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At the edge, of the actual edge, of her seat was probably the best way to put it, considering she was pretty much a small gust away from some kind of bone infarction. 

"So here we are," she said, a flat tone of voice echoing in contrast to her body language. "Am I finally about to hear the real true story of you and Silas?" 

"Real? True?" Ria cocked her head. "What - haven\'t you, already? I did tell you, didn\'t I?" 

"Bits and pieces," she responded, with just a little sour note of resentment lagging behind her. "Bits and pieces of lies, apparently. You told me Silas was just an apprentice sorcerer. That he found you, adopted you - you never mentioned a word about Torem or anything regarding the story you\'re telling now." 

"I told you I didn\'t lie. Or more like - I don\'t actually remember lying to you about that. Hell, I don\'t even remember telling you about anything anyway, so there\'s that too." 

"You forgot, so you didn\'t lie?" Irene\'s face froze as cold as ice. "Lawyers would hate you." 

"But, hey - you remember," Ria said with glee. "And more than me remembering, that\'s worth something. I mean after all we\'ve been through you still bother to remember the things I said at age - like what, how long ago did this happen?" 

"I was ten when you told me." 

"And it\'s no wonder I lied!" she exclaimed, voice trembling on the verge of laughter. "You\'d think I\'m gonna intentionally subject a ten-year-old honey-bunny you to what it was like for me growing up? No, I prefer my eye candy smiling all the time, thank you very much." 

"Fine. We\'re all big now. No moral excuses this time," Irene said a little impatiently. "So what was it like for you?"

In an enveloping burst of warmth and light, Irene got what she demanded. A tall spiraling tower laid its foundations right in the center of her table, soaring high enough for the very top of it to eclipse even our heads. It said there, concrete walls made of flames, sporadic cracks running all around in low smoldering embers.

"This," Ria finally answered, her smile split right down the middle behind her great pillar of fire, "This was what it was like for me the very day I walked up to his doorstep."

Then she made an obvious show of gazing up at the tip of the tower, and naturally, we followed along after her. There were small rectangular slits etched into the sides, allowing just the smallest peek of what lay inside the cramped space. I only needed a second, the slightest glance inward, and I didn\'t anymore - I already know.

Irene on the other hand, only leaned closer and closer. 

"What is…? Is that…?" The woman practically had her nose pressed against the wall of fire; the narrowest squint with her mouth hanging wide open. "Is that you?" 

"Like a bird in a cage," Ria affirmed, meeting her squint directly on the other end. "Let\'s just say Silas wasn\'t exactly gung-ho about the prospect of adopting me as his own."

From my own little peephole, I saw a frail little silhouette move from within. A hand, a leg - whatever it was - it writhed, it curled in agony, in hunger, knowing what I know, it was more likely it was actually both.

Irene slowly withdrew herself, saying no words but with her sentiments clearly inscribed in the somber expression on her face.

"We all have attics for a reason, right? If you wanna discard something, forget about something, barely even a thought in the back of your mind, you know where to put it," Ria said, completely detached from the spirit of her tale. "For Silas, I was that something. He hated me the very moment he learned what I was. That letter I gave him… sometimes I wonder if I had just shown up in front of him that night, no letter to deliver, I probably would have been treated a whole lot better than what I got. But what\'s done is done. And although he utterly despised my entire being, he still took me in regardless.

"Because make no mistake, Silas had love in him, loyalty - that letter from Torem is evidence of that. The man threw him aside, discarded him like trash, and Silas still chose to fulfill a dead man\'s request for no other reason but love. It\'s always love. He definitely had it in abundance, but just none for me specifically. Torem taught me what it was like to be loved. Silas taught me what it was like to be hated, abhorred completely. Which - in our reality - was probably the wiser lesson. And so poor little Ria had to endure slowly starving to death, and living day and night laying in a cramped space barely big enough to curl like a ball in. No freedom to live, to fly, or do anything shy of breathing and crying away the pain.

