Vayal Academy

As another year’s Gauntlet passes, fading into the distance like the Vayal train chugging into the horizon, student life settles back into the routine of classes broken up by hazardous excursions, sneaky late-night drinking, and — inevitably — sex. But it’s mostly classes and study, at the end of the day.

Professor Yola’s Fundamentals of Magic is a favourite class of the First Years. Most anyone experienced enough to secure an invite to the Academy is familiar enough with how magic works that the class merely puts into words things they’ve always intuitively understood, which makes it the kind of blow-off that the academically-pressed just adore.

The 15.30 Nyrnday class, in fact, has just one student who doesn’t approach it with a general feeling of you know, I’ve already got this well in hand, so I’m gonna spend more mental energy looking at Professor Yola’s pretty silver hair or the kind eyes on her gracefully ageing face — that student is Hattie Hare.

While Hattie, nose in her notebook, scribbles down Yola’s accessible digestion of the typically impenetrable Origins of Mana in the Natural World and Development of its Manipulations, across the lecture hall Gelstra, behind her glasses, stares at the pretty priestess Posy Primrose. On the other side of Gelstra, Willow, a lean faced and (generally agreed to be) gorgeous brown-skinned woman with a shock of hair that curls just so, stares at Hattie Hare.

Willow, whose bright blue owl birthmark on her wrist marks her as a member of Reason, has been sort-of-casually hooking up with Alyx Fartrot, who spends more time in the Reason library than most would expect of her. Alyx, who got drunk with Willow the other night and divulged more than she should have about the contest, like how she threw herself into it out of a strange compulsion, a love for Hattie and Mae, and planned to win just so she could tell her new girlfriend Mae that they’d both benefit from including a third — Hattie.

So now Willow’s stuck in this state of jealousy she can’t quite account for. She neither expects nor wants exclusivity from Alyx; the very idea is ridiculous. But, still, all that drama over the Orc? Well, that’s intriguing to her. She does wish, maybe just a little, that she could get some of that fuss over her, as well.

But then, Willow’s a rather complex, multifaceted gal, and so she also gets a little jealous of Alyx too, because at the end of the day yes, the competition was a strange thing, but it sounded fun, didn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to fight over?

“Miss Wick,” comes Yola’s voice (always firm, but with a comforting sort of fireplace crackle beneath it, like you’ll never get in too much trouble from her). “Perhaps you might like to answer.”

Suddenly forced to pay attention, Willow swallows imperceptibly and sits up straight, drawing her attention to the twinkling board at the front of the hall. She’s one of the few to have read and understood Origins of Mana, so she just needs to orient herself given she probably already knows the answer. “Well,” she tries, as Yola’s chicken scratch across the board provides not a single anchor or landmark to help her figure out what she’s even being asked.

Hattie puts a ginger hand up, earning Willow’s gratitude and Yola’s ever-so-slight disproval. “I could give it a go?” she offers. Yola nods assent. “Well, the first mages were knitters, right? They would cast by accident as they moved their fingers in the tight, precise motions of craft? Some are just born with a big well within, and others were over leylines when they worked, but — either way — they made scarves that never tatter? Coats that are heated on the inside?”

Gods, what’s the question? Willow thinks, desperately. Since Hattie bailed her out, she needs to come in and bail Hattie out; evidently she needs it, if she’s uncertain about every sentence.

“So it’s probably the same for the magical beasts, right? Just, I’m not sure their analogue for knitting is…”

Oh, okay! Right. That’s easy. “It depends on the beast,” Willow says, earning an appreciative, relieved smile from the Mountain Orc. “The thictai developed a rudimentary sort of Alteration from digging out their burrows — their tiny claws are well suited to precise movements; there’s an argument, though it’s contested, that mortals learned Restoration from the kitmo, who healed each other with vigorous licking of wounds.”

“Very good, you two,” Yola says, her smile wide and warm.

Consider that a favour for your new girlfriend, Willow thinks. Ah, whatever, she’s generous enough without calling in favours.

All this jealousy is somewhat misplaced, because the one thing Alyx neglected to mention is the terrible state Hattie’s in right now — with her punishment for sneaking out of the Diligence Compound delegated to Vila (as overzealous as ever), Hattie’s pretty much locked up in there every second she’s not in class. While Alyx and Mae are living it up, having the dizzying, butterfly-summoning dates that come with a new relationship (and similarly incredible sex), Hattie’s on an endless series of errands that has her all worked up with nowhere to go.

If Willow did know this, she’d be all the more impressed with Hattie for her help. But, as it is, she’s simply thankful — and when class ends in twenty minutes, she’ll stop thinking about Hattie until next week’s class; the girl exists, to her, in hour and a half increments (plus whenever Alyx brings her up, which is admittedly often).

The class concludes; the two, briefly connected, go their separate ways, and the school year rolls on, as it must.