Chapter 7: The Fire to Cook Our Food By

It was hard. No, scratch that, it was beyond hard. I had been here barely two months, and there wasn't a time in those two months where I didn't go to bed absolutely exhausted, sore, burnt, cold, or jittery from too much arcane exposure. I thought working in the fields was difficult, this was…it was beyond explanation at first. There were many times that getting out of bed was a chore, and I lagged behind the other children as we went to our morning classes. It was becoming a routine, really. Up at dawn, in class after a short breakfast, until early evening, and then it was study, homework, practice, and everything else my master could throw at me. I was the oldest child in the apprentice classes, by over three years. I remembered Archmage Magdalene had said that I was too old to start my training, and it was showing with how my body was not at all accustomed to their…rigorous workout. That, too, passed in time, however. All the same, it was an early September morning, and I was running late, as usual.

With a piece of toast clamped in my mouth, I was running down the corridor, trying to dress myself at the same time. I'd woken late, and I was a disheveled mess. My hair going every which way, my robes stuck on my arm, I burst into the classroom several minutes after the lesson had begun. The room went quite, and instructor Talven, my basic magic instructor, simply sighed and shook his head at me. He was a scrawny man, with horn rimmed glasses and a face only a mother could love, but he was a brilliant magister, and I was lucky to have him as my instructor, Arthur had said so, and everyone was learning much in his care before we went off to our specialty classes later in the day.

Today, though, I could tell Talven was reaching that point where he'd had enough of my excuses, my tardiness and…well, everything else. I tried to make my way towards my seat, and wanted nothing more than to be able to cast the invisibility spell on myself like I'd seen the Adepts doing in the courtyard. It would not be so as Talven cleared his throat loudly and pushed his glasses up his nose. I winced and froze in my spot, turning to look at him.

"Tell me, Mister De'tylmarande, when one combines a telekinetic spell and a push spell, what sort of spell is created from the combination?" He said, dropping the chalk into his other hand and crossing his arms in front of his chest, waiting for my answer. I went through every possibly magical combination in my head at once, trying to find out what could be created with such an odd combination of spells. It wasn't an unlocking spell, which was…I won't bore you with the details. It wasn't an incantation for a larger spell; the two spells would simply create no basis for anything useful.

"Um…n-nothing, sir…those two spell components wouldn't create anything useful, and you'd just have two components stored for later use. You could combine the push spell with a frost spell to create something there, and you could combine the telekinetic spell with an arcane can trip to…"

At this point, the entire classroom could no longer contain its laughter, and erupted into loud, raucous laughter. I shrank my shoulders, and waited for the instructor to correct me, and set me with another discipline, which I'd need to explain to Arthur and it was just going to be another mess I'd have to contend with.

Talven shushed the class quickly and turned his attention back to me, leveling a serious gaze at me. "Finish what you were saying."

I swallowed hard and collected my thoughts and continued. "You could create an arcane cantrip to be the basis of a number of other spells, mostly movement related such as operating a complex mechanism." I said it so fast that I wasn't sure he had caught it all, but he nodded, and I could tell the entire class's eyes were on me.

"That is actually a completely correct answer, Matthew. " He waved me towards my seat and I sat down and took out all of my books and papers and quills and focused on the lesson. I looked around and most everyone had the look that I like to call the 'deer in the lamp light's' look.

"The reason Mr. De'tylmarande is correct is because the two components, the push and the telekinetic component are two completely different sets of components. While both are based in the movement category of components, they are, in fact, fundamentally different, and who can tell me why?" Talven said, writing frantically on the black board as he turned towards the class.

It was true, while I was struggling in the time keeping department and in many other departments; I was able to catch on quite quickly to the knowledge of magic. I focused on the rest of the lesson, for the next two hours, learning as much as I could from my instructor, until it was time to break for study time, and then it would be time for my favorite class.

