“I know this is his day,” Jase whispers to me as we lie entangled in my dorm room’s bed that’s just slightly too small for two, “But I want to help you through it. Any way that I can.”
I sigh. I know he means well, but it’s not really helping. “I know,” I reply, quietly, “I’ll let you know.” I don’t mean it, but saying anything else would just hurt his feelings. Any other day of any other week, I might engage with that. Talk this whole thing out. But not today. Today, I need to find… Well, I need something less. And that just isn’t. Jase certainly can be, but not when he’s on some kind of savior kick. Slowly pulling myself out of bed, I start to get dressed.
“Aw, fuck,” Jase mutters from behind me. “I just saw the time. Kisses and whatnot, but I got a paper to finish in twenty.” He gets up himself and, without bothering to get dressed, pulls out his laptop.
“Kisses and whatnot?” I muse at him, as I pull on my shirt. Sometimes he does know exactly what to say.
“You know what I mean, babe,” he answers, typing furiously, “I love you, and would love to kiss you goodbye, but getting an A in Cultic History of Asia takes preference.”
“Glad to see you’ve got priorities,” I joke, pulling on my pants. “In that case, love you, I’m heading out. Kisses and what not.” I say the last bit there with as much sarcasm as I can muster. Then, with a glance towards the small box in my closet, I head out to classes.
I have two today, thank god. It’s almost like I scheduled it. I didn’t want to owe another, well, that doesn’t matter. First is my not quite early morning class. Rites and Bonds of Familiars. It’s almost entirely useless or boring, but I need it. My advisor, Magister Steven Locke, teaches it. And, it happens to fit into my schedule nicely. Ten o’clock. I head into Konstantin, up the stairs to the fourth floor, and into the small classroom Magister Locke always gets. The faculty here doesn’t like him that much, at least that’s what Nat claims.
Nat hurries in. More and more, Nat’s been disappearing. I’m not sure why, but I think it probably has something to do with Therese. She keeps it secret like it does, in any case. That woman seems to be everywhere. Given that she’s friendly with my boyfriend and my best friend, if I didn’t know better, I’d be happy with it. But I do. There’s something more going on, and no one seems to care much. Nat sits down by me. “Hey Ali, you good?” she asks.
“Fine,” I reply, “You ready? You seem in a rush.”
Nat smiles. “Yeah, sure, I’m fine. I was just, you know, a tad busy with something.”
“Take one person on a rich people vacay or two around Europe and suddenly they think they’re better than everyone else,” I joke.
“Hey, that ain’t fair,” she shoots back, “We both know you asked Ike to join, too. So technically, it just takes you inviting someone to get them thinking they’re better than everyone else.”
“You noticed too?” I ask.
Nat nods. “Yeah. I’m thinking he’s seeing a townie. Doesn’t want the school to know.”
I wave that off. “The school doesn’t care about that,” I dismiss the notion.
“Yeah, but Ike’ld care.”
She’s right, of course. I look at her as the rest of the class arrives with some time to spare. “You ask Ter about it?”
“Why me?” she asks right back.
I shrug. “You’re the only person I know who’s gotten Ter in the red before.”
Nat sighs and nods. “Yeah, well, right now we’re even, and I’d like to keep it that way. At least for a while. Anyways, I’m not the only one who could ask.”
“Right now, I owe Ter a bunch, so not me. It’s about Ike, so not him. And you really think she’d tell Jase about anything?”
“Nah, that boy can’t keep a secret.” Class officially starts, but Magister Locke is, per usual, late. After a brief pause, Nat has an idea. “What about Irene?”
“What about her?” I ask.
Nat explains. “Well, she knows almost as much as Ter about the goings on around here, but she likes to gossip. You could…”
“Irene. I ran into her once, in a, well, a specific context.” I shake my head at Nat. The girl’s got a strange idea of what a good idea is. “What you seem to be telling me is, since I’m already in the red with Ter, I should get into the red with Ter’s apprentice. Or whatever the heck those two are.”
“Yeah,” Nat says with a smile.
“Great, just making sure,” I shoot back, “You know, checking exactly how insane you are.” Pulling out my notebook, I open up to the first fresh page. I start to write the date, stop myself, and instead simply write ‘today’ at the top.
Magister Locke, almost exactly a minute and a half late, walks through the side entrance to the room and up to his desk. “Sorry I’m late,” he begins as he gets himself organized surprisingly quickly. Well, it would be surprising to anyone unfamiliar with the man. “The assignment was to read through chapter two. If I were meaner, I’d have a quiz or something. Instead, I’m just going to embarrass any y’all who didn’t finish the work. Let’s start with you, Nico. Why do you think the practice of bonding was outlawed in the late fourth century in Europe?”
