“I’m not joking. I told you that I don’t accept any substitutes, I don’t care that you’re a Saryan child; do the assignment like the rest of the students.”
“Real classy using my lineage against me, Professor.”
Rubbing her eyes, Ty couldn’t believe she was consigned to stand in the hallway outside Korinna’s classroom with the rest of her classmates.
“Maybe…we should let Ty intervene.” Callie breathed while inconspicuously peeking into the classroom. “She could probably argue for an hour.”
“What’s she even looking for?” For once, Faris looked interested.
Everyone could only look at each other and shrug.
The caster unfolded his arms across his chest and stopped leaning against the wall, sauntering over to the classroom entrance.
“Hey,” he yelled loudly, “What do you even need?”
Korinna didn’t miss a beat, shouting back, “Wisteria, this lady’s crazy if she thinks I’d ask Selene to grow them in her conservatory.”
“There’s magic for that,” he barked, not even trying to conceal his annoyance.
There was a slight pause as the room grew quiet, and then the rapid sound of shuffling feet that grew closer and closer until Faris stepped back from the entrance.
“Since when did I need you to fight my battles for me?” spat Korinna, looking up at Faris’s dour face. “Telethyos does the exact same thing, is artificial, no-risk, and it doesn’t have to be grown for this stupid little poison assignment. The damn system’s archaic.”
He remained steadfast, face unchanging. “Suck it up,” he snapped. “She’s your professor and she can do whatever the hell she wants. Tell Selene to grow the stupid plant and then get it Uprooted once you’re done.”
Korinna bit her lower lip, visibly boiling with rage, and shook her head slowly with a fist raised. “One day, I’m going to punch you so hard your pompous-ass ancestors will feel it.”
As she turned her heel and stepped back into class, Faris silently went back to his spot by the wall and resumed his nonchalant pose, glaring at the staring faces. “What?”
“Wow,” Cyril breathed, turning to Callie beside him, whispering not-so-quietly, “Don’t you think he’s super cool? In, like, the I-don’t-care kinda way?”
Callie regarded the healer with blatant disgust, not even sure what to say as she turned away from the two boys.
Guess he got through to her, Ty thought to herself as she peered into the brightly lit classroom, spotting some glassware and apothecary materials near the front while Kor grabbed her belongings and started storming towards her.
“Anyone else to get?” huffed the chemist, taking the time to glare at Faris before resting her gaze on Cyril. “Dude, you’re still here? Didn’t your supplemental class get rescheduled to tonight? You gonna skip?”
The entire party froze.
“Oh, shit.”
The chemist sighed, her stern expression evaporating into a pitiful smile just as Cyril began bolting in the other direction, back to the main lecture halls. “Alright then, let’s go meet up with the others.”
* * *
Seven of them sat around a table in the dining hall, one beside the other so that they covered all four sides, Ty on the outermost one: Ty, Faris, Callie, Elias, Theo, Korinna, and Selene. Elias was already waiting when they had arrived, taking the opportunity for a quick nap, impervious to the noise while Theo and Selene arrived soon after with large bowls and plates of food, which were now sitting in the center of the table. Today’s choices were greens, soup, fish, bread, and meat pie; choices of drink were the usual: ale, cider, wine, tea, or coffee, individually taken from the front of the dining hall.
Ty, who never really had a penchant for food, got her usual coffee, soup, and bread. It was simple and easy on her stomach in the evenings, which she sometimes spent feeling nauseated on slow days. There was little else she could do about her anima’s regeneration rate other than to take her medicine and sometimes skip meals altogether. No one in class caught on yet though, so she’d have to be sneaky about it if she really needed to take her medicine in public.
Swirling her wooden spoon in her bowl, she watched her classmates take a bit of everything—with exception to Selene, who avoided proteins other than fish and egg on account of her affiliation with the Circle of Graces—and listened in on their conversations about lectures, magic, professors, and a variety of hobbies she hadn’t even heard of. Soup is good, she told herself absently, eager to fill the void as she put another spoonful into her mouth. And coffee. Hot coffee is always good.
“So, Ty, where are you from?”
Ty swallowed and put down her spoon, startled at being asked a question. Thirty minutes into the meal, she was content with just listening. “Um, I live near the waters,” she answered Korinna as others looked at her thoughtfully. “It’s why I’m, uh, a bit tan.”