What? Oh, simple; because the push component is a directional based spell, meant to direct people and objects away from one's person, while the telekinetic spell is an area based component used for the manipulation of the world around you on a much more specific level. You can't direct something to manipulate itself beyond the limits of its physical self. The thing would simply just whip around in the air uselessly.

Now, then, where was I? Ah, yes. It was right after study time, I was heading to the courtyard to begin the apprentice fire lessons for the day. Until now, it was just about the safety of using such a dangerous and unpredictable magic, and watching other fire mages cast their own versions of each spell. Everyone had their own way of casting a fireball, and I'd seen the thing cast a hundred different ways by a hundred different people.

Today, though, was going to be different.

Our fire instructor was a portly woman, with grey curly hair that was always in a messy bun, with blue and gold robes, and with glasses you could eat off of simply based on the size of them. She was old and frail, but she could chain together flame spells better than most anyone here, save for perhaps Archmage Magdalene.

I'd learned that Arthur specialized in pure arcane spells, using the raw spells for defensive spells rather than offensive uses, and used frost magic for minor offense, while other mages focused on offense.

It worked well for him, but I was attracted to the thought of using fire magic for offense, and frost magic for defense. It seemed to work in my mind and the two spell classes…

It would appear I've digressed. Beg pardon, gentleman. Now, then, where were we?

We entered the courtyard single file, as we did every day, and lined up in front of Instructor Gertrude and we all prepared for the lesson for the day. We'd be doing our first actual casting of fire spells, casting minor spark spells, but still, it was a step in the right direction for me, while most of the class was focused on casting flamestrikes and summoning phoenixes from dust.

Our rotund instructor paced back and forth in front of us, snorting heavily as she walked, her rolls jiggling heavily as she made great, long strides in the middle of the courtyard. We'd each take our turns casting the spark spell, with each of us graded on several metrics. I was running through the casting sequence in my head as the first apprentice made his face forward and tried to cast it. It was wild and unpredictable, but he managed the simple mechanic of the sparks from his palm, the little flits of fire going every which way as the class cheered him on. He received a decent grade, but it would have been much better had he managed to control it decently.

One by one, each of them went to cast the spell, all of them having success to varying degrees. Some of them took more than one try to get the spell to actually cast, but they all managed the spell. That made me nervous, worrying if, perhaps, I'd try to cast and nothing would come from my hands, or I'd burn down the courtyard by using too much focus, or some other such nonsense. I was so focused on my own casting, that I didn't see the apprentice next to me be called up. She took several minutes to actually cast, and her sparks went every which way as well, and some went into the sky, some of them rolling around and popping on the ground. Instructor Gertrude looked particularly miffed about this, but I hadn't noticed, I was too busy going over the spell for the hundredth time in my head.

"Matthew!" Gertrude called out, but I didn't hear her, focus, heat, cast focus, heat, cast. I was not going to muck this up. "Mister De'tylmarande!" He screeched in her birdlike voice. I almost didn't hear her, but I could feel her stalking towards me on her treelike legs. He stiffened and walked forward, causing her to stop and back up, "If you please, young man."

I took my place in front of the crowd of apprentices and focused on the fountain in front of me, as well as the small targets that Gertrude had set up around the outer rim. When had those gotten there? It seemed the others required some sort of target, and she set them up when I wasn't paying attention. No matter. I took a few good, careful breaths and held my hand out, palm out, fingers together. I was certain somewhere Arthur was watching, as I knew many others were.

Maybe she was too.

Focus, heat, cast, it was an odd feeling at first, feeling pieces of my energy leave my body in the form of magic. Is that what this felt like? I felt great, burning warmth on my fingers and the palm of my hand as light filled and obscured my vision. I needed only to repeat the spell components once in my head, and the spell was done. The sparks flew from my hands and across the courtyard, not on the ground, mind you, or wildly shooting into the air, but straight like arrows, popping around the fountain like fireworks and clanging against the metal targets. It was a beautiful display of fire magic, to say the least, and not to toot my own horn of course. Over all too quickly, a hush fell over the courtyard, but it was suddenly broken by cheering and clapping, and even Instructor Gertrude looked incredibly pleased with not only herself, but of me as well.

