NaNo 2018- Reality

week days= 1300 words (each day)

week ends= 3000 words (each day)

total word count every week= 5(1300) + 2(3000)
= 6500 + 6000
= 12500

This was I'll have exactly 50k in 4 weeks

Cassandra
Scylla
Hannah
Berry
Michael
Summer
Cleo
Ross
Raydan

I mainly just wrote down all detail in one sentences on post its and stuck them down. Then I decided a little bit of the order of the events (at least for the starting) and now I'm just going to start writing

Cassandra, a girl turning 13 finds out that her whole life is a lie, including her parents! She meets a twin sister, Scylla, she didn't know existed and together with her, and her best friends, Hanna and Berry, she must train in magic to defeat Andromeda, the murderer of her parents. Andromeda doesn't stand alone, but with an army of Hollows who shall fight with her till the end. Cassandra has the support of many, but her twin sister's betrayal, who she had begun to trust, is a deep hurt Cassandra will never forget. But first, she has to survive the magic school, Training Facility X, and with Andromeda on the lose, no place is safe.

This actually has a lot of different elements
fantasy
adventure
romance (just not the main focus)

fill out character templates for the characters as I introduce them
not fall on my drawing everyday goal
somehow manage to write my unit tests in November last week

My story is very long, but is one that might change the reality of your life. I too, was very confused when told this reality, but know that in the end, everything plays out. If it didn’t, it’s not the end. Heck, if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here, telling you this story in the first place. If you feel the energy of the book while reading it, or see flashbacks, or can relate to anything that happens here, then you are one of us, and we need you. Why? That’s a very long story, so here goes everything.
My name is Casandra and it all started when I turned 13. Well, weird things have been happening throughout my life but this was the weirdest yet.
I saw swirling patches of lights around me, and I was just floating in mid-air. I knew it was a dream, I had been having the same meaningless dream since before I can remember. But somehow, it felt real. As if it existed, but didn’t at the same time. I know, you think I’m crazy, I thought so, too.
And when I finally woke up to the darkness of midnight, I felt weight on my legs, and quickly kicked before I thought anything else. I saw a bluish pillow kind of thing fly and land upon the floor near my bed. Freaked as I was, my hands started searching for the light switch near my bed. While doing so, I felt my hand knock over the alarm clock, but I didn’t care, I was focused on the light switch, and upon finding it, I switched it on to have the light blind me.
After my vision adjusted, I looked at the floor to find a… I had no idea how to describe what I saw. It was a furry creature about as big as a watermelon. It’s blue fur had a weird glow to it, like it had been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. The creature had big purple eyes, like an anime character, and it’s nose and mouth were so small, they were hardly visible, covered completely in fur. It had antennae kinda things, and they were moving like being controlled by a weird force.
It started emitting a sound that was somewhere between purring and squeaking, and this sound got clearer with every passing second. I felt my heart pounding, and I wanted to scream, but my guts told me not to. I just looked at the creature in curiosity of what it will do next. The creature’s voice was now no longer like what it had been, and I could make out it saying the same words again.
“You shall avenge them,” it was repeating again and again. It’s voice was also getting louder with every word it said, and as it did, my head started to spin to. The noise wasn’t loud, it was like it was somehow convincing me to lose consciousness. I tried my best to concentrate, but couldn’t. I tried moving my hands and legs, but to no avail. They seemed drowsy. My eyelids soon began to close, and the last thing I remember before passing out is that the noise completely stopped as the creature disappeared in a puff of smoke.
I woke up to find sweat dotting my body and thought it had all been a dream, but quickly, I realised that the light of my bedroom was still switched on and the alarm clock was on the floor. I hoped that I had somehow left it on before going to bed and knocked off the clock during my nightmare, because if not, I then my life was seriously messed up. The recurring dream about swirling colors, the memories and flashbacks of places I’d never visited, those weird objects that appeared in my room. I was pretty sure it was all somehow connected, my gut told me so.
I got up to pick up the clock and drink water. It was 1 am now, so now I was 13 years old. I unlocked my phone to see 2 texts, I couldn’t believe I was able to sleep through the buzzing. I hadn’t heard anything during the encounter with the weird creature, assuming it actually happened, it hadn’t seemed like it was unreal. How long was I out anyway?
I quickly replied both, Michael and Hannah had wished me my birthday. Michael had wished me at 12 in the night! That was huge for the girl who had liked him for almost 2 years now! After replying, I stared at the screen, re-reading his text.
I don’t remember when I fell asleep, but I woke up the next day to the sunlight pouring into my room, ready for a new day at school. After putting on my jeans and top, I went downstairs for breakfast to be wished my birthday but my family. I sat down for my ‘birthday breakfast’. It was this sweet family tradition where my parents would together cook a breakfast that somehow fit into the moment. Last year, they had made it look like me, just by using egg, some spices and vegetables. It didn’t taste bad either.
And as I had expected, a colorful plate with many vegetables that made the number 13 was kept in front of me. This might seem very silly and cheesy, but I actually looked forward to it every year. I mean it was sweet so.
After eating it and saying goodbye, I picked up my bag and headed to school. I usually cycled, but yesterday my cycle had a flat and I still hadn’t had it replaced, so I had to walk.
After a short walk through the cold morning air, I reached my school to find Hannah already near my locker, with a small cupcake with a candle.
“Happy birthday!” she wished and hugged me, “blow the candle.”
I blew it, wishing for the guts to finally ask out Michael, and as if on que, he entered the hallway, his face lighting up when he saw me. He smiled at me and I smiled back, but before he could come to where I was, his friends ran in and said something to him. He flashed me an apologetic look before walking away with them, almost running.
Great
Hannah must have seen the miserable look on my face and nudged me, “He’ll come back,” she said, smirking.
“Who?” I said, trying to act busy with the books in my locker.
“Seriously Cass? We have been friends for ages, and it’s like crystal clear you like Michael, just admit it already,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I know, I should have just admitted it, but I just didn’t want to.
“Sure you don’t. At least eat your cupcake, or are you going to wait for him to come by?”
It was now my turn to roll my eyes, and she just smirked.
“Whatever, but now something serious,” and then, I filled her in with details about my very weird encounter.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? I mean, really Cass, what are the chances of that happening.”
“You know all the crazy stuff that has happened in my life, you actually saw one happen.”
“Yeah, but still, I’m not exactly sure that had happened after all,” Hannah said with a shrug.
We would have continued but the bell rang and we had to go to class.
“See you in bio,” I said as I left for maths. I, as usual, sat at the back of the class, and when Maths was going on, was more concentrated on listening to music then to actually pay attention. And sitting next to the window, I had the sky to stare at.