Elias smiled wistfully, chuckling to himself. “Ah yes, I always snuck out to the beaches in the warmer months. I used to get into so much trouble.”
“In other words, nothing’s changed,” quipped Korinna.
Never having had many opportunities to go to the beach herself, Ty could only nod awkwardly and offer a timid smile as she looked down at her meal. “The sound of the water is nice.” That was true enough—she could see the waters from her home, up on top of a hill, surrounded by trees. The waves were loud enough for her to hear on some days. Some days it was comforting, some days it had made her angry.
Faris tapped his small black notebook, piece of pie crust in his other hand. “Well, that makes it three in the east if Cyril weren’t such a fool, so I win.” He popped the piece in his mouth and held out the hand to Korinna, who was across the table from him. “Pay up.”
As Korinna reached into her pocket, sighing, Theo interjected, “Wait, if we did it by where people were born rather than grew up, I could count for another northern vote.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Korinna stopped, grinning and widening her eyes. “Oh? You weren’t born in the west?”
Theo leaned back in his seat, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah, I was born up north in Tetche, and only ended up in the west after…”
“Did your parents have to relocate?” Callie prodded.
“Nah,” he shook his head a bit too casually, picking up a carrot from his bowl. “I was too sick for my parents to want me. I ended up in one of those Halls of Anasot where Circle of Graces people raise unwanted children.”
About to take a bread roll from the basket in the center of the table, Ty retracted her hand. She stared at Theo wordlessly, in slight disbelief that none of this was mentioned in his file. He had studied with an extremely high-ranking MATS teacher, even; the feat of joining the Academy at eighteen must have been tremendous.
“Not everyone’s from a wealthy family,” noted Theo, catching Ty staring. “Though it appears a few of us are.”
“Not me,” chimed Callie unabashedly before drinking her cider.
Selene, who also didn’t speak much, gazed at her food while answering, “Me neither.”
Unafraid of incurring the wrath of the class botanist, Faris chuckled. “I’ve yet to meet a follower of the Circle of Graces who is.”
“Hey!” Selene pouted disapprovingly in reply and right on cue, looking up to give Faris a stern look.
“Mmm, who else other than me?” wondered Elias aloud, surveying the rest of the students sitting around the table with his cheek resting in his palm. “Faris is noble, Korinna’s family are court chemists, and…” He raised an eyebrow at the class lead. “Ty?”
“My mother was a teacher at MATS,” she replied quietly, having had nightmares about being asked the very thing.
“Oh man,” the study-averse student replied with a wide smile. “I can’t even imagine how much of a burden that must be.”
“Oh, don’t say it like that, Elias,” scolded Callie. “No one’s a burden.”
“Explains the offensive magic,” commented Faris from beside her, chuckling and eating another bite of pie. “And you let me land a hit, ha.”
“That’s pretty great, though,” Korinna finally mentioned, tracing her finger around the edge of her mug as she watched Elias shy away from the support. “You must have lots of familial connections.”
Ty fidgeted with her spoon. “I…I’m not sure. I learned mostly under my mother…though I did have a handful of tutors visit from time to time.”
Korinna nodded. “Yeah, and they must have been fantastic—oh man, that reminds me, Sel, didja hear that the first-year bow instructor—”
As her classmates continued chattering amongst themselves, Ty returned to her soup, pensive as ever. It had cooled down, but she didn’t mind it. The bread was still good, and her coffee was still piping hot under the enchanted plate she got for it.
It wasn’t so bad, being surrounded by the noise. Even if she didn’t contribute much, she could get used to it, being able to listen in on conversations and smile at the random witty remark. Her classmates weren’t bad people, and Callie was right—maybe she had thought they disliked her because of her own perception of them. They seemed nothing but normal, sitting in the dining hall, talking and laughing while enjoying a long, leisurely meal.
We should do this every week, she wanted to say. That would be nice.
But as she finished her soup and her coffee, taking out a packet of her black medicine from her coat and concealing it on her lap under the table, she wondered if it was because everyone thought she was normal. If things would suddenly change if they found out she was a halfling, that she could level a building easily if she simply wished it. No, that won’t happen, she convinced herself, flipping over the square sachet between her fingers, I’m a better person without my anima. The warm, calm feeling in her chest after she had that bout with Faris—that feeling, she wanted it back.