I scanned the crowd and lifted my hand to wave to everyone, and I could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment, but I was practically on cloud nine. I could not be happier. I saw Arthur give me a firm nod, the old man grinning from ear to ear, and I saw Archmage Magdalene looked pleased. The cheering got louder and…well, that was it, as it were. Fire became my passion. It was something that came easy to me. It was something I would grow and develop over the many years of my training and tutelage in Dalaran. But that is a story for another time.

I scanned the crowd one more time and glanced up towards the back. I saw here there. I waved and smiled. By the aspects, I can still picture her in my mind. A gentle breeze caught her hair, which she tucked back behind her ear with two slender fingers. She was smiling so big, and gave me a little wave with her other hand. Andris was next to her, and he gave me a nod and thumbs up. The sullen looking one, the other sister, Circi, gave me a very stiff jerk of her head. I was too focused on Ti'tanya to notice. She gave me a little wink as I turned away to join my classmates. Nothing at all could ruin my happiness that day.

The rest of the day passed completely uneventful. It was quiet, mostly, doing my studies in the other classes. Arcane passed dreadfully slowly as I listened to the dangers of arcane resonance for the hundredth time that week, and frost was spent learning how to conjure water from moisture in the air. Dull, I know, but it would all become important one day, I was sure. Today, I was all smiles and was enjoying the euphoric feeling that the afternoon's fire lessons had left me with.

It was later that night, just after light's out, that I decided I was simply too wound up to be able to sleep. I found myself in the library, having snuck past the sentinels to be able to get to the library near the far courtyard towards the lake. It was there that I would found the bookshelves, piled high to the ceiling, some of the tomes in pristine condition, others having a thick layer of dust on them, the covers rough and grimy with years of caked on dust. I grabbed the ladder and, as quietly as I could, climbed up to one of the newer sections of the books, read through the titles, and plucked two of the bigger ones from the shelves and tossed them to the ground with a loud bang. I froze and waited to see if any of the sentinels had heard me. Waiting, I crept down the ladder as slowly as I could. I was in the clear, as the sentinels were patrolling the opposite end of the courtyard by now. Picking up my bounty with a grunt, I carried them to a table with a candle on it, and began to read.

I couldn't really tell you how long I was there, but I learned much that night. About the nature of magic, theories on what it came from, and different theories on how magic is cast among different societies. All very interesting stuff and I didn't even notice the door creak open, and someone enter like a ghost in the night.

"I thought I'd find you here." the soft, soothing whisper of a voice from the door. The woman padded towards me, with a small basket hooked on her arm.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when she spoke, and I snapped the tome shut in a hurry. A smile played on her face, and her glowing blue eyes danced over my reading material.

"You scared me." I whispered as I put my hands in my lap, my heart hammering in my chest.

"I can see that, Matthew." Ti'tanya said with a soft giggle. "Just doing some light reading?" She looked at the biggest tome I had grabbed and lifted up the cover to examine the first page.

"Yeah, you could say that. Today was a good day, and I want to try and get a jump on my studies for the future." I said with renewed confidence. I had a small stack of tomes on either side. Perhaps I was here much longer than I'd anticipated being.

She set her basket down and hopped up onto the table just next to me. She was so close I could have touched her leg. I'm loathing admitting it, but I looked down and saw the skin of her leg peek out from the slit in her robes. She crossed her legs and cocked her head to the side.

"Too busy reading to have a little picnic," She asked, patting her basket. I could smell the sweet smell of honey bread, and my stomach rumbled loudly. She giggled as her delicate hands folded in her lap. "Come, can't you find the time?"

"We're going to have a picnic in the middle of the night?" I asked, looking around. A library was surely no place to have a picnic. I looked back at her in confusion.

