Misfit
Chapter One: Threat
(My interpretation of) Wizard's past and his relationship with Witch, while they train in the magic arts.
A skinny, dirty young kid's hanging around the outside step when she arrives. Unfamiliar, with shaded urchin's eyes that travel slowly, analytically up to her face. He has no expression and no shoes.
A street kid from the poor district, no doubt.
The little witch disregards this encounter and enters her Master's house.
He is not in, but leaves a note scolding her for failing the first lesson of the day: to teleport to the castle.
She had walked.
Indignant, she prepares an excuse involving fatigue, but declares it futile and abandons it in favour of formulating one about that kid.
She couldn't very well have teleported right in front of that rat. Why, she had known he was there before she had even left her home!
Shouldn't she be rewarded for her foresight?
Satisfied, she slips out of her coat and promenades into the study, settling into a wooden chair (spine ruler-straight, as a lady's should be)
with some ancient tome nestled in her lap.
The room fills with ticking from the glass-plated clock in front of the biggest window; the morning sun throws shadows of its hands and numbers on the stone floor.
She reads peacefully, skimming. She cannot yet remember the finer points of the grammar of some of these languages. The big words elude her completely, and she pieces together the text with scraps of whatever she understands. The sky outside is pastoral blue, a day to be used for sowing, tending, harvesting.
She doesn't know how long she's been reading when the big wooden door- the warded, charmed door- clicks open, creaks, shuts heavily.
Master never uses that door. Witch hasn't seen him do it even once.
It's the kid. He walks into the study, still empty-faced and unresponsive, to her shock. He has no coat to hang up.
"What are you doing?!"
She hisses through her teeth. But this too is pointless. Master already knows the kid is in his house. He is probably already on his way.
But if Master hadn't meant for the kid to get in, he wouldn't have. The kid couldn't have breached the physical locks, let alone the protective charms and spells that were in place.
The kid shrugs. His eyes meet hers again, staring as if scrutinising, and it makes her fidget.
Like she's done something wrong, and he knows.
And he'll tell.
Witch stands. The kid follows the movement with his eyes.
"You get out now."
He just keeps staring.
She takes a threatening step forward, gathering herself up to her full height of four-eight in patched stockings.
He doesn't move. He isn't alarmed, shocked, scared.
It's like he knows.
"What do you even want, you dirty creep?"
"...Nothing with you. Nothing."
His voice is very quiet, calm. It doesn't fit exactly with the intensity in his eyes, and she doesn't know how to respond, under that gaze, and so sits back down, wary.
She's running through every spell she knows. Everything.
She pulls her jumper up a little higher without thinking about it.
The kid shrugs again, finally looking away. She can see his shoulder joints, his vertebrae, all bulging and angular under his skim, which seems too small for his body. No fat.
Is his skin naturally that colour or is it just grime?
His hair is long and dark, dirty like the rest of him.
He doesn't belong here. Not like she does, with her talent and looks, just like her mommy.
Does he even have a mommy?
Master had said once that she had potential and talent.
What had Master said about him? The little witch-in-training wanted to know, suddenly, badly.
What did her strong, wise Master want with this street misfit?
Review, please! I'd like to know where and how I could do better.