“Cass!” Hannah’s voice jerked me awake, and I realised my bio teacher was standing in front of my table, glaring at me.
“Ms Rys, may I know what you were doing last night that you decided to rather fall asleep in my class?”
“I umm… was ummm,” I looked down as I tried to come up with an excuse as the others snickered, but my brain didn’t seem to be working properly. The last thing I remembered was maths class, then… I was in the world of swirling colors. And I somehow woke up in my bio class?
“Ms Rys, since it’s your birthday and the first time this has happened, I’ll excuse it. Don’t make a habit of it,” she said with her stern voice, and I could hear whispers of ‘special treatment’, “Now, now, let’s continue with the lesson.”
And as she started her lesson, I tried to make sense of the mess that was my life. Sure, I have had these dreams before, but this was the first time I had it in daytime, and it was definitely the first time I had memory loss for… almost the whole school day. Bio was my second last period, maths my first.
“Are you okay Cass? You look like you saw a ghost,” Hannah asked with her brow furrowed.
“Yeah,” I didn’t exactly know how to explain everything to Hannah right now, and I had a feeling she’d think I’m crazy, she already thought I was gone because of what happened last night, “Just feeling sleepy, I guess.”
I spent the rest of the period trying to remember whatever I could, and some flashbacks came back to me, but they were so vivid, I couldn’t make sense of them. After another period, I finally had the day off, and as I made my way towards my locker. When I reached there though, I found an amazing surprise.
As I opened up the locker, a piece of paper fell down and as I picked it up, my excitement level increased like crazy, it was Michael’s handwriting! I read the note and as my eyes skimmed the page, my excitement only increased.
“Hey, so I know that I have been very confusing in the past, but I wanted to finally have ‘the talk’, and if you want to, then meet me in the parking lot at 3, and I’d wish you happy birthday here but I prefer to do it in person.”
One minute left to 3! I just dumped my books in the locker, flung the door closed, and raced down the hallway as fast as I could. I reached the entrance of the parking lot, completely out of breath. I took a few seconds to even my breathing and then opened the door. There he was, waiting near his brother’s car. He seemed surprised to see me, but quickly covered the surprise with his smile.
“Hey, Cass,” he said so casually, it was almost irritating.
“Hi,” I smiled as naturally as I could.
“Listen about morning-“
“It’s okay,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Yeah, and now I wanted to tell you why my friends called me in the first place,” he said and just casually leaned back against the car. And then, all his friends, and Hannah, jumped up from around me and screamed ‘Happy Birthday’.
“So I know that this is not the perfect place but Cass, will you be my girlfriend?”
At the last word, I literally wanted to scream ‘yes’, but somehow kept my cool. I felt my face get redder by the minute, but as I tried to balance the color of my cheeks, I found my voice, that surprisingly wasn’t a squeak.
“Yes, Michael, I’ll be your girlfriend,” I just smiled uncontrollably at that point, and didn’t care much about what that would seem like, it’s not like I could help it anyway.
As cheers eroded from all his friends, I noticed the cake in the car that I had somehow missed.

