X778
I basked under the shade of the usual big tree at the orphanage. It had always been my favorite sitting spot since it protected against the harsh sun and rain, allowing me to stay outside pretty much whenever.
I leaned against the tree and listened to the wind rustling past the fluttering leaves.
My eyes closed as I sighed, taking in the peaceful atmosphere.
The old me had never gotten to experience even the slightest breeze considering how busy and stressed I was with my job. As an adult, there was simply no time to enjoy the beauty of nature.
But my reverie was cut short when I felt a sudden pain in my arm.
Apparently the kids who were playing with balls nearby had accidentally kicked a ball at my arm.
Three of them came running to me, and one of them came to apologize, "Hey, Lili, sorry about that. Are you hurt?"
I shook my head and gave him the ball. They were kids, mistakes happened, and they were apologizing too. "No, I'm okay. Thanks for asking though."
"Wanna join us?" he asked, and I could see his friend elbow him for asking.
"She can't play with us!" the friend seethed.
I quickly turned my attention to the boy with the blocky face. I struggled to recall his name, and I realized I hadn't even bothered to learn any of these kids' names. I always tended to remember faces first before names, which was a bad habit on my part. No wonder they didn't want me to play with them.
"Why can't I play?" I asked. It would be good to know the specific reason at least.
"What would a bookworm like you know about playing ball? You always got your head stuck in a book anyways! What's so great about reading?" He snatched the book out of my hand.
I took a deep breath.
Must resist the urge to maim.
"You know," I started. "That book belongs to the Matron. If something happened to it, and she knew it was your fault..."
The kid's face paled for a moment before he huffed and threw the book back at me. I clumsily caught it, sighing in relief as I inspected it for damage.
"Who cares about some stupid book anyways?" He waved his friends over and scowled at me. "Let's go guys."
I rolled my eyes. Kids in every world would always be the same it seemed. Plus, it was really hard for me to play like a child without being condescending, especially considering the age gap I had with them, so it would be better if I just entertained myself.
"Did you just roll your eyes at us, freak?" the wannabe bully turned red with anger or embarrassment. "Think you're so much better than us, huh?"
"No," I opened the page of the book that I marked earlier and continued reading. "You guys should go on and play."
"Yeah," one of his followers kicked the ground. "Let's just go play. She's just sittin' there."
I smiled and waved at them. This only seemed to make the bully angrier and his face an even more amusing shade of red.
"Fine," he spat on the grass. "Let's go and let the freak do her reading."
With that, the three went off to another part of the backyard and continued doing whatever it was they were with the ball.
I wryly smiled and turned my attention back to the book. To be truthful, I had already read most of the books regarding magic and wasn't really getting much out of a reread. The suggestions on how to access magic were all painfully vague like "It's tied to your emotions", "Meditate to sense it", "It's different for every wizard."
In short, it made for a very frustrating experience.
I let out a long breath from my nose and closed my eyes. It really was a nice day outside after all.
A faint prickling made its way to the edge of my senses. I scrunched my eyebrows as I opened my eyes and looked around me. The feeling disappeared, and I frowned in confusion. The feeling hadn't really come from a specific physical part of my body. If I had to say something though… was it from my mind?
Odd. Was this the work of someone else's magic? I shrugged to myself. If they wanted to do anything bad, they likely would have done something a lot more drastic than just some mental tickling. And if that tickling was a sign of some other esoteric attack, well, it was too late to worry about it now.
Having made peace with that theory, I leaned back against the tree and closed my eyes again. The moment my back made contact with the bark, the mind tingling came back.
Huh. Curious, I tried to focus on the feeling, a fruitless endeavor I found out right after. What if I focused on something smaller, like a leaf?
I picked up a fresher looking leaf from the ground and tried to keep my breathing even as I held it in my palms. Slowly but surely, the tingling turned into a warm buzz that seemed to stretch into the leaf itself.
I gasped, and my eyes snapped open. At that moment, I felt like I… comprehended every aspect of the leaf. I could see its structure—hell, I could somehow see its individual cells—and how it functioned, and how the cells themselves slowly moved and wilted.
I grinned and refocused my attention on the leaf, making sure to be as thorough as I could. The warmth stretched out from me again as I tried to focus it on the cells themselves.
Many of the cells seemed to be slowing down or completely stopping which I took to represent dying—no surprise there, the leaf wasn't attached to the tree anymore.
