Today is going to be a busy day. A lot to do, to think about. I look over at Ter, standing beside me. For the record, I’m terrified of Ter most of the time. She acts on equal footing with the Magisters, and they accept it. They don’t even try to put her in her place. I go and talk back just a little bit, and I get slapped down right quick. I don’t know what it is about her, but she’s scary, and everyone knows it. And she’s my lab partner in Transference 100.
“What do you think we should do, Alina?” she asks me, standing over an ancient book.
I sigh. Looking down at the book, I read the same text she’s reading. It isn’t particularly helpful, but then again, it never is when they’re this old. I don’t understand why the old masters loved poetry so damned much. “So, it’s definitely that symbol from last week, right?” I muse, looking at the poem again, “It’s got the same imagery about the caves of coves.”
Ter smiles at me. I feel my stomach turn. Even her smile is terrifying. “Sounds good. I think that thing about the goat’s spleen is the ingredient list. For the quote-unquote paint.”
I nod. She’s right, of course. She’s generally right. She doesn’t talk much, but I’ve learned to listen whenever she does. “Alright, so tonight, you want to gather the ingredients together?” I ask, knowing the answer already.
“I can get them alone. Have your own evening, we both know what day it is.”
Of course she knows, I muse. She knows everything; it’s what she prides herself on. She probably has an inch-thick file on me, hidden away in some binder in a wall. “Thanks,” I say, to be polite.
“You don’t mean it,” she says right back, a pleased smile across her face. Have I mentioned, I’m terrified by her?
I chuckle. “No, I don’t,” I answer honestly this time, “I think it’s weird that you know about my life as much as you do.”
“To be fair,” Ter says with a slightly less creepy smile, “This one I didn’t find in my creepy research. This time you have Jason to blame. He explicitly told me not to keep you. So, I, being me, found out why.”
Of course, I had Jason to blame, I think with a chuckle. Jason is the best and worst thing to happen to my life. I nod, slowly, “I’ll need to scold Jase, then.”
“Ugh,” Ter says, almost instinctively. I say almost, because I’m seventy percent sure she actually thought it all out in her head and figured that would be the ideal response. “Please, don’t tell me about your bedroom life.”
I laugh. See, I’m fairly sure she also knows everything about that. Last semester, Ike warned me that someone was watching him. I suspect that it was Ter, and I suspect she’s still watching everyone. Because Ter is terrifying. “If you insist, Therese,” I reply, “You know how much I love you knowing everything about my life.”
That causes her to laugh. “I know,” she says, her dry wit coming through, “It’s the only thing that gets you through the day.”
I can’t help but smile as I walk away. I got the terrifying Ter to not just laugh but make a joke of her own. I’m pretty sure that means I win life. Even on a day like today, I’ll take the wins when I get them. I walk down the stairs. Today is a stairs day, not an elevator one. It gives me less time to think. Instead, I focus on each step, on saying hi to each person. Keeping myself busy is easy enough when you’re busy all the time. And I have Interlinguistic Theory homework for tomorrow. I need to finish that before tonight’s, well, before tonight.
ILT is one of my favorite classes this semester. It’s taught by Lisette, who’s high all the time, which is kinda meh, but the class itself is fascinating. It’s all about translations of mystical rituals and the difficulties inherent in it. See, theoretically speaking, all rituals are perfectly translatable to any language at all, right, because the language is just the intent and emotion of the mystic individual mixing with that of the ritual reaching out into the fabric of reality and altering it appropriately. But, because of the intricacies inherent in the rituals and the complexities inherent in languages, it’s very difficult in practice to translate them. Hence why most people just learn the rituals as they were originally performed, not as they are. Also why so many mystic peoples, in the magisterium, the towers, and even the covens, study long dead or forgotten languages. That stereotype is definitely true.
This week's ILT homework is a translation of a simple Sumerian augury into modern French. Not a complicated thing, save the slight problem of requiring a living chicken to test my translation before I turn it in. Or several, if I screw up the first time. As I walk out of the classroom building and into the quad, I remember that one of the magisters from my last semester, Lonnie Jeffry, recommended a local farm for the strange ingredients, especially living animals. “Two of them,” I mutter to myself, “That should be enough.” Greg looks over at me like I’m an insane person as I walk by muttering to myself. Maybe I am, but he’s certainly not one to judge. Like the Cheshire Cat says, ‘We’re all mad here. You must be or you wouldn’t have come.’ Ignoring Mr. Judgy, I walk over to my car and drive the ten miles out through dirt roads to Mr. Pete Waldrop’s Animal Farm.
The Waldrop Farm is an odd place to be. Pens and pens of animals, just about any that you could imagine on a farm are there. Mr. Waldrop himself, an eighty-year-old widower, takes care of all the animals in the morning. That said, his business model is terrible, I think he just does it because he likes the company. The only thing keeping him in business is the steady stream of college students who want strange pets, now that they live somewhere that allows pets. At least, as far as we tell him. I walk right up to the farmer. “Hey Mister Waldrop,” I say, smiling.
The old man smiles right back, a pleasant grin. “How many times do I have to tell you kids, call me Pete.” He always says that. We never call him Pete.
