Master Rufus sat at one of the tables in the Refectory grading his students' papers. He was done for the day with Aaron's Makar lessons, and Tamara and Call weren't quite finished with the day's lesson with Master Milagros.
The other Masters had been predictably cold towards him after the discovery of Aaron's ability with Chaos magic. Training two out of three Makar that had appeared in the last century certainly hadn't made him very popular, especially given what had happened with his last apprentice.
He stared gloomily at the papers for a while then looked up as students started to file in for the lunch break. Tamara and Call were mixed in with some of the other students who were all smudged with dirt from their lessons outside. From the various flowers students were holding, it looked like earth magic had been the subject for the day.
Tamara was holding an iris that was a violent shade of cobalt and Call had a hot pink, thorn-less rose in his hand. Aaron appeared behind them and they all lined up with their plates in hand.
Master Milagros walked over to Rufus and started talking about lesson plans. Call had finished filling up his plate and was now standing a beside the two Master waiting patiently, but neither of them seemed to notice him. Shrugging, Call dropped his rose onto Rufus' stack of papers and went back to his table.
When their conversation finished Rufus turned to grab his papers and saw the pink rose sitting on top. He looked over to where Call was sitting and smiled. They'd certainly had a rough beginning but it looked like things were starting to turn around.