Chapter 7: Behind the Curve


That evening, not long after they'd retired to the parlor, a page knocked on the door with a parcel of paper for them. It contained both their weekly schedule of classes, and further instructions of dress code, arrival times, and etiquette for the Inauguration Ball the following weekend. She barely scanned that document; she was too excited seeing that as Techna had said, ballet was integrated into her schedule, her first class being tomorrow. She'd also be studying charms and royal etiquette. Politely, quietly, she swallowed her questions and her excitement while her new friends discussed dresses and tiaras and boys; she resigned herself with just listening, suddenly far more excited about the first day of classes to care.

Flora lent her more clothes to wear to class, saying she had plenty. This was the first time each of the girls wore almost the same thing; rather than a leotard and tights, as she was accustomed to, they'd worn dresses that felt like nightgowns; they'd make beautiful Clara costumes. The skirts flowed in panels down past her knees, with several layers of cotton. Delicate ribbon held up the empire waist bodice. Her dress was stitched with tiny blue flowers; she'd noticed when they were together that this was likely because of who she'd borrowed from. The different pale pastel dresses all resembled the attire of a class from the 1800s, but each had the slightest difference, depending on where the girl was from. Techna's had no unnecessary frill or lace, and the seams were clean and streamline. Stella wore pale yellow. Musa had several colors in her skirts, painted to look like watercolor, while Flora and Bloom had a field of flowers embroidered into their skirts.

She discovered that ballet at fairy school was strangely similar to ballet on Earth; there were a few small variations to movements that must exist purely to make the movement more difficult, regardless of aesthetics, but she felt at home with her hand on a barre and going through her plies, tendus, releves, and degages. The instructor leading their class came over several times, watching her. Her flexibility made her stand out; the rest of her classmates were able to reach a comfortable 90 degree angle during their battements and developpes, but hers were trained to stretch far past that. At one point, she made an effort to stop her leg from going quite so high, but the instructor wordlessly grabbed her ankle and pushed it higher as he walked by. He also made a few corrections to her arm and hand placement.

They spent the entire hour at the barre, never venturing into the center or across the floor, to her disappointment; she'd always loved to jump and fly across the floor. Now, she might be learning how to actually fly.

Professor Wizgiz was a short man, with an extremely high pitched voice and curly hair that rivaled Bloom's spilling out from under a top hat. He was actually what she'd been expecting when she'd been brought to Alfea; she hadn't asked if he was considered a "dwarf," and no one said it in so many words, but he looked almost identical to the description of the mythical creature from her childhood storybooks.

"It's the first class of the year, a year full of great potential and limitless possibilities-and that is what metamorphosis is all about!" he was saying, while Bloom burst with excitement and nerves and the prospect of being in her first class on magic. "Metamorphosis is the art of changing how you appear, and once you master it, you can turn into anything from a rock, to a rock star! Let me give you a little preview. Look at me now, an average elf, right?"

So that was the vernacular, she thought as he gestured to himself.

In a flash of hazy light that looked like a mirage, Wizgiz was gone, and Griselda appeared before them. The body and the clothes looked correct, but the goofy grin on what was normally a very cold face seemed off putting and just...wrong.

"Don't worry," he reassured, voice matching Griselda's perfectly, "I'm not really the Queen of Detention. The beauty of magic is that you can always go back to being you!"

The mirage was back, and within the blink of an eye, so was professor Wizgiz. It was almost comical seeing each of her classmates heads shift down a fraction, from looking at the adult sized headmistress to the elf who was barely three feet.

"For now, we'll start with the basics," he explained, passing mirrors out to each student. "We'll warm up with one of the simplest exercises: changing your hair color. You should all be able to breeze through this one. Look in the mirror, focus your magic, and go. Try to change it! Visualize your new do!"

Each girl in the room was able to do it with ease, Bloom stared at her mirror in frustration. Wasn't she supposed to say something? No one else seemed to be. All they did was look at the mirror and change it. How could it be that simple, and how stupid must she look for not being able to do it?

Wizgiz walked over to her, looking concerned. "Bloom, it's a little early to fall behind. You have a lot of homework to do!"

She lamented the story to her suitemates that night, after classes were over and they returned to their suite for the evening. The girls had elected to have dinner privately, needing to decompress after the first day of classes-and least, four of them did, and Stella went along with the group. Bloom had done fine in their morning ballet class, and passed through etiquette without making a fool of herself, but charms class was nothing short of humiliating.

"I was the only one who couldn't do it!" she groaned, picking at her tiny finger foods. Almost everything they ate was a mix of petit fours and tapas spread out to share; rarely did they eat a singular meal on a plate.

"Wizgiz isn't known for explaining things well, and you are a little bit behind the rest of us," Stella said in a friendly voice.

"I'm years behind you guys, Stella."

"So, let us help you," Techna said logically. "We're all more than qualified to teach you the basics. Probably more so than the teachers, since we remember what it was like to learn all of this."

"We can start right now!" Stella said excitedly, leaping to grab a mirror from her bedroom and handing it to Bloom. "Have you ever done something crazy, drastic to your hair before?"

"Um, I dyed it black once," she said, because that's what you did when you were a redhead and a boy broke up with you.

"So think about that, really visualize what it was like. Smell, color, texture, everything you can think of, really round out the image."