I wondered, was it possible for me to focus my 'magical vision' even further? I forced myself to visualize—the books said visualization was important for magic after all—the inner components of the cell. A dull headache began pounding at the back of my head, but I smiled regardless.
I could 'see' all the organelles of the plant cell, from its mitochondria, chlorophyll, the structure of its wall, and far far more than what I could make sense of.
If a leaf could give me so much information then…
I eyed the tree behind me with wonder.
Right then, I decided to do something the book had repeatedly said not to do without an expert around. I experimented without a guardian.
Focusing on the 'magical vision', I placed my hand on the bark of the tree and a torrent of information shoved itself into my head.
I saw the leaves, the buds, the flowers, the fruits. Every single detail of each cell absorbing sunlight and making its own food. The stem that carried water, food and minerals throughout the tree and the roots that drank in the waters and minerals from the soil.
I could see the stoma of the leaf, the myriad palisade cells, the organelles: the bright globules which must have been the golgi apparatus, the yellow endoplasmic reticulum studded with ribosomes, the nucleus, the mitochondria, and the faint, yellow, spider-web structure of the cytoskeleton that provided structure and support to the cell. Even the delicate pancake-like membranous structure where photosynthesis took place was not hidden from me.
I saw the small clusters of proteins that converted light from the sun into chemical energy that was stored. It all looked like tiny particles dancing around and buzzing randomly, rotating and wiggling in a chaotic way that was orderly nonetheless.
It was too much.
My head almost felt like it was going to split open like a ripe watermelon. I gritted my teeth as tears squeezed themselves out of my eyes. My vision flickered as every minor detail of the tree raged through me.
My body crumpled as if every bone had been removed and came to a rest at the base of the tree.
I had blacked out for a few seconds at least. At least that was the explanation my spinning mind had come to. I came to with agonizing pain all over but primarily in my head. Black spots swam in my vision as I rapidly blinked. Did I give myself a magically induced concussion?
I giggled nervously as I tried to move but looked like a dying worm instead. It was getting really hard to think straight. I turned my head and saw a blur of blue and white running towards me. It kinda looked like Erigor.
Without warning, the black spots expanded and consumed all of my vision. I tried to make one last effort to get up, but my limbs gave out and I crumpled on the grass.
I probably had a nosebleed too, but I wasn't too sure.
Dimly, I noticed my head slamming against the trunk before everything went black.
…
My eyes slowly opened.
The first thing that came to my mind was Wow, my head feels like shit. The brutal headache I had just experienced was slowly receding. The second was Who's touching me? A calloused hand was rubbing my still raw head.
I was laying on the bed I typically slept on. A groan made its way out my lips as I recalled what had happened.
"Lili," a familiar voice… "Are you awake?"
I blinked blearily at him or her, "Uhuh."
"Are you sure?" he, definitely a guy and probably Erigor, repeated. "Do you need anything?"
I grabbed his clothes to pull him closer to me, and I whispered to the white haired boy, "You're a wizard, Harry."
"Wha?" Erigor gently pushed me back onto the bed and returned to his usual sitting position. Obviously, the reference was lost on him.
"I'm a wizard!" I said, my words coming out a tiny bit slurred, "Where's my Hoooogwards acceptance letter?! I also need to get my own owl!"
"...I think you should get some more rest Lili," Erigor firmly said.
"Oh, oh! I also need a wand and books! Lots and lots of boooooks!" I rambled. Erigor obviously didn't understand how important this was.
"I'll go get the Matron to look at you," He decided after staring at me for a bit. I didn't like the way he was looking at me like I was some sort of psychotic person.
"No, you don't understand! I can do magic, Erigor! La magieee!" I kicked my legs around erratically and flailed my arms around. "I neeeeeed to get on Platform 9 and 3/4!"
Erigor had already walked away. Hmph, what a pretentious bastard.
As I fumed impotently in my bed, the Matron came inside and looked at me with worry and exasperation.
"Tell Erigor to come back here now!" I pointed at the Matron and demanded. "How daaaaare—!"
"How dare he nothing," the Matron firmly shot me down. "You had done something very foolish Liliana."
I shivered. Despite my newfound abilities as a wizard, the Matron was still as scary as always. I whispered in a small voice. "Yes Ms. Mcgonagall."
"Oh Lord," the Matron's eyes twitched as she looked up at the ceiling. "Please grant your humble servant patience."
I waited patiently for the Matron. It was rude to interrupt people while they were praying after all.
After she was done, she looked at me sternly. "What you did today was very irresponsible."
I nodded along. Magic was certainly very dangerous.
"I understand it would be a fruitless effort to try to get you to stop practicing," the Matron sat at the head of the bed and stroked my hair. "So instead I will require you to always have Erigor with you whenever you decide to practice."
I frowned. "But Erigor is a idiiiiiioooot!" I whined, "He doesn't even know what Hogwarts is."
The Matron pinched her nose, "Regardless of whatever he knows, you will heed this requirement. If you don't, I will personally ensure that you will no longer enjoy the privilege of accessing my library as you please."
That shut my mouth immediately. No books meant no going to wizard school.
"So will you do as I've told you?" the Matron asked quietly.
"Yes," I pulled the cover over my face and fake-snored.
I heard the Matron sigh before the bed creaked as she got up. The door clicked shut behind her, and I immediately removed the covers as I jumped out of bed. The door opened again and the Matron gave me a disapproving glare. "And I would like for you to stay in bed for the rest of the day."
"Okay Ms. Mcgonagall..."
…
A few weeks later
Apparently my little experiment had caused my brain to get fried via information overload. It took a few visits to the doctor to convince the Matron that I was indeed fine and perfectly well, and that I also didn't sustain any permanent brain damage from my experimentation,
The Matron also went and asked the doctor about the weird stuff I said after some urging from Erigor, but the doctor just chalked that off to an overactive imagination that was nothing she should be worried about.
I had beamed happily at the doctor.
After several weeks of bedrest and going back and forth to the doctor, I could finally start experimenting again!
"Not so fast, young lady!" The Matron grabbed the back of my shirt before I could run towards the orphanage.
"What? Why?" I moaned, "The doctor gave me the okay!"
"Remember what we promised?"
"Have Erigor around if I wanted to practice?" I remembered.
"Exactly, if Erigor is busy that means you can't practice since you're on your own, understand?"
"Okay~ Erigor nii-chan~!" I ran full speed towards the orphanage.
"Poor Erigor," I heard the Matron mutter behind me. Oh well. I had magic! This was no time to be stopped by petty concerns like someone's schedule!
As soon as we went into the orphanage, I saw Erigor meditating under the giant tree and I immediately ran towards him, "Eri-nii~!"
Erigor sighed, opened one eye, and grumpily asked, "What?"
"Will you oversee me practicing my magic?" I asked him eagerly.
"No, I'm busy."
"When will you not be busy?"
"Later."
"How long is later?"
"Later is later," He fired a small gust that caused me to stagger back, "I'm meditating right now."
"Why?"
"Because it's helping me with my magic," he simply responded, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice.
I beamed. That was exactly what I needed!
"Then I'll meditate too!"
"Aaaaagh, fine," Erigor sighed. "Just don't do anything crazy."
"Of course," I made myself comfortable next to him. "I'll be careful."
"I sure hope so," Erigor grumbled before closing his eyes again.
I sat down beside the grouch and imitated his position. My legs were crossed together, and my arms were laid slack on my lap. I took care to even imitate Erigor's signature slouch too and closed my eyes. Relaxing. Breathing in, then breathing out. Focus…
Until I realized one important thing.
"Uh, what do I focus on?" I asked Erigor, opening both of my eyes and looking at his increasingly annoyed expression.
"Magic, obviously."
"Yeah I know that, but how again?"
Erigor sighed, and opened one eye to look at me, "You have to focus on your magic. Typically all wizards focus on their stomach and then you just do it long enough until you can sense it or whatever."
"Whatever, huh?" I closed my eyes, this time taking his advice into account.
I steadied my breathing, trying to focus on my stomach like Erigor suggested. The familiar fuzzy feeling came back, but it didn't really feel all that much different from before. It was easier to call upon this 'magic' than before, but I felt like that was more because I had already experienced it.
I slowly laid a hand on a single blade of grass, taking care to avoid overloading myself like last time. From the weird looks Erigor and the Matron had given me over the past few days, it seemed like I had embarrassed myself pretty badly.
Scowling, I cleared my thoughts and refocused on the blade of grass. The odd feeling flowed out of me, into the grass, and then back into me. Something like a loop I suppose?
Without noticing, my breathing began to match the pulse of the 'loop', and my skin felt like it had become more sensitive to the breeze, more aware of the cold earth beneath me.
The loop steadied into a constant stream from its once pulse-like nature, and this time I did notice that the buzzing in my head was much more subdued than the first time I tried this... activity.
I made sure that I was maintaining my breathing before deeply inhaling through my nose and breathing out with my mouth. I did this for a period of time until I felt Erigor's hand on my shoulder.
I opened my eyes and saw that light was emitting from a small circle around me. This hadn't happened the last time I tried using magic.
"What is this?" I asked Erigor breathlessly, still in awe of the colors surrounding me. They were almost like a cloud in how they drifted before disappearing in an instant.
"You're emitting magic power to the point where it's completely visible," Erigor simply explained, and I was even more astounded.
"This is what magic looks like?" I whispered. Incredible. The light show didn't seem to have any practical purpose, but it gave me the feeling that I was doing something right.
"Yeah, but you need to stop doing that."
"Why?! It's so pretty though?" I exclaimed in disbelief.
Erigor sighed, "Look, if you keep pumping out magic like that you're going to faint again. You have to keep track of how much magic you use."
Right as he finished his explanation, a sudden wave of exhaustion hit me. I slouched against the tree and groaned. "That was only like, a few seconds. Could have told me earlier too."
"You didn't hear me when I called you," he shrugged, "Don't blame me if you weren't listening."
I pouted.
Erigor started rubbing the top of my head with a small smirk, "Good job regardless. You're picking things up real fast," he stood up, leaving me to rest against the tree, "Oh, and that wasn't a few seconds but a few minutes," he added.
I stuck my tongue out in response and cheered on the inside. I had no idea how impressive my feat was, but a few minutes was surely a magnitude better than a few seconds.
He pinched my cheeks in response, "I'm gonna go grab some candy and water, so you just sit there and recharge. Don't do any magic, okay?."
"I want the big chocolate bar and the strawberry flavored one," my eyes lit up at the mention of candy. Hey, blood sugar is important for the brain!
"No, the big chocolate one is for your birthday. You can have the strawberry flavored one. Just one though!" Erigor warned.
"Hmph! Who cares if it's one or ten? I'm a patient, so I need the candies okay?"
Erigor deadpanned, "You know the strawberry flavored one is from my stash right?"
"Oh my, Erigor-sama is sharing! What a joyous occasion!" I teased him. What a cute kid.
"I see how it is," he plopped back down on the grass, "No chocolate for you. Just rest."
I immediately see the error in my ways, "Noooo! I'm sorry, I was joking!" My face morphed into a rictus of horror as the delectable candy flew out of grasp.
The strawberry flavored one was the best chocolate I'd ever had in both worlds. I didn't know what juju they used, but it was so dang good.
I crawled up to Erigor and began shaking his shoulders. "Please! I need candy!"
"Ugh, okay, fine," Erigor frowned. "But only if you give me all your lemon candies."
"Deal," I replied immediately. I hated sour candies anyways so this was a great deal.
"Alright, go grab 'em then, and I'll get mine," Erigor leisurely got up, but I raced to where I hid my candy stash and picked out all the lemon ones.
I rushed back to the tree, using my shirt like a kangaroo pouch to hold all the candy, and paced around as I waited for Erigor. He probably thought it was funny to keep me waiting. Jerk.
Finally, finally, finally, the grouchy kid came back. I narrowed my eyes when I saw he was holding just one singular bar of strawberry chocolate.
"Okay, here's your chocolate," Erigor handed the bar to me. "Now give me all of your lemon candies."
"This is unfair!" I protested. "This isn't what you promised!"
"What do you mean?" he asked innocently with his shit eating grin. "I never said how many bars I was giving you."
"Um well," I felt flustered as I realized he was right. "Ughhhh..."
"No hard feelings," he brushed his spiky hair out of his forehead. "It's just a hustle, kid."
"...Jerk."
...
"What a weirdo," the black-haired boy whispered loudly to his friends as they passed by me.
I held back an urge to laugh. Recently, the black-haired boy and his two friends who had accidentally kicked a soccer ball toward me had taken it upon themselves to insult me whenever they passed by.
Frankly, it was a bit ridiculous. It was nigh-impossible to take their name calling seriously, something which seemed to make them annoyed.
Brats would be brats I guess. It was more entertaining than annoying, so I didn't really mind them all that much.
There were much happier events to focus on right now. For example, today—the rough equivalent of February 2nd—was my birthday! Well, my birthday in this world. And not really a birthday, more of the day I was found outside the orphanage.
But it was close enough! Despite having close to no extra funds, the Matron had gone out of her way to buy a book for me. I clutched the book tighter against my chest. I had received heartfelt presents before, but to receive one from someone who was so overworked, burdened with the lives of an orphanage, and well, poor meant a lot to me.
Oh, and she'd given me that big bar of chocolate Erigor said was being saved for my birthday.
I hummed happily as I plopped against the tree and admired the chocolate and book. What should I do first: eat the chocolate or read the book? Or maybe both at the same time?
No, no, I can't risk dirtying these precious books. It's either this or that.
As I was contemplating my options, a pair of rough hands snatched the book from me. Lo and behold, I saw the boy and his gang of friends—well, just two friends—circling around me. The boy had a really smug look on his face, as if he was satisfied with something.
"What?" I felt a twinge of annoyance. Calling me names was one thing, but taking my property was something else entirely.
"Oooo~ Whatcha gonna do?" the boy and his group from earlier all sneered at me. "Cry?"
I found myself at a loss for words. What was this stereotypical schoolground play? Was my life a bad sitcom?
His face grew red, his scowl deeper as I just stared at him.
"W-What? Why're you staring at me, brat!" he stammered and started yelling.
I frowned, "Who are you again?"
"You think you're so much better than us, huh?!" one boy shouted as he took a step forward with his fist clenched. Ooo, so scary.
"Yeah, she's so rude! Don't you know Matthew? The coolest kid in the village?" his other cronie jeered at me.
"Aren't you guys all like, eight years old?" I asked incredulously. Never in my life would I have imagined that I would one day be bullied by eight year olds. Eight year olds.
"Yeah, and you're four so we're better than you," Matthew said smugly.
"Okay, that's very nice and all, but could I have my book back?" I asked patiently after waiting for them to finish bragging.
"No," he tossed the book to his friend and peeked at me to see if I was reacting. "You have to get it from us."
I sighed. Today wasn't really a day where I wanted to deal with bullies. Ones that bullied toddlers no less. So I decided to respond indifferently, "Why should I?"
After hearing my response, they flinched a little bit. Brats probably didn't expect me to react like that. I'm pretty sure they wanted me to cry and beg for my book back.
"Ummm, because it's your book?" Matthew scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. "That mom bought for you? Don't you care about her gift?"
"If you care so much about it then why are you messing with it?" I pointed out. "If you want to read it so badly then just ask."
He flinched.
"U-Uh. T-That's b-because—"
I came to a realization with a silent, Ah!, "You want to read it?"
"No! Why would I read your stupid book?!" He threw it on the ground. "We're gonna go play cool games!"
"Yeah, and you can't come, stinky!" his cronie jeered and blew a raspberry at me.
I simply picked the book up and brushed the dirt off, "If you want it, I could always lend it to you. You don't have to be so rude about it."
"S-Shut up! I said I don't want your stupid book, okay!" he shouted again before stomping away, clearly embarrassed that things didn't go his way. His cronies just looked confusedly between me and him before deciding to follow him.
"This isn't over!" one of them pointed at me as they ran away to do whatever it was that eight year olds did.
I simply shook my head, "Kids…"
…
Over time their bullying got worse.
They'd hide and misplace the books I typically read. In response, I just told the Matron who got irked at the boys and told them to find the books and apologize to her.
That didn't stop them.
Next, they decided to damage and ruin the books. Frankly, I was amazed at how brazen they were. Surely they knew how the Matron would respond?
As expected, the Matron got furious at them. They started explaining their dissatisfaction because according to them, I always got what I wanted which was not true at all. Every child in the orphanage got gifts at every birthday in one way or another. Somehow they thought that the books that I'd been reading belonged to me, while they didn't get anything.
Hearing their idiotic excuses of jealousy made me want to sigh out loud. Instead, I clarified to them that those weren't my books. I only had one book, the one the Matron gave me for my fourth birthday. The rest belonged to the Matron herself, and she just lent them out to me.
I saw their jaws drop in disbelief after hearing that they ruined 'Mom's' personal belongings and not mine.
She didn't beat them or anything, but did express her disappointment and grounded them for a month. Also, no more candies for them, heh.
Strangely enough though, the Matron gave me sad looks every now and then after that incident. I wonder why? Maybe she knew about them bullying me or the like.
Speaking of bullying, even the punishments they had already received weren't enough to dissuade them. Now, they got more physical, shoving me around when they thought no one was looking and purposely bumping into me whenever we would walk past each other. I found that tattling was just making them escalate, so I decided to ignore their antics.
I found this all to be very tiring and very annoying. On the bright side, these situations gave me a new idea.
I hadn't tried 'sensing' my own body or that of an animal's. I suppose now was as good a time as ever.
I got into my typical position next to the tree and focused on that feeling of 'magic'. The warm buzz rushed through me, but this time I focused it inwards.
It was a much different feeling from before. Instead of the sensation of warmth going 'out' and connecting with something else, I felt like I skipped that connecting phase. In other words, 'sensing' my own body was easier than extending that connection to some other entity.
I took my time exploring my body through my new 'eyes', basking in the feeling of knowing exactly every little detail that was happening. Of course, I wasn't trying to take in my entire body at once; I had already learned my lesson from my mishap with the tree, but looking at one part at a time was manageable.
Eventually, I focused on the areas where minor bruises had formed from all the shoving I had received. The capillaries there were broken—I didn't really need magic to know that I guess—and my magical sense showed me just how all the blood was trapped beneath my skin's surface.
I opened my eyes and frowned. Knowing exactly how I was bruised was very nice and all, but it didn't do much for me at the moment. It was a great tool for diagnosis, but wouldn't it be great if my magic could do...more?
Bruising recovered as the body repaired the broken blood vessels and reabsorbed the spilled blood. Was it possible for me to speed up the process?
Curious, I extended my senses to the bruised area again. The blood vessels themselves had already been repaired, but now I just needed to get rid of the excess blood.
As I was contemplating how I should go about experimenting on myself, I got shoved from behind and jerked slightly towards the direction where they had pushed me.
"Ha! Take that loser!" I turned towards the familiar voices of Matthew's cronies.
"That's what you get for tattling to mom all the time!" The other cronie responded the same way. So very bothersome.
Yet again, Matthew and the boys had come to terrorize me. Huh, that kinda sounded like a shitty high-school boy band or something. Matthew and The Boyz with a 'z'. I inwardly snickered.
Unfortunately, I didn't hide my emotions that well, so my lips pulled up involuntarily. It really did look like I was smirking at them because I was.
"What are you smiling about!"
"You think this is funny?!"
I stopped smiling. Oops.
"You think we're just some joke, huh?" Matthew stalked towards me like some edgy MySpace blogger. "Well, we'll show you who the real joke is."
"Right," I nodded. "Well, get on with it then."
"Wha-?"
"What are you going to do now?" I counted off my fingers, "You stole the books, you ruined them too, I stayed quiet to the Matron about you guys shoving me too. So what else are you going to do?"
"Why you—!" He pulled me by my collar and raised his fist high, ready to punch me in the face. I closed my eyes as I braced for impact.
However, a strong gust of wind blew through us unexpectedly, shocking Matthew and The Boyz, who spun around looking for where it came from.
Turns out it was from Erigor. Hooray, I, the princess, has been rescued from the big bad eight year old band.
Erigor was livid with fury. He looked even angrier than the time I got kidnapped.
"What the hell are you all doing?!" he roared angrily. Matthew and The Boyz let go of me and backed off nervously.
"U-uh, um, nothing much, we're just playing around," Matthew stuttered.
"Fuck off, brats," Erigor glared at them. The Boyz scampered off as Erigor watched until he made sure we were alone. He turned his glare—no less angry—unto me.
"Why didn't you tell me about all this shit earlier?"
I looked him in the eyes. "You're right. But you're never here and telling you would just make them do worse things."
Erigor slumped in resignation. "I was doing an apprenticeship with this girl. What happened to make them act like that anyways."
I shrugged in response. "Who knows?" because I sure didn't, "Last time they got told off by the Matron since they thought her books were given to me. I'm just chalking it off to jealousy."
"Brats..." Erigor sighed. I resisted the urge to mention that he was a 'brat' too. "All of them are just making Mom's life harder."
"Yeah," I agreed, and we sat there in silence for a bit before I decided to ask, "So how's the apprenticeship going?"
"Pretty good," he responded. "Why would you want to know, brat?"
"It sounds interesting," I hummed. "Since you and Karen are both on this track, I thought it would be nice to ask you about it since Karen doesn't visit. Who knows, maybe I'll become a guild wizard too someday."
"You shouldn't worry 'bout stuff like that now," Erigor grