Olive_Ayra

7. BIO

Olive's parents always knew their daughter would be successful. The only child of a family of renowed spell-sellers, they expected her to one day take over their adored store; they raised her accordingly, with a voracious appetite for literature far disproportionate to her diminutive size. After all, when customers inquired about one spell or another, any Ayra worth their shop was expected to immediately cite the appropriate tome. Her father thus insisted she read every book in their extensive inventory, which – as the sign out front proudly declared – contained just about "every spellbook worth reading."

What they did not expect was the tingling feeling Olive felt when she sounded out the unfamiliar words, or the sigils that sprang to life around her as she followed their mystic directions. For beastkin to have any magical ability at all was unusual; for one to be so intuitively gifted was nearly unheard of.

In any other era, Olive's talents might have gone to waste. But by the late Age of Adventure, the prestigious Marunomia Adventure Academy had begrudgingly opened its doors to "civilized beastkin"; Olive's murine heritage proved suitably unthreatening, so when a travelling faculty member saw the little would-be witch, he arranged for her to join what would be the first mixed-species class in Academy history. Desiring the best possible life for their daughter, the Ayras closed up the shop they had run for generations and left their desert hometown of Abul-Shir’in for the promise of Marunomia...

The promise proved premature. In Abul-Shir’in, neither Olive's dark skin nor animal traits were unusual; Marunomia was a different story. There, she was merely the daughter of immigrants, and beastkin at that – this at an time when many in the capital still reflexively reached for their scabbards on seeing her ears twitch. Her family, who had once owned a prestigious bookshop, now struggled even to buy Olive's first-year textbooks, finding most shops would not let her inside. Marunomia Academy was no better: far from joining a community of peers, Olive found herself among wannabe monster-slayers who seemed unconvinced the mousegirl among them was not herself the enemy.

Each of the "tailblazers" (as that first cohort of Academy beastkin were derisively known) handled the hostile environment in their own way. Fighting back physically wasn't an option for Olive – she wasn't strong enough, and besides, any beastkin caught attacking humans was likely to end up tied to a archery target – but she took special satisfaction in out-scoring her human classmates, as if proving her worth with every perfect grade. Moreover, rather than shrink back in the face of racism, the mousegirl proved surprisingly willing to stand her ground: Olive eventually gained begrudging respect as a fiery debater willing to fiercely challenge her peers' assumptions and the Academy's prejudiced teachings. Meanwhile, she thought of how she might one day push for change in the rabidly anti-beastkin Guild from inside...