The cake looked chocolate. Yep, Michael knew me too well. He noticed me looking at the cake and said, “Oh yes, I almost forgot, come on, cut the cake.” As he brought out the cake and handed me a knife, everyone gathered started singing the birthday song. In that moment, everything seemed perfect, and I had completely forgotten about my repeated dreams or what had happened that day. As Michael smudged some cake on my face, it felt like the most perfect moment I could hope for. The rest of the day was a whirlwind, and when I reached home, I felt giddy with excitement.
“Cass, we need to talk,” was the first thing Cleo told me when I walked into the living room, “it’s very important.” Cleo had her fingers crossed at her side, something she only did when she was nervous, and she was hardly ever nervous. She had a look of uncertainty, and so did my parents who then walked into the room, my mom’s eyes moist.
“Cassandra, we… we have something to tell you,” my dad said, “we’re just… not allowed to keep this from you anymore.”
“What is happening, are you guys trying to prank me, again?” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“No, Cass, this is serious,” Cleo said.
“But-” I was cut short by the doorbell, which made everyone else even more worried.
“I’ll answer it,” my mom said as she left the living room, and a minute later, was back with a man. He had a moustache and his skin was olive colored, he wore black robes with golden patterns and symbols that made no sense to me. He had a determined look in his eyes, and the way they sharply looked around creeped me out.
“Hello Cassandra, I’m Rayden, head of the Secret Society,” he said in a very formal voice.
“Secret what now?”
“The Secret Society, you’ll know more about it in a while, but for now, we- they need to tell you something,” he said with a nod towards my parents.
“Cassandra, the truth is that, that we’re not your biological parents, I was your mom’s best friend, and there is so much more you need to know, just let us explain.” My mom said, her voice brittle. I tried to make sense of the statement I had just heard, but was not able to process it.
"Your parents died about a year after you were born. You would be in danger if anyone found out that you were not our actual daughter. So only a few very trustworthy people know it." My apparently-not-dad said without meeting my eyes.
“But-” I stopped as I tried to come up with something, what was I supposed to ask. My head seemed to be spinning because of all the questions I had.
"We didn't want to raise questions about your parents' death and also, we wanted you to have a normal life. Imagine knowing that we are not your parents but being forbidden to say anything to your best friends. We knew that we would have to tell you one day and you would have to make your choice but until then we wanted you to live a normal life."
“Why wouldn’t I be able to tell my friends? And what choice?”
“It’s a very long story, I think Rayden should tell you,” my dad said.
"A magical world exists around us," he said. "we exist in every part of the world, every city, town, village has at least one family of our kind. But we need to also make sure no one hurts anyone with superpowers. So we have a Secret Society. It's like a government. It also has an elder council. The best wizard or witch of every country is part of the elder council. There are 195 people right now, excluding the head of the Secret Society, which is the most powerful wizard of the world, who as it happens, is me. Your father, Daniel Hart, was the Council Head before he passed away."