She laughed adorably and nodded her head side to side. "Yes, a picnic, yes in the middle of the night, and no, not here. Come. I have a spot." She said, grabbing her basket and then me, hurrying us both out the door.

The night air greeted us coldly outside the library, and our breath could be seen in the air. I shivered and rubbed my shoulders, the fall air quite cold this time of year. She didn't seem bothered about it as she looked left and right, took my hand in hers, and rushed us down the cobblestone path towards the lake. We were approaching a sentinel, and I nearly jerked her back, but she didn't seem alarmed as we both passed it without any incident. I blamed it on her status, and didn't question it.

She took us outside the city walls, to where the cold dew was just forming on the grass, and the morning was just a few scant hours away. We stopped running now, and her arm was now hooked around mine. We walked down a short path, just to the edge of the water. It was quite beautiful here, and water lapped at the shore. It was sandy there, but there was enough grass so that it wasn't uncomfortable. It was beautiful, and the lights of the Capital City could be seen in the darkness in the distance.

From the basket, she removed a blanket of the finest silk and spread it out, motioning for me to sit. A single tree next to us offered some nice ambience as the leaves rattled at the breeze.

"I didn't know what you liked, so I hope you like a bit of everything." She said softly, as things were pulled from the basket. Some sandwiches, made from honey bread and roasted pork, some apples from the orchard and sweet cakes from the kitchen, as well as baked bread broken into pieces as well as…

Cherries, I knew those cherries well. There was only one place in the whole of Lordaeron that could produce those ripe, red little jewels of deliciousness.

"Hearthglen cherries," I muttered softly, staring at them intently. I licked my lips and she smiled.

"You've had them before?" She asked as the spread was laid out before us.

"My mother and father own a cherry orchard in Hearthglen. They're out of season, now, but I remember mother baking us cherry pies every spring." I said as I all too greedily grabbed one and popped it into my mouth, chewing it down and swallowing it, spitting the seed into the grass.

Her face lit up and she smiled. "Good! I'm glad." She said, taking one and doing the same.

"Where did you find them so late in the season?" I asked as I grabbed another.

"Andris loves them. He buys them by the bushel when they're in season, and keeps them in Silvermoon. The three of us love them, and eat them on the road back and forth to the city." She said, spitting out a seed into the grass. It landed short and ended up on her robes, causing us both to laugh.

We ate our fill that night. The sandwiches were delicious, as were the apples, and everything else. The cherries didn't last long at all. We both ate our fill of those. Before long, all that was left was but a few bites of sandwiches and bites of sweet cakes left into the blanket.

"I couldn't eat another bite." She breathed, scooting over to the tree and leaning against it with a content sigh, closing her glowing eyes.

I nodded in agreement. "I'm stuffed." I said with a groan.

She opened her eyes as she eyed the very last cherry. I set my eyes on it as well, and then we locked eyes. I picked it up and offered it to her. Instead of taking it from my hand to hers, she leaned forward and snatched it from my fingers with her pearly bite teeth, and a cheeky little smile. I smiled dumbly back at her, licking the cherry juice from my fingers.

"Come with me." She whispered, patting the spot on the grass next to her.

I complied hesitantly, my heart threatening to burst from my chest. We sat close to each other for a time, and I could see the sun begin to peek over the mountains of Lordaeron. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, it was…nice.

I felt her hand brush mine and soon both her arms were wrapped around my left one. "You were magnificent today." She breathed, her eyes slipping closed.

"Thank you." I whispered in back, certain I was going to die of cardiac arrest. "It's…getting early, I suppose. I should go back."

The elven beauty clinging to me shook her head, nuzzling her head into my shoulder. "Don't go…just a few more minutes." She whispered as sleep began to take her.

I hesitantly rested my free hand on top of hers as sleep began to settle over her, and slowly, over me as well.

"Don't go." She whispered finally. I nodded to her as my own eyes slipped close.

"Don't ever go."