Chapter Ninety Three

Following her birthday party, Elenie spent the night in the fairy castle out in the garden.  

The whole family took a while to get up after the late night, but when they were all finally ready, Miralys treated Elenie and Coryn to a restaurant meal in celebration of Elenie's coming of age.  

While they were there, Elenie met her great-uncle's wife, Evenfall and spent some time talking to her and getting to know her. 

Amongst other things, Evie told Elenie how to use more of her faerie powers, and demonstrated a few new tricks to her.  She also seconded Talfryn's invitation to visit them at any time.   

Elenie would have liked to have spent more time getting to know Evie, but Mira interrupted her, insisting that she get photographs from a booth to commemorate the day; she'd already dragged Coryn into the booth and was determined to have pictures of both her grandchildren. 

Once they got home, Mira went about doing the household chores while Coryn worked on his homework and Elenie checked on her drake egg and talked to it. 

During the night, Elenie was woken up by a sharp 'crack'... 

Getting out of bed and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she saw a small green drake standing where the egg had been when she went to bed. 

As soon as she went over to look at the drake, it flew up to land on her arm. 

 

Once she was up and dressed, Elenie remembered that Talfryn had asked her to come and visit him once the egg hatched and he would tell her more about drakes and about the specific one she'd hatched.

She was in luck when she got to the house, as Talfryn was at home, he invited her in and greeted both her and the drake on her shoulder.  

"She says her name is Rhosyn" he told Elenie, "she's an earth drake which means she's very in tune with the earth, if you're good to her and she stays with you she'll be able to help you with tending a garden and if you're very lucky she might magic up some gems for you as well"

As they chatted, Talfryn told her more about the drakes and what powers Rhosyn had, as well as the other types of drake.   

After talking for a while, he asked Elenie what she wanted to do with her life and she told him about the alchemy books she'd been studying and how fascinating she found the concepts involved.  

He listened to her for a while and then suggested that it might be beneficial for her to spend some time at a university, the study of science would feed well into the older field of alchemy and Evie had been telling him about a university out in the mortal realm with a large collection of books on the histories and legends of the fae - there was a chance that Elenie would be able to find some information about her step-father and maybe get some leads on where he might have taken her mother.Back at home, Misty's time on this world had come to an end; she was an old cat by now and she had been missing Merlin badly since he had passed away some time previously.

When the Grim Reaper came to the stable loft where she'd been playing she had not hesitation about allowing him to pick her up and cuddle her and when he opened the portal to the next life, she leapt straight through.  

Elenie didn't have long to grieve though, she'd spoken to Mira about Talfryn's suggestion and Mira had given her blessing; she'd also called Ieaun and he had jumped at the chance to go with her so now she just had to finalise a few details and then it would be time to go.

It was a grey, rainy autumn day when Ieaun arrived at their house ready for the two of them to leave for university and Elenie had to juggle her suitcase and umbrella in a desperate attempt to keep dry and she flew off. 

It was however a gloriously sunny spring morning when they arrived at the university and discovered that they were going to be spending their first year staying in an old castle which had been converted into halls of residence!