Class creeps by. I never even get called on during the embarrassment quiz. Partly because I always do the work, and partly because, even when I don’t, I know how to answer questions like I do. Magister Locke learned that about me back in my second semester. For most history based questions, you just have to know the tentpoles, the important people or events, and find a justification for why the closest of those could be related to whatever the question is asking. For instance, for the late fourth century in Europe, the tentpole is Julian and Theodosius, the religious strife and backlashes. Figure, bonding was generally seen back then as a pagan tradition, rather than a tradition of one of the Christian sects, so blame the backlash against Julian’s push for a return to traditional, Hellenistic religion. Add something about the common enemy being important for the reestablishment of Christianity because they sects hated each other almost as much as they hated Julian and there is a fully fleshed out answer. And, since it has context beyond the reading, Professors will often even give you credit for going beyond expectations. After his quiz for embarrassing the unprepared, we move on to a few group-work discussions of the importance of the ban and underground practices on the development of bonding as it is understood today. Boring and slow. Normally I might complain, but today, boring and slow serves me just fine.
After class comes lunch, where Jase and Ike meet Nat and I. Jase is high. From the look in his eyes, he got the paper in. Also from the look in his eyes, he either isn’t happy about the quality of the paper, or the timing of his turning it in. I don’t ask, though. It’s not that important. Ike, on the other hand, looks tired. He’s grasping his coffee like it’s his only chance of survival. The cup is from out in town, and not one particularly near campus either. Maybe Nat is right about this whole thing. As we eat and talk about nothing in particular, I take a glance around the dining hall. But nothing interesting is happening. It’s as though the world itself knows not to push me today.
“You got plans for today?” Ike asks me.
I don’t. “Yeah, actually,” I say, “I’m taking the car out to Mister Waldrop’s, then I’ve got class, then some work I need to get done.”
“Alright,” Ike says, not buying it, but also knowing better than to question it. Then, standing up, he says, “Well, I gotta go reup on some stuff before my class, so…” He trails off.
“Have fun,” Jase says with a grin, “Keep your crimes misdemeanors.”
“Never,” Ike jokes back, “Misdemeanors would mean I got caught.” And he heads out.
Nat leans in to Jase. “You know what’s up with him?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” Jase muses.
Nat shakes her head. “He’s been acting tired, always disappearing and busy. I think he might be dating a townie.”
Jase takes a moment to think. “I don’t know. I mean your boy goes hard, but he’s also, well, him. He might be going out with someone, but you guys know him. He’s always tryina think twenty moves ahead. Might just be pushing himself too hard.”
“Does he have his Magister placement lined up?” I ask.
Jase nods. “Well, lined up, yeah. Not a done deal or nothing, but…”
I think. Maybe Jase is right. If his next move is lined up, he could be thinking about the move after. Or Nat could be right, and he’s thinking about someone in the city. “Uch, why do people have to be so complicated all the time,” I mutter, not at anyone in particular.
“Because the world hates you, in particular, dear,” Jase jokes.
I raise my eyebrows at him. “So you got the jokes now?”
“I’ve always had the jokes,” he says, “They’re just usually not that funny.”
I chuckle. Until I got to know Jase, I’m not sure I thought it possible to find something genuinely funny today. But he has a way.
After lunch, I head out to the Waldrop farm. Every couple months I pick up a chicken. He thinks it’s something weird and cultural, I’m pretty sure. And he’s not entirely wrong. My parents, they like to spy. And they don’t particularly like Jase. They don’t really get it. So, I show them what they want to see. A trick I learned from Ike, modified with some stuff from classes I’ve taken. A simple trick. Something I’ll do after class. Driving back to campus, I take the chicken, in its cage, and bring it up to my room. Grabbing my stuff for my Healing and Mending Lab, I leave the chicken behind. It can wait until class ends in three hours. I head back to Kon, to the lab.
H&M is an easy lab. Most of the calculations are the same stuff I learned last semester in Imbuement of Power. It’s basically just a different sort of imbuement. A different flow. Also, a relatively easy A, especially how leniently the Magister grades our reports. I take detailed notes, I write a coherent hypothesis based on the tests, and test it with whatever we are supposed to do. And, as long as I keep to the formula for the reports and don’t mess up in the labs themselves, it’s always A work.
The lab is slow, about fixing dead wood in a split table and the costs within. Thankfully, slow and hard are two different things. And slow means, for the full three hours, I can focus entirely on the weaving together of wood grains and the changes the costs require. It’s relaxing, almost, watching those thin strands pull themselves back together.
After class, I head back to my room. Jase stops me in the hall. “Hey,” he says, “I’m about to head out. I know you want to be alone tonight. But I’ll be back early tomorrow morning.”
“With coffee?”
“Maybe even a little something in the coffee, for old time’s sake?”
I chuckle. “Alright, I suppose. Actually early?”
“For you, my dear,” he says with a bow of his head, “I can make the sacrifice.”
I lean in close and kiss him. “Thanks, babe,” I whisper in his ear.
“Anytime,” he says, before he leaves. I head back to my room. The ritual takes a matter of a minute. Just a chant, a bleeding of the chicken, and a few sigils. After that, I head over to my closet and pull out that small box. The box I never open. I open it and gaze inside, tears welling up in my eyes. “Hey, Ric,” I whisper to my little brother, holding back the tears, “Today I learned how to fix a table.” I begin to silently cry. “I wish you could be here. There’s something I need to talk about.” I pull out the small carving from the box and hold onto it. I whisper to it everything I want to say to my baby brother, through my tears. About the school, about him, about Jase. And it helps. Not much, but some. Curled on the floor, I sleep.
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