent me home early. There was this kid there who knows that I'm a Witch from school and..." I took a breath. I hated admitting things. Why did it always have to be so difficult, and why did she have to give me such a look to make it even harder? "He called me a Witch in front of my boss, not as an insult or anything, but when I had filed my application, I put that I was Human on them, so they got mad. Then they freaked out because my wand was still in my backpack, and sent me home. They said they'll call me back when they figure out what to do. So not fired, but..." I decided to ditch that sentence and instead shoot for just a mumbled, "Sorry."

"Crow..." She sounded so exasperated, and I looked away as she ran her hand over her face, her body that had been sitting up straight with worry now falling back onto the couch with exhaustion. "You can't just go filing important documents wrong like that. We can get in huge trouble for stuff like that. Actual fines in the mail from the FTC. We can't afford that! Why would you even write that you're Human anyway?"

"I just figured since I didn't have, well, didn't know my specialty at the time, and I don't usually levitate stuff, that it wouldn't make a difference. Better and less embarrassing than me writing Witch, and explaining I was an Ord or something."

I grimaced as she dragged her hands down her face, red with anger. It was the same thing she did on the car ride home from the mall, every time she checked my grades online, last year as I'd waved hi from the principal's office... It hurt. Every time. 

"It does make a difference, Crow! Why do you think there are so many riots and strikes happening?" She didn't leave me time to answer the question before her snippy voice cut in again. "We don't have a single Witch representative in the Congress or Senate at the moment. Any laws made will be in the Humans' favor, same as always. Right now, they want to have us not paid as much per hour, because if we have magik, then then don't believe we work as hard. Like it just does our job for us, somehow. That's how they see it. If that's passed through, or anything else for that matter, and you're too young to have your paperwork grandfathered in, which you are, then you'd be fined. Heavily. Not to mention that having that on your files can decide whether you're even hired in the first place."

"Hold up. " I held up my hands, raising an eyebrow. "That's not even legal. The constitution says that no state can deny someone by sex, sexual orientation, race..."

"They don't count Witches as a race. They don't know what to classify us as yet, and right now they're too keen on taking advantage of all of us to figure that part out. We're lucky that your father is a fire investigator and allowed to use magik for his job as it is. Most aren't allowed to, because they're too afraid to actually learn to grow as a society." Her voice switched to a low mutter as she crossed her arms, green eyes glinting in annoyance. I knew that look. It was the same mentality I'd had none too long ago, annoyed at the government, but unable to do anything about it because really, I was just one guy. It was pointless negativity though. I knew that now.

Even so, I hated the whole it's-us-verus-them approach, her mentality making me think back to Dustin, and his odd ramblings. I didn't care about politics, I knew I didn't, but I started talking away. "I mean, that can't be every Human. It's probably just the politicians right now."

"It's a good amount of them, and it's been that way for twenty-seven years now. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but think of that woman in the mall. Think about how your boss reacted when they learned about the wand. I don't think anyone around here will look at things from our point of view." She reached out, grabbing my hand, suddenly pulling my head down to stare at me directly in the eyes with such seriousness that I froze for a moment. 

"I know it isn't fair, and I'm sorry that you have to go through all this, with your job, and with other people. My generation honestly thought that with all the social changes going on, that we'd be past all this and have things figured out by the time we had kids." She stopped for a moment, seeming to realize something as a softness filled her gaze. "This is my fault, isn't it? For always yelling at you for showing off that you're a Witch. I didn't mean to go and hide it-"

My stomach dropped. No, this wasn't her fault. "Hey-" I cut her off. "That's not why I did it. I'm not trying to get us fined. I just... didn't care if I lived like a Human. It seemed better than being seen as a useless Witch. Even now, with my specialty being so late, and so much work needing to be done for it, it honestly feels like a lost cause," I admitted. My overstuffed backpack, holding more books in it than it ever had before in its life, toppled over and spilled out across the floor as if to prove my point.

"It's not a lost cause. If you have a specialty that can do all these things, maybe you can prove to other people why they should advocate for us." She titled her head at me, and for the first time I noticed the small start of tears in her eyes. "Maybe you could be a role model on how to do that peacefully, unlike some of the other Witches out there. There's so much fighting and suffering on the news on both sides... someone has to prove it doesn't have to be that way."

"I guess." I flicked my gaze to the floor. Who was I to prove anything though? All anyone had to do was glance at my school record to know how good I was at stopping fights. I should be the last person in line for that. It was better to just stay out of it at this point.

I didn't have anymore time to explain though as a knock hit the door, with Gaia inviting herself in, skipping happily. "Oh wow! Crow you're home already? Look at my picture I made at school!" A small piece of paper flew out of her hands as she levitated it over to shove it in my face. "It's a butterfly."

"I see," I said plainly, which was a lie, because I can't see anything when it's directly touching my eyeballs, but she seemed happy enough at my answer. With that, she pulled the paper back towards her and headed off to the kitchen, probably to get herself a snack.

I shook my head, trying to focus back on the conersation. Unfortunately, my original train of thought had derailed and crashed into one of the other, several trains by now, so instead I worked with the broken pieces that were left over from the incident. "So... yeah. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that, but I'm home now."

"All right. I just really, really wish you would follow current events and things more so you'd know why that was as bad of an idea, before you went ahead and did it. At least you got home fine." She ran her hands to pat down her dress before stopping for a second. "Wait, how did you get home? Your father didn't pick you up, so how did you make it here?" She glanced at the clock on the wall, but even I knew there hadn't been enough time to lie about walking home.

"The boy that called me a Witch had a car. He felt bad about the whole thing and drove me home."

"I'm going to guess you know him then, since I know you're not stupid enough to get in a stranger's car?" I didn't like the way she raised her eyebrows at me.

"Yeah no, I know him from school. We talked at the bus stop this morning. I guess I would call him a friend." I had started saying it just to calm my mom's fears, but when I thought about it, as much of a weirdo as he seemed, he'd been nothing but friendly to me. And he liked the same band as me... not to mention he played games, which was something I could never get Elliot into. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to be nicer to him tomorrow. "Anyways, as you saw from my backpack, Mr. Dekoran gave me a bunch of homework. I didn't think I was going to get to it, but if I don't have work, I might as well get started on it."

"Fine. You go do that then," my mom said, and she left it at that.

Nothing felt better than shutting my door and breathing out slowly, my back pushing against it firmly. "That was awful," I groaned to no one in particular. Then I tossed my backpack on my bed with a thud, and clamoured up after it. Part of me wanted to just flop into my gaming chair and play a few rounds of SpellSlay on my computer, but I knew if I did that now, I'd never get back to my homework. They're plenty mad at me already. I can't let my grades drop too. Whether I liked it or not, I needed this class. I tugged the same blue book out of my bag. Even with its small size, the paperback still felt heavy in my hands as I laid on my back, holding it straight out in front of me.

Back to the aloes and azaleas.