"But as you know, good also comes with bad. The bad of ones of our kind are known as Hollows. The worst Hollow te ever live is Andromeda. She wanted what every Hollow wants, their rule over ours. But Andromeda was more ambitious than any other Hollow, and powerful enough to wipe out nations by single spells. She knew as long as Daniel led the Council, it would be very hard for her to take over. So she turned his own people against him by setting up fake evidence that he was committed to the dark forces, and somehow escaped the taboo it had. Basically, dark magic has an enchantment wherein if anyone uses it, they turn into a Hollow, a very ugly creature with no soul. Every wizard was now intended to kill him. He had to go into hiding with all those who supported him, which was not a large number.”
This was a lot of information, and I tried to process it, still weighing the possibilities of it being a joke.
"He couldn't harm them, or he would actually turn into a hollow. He was caught and everyone who supported him was sent to the North Dungeons."
"What's that?" I was expecting the stranger to be frustrated with me cutting in every few minutes, but his voice was unchanged when he answered.
"A magical prison. There are four parts to the prison, North, South, East and West which together make the Spider's prison. And soon, the Secret Society realized their mistake when Andromeda arrived with all her forces at the headquarters’ door. We wouldn't be here if your mother hadn't cast that protective enchantment. She saw that we had no chance to defeat her, and she wanted you to grow up in a world not controlled by Hollows. But to do so she had to cast a large amount of magic, much more than possible for any witch or wizard, as magic feeds on the essence of one’s life, and if you cast a lot at a time, this essence dies out. But knowing the risks, she still did it, and by the time the protective enchantment had died out, more than half of her army was wiped and we had lost only a few people thanks to the protective enchantment."
“Andromeda then challenged Daniel to a duel. Andromeda was badly injured by the end and so was your father. Andromeda fled with her remaining army. Your father too, had cast more magic then his body could tolerate. In the end, both of your parents couldn't make, thus you had to be raised by others, and the same had to be done for Scylla."
"Who is Scylla?" I asked. My parents looked at each other with uncertainty. A feeling of Deja Vu swept over me.
"Your twin sister."
"What?" Now I was definitely going to lose it. "Is there anything else you would like to shock me with?"
A magic world? You’ve got to be kidding me
"Yes, there is actually a lot you need to know, so let's continue our story." The stranger said with no emotions, as if he were a robot, “the Society searched every corner on Earth in within a week, but couldn't find Andromeda. To calm people and to make them trust the society, they had to make a statement that Andromeda was gone for good, when we still weren’t sure of that."
"Everyone celebrated but the Elder Council and those who had supported your father knew it was only a matter of time before Andromeda returned. She was injured far worse than your parents but dark magic would have helped her survive."
"We knew that Andromeda would seek revenge so we hid their children away from the world. It is up to those who know about her survival to stop her. And you have to make a choice, whether you want to continue your normal life or join us in stopping Andromeda. But once you step in, there is no stepping out. And you will often have to make certain choices that are very difficult."
“This is… a lot to process, do I have time to think?”
“Sure, but you should know that even Hannah is a witch by birth, so she will be coming along with you if you make the same choice,” he had maintained such a formal voice throughout, “now I have to leave, thanks for your time.”
And with that, he disappeared in a puff of golden smoke. An awkward silence filled the living room as we all tried to find the words we would next speak, but as nothing came to me, I left for my room without a backwards glance. At this point, I didn’t know what I felt, sad? Angry? All I knew was that whatever my choice, my life was going to change.
I thought about it for the rest of the day, which was about four hours, and after dinner, when I went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep at all. As I tossed and turned, I reviewed all the possibilities of what could happen, but not one seemed real enough. What was I supposed to expect? I finally drifted off to sleep around 1am, and had a dreamless night, thankfully.
When I went down to have breakfast the next day, the same awkward silence from before greeted me, but today, I was determined not to be bothered. I didn’t know if it was right or wrong to feel angry, but I had decided I felt it after all. I didn’t talk at all during breakfast, and when my mother tried talking to me, I just nodded.

