#elijah 1

Rosemary was the type of person who liked to be good at everything she did. Which of course made it annoying to her when she wasn't instantly good at something. While she wasn't a quitter, it was always hard for her to struggle. She had thought art was going to be something she was naturally good at, but that was proving not to be the case.

Rosemary had been doing lessons with Elijah at the community center, and while she thought she was getting a little bit better, there was still improvement to do. She had just messed up a petal she'd been painting and let out a sigh. The painting had been going really well too, so it was a bit of a shame. "Do you think it is a lost cause or can I fix it?"

Kennedy was nervous was she waited for her appointment with the Shifter Alpha. It was her first time meeting him and while she had heard many good things about him, she wasn't really sure if her status would make him think any less of her. She was still debating shifting and thought it would be nice to speak to the leader himself to kind of get an idea of what would be expected of her if she did decide to bite the bullet and become one of them officially.

When she finally got the nod to enter his office, she stumbled onto her feet and marched inside, taking one deep breath before closing the door behind her. "Hi," she greeted, her pitch a bit too high. "I'm sorry to bother you but I'm, uh, actually, I'm new to this whole shifter thing so is there like a protocol or something?" She had witnessed all the formality that went around the vampire hierarchy when she had met Princess Katherine so she wondered if there were rules here too.

When the fever first hit, Sorcha assumed it was the shifting weather. Acrine was further south than her native territory, and even after being here for ten years, she wasn’t used to how hot the summers could get. But the fever remained in place even after a cool bath, even once she’d thrown all the windows open and stripped down to nothing more than a light cotton gown. It was slowly gaining traction in her body, seemingly spreading through every vein and nerve as though she was being boiled alive. What in the hell was wrong with her? Sorcha never got sick. That wasn’t something she, or any other faerie really, did. But there was no denying it, not when the fever started wracking her body with shivers that made her wings ache.

She just needed... fresh air, right? That would help. Or maybe she should fly home. Acrine was a place of many things, but physicians who could treat fae were thin on the ground. Nonexistent, really. At home, she could find someone who would know what was wrong with her and could fix it. Delirious and barely able to stand upright, Sorcha wobbled her way to the nearest window and took flight. Or rather, tried to. It was, er, not as graceful as it should have been. Anyone who saw her would probably think she was flying while drunk. Within a few minutes, she had to land again—the effort of staying airborne was too great, and the gusts of wind she conjured to help her were as shaky and weak as she was. “Fucking...” she muttered, leaning against a wall and peering around her. Where... had she landed? She’d only been up for a few short minutes, she couldn’t have gotten too far from the human palace. But this was definitely not the palace grounds. She thought she could smell smoke and heated metal, she thought, or something like it. Maybe the palace armory?

Sorcha tumbled through a doorway, wings twitching feebly behind her, and stared around. “Sc... ‘scuse me.” The words sounded slurred. Maybe her brain was slurred. Was she still flying? Was the room floating? “I think... mmm. Mmight need a d-doctor.”