Cades woke up in his warm and comfortable bed, and as he looked around, trying to really wake up and locate himself, he realized what day it was.
And as he looked around, seeing his room that he had designed himself back when he was just six years old, he began to smile wildly, his heart starting to fill with glee at the prospect of this day finally having arrived.
He began to quickly walk down the stairs, his small still puffy wings not being able to fly yet, they were far too small and weak in relation to his body after all.
Just a few weeks ago he had gotten in great trouble so he was kind of nervous, but he was sure that his mom and dad must've already forgotten what had happened, I mean he barely remembered how he wanted to take his own arm off to analyse, so how would they be able to remember ?
They were old after all, much older than him, and they say that time makes people remember worse than they did before.
And after today he would finally be eight, he would finally be allowed to do artificing, he would finally be able to make his first Ujo !
His eyes still full of glee he began to get entranced in the rhythm of his steps as he walked downwards, with the stairs producing a weirdly metallic, low tone resembling more of a thump than a hollow sound, and as it started he halted his steps for a moment, looking down and stomping once, making sure of that fact.
The stomp resulted in a normal sound, but after that Cade's hands suddenly started to hurt, as if he was starting to ever so slightly bleed, but there was nothing to see.
And just a second later the pain and everything was already gone.
He just continued and soon after he was down from his room that had been structured like a kind of balcony hovering above the kitchen, a layout that resulted in him suffering whenever someone burnt something or just cooked something that he didn't like, though Cades liked almost every kind of meal.
There, in the middle of the kitchen there were three people.
One was a woman that he had been caught by just a few weeks prior, his mom, then there was a man who felt like a big, powerful teddy bear, he was the one who had been a bit obsessed with teaching him how to use a sword lately, trying to get him to change his obsession towards that, and then there was another ehetrian child, one that was very young.
There, in a small and colourful chair with a kind of flowery pattern there sat a small child, a girl, with beautiful silver hair and wings, a birth defect that often happened with ehetrians, something to do with the concentration of the enzymes that controlled the colours correlating with the mana residue in the silver, something that is for some reason dyed as silver.
She had pale skin, just like Cades and the rest of his family, except for his mom who had a warmer skin tone, something that she often changed using her very own spells, she specialized in beauty type magic after all, not very useful in fights but still great.
The child had plumb lips, smiled as she saw Cades and had a look full of happiness as she saw her big brother, with her glowing yellow eyes that now seemed to almost form into the shape of a smile, something that was however more of just an impression from the beautiful giggles that now came out from the hole in the girls face, her mouth.
For just a moment Cades felt the pain in his hand, oddly enough only his left hand, and phased out as he looked at his sister whose name he had somehow forgotten for just a moment.
But now he remembered it again.
It was his lovely little sister after all, four years old right now and already capable of speaking, something quite impressive to really do as eh was already speaking fluently and in whole sentences, something that ehetrians have trouble with doing due to their nature and psyche, though that gets lost around the time they turn five, it was just that she had been an early bloomer.
Nevertheless, her name is Hecir, and as he finally brought his thoughts to the end, now hearing an annoying tone in the back of his head, his left hand began to hurt once more, now with a kind of stabbing pain that made him grab at it for a moment, but as he did he felt something off as he felt absolutely nothing on his right arm.
But as he looked for just a moment he saw that everything seemed to be normal, and soon after the finally heard a warm voice that he heard many times before, something that he was for some reason yearning to hear.
"Hi, my little hawk." His mother made a small break and waved her hands while her beautifuk wings fluttered a tiny bit, making a gesture that seemed to invite him to come closer, then she continued in her well-known warm voice that he was so happy hearing. "Happy Birthday, why don't you come here and open your presents", she said this with a beautiful smile on her face, looking at her son with a loving look and smiling as she thought about the things she bought so he would have a great day today.
And indeed, right in the middle of the kitchen whose outer layers, the stove, the fridge powered by some basic magic, the cupboards and the shelves that back then weren't magical were for some reason basically invisible as he stared right at the table with only a single present on it, one that was huge but slightly dirty.
No, not dirty, he first thought it was dirty, but he soon saw that it was a child's crude painting of him and his sister holding hands, something that his sister had surely painted herself, especially with her looking so very grateful as he slowly walked closer, complementing the beautiful paining on the side and exclaiming how beautiful it was.
Finally he sat in front of the beautiful, light blue present, on a warm chair plastered with a red cushion and consisting of a light brown colour, and finally he looked at the big present that was about half as big as he himself when it came to width and about eight inches tall, and then he started to open the wrap, careful not to rip the painting in half.