She didn’t seem surprised by my behaviour, no one did, and this bothered me a lot. As I left for school, again on foot as I had no time to get my tire fixed yesterday, I met Hannah.
“Hey Cass, are you fine, with you know, everything going on,” Hannah said as we walked together in the cool breeze.
“Yeah, I guess. I mean I’m not even talking to my parents, or aunt and uncle, whatever. They just had to hide all this from me?”
“What do you want to do then? I mean the whole choice thing.”
“I don’t know, I just keep thinking about you… and Michael. We just started dating, if I decide to leave, I’ll have to dump him. I can’t do that,” I didn’t know if it was stupid to admit this, but I had been thinking about it a lot, and what was I supposed to do? I had to tell someone.
“Come on Cass, I mean Michael will be fine and you can always meet new guys, but your parents, your actual parents died for something, aren’t you going to make sure their sacrifice is not wasted?”
“I know Hannah, but that’s easier said than done. Why on Earth should I give up my life when it just became good?”
“I don’t know, but I think you should say yes,” she said and shrugged.
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m planning to say yes,” she said simply, as if it was the decision of her breakfast cereal.
“Oh, you sure?”
“Yeah Cass, you remember those mysterious objects, that dream, and that weird creature in your bedroom? You have to avenge them,” she stopped talking as we reached the school building, and then dropped our voices so no one would hear us.
“Yeah, I mean, I’ll think about that,” I said and started digging in my locker for my books, completely distracted by the thought of dumping Michael. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about it a lot, because I found a note in my locker. It said-
“Cass, it’s Michael, and I know we just started dating a day ago, but I just found out I have to leave town and I’m very, very sorry, but I can’t date you anymore. I hope you are not mad at me, and hopefully, we can be friends. I’d text all this, but my phone is not even working. Sorry again.”
And. That. Was. It. That moment was when I decided I would do what Hannah said, Michael hadn’t even considered saying all this in person! I felt like an idiot to consider him and our relationship while thinking about my life’s biggest decision. I had never felt worse, so I tore the fucking note and ran to the washroom, where I locked myself in a stall and just cried. I had had it! First my parents, then this magical world, now Michael, too.

















Chapter 2
“Are you sure Cass?” Hannah said
“Yes, I’m sure that I want to join the magical world,” I replied as I ate the pizza slice.
“Cool, seems like we are on the same page,” she said.
As we ate our food, a silence hanged over the air. I thought about my twin sister, what had she decided? Would I ever meet her?
“So now that we have decided, what do we do next?”
I just shrugged, “I guess they’ll ask us soon enough what we want and we tell them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
More silence, and soon, the bell rang, prompting us to leave our trays in the pile of used ones.
“See you after class,” I said over the chatter of the rest of the students.
“See you,” and we parted for our respective classes.
---
“So you have decided?” Rayden asked me.
“Yes, I have decided,” I said, “I’ll join the magic world.”
“Okay, but to make your choice legal, you have to graduate the training facility, and for that, you have to get admission, for which you have to attend a test in the facility.”
“Okay, and umm, what is Scylla’s choice?” I waited for his answer, I had been since yesterday, when I figured out what to do.
“She said she will join, you both will be meeting at the Training Facility X, tomorrow. You also have till tomorrow to say goodbye to any friend who is a NMP, which means non magical person, because the cover up for you disappearing will be that you are moving out of town, to a new one,” he said and got up, “Thanks for having me.”
“Anytime Rayden,” my uncle said. Rayden then disappeared in a puff of golden smoke just like the last time. But one thing never made sense to me, why Rayden had come specially for this. According to what he told me the first time we met, he was the Council Head, and if there were as many wizards as I thought there were, then there would be a lot of children he’d need to ask all this, couldn’t he have someone else do this? This question wasn’t answered for a long time.
---
“Cassandra, we’ll be leaving soon, your stuff is packed, right?” my aunt asked me.
“Yeah, it’s packed,” I told her.
I couldn’t believe I’d be meeting Scylla in less than an hour, I wondered how alike we were. Typically, twins were opposite in what they did, would we be the same? Or are we going to be like day and night? I looked once again in the mirror. I hadn’t exactly ever cared much about what I looked like, and did not want to change that. I smoothened the creases in my black crop top and picked up my bags. My room was completely empty now, I never thought I would have this feeling before college. I had removed all the pictures from my memory wall which was just above my desk, and its bareness gave me a weird feeling I couldn’t quite explain, but I could create a new memory wall with more memories, these were only with Hannah. I wondered if I’d meet anyone new in the magical world, and become close to them. That would be a nice feeling, considering most of my classmates don’t even know my name properly. Michael was very different, he and Hannah were the only ones that paid attention to me. Now, only Hannah.
I hadn’t even texted Michael ever since I got his note. He texted me ‘hi’ but I didn’t reply, just blocked him.

