Apprenticeshipping (Mahad/Mana)
. . .
All right. Now this was a very high concentration spell. Mahad bit his lip in concentration, tracing the stick of incense along the edges of the sigil he had written out across the ground with chalk. Candles lay at the strategic points, flickering slightly as he moved the smoking stick in the appropriate motions. After several hours of work he was almost done—
"Master, master, master, look, look, look—eek!"
Mahad did not have even the half a second needed to turn around, before his apprentice skidded into view and right across the sigil. Her arms wheeled and she shrieked as her legs knocked into a candle, sending it to the ground and spilling wax, her feet smudging the chalk, and then finally she came to a crashing stop belly down on the floor.
For a second, they both just sat there, very still, and very quiet. Mahad still held the now useless incense stick, which spiraled up into the air silently.
He thought, perhaps, that he should probably be angry, and scold her. But for a long moment, he didn't feel anything at all—just dull shock that it had happened.
Mana's fingers curled up into the ground, her face pressed against the stone. He saw her shoulders tense up before she finally peeked her eyes up over her arms.
"I—uh…" she mumbled. "I'm sorry, I—I know I should have been looking where I was going—I'll set it all back up again, please don't yell—"
In spite of himself, Mahad felt a snort roll out of his throat. He put down the incense stick and pressed his hand to his mouth. Why was he feeling like he was about to burst out laughing? This had been a lot of work, and Mana had quite frankly caused him to waste his time.
Mana looked at him wide eyed as his shoulders shook slightly with his barely muffled laughter.
"It's all right," he finally said, calming down enough to speak. "It's all right, Mana. Come here—don't cry, I'm not going to yell."
Mana stared at him for a second. Then her lip started to tremble, and she wobbled up to her hands and knees so she could crawl over to where he was sitting, throwing her arms around his chest. He patted her head light as she pressed her face into his chest.
"I'm sorry!" she said. "I'm really sorry, I know that I keep doing things like this and that looked like a lot of work so if you want to scold me you can, I know I did bad—"
"Mana, it's fine," Mahad said. "It was experimental anyway—I have all my notes, and I can set it back up again."
He patted her again, feeling her tears soak into his tunic.
"It's all right," he said again. "You can just help me set it back up. I can show you how it works."
Mana swallowed, peeking up at him.
"You're not mad?"
He shrugged.
"I'm a little irritated, yes, but it's not like you did it on purpose. Chin up, Mana—we can make sure you at least learn something from doing it over."
Mana sniffled, and smiled shakily at him.
"O-okay," she said. "I can do that."
Mahad ruffled her hair softly.
"Let's start by picking up the candles and redrawing the sigils, all right? Take a look at my diagrams and see if you can try it yourself."
"Yes sir!" Mana said, bouncing up immediately to her feet and running to grab the candles. Mahad stood up himself, dusting off his robes to watch Mana get to work.
Next time, he thought, he would just make sure Mana was here from the beginning. At least that way, if she tumbled into something, he'd be more prepared for it.
. . .
A/N: I love them, they're adorable. Next is Apocalypshipping (Yami no Marik x Seto x Ishizu).
