Aria mumbled to herself as she walked back and forth across the floor, doing laps across the small room. The scent of lavender still hung in the air from the afternoon tea, mingling with the various other sharp scents from their many wares. As she pulled on her brown curls, she examined the stack of eclectic things Asra had brought back from market with him; a canister of dried peppers, a vial of some silver liquid, a few new blankets to replace a few lost to an unfortunate accident involving using magic to light a distant candle, a mysteriously full barrel... It was a wonder how he carried them all back to the shop.
Asra had walked in, asked her to put their new merchandise away, and then carried another bundle upstairs with him. It wasn't an unusual request by any means, just an abrupt one. Usually he lingered about the first floor for a while, asking if any customers had come in or just talking to her in general. Today, Asra seemed a little preoccupied, with his brow furrowed and his soft eyes rather distant. Aria bit at her lip. She'd ask him about it later. For now, she'd have to move these things out of the entryway.
Digging her boots into the floorboards, she started with the barrel. The other items were sitting on their wooden shop counter. They would be fine sitting there a bit longer. She held her breath, grappled the sides of the barrel and lifted it high, feeling her heels lift as she initially lurched forward. She pushed the air out of her lungs and shifted her center of balance, saving it from careening into a wall. Aria winced as she spun with the momentum before stopping in the center of the room, the barrel firmly in her arms and the initial strain drifting away.
That was when she realized she didn't know where Asra wanted said barrel to be.
Aria huffed in annoyance. She should have asked first. As it were, the barrel wasn't so hard to carry once she had a firm grip on it. She carefully walked toward the bottom of the stairs and peered up. Well, no reason she couldn't ask now. "Master Asra," she called up the stairs, tilting her head slightly as if it would let her peer around the walls blocking her from seeing into their shared bedroom, where she assumed he was now. "Where would you like me to put the barrel?"
There was a muffled thud from upstairs, followed by indecipherable muttering. Aria found herself wincing. She hoped that she hadn't startled him too badly. She watched patiently as footsteps trailed towards the staircase. "The barrel," he echoed back, still out of view.
"Yeah! I'm not exactly certain what's in it, or if I should open it. The last time I opened an unmarked barrel, it made a rather large mess," Aria admitted.
Asra hummed unhappily. "I should have warned you that the contents were volatile," he sighed, his voice closer than before. He seemed to pause somewhere upstairs, perhaps in the bedroom doorway, before he started walking again. Within a few steps, he was in view, pushing at his snowy curls with a distracted glance at Faust, who had coiled herself around his shoulder. He took a few steps down in stride. "That was an awful lot of opal dust. I think I'm still finding that in my clothes even now." He turned to face his apprentice, then paused, a foot still in the air. He widened his eyes in surprise.
Aria, not one to be uncomfortable under his lavender gaze, found herself feeling a bit embarrassed by the incredulous look in his eyes. "Is something wrong," she asked nervously.
Her mentor quickly caught himself and took his interrupted step. "No," Asra blurted, a hand lifting as if to catch himself against the wall. "I just..." The tips of his ears turned red as he smiled a bit in bewildered amusement. "I had assumed you would be using your magic to move it, that's all. I didn't think that you would...lift it."
Aria felt her cheeks warm a bit. "O-Oh. Right, levitation... We had been practicing that as of late," she admitted. "I hadn't thought about it." She found herself smiling. "I had been so preoccupied in moving this out of the way of the door that I had neglected to think of anything but the direct approach."
Asra chuckled a bit. "That's quite all right." He walked down the remaining few steps and smiled at her side. "Perhaps I should have mentioned that you could use it to practice your levitation." He paused and tried to find a way to take the barrel from her. "Do you need any help? I'd hate for you to strain yourself over it."
His apprentice simply shook her head. "I'm fine. It actually isn't that heavy," she mused. "Did I often carry heavy things around," Aria asked suddenly. "This seems easier than I expected it would be."
Asra smiled that soft, melancholy smile he would make whenever his apprentice asked about her forgotten past. Every time he did, her curiosity only grew. "You lifted things around the shop here and there, but you didn't do it often, no." He paused and motioned upstairs. "We rearranged the bedroom once. You and I moved the bed over to where it is now, brought in that trunk..."
Her turquoise eyes lifted with great interest. "Really? I can't imagine it looking any different."
He smiled. "It does seem rather perfect the way it is now. I struggle to imagine how it was before myself." He stopped himself, his eyes wide again as he realized he had been reminiscing instead of helping. "I completely forgot about that barrel," he admitted. "It needs to go behind the counter here. It's our new supply of wax. You've been doing rather well making those magical candles, so I thought we could stand to get a couple dozen more blocks of wax to melt down."
Aria's eyes gleamed, earning a smile from her master. "That's great!" She nonchalantly carried the barrel behind the counter and found it a place near the rightmost edge. "I really do think that the customers appreciate them. Having softer but longer lasting spells really does open up new opportunities for wider areas of magic, don't you think, Master?"
Asra's smile faltered for a moment, but he quickly recovered. "Yes, I think so, too. You always know just what herbs to add to make them smell nice as well." As Aria beamed, he walked behind the counter. Faust slithered her way back into his vibrant coat. "Well then, how about we practice your levitation on the rest of the items I brought home." When she moved towards them, he quickly blinked and shook his head. "Ah, perhaps not on the vial. The contents are rather sensitive to magic. How about the peppers?"
His apprentice simply gave him a confident smile. "Actually, I wanted to try it on the blankets first."
Asra smiled. "All right, the blankets then. Now, remember to focus your thoughts on them and still your hands..."
Author's Note: I wrote this when I was feeling rather ill. It's a bit of a drabble, but I thought I might as well post it anyway. Used my fan apprentice Aria for this; I've been drawing her a lot so I thought I might as well write her, too. I'll definitely be writing more Arcana fics in the future.