He didn’t deserve the time I’d already wasted on him. I get that he could not control the situation, but he could have done this in person. Was it really that hard to say a few sentences to me? He was the biggest jerk I had met, and this is coming from the girl who had received tombstone emoji on her 10th birthday from most of the other girls and guys.
I had packed my clothes and other stuff also, but what didn’t make sense was that how everyone felt sure I’d pass. I mean, what if I failed the test? As I thought about this for the millionth time, I heard a knock on my bedroom door, and opened it to find Cleo there.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi, have a minute?”
“Yeah,” I wondered why she was here as I moved aside to let her come inside. I noticed she was carrying a paper bag.
“You know, I never thought we both will be leaving the house for studying together,” she said as she looked around.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you. X doesn’t have any age limit, mostly parents decide when the young witch or wizard is ready to attend the place, and most people go when they are around 15. You are going at 13, though,” she said.
“Oh, didn’t know that,” I said, which was followed by awkward silence. A minute or so passed without either of us talking, and then she finally spoke.
“I got this for you as a birthday gift, but never got the chance to give it to you, because well, you know. But I think I should give it to you, better late than never, I guess,” she said and handed me the bag she carried, “Happy Birthday, Cass.”
I smiled back at her, but it was forced. I hoped that she wouldn’t notice. I looked inside the paper bag and removed what was in it, a black hoodie with the words “I Speak Fluent Sarcasm” on the front. It was amazing, exactly like the thing I’d wear. Cleo knew me like an elder sister, even though she was my cousin.
“Thanks Cleo,” I said and smiled at her, but this one wasn’t forced. She seemed to notice that, too.
“Your welcome, sis,” she said and smiled back. This seemed less awkward than anything else that had happened in the past few days, and more normal than I’d expected. As Cleo left the room, I added the jacket to my bags and got one last look of my room, the slanted ceiling over my bed, the window seat where I had spent hours reading, the bookshelf, everything seemed important, like I was losing it just like that happy family I knew. Okay, this is getting cheesy, so we’ll continue.

“Cassandra, come on, it is time,” I heard my mom call from downstairs, and picked up my bags to leave. I got a final look of my room before closing the door, and went downstairs. My uncle and aunt were standing there, and looked like they were about to say something. I knew this conversation was coming, but had tried to postpone it as much as possible, right now, however, I saw no hope of getting out of this. I suddenly realised my parents would have thought the same of that conversation I had with them and Rayden.
“Cassandra, we knew that you weren’t our daughter biologically, but we always loved you just like we loved Cleo. We both believe in ‘family before blood’, and we are very, very sorry we didn’t tell you all this earlier. And if you want to, we can just be the way we were before,” my uncle said. I had no doubt he meant all of this.
“I already know all this, but you have to understand, this is a lot to process. I don’t know what to expect from myself at this point, maybe we should wait till I get back from the Training Facility for me to decide anything,” and I measured if I should add the next words, but decided I should say them after all, “and I know you all will try, and so will I, but I doubt we can become exactly the way were before. But now because of blood, because of the fact I lived a lie till this day. I’m sorry,” I meant every single word I had said.
“I understand, Cassandra,” my aunt said, her hazel eyes moist.
“Now, we should go. We don’t want you and Cleo to be late,” my uncle said.
“But I have one question,” I said.
“What?” Cleo said.
“Why were Scylla and I raised separately?”
“Cass, this is a very, very long story, I don’t know if we have the time,” my aunt said.
“It’s okay if we are 30 minutes late,” I said, “I want to know this.”
“If that’s what you want, then fine,” Cleo said.
“Oh, I’m sorry Cleo, if we are late,” I hadn’t meant to be rude, I hoped she knew that.
“I know, sis,” she said.
“Magic mostly needs wands, you’ll get your wand at the training facility, but there are different kinds of magic that can be done without wands. One such magic spell is easily done by twins when they are together, and we didn’t need to raise questions about your uncontrollable magic, you already had enough dreams,” my uncle said. I blinked with surprise.
“You knew about my dreams?”
“Of course, anyone who has a Wand Core has those dreams,” my aunt said.
“Wand Core?”
“You’ll learn about it in the TCX, which is short form for the Training Facility X.”
“Okay, we can leave now,” I said.
“Fine, we will be traveling through magic. We will basically enter a different realm where distance and time are different. After a little time, we will re-appear in our destination. It is called Realm Switching, you will learn how to do it in TCX,” my uncle explained.
“Does it, you know, hurt?” my uncle chuckled at this.
“Of course not, you might find it uneasy, though,” he said.
“Uneasy?” I didn’t like this.
“It’ll be okay, Cassandra,” my aunt said with a reassuring smile, which weirdly made me feel better. Cheesy again.