"And she hadn\'t the faintest idea why this scary man was treating her this way in the first place. I mean - how was she ever to know that she was precisely the reason why he was like that in the first place? That, because of her, he had lost the greatest love of his life? He\'d look at this little girl, and she was like a hole - a bottomless cesspit that represented decades of wasted time, and a million and one regrets. And when I look at him that way… when I stand back and see the bigger picture… I mean, well, I still fucking hate his guts, but… I get it. I do. I\'d hate me too."

The tower vanished from the table, and what replaced it was nothing - literally nothing. A steady stream of silence, of ambiguous glances exchanged. Irene, in particular, was keeping a closer eye on Ria than she ever had. 

For someone who\'s barely a friend, like me - this outpour of information was already far too much to swallow. But for someone like her, Irene, practically a daughter, so much closer… I can\'t even begin to imagine the raging storm brewing inside her head.

Ria took in a deep breath, and continued again.

"One day, Silas called the little girl all the way downstairs. He had just returned from digging through the burnt remains of her old home. He was gone three days, so naturally, she hasn\'t eaten for three days. He got her an apple from his pocket and told her to eat. He explained to her that everything that happened was all her fault. That the First Church had caught wind of my existence, and because of that, her father was dead. That she killed him. It wasn\'t the best dinner conversation, honestly.

"Later, Silas moved on to say that he\'s recovered notes from the ruined estates which pretty much affirmed what he was trying to deny to himself - that this tattered, dirty, little girl in front of him was supposedly a success. A being forged by man that possessed the natural ability to transform at will. The very theory he proposed, the very process that his skill was essential for - done without any need of his help. But seeing was believing, right? And Silas was firm on staying a non-believer. He demanded her to immediately transform - he needed her to be a failure, a mistake… he needed that validation, and he needed it desperately. 

"Ria… the poor girl, scared out of her wits, explained to him that she physically couldn\'t. Not in the state she was in. Hungry, in agony, and very, very tired. She needed nourishment, rest, and some time to be healthy again. See, once again, this girl hasn\'t a single damn clue about anything at all. She thought that she was like everyone else - flames and bird-morphing aside. And that, much like everyone else in the world, she needed to slowly heal in order to feel better again. Silas, however, in his rage, in his bitterness, knew better." 

For a moment, Ria\'s eyes fell shut, and for that moment, it was like I was staring at that frightened little girl again, cowering in place, a half-eaten apple between grimy fingers - pleading for a second, a chance to do as the man demand just so he wouldn\'t be angry at her again.

I remembered her loud sniffles, the breaking quiver in her squeaky voice… and regrettably, I also remembered what happened immediately after.

"Before the little girl knew what was even going on, Silas brandished a knife and slit her throat clean," Ria said, her eyes fluttering back open. "Two weeks ago, she was flying between trees, chasing little critters back up their branches. A week from that, she was huddled up on her old man\'s lap sleeping underneath the stars. Fast forward another week, and suddenly here she was now… dying in a pool of her own blood." 

Irene\'s head moved a little, turning an inch to the right before stopping. If she wanted to look away, she wasn\'t allowing herself to… and I don\'t exactly blame her for wanting to. 

"Unfortunately for Silas, the little girl didn\'t stay dead. Not even a minute later, the girl was coughing for air, sitting up, as healthy and bright as she ever was, and that\'s when he knew Torem had done the impossible twice. He had created a being both capable of transforming and as well as overriding the process of death itself. An immortal being through and through. All without his help." 

"Then?" Irene asked before she could stop herself. She tried to recover by asserting a blank look, but it was too late, Ria caught her red-handed with the crime of actually caring. 

"And then…" Ria continued with a faint smile. "Well, despite this realm-shattering revelation, Torem\'s work was far from done. Immortality was still something far from the grasp of humanity. So, Silas, in his anger, frustration, and love… went and did what was natural. He simply went and picked up where his dearly-departed partner had left off. 

After all," she sighed. "Why waste a perfectly good, perfectly permanent guinea pig, right?"