They all stared at her expectantly while she looked in the mirror, but lost their polite interest when they realized there wasn't a chance under the sun of Bloom managing to do anything to her hair...she dropped the mirror onto ground and flopped onto the floor in a huff.

"You just have to take it day by day," Musa said, comfortingly.

"I hope tomorrow is better. It's bad enough listening to everyone gossip about me, I don't need to be a complete idiot on top of it."

"Well, the learning curve for the first semester at our new school is quite steep, you know," Techna reminded her. "Don't be too hard on yourself."

However, as she moved through each of her classes for the week - some about diplomacy, some about etiquette, one where she spent over an hour with her shoulders tied to a chair and attempting to drink a cup of tea - the magical elements continued to place her behind. She struggled with summoning her powers on command, let alone manipulating them strategically the way the other girls were. She grew more and more frustrated each day, nearly snapping at Griselda when she reminded her to see Miss Faragonda in her office for their weekly lunch. She'd forgotten she was meeting with her this afternoon; she had made it a week at fairy school already.

"You had to expect that you'd be behind," Miss Faragonda handed her a cup of tea, settling down in the seat across from her. "An average fairy starts exhibiting magic around age twelve. They begin their magical training not long after. You, Bloom, are eighteen years old. You have only begun to exhibit your powers."

"I haven't been able to...do magic-" was that the vernacular? "-since that day in New York. That could have been a fluke, nothing has happened since then and-"

"Bloom, dear," Miss Faragonda held up her hand. "Powers are very sporadic when they are just beginning to cultivate. They take time to regulate; the junior school is designed for young, developing fairies to attend magical classes when their powers allow. It is a year round education until the girls' power becomes reliable enough to attend regular classes. Bloom…" Miss Faragonda folded her hands on the table. "I want you to consider accepting a transfer from Alfea College to the junior school, Epsilon Academy."

"The junior school?" Bloom couldn't hide the desperation in the voice. "Aren't I too old?"

"You are older. As I mentioned, powers begin to develop around the age of twelve. The youngest Epsilon will accept is fourteen; it is believed that magical powers require one on one education in the early stages. Many of the families of Alfea alumnae hire private tutors."

Yet another thing she missed out on.

Faragonda continued on. "The decision is up to you, ultimately. But it might be a better education for you. The facilities at Epsilon are better equipped to handle a developing fairy. By the time girls reach Alfea, they have enough control over their powers to really strengthen and perfect them. You," she struggled to find the words. "You don't have the basics Bloom, you can't build upon what isn't there."

Hearing it outright was harder than she expected. She kept waiting for this perfect magical bubble to burst; here it was. She should be grateful they weren't sending her back to Earth, but hearing just how far behind she was was daunting and discouraging. "You said I don't have to. Is there any way I could stay at Alfea?"

"You are a rare situation. Powers developing later in life isn't unheard of, but a magical being coming from Earth was previously believed to be impossible. I want you to explore all of your options Bloom, and discuss them with myself and your other teachers and friends. We can continue working together, and perhaps you could join Alphea next year, with more experience and control. A year at Epsilon can do a lot for a young fairy."

She found Flora first, sitting in the courtyard and concentrating on changing the colors of a flower in front of her. The purple tones drained out of it the moment Bloom broke her concentration, and she looked up in frustration for a moment. "Wha-oh, Bloom. Are you okay?"

She couldn't tell if her face read like a book, or if Flora was just good at reading people. Launching into her conversation with Faragonda, she was surprised when her roommate's face grew into one of resolve, rather than sympathy.

Rather than offering advice, or comfort, the girl started explaining to Bloom what she was attempting to do with the flower; by manipulating the anthocyanins within the flower, she could shift the tones from red to blue. She explained the morphology of the flower, of the four whorls and the function of the petals in pollination and Bloom was taken aback by her botanical knowledge. When she turned to Bloom and told her to think about the chemicals, think about the anatomy, think about what pollinators would be attracted to the flower if it were blue instead of pink, she watched it change from pink to a pale blue; the same color as their bedroom walls.

She stared at it for a moment before turning to Flora, who grinned at her proudly. "Did you do that?"

"Nope! That was all you Bloom. You did it."

She threw her hands around her friend in glee, ecstatic. "I haven't been able to do anything like that all week!"

"The teachers are explaining things to you like they would explain things to the girls who graduated from Epsilon. I'm not in the same spot as you, but I'm struggling too. You and I just need to work things out in our own way, the way we're used to thinking."

Bloom smiled at the girl. She liked Flora; her tone was always so maternal, and friendly. She kept forgetting Flora was a queen, returning to rule her country when their education was over. Her demeanor seemed too soft, too gentle, too sweet to be in charge of armies and battles and lives. Maybe that was why she was so genuine.

"I really appreciate you helping me," she said. "This is the first time I actually feel like I know what I'm doing."

"The other girls will help you too. I'm good with botany charms, but Techna is great with combat and Stella knows a lot about healing. We all really want you to stay," she said earnestly, and Bloom couldn't help but be warmed by the generosity. For the first time, she was beginning to feel like she might belong at Alfea.


I THOUGHT I LOST THIS WHOLE DAMN CHAPTER AND I FOUND IT AND I AM SO HAPPY.

that's it, that's the whole authors note.