“I was wondering if you had a couple of chickens for sale.” My voice stays calm and collected.
Mr. Waldrop nods. “I do. For eggs, entertainment, or meat?”
I pause to think about that. Homework, though the right answer, seems a tad insensitive. I decide the closest to the truth is meat. “Ones ready to be eaten, please.”
“Want me to kill ‘em for you? Sometimes you children get weird about that.” He’s being polite as he walks to the coop.
“No, I want the practice.” I lie. Sort of.
Waldrop looks at me, then nods. “Right, I get it. Cultural thing.”
Why are old people so racist, I instantly think to myself, but I shut that down. After all, I basically led him there by the hand. Instead of saying anything, I simply smile as he hands me a cage with two chickens inside. “Ten for the pair,” he says, as I hand him a twenty. He grabs it, looks at it, and begins to pull out his wallet to look for change.
I shake my head. “Keep the change,” I tell him, “Having you around is a lifesaver.” It isn’t like my family doesn’t have money to burn. I can afford to be nice to the old man.
He smiles and walks back to his rocking chair on the front porch, leaving me with two chickens in a cage. In no time, I’m back on the road, chickens squawking from the passenger seat. Once I’m back on campus, I head down the quad to the river. I like preforming riverside. Less cleanup. I set my squawking chicken cage down and begin to set the ritual out.
Irritatingly, Ike picked that exact moment to show up. I mean, not irritatingly, because he’s like my best friend and all, but still, just when I want to murder chickens in peace, you know? Ike looks at me. “Oopsies, didn’t realize you were here. Thought you’d be taking today off.”
Sure he didn’t, I think aggressively and sarcastically. “You knew exactly where I’d be,” I choose to say instead.
“I did,” he replies honestly. I hate it when people do that. Why can’t people just politely lie to me? He continues talking through my musings, “But also, I need to stab myself repeatedly and the disruption sigils all over my room might get in the way. Not in the way of the stabbing myself, I can do that anywhere, in the way of the spell. What are you up to?”
“ILT homework. You?” I finish setting up the essential elements of the alter.
He smiles at me. “Curses of Ancient Societies. You know how I do.”
He walks away a bit, partially to give me space for my homework, and partially to give me space in general. He knows the look on my face, what it means. I take out the first chicken from the cage and hold it over the center of my makeshift altar. After saying my French spell translation of the Sumerian ritual, I take the small knife and slit the chicken from beak to anus, allowing the viscera to spill out onto the symbology. I watch the guts as they fall to the ground, and the fall isn’t just gravity and wind. Something else is affecting the movement. It works. I’m a goddamned genius. After taking careful notes of what the chicken’s liver and kidney tell me about the future, I leap up in the air and fist pump. “Eat it, world,” I shout. As I land, I look over to Ike. He was serious about the whole stabbing himself thing. He’s floating in midair frozen in place, blood, still but pulsating, seeming to spurt out of his chest, talking in some Germanic language. I can’t help but shake my head. Witches are weird, even former witches. Picking up my bucket of water, I throw it on my makeshift alter, causing the gross bits to fall into the river. “Enjoy not-dying, Ike,” I say to my floating friend.
The sun is starting to set. I head back to my room for the evening. As expected, Jase is there, waiting for me. “How’s everything, Ali?” he asks me as I all but collapse into my chair. He walks over and starts to massage my neck.
“I’m okay, Jase,” I say, then remember, “Also, you went and told Therese?”
Jase laughs at that, “Like it or not, Ter’s sorta my friend. Just like I told Lisette to give you homework to keep you busy during the day. How was that?”
I hit him. “That was your fault?” I blurt out, “You owe me twenty bucks. Also, thanks, it was awesome, also stop it.” A lot of emotions are all coming out at once.
“I know today’s been a lot. Is there anything I can do to help?” he asks me. He probably knows the answer already, but he’s waiting for me to tell him.
I sigh. “Just, I need some space, okay? Just for tonight. Oh, and maybe come by tomorrow with coffee…?”
He smiles at me. Jase is a lot of things, but one of them is a good boyfriend. “Alright, I can do both of those things easy enough. You know how to reach me if you need anything at all.”
I nod, lean in, and kiss him. “Now go, enjoy your night without having to deal with my neuroses.”
“It’ll be no fun without those,” he says to me as he walks out of my dorm, smiling.
I sigh, walk over to my closet, and open the small box in the bottom. The box I never open. Looking down at the pictures and the small carving inside, I can’t help but start to tear up. Today is a rough one, to be certain. I hold back the tears as best I can. Instead, I start to tell the box about my day, “Today, I helped translate an old poem into ingredients for a mystic cocktail of some kind. And I got a translation of a spell right on the first try. I mean, now I have a chicken, but first try, right?” I can’t help it anymore. The tears start to flow. “You’d love it here, Ric,” I tell my little brother, “I hope you love it where you are now just as much.” In my heart, I can feel him, proud of me. Feeling that makes me a bit better, but it doesn’t help stop the tears. I doubt anything will. I hold the small carving against my heart as I cry myself to sleep on the floor.
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