She unfolded the sachet slowly, dropping it into the last of her coffee before placing it back onto the table as if nothing had happened.
“Ty?”
Mid-stir, she turned to face Faris beside her. She didn’t speak, just watched him expressionlessly.
He returned the look for a few good seconds before staring at her cup, her slender hand holding her stirring spoon, and then back at her. When she still didn’t respond, he articulated quietly, “Never mind.”
When Faris turned away, Ty returned to her cup, mixing the dark liquid and thanking the Graces he didn’t say a word as she downed it all in one go.
Its effect was almost immediate as she felt her heart begin to ease, and her head lighten. The glare from the spell-candles illuminating the dark hall felt a bit less bright, and she could no longer feel the tumultuous tempest swirling around in her chest.
Her mind was clear and made up as she looked out the dining hall windows into the courtyard—she wanted to go outside, stand in the middle of the field and cast the strongest, most beautiful spell she knew by heart. And then she would run away as if she were a ghost, like no one had been there all along. No one would know, no one would catch her. Stars would gently fall, glittering for a few seconds before fading. An unexplained, ephemeral sight like her existence would ultimately be—I was here, she wanted to yell, watching her classmates continue to casually chat around her. Unchanged, unaffected by her realization. They had no idea who she was, what she was capable of. What she was going to do. I was here, and you were all here to see it, she wanted to tell them. Only you. Only you will know.
I was here.
Ty abruptly stood up, gathering what little belongings she had and, noticing her mystified classmates, hastily put her cloak on lest the feeling disappear. “I just remembered I’ve got to go to the library,” she blurted without waiting for a reply, “Thank you all for the meal. L-let’s do this next week.”
And then she bolted out of the dining hall, wriggling the tactician’s ring off her hand and stuffing it into her pocket.
The wind of dusk blew past her as she ignored the cold, reaching the courtyard and feeling a sense of fatefulness wash over her.
It was dark. Empty. The buildings were lit all around, but there was no one else. She looked at the top of the main lecture hall building, at the windows on the Headmistress’s floor, and saw no one either.
She stopped, breathing steadily at the edge of the field. Bag in hand, held by its strap. Tome, burning a hole through her coat pocket.
Her bag made a slight rustling noise as it dropped from her hands and onto the grass, and so too did her cloak.
Step by step, she made it to the center of the courtyard, cupping her two hands together as she lifted them to the sky.
Starshower, she thought, remembering the words well. Long ago, her mother had used it to illuminate the sky. And that same night, she had committed every word of it to heart, keeping the words close for the right time. Maybe she had never tried casting it before because she was afraid of failing, or maybe it was because her mother had told her it was a secret. Maybe it was all in her head.
None of it mattered now. She didn’t care what others thought.
When she softly sang the first sentence to the melodic chanting spell, a light appeared in the center of her hands. Her eyes watched the light twist and swell before she lifted it up, higher above her head, continuing to sing softly until the light grew greater and greater, until it finally grew so big it blinked out of existence.
Ty looked up at the dark sky above, eyes wide as she took in the pure darkness one last time before opening her mouth to softly sing:
“May my stars ever guide your way.”
Just like that, the sky above the Academy was bathed in a blinding white light that broke off into a million smaller stars, fluttering down like the ashes had that very evening, pulsing like lost fireflies, each beat a lifetime, desperate to return home, desperate to let all who watched know that they were here. At this moment in time, among the chaos of encroaching darkness, they were here. Even if it was just a few seconds compared to the vast timeline of existence, they were indefinitely, indisputably, inarguably, here. Wherever here was. All she knew was that she was here to watch them all glow and glitter in the night sky, here to make sure they were seen, here to affirm their tiny, seemingly insignificant existences.
It was the most important, most beautiful sight she had ever seen. As she continued to ignore her aching neck from looking up for so long, intent on watching every star as they came closer to the ground, beginning to die out, just barely out of reach, she thought silently, as if the stars were listening, It’s alright, I see you. You can go now, if it’s time. I won’t be angry. You did your best. The light you brought into my life was more than enough.
And when all the stars finished flickering out of existence, she felt a calm stillness in her heart while she smiled at the darkness in the sky, whispering a phrase so quiet only the wayward stars could hear:
“Welcome home.”
