There are a lot of things in life that hurt but there's a particular sort of hurt that gets in under the skin, especially when you're a certain age and it just seems to stick. The apologies came, and Araceli loves the rest of the guard but the early days when she'd been the different one, the common one, trying to swallow it down as her face had heated and her eyes had burned.

"People always like to try proving themselves," she says almost sadly, nudging the nuggalope out of the way so she can lean back against him and the stall, "and the easiest way when they're unsure or upset or out of place is to make sure they're at least sure about being better than someone else. It's the hardest thing not to let it under your skin. Because it gets there. It's a pebble in your boot and then come the end of the day your foot is red raw." Easier to speak of it now that she's older (is she wiser? She'd like to think so) but of course, when they're all meant to be pulling together it has to be like this.

Fern is so young and she reaches out without thinking to set a hand on her arm, her smile sympathetic. "But it's not fair. Because they aren't. It's what we do that makes us who we are. Behaving like that? It makes them among my least favourite sort of people. Where did you live though, if you didn't grow up in a Circle and you're a mage…" She doesn't want to say apostate at this hour, it's such a loaded word.