“Just make sure you hold onto one of us, since we both will be doing the Realm Switching part. If you leave contact, you might get lost in the Realm. You’ll hold on, right?”
“Yeah,” Cleo said, and my parents looked at me next.
“Okay,” I just said.
“Fine, we can leave. The doors and windows are locked, right?” my uncle said.
“As long as I know,” my aunt said, and looked at me and Cleo, “did you guys close all windows in your rooms?”
“Yep,” I hadn’t opened mine since the night of the encounter with that fur-ball creature, so no doubt of that. Cleo also said she had closed hers.
“Let’s leave,” my uncle said, and held out his hand for me to hold. I did, and he closed his eyes. So did my aunt who Cleo held hands with. And I blinked as I found myself in a different place. The place! It was the same place I had seen in my senseless dreams. Swirling clouds of color floated around me as I magically hovered in the air. This color spread as far as I could see, in all directions. We kept hovering in the air and flew forward. Slowly, we picked speed, until we were fast enough that everything else around me passed as a blur. The whole while, my uncle held my hand, and my aunt held Cleo’s. They didn’t seem a lot interested, and I guessed they’d done this many times by now. Soon, we started slowing down, and after a minute or so, we had completely stopped.
I blinked again as I found myself standing in a big room with a lot of activity. It looked like a waiting room, and there were a lot of chairs around which were mostly occupied. There was a small food court in one corner with a few tables and chairs randomly placed around it. On the other side was a receptionist’s desk, where a kind looking woman sat, talking to people who had formed a queue there.
The ceiling, however, caught my attention. It was high above me, and represent a swirling galaxy. You could see shooting starts zap by every minute, and there were many planets I could see, though none of them represented our solar system. They looked nothing like what I had seen in solar system models. My aunt saw me staring at it, and said, ”that,” she said pointing up, ”represents what our solar system will look in about 100 billion years. According to prophecies, at that time, NMPs would have completely disappeared and the Earth will have only magical creatures, but we are not sure what will happen to them. But that is a completely different story, about their debates and stuff,” she said and looked at the receptionist’s desk, “we should go and find out when the exam starts.”
After that, she walked away with my uncle, telling us to find a place to sit. We did, and as we waited, I thought I saw… Michael? But he seemed to disappear as soon as he had appeared, which made no sense. I thought for a while, then decided it couldn’t be Michael. I might have seen someone else and thought it was him. And not a minute after that, my uncle and aunt returned with forms in their hands.
“These are your room ticket and roll calls. When they call your number, you enter that hallway,” my uncle pointed at a narrow hallway near the desk, “and walk until you find your room, there you will go to a practical test to judge if you are eligible for TCX,” he said.
“What about Scylla? I mean is she here?”
“Yeah, but there are so many people here it will be hard to search for her. You will meet her if and when you pass the test.”