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Aurora’s World: Ialaera: Mackenzie: The Thieves’ Hideout (part 4)
It was on the days she hated the Hideout most that Mackenzie reminded herself of how much harder it would be out there. For the first six moons after she bloomed she had no other option – all she could do was walk the streets, looking for a safe place to sleep, for food, for opportunities to earn money that weren’t prostitution. Being a magic user made prostitution dangerous, otherwise it would have been a possibility, because she didn’t have a problem with the idea of using her body to earn the money she needed for food and shelter, especially as it wasn’t illegal in her home city. Since she’d been in the Hideout she’d had a chance to travel more, so she’d visited cities where it was illegal, but that didn’t stop anyone – it just made it harder for the girls who had no other options.
Mackenzie knew she’d been lucky. Even when she’d bloomed her father had been willing to house her, to let her choose her own husband, to do whatever was right for her, but staying was too dangerous. If she’d been found… she tried not to think about that, because she had left her family behind, although it had been one of the hardest things she had done in her life, in order to make sure they were safe. For a short time she’d hoped she might find somewhere safe, somewhere she could look after any family who bloomed, and the longer she spent on the streets the more that faded away. She didn’t think she’d ever find a sanctuary.
At least until a girl, who hadn’t looked to be more than six, had appeared in front of her. That girl still hadn’t reached her eighteenth birthday, so no one knew if she was going to bloom or not, but she had been raised in the Hideaway after her mother died, and she searched for people she thought would make it a better place. It had been thanks to her that Mackenzie had found her sanctuary, the place she could bring her sister, but that didn’t make things any easier, as she wondered once more how she would afford a double room. She did have savings, money stashed away in case a crystal became available, that she didn’t want to use unless she had no other choice. Biting hard on her lip she stood, pacing from one side of her room to the other.
There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Mackenzie called, trying to keep the surprise from her voice.
“Your guardian,” an amused voice replied, and Mackenzie smiled as she made her way over to the door.
“I was just thinking about you, Stasia.” She stepped back to let Stasia into the room, their eyes meeting for a moment. “And Iliana.”
“She’s not going to bloom, Mack.”
“How do you know that?”
“When I was younger I could feel things that I didn’t understand and it’s only now that I’m older that I’ve started to understand that what I’m feeling is someone when they’re about to bloom. It all starts around six months before the bloomers eighteenth birthday, which Iliana is long past, and so far I’ve felt nothing. Sometimes it does happen much later, but it’s very unusual, so Iliana’s not going to bloom, but…” Stasia bit her lip. “I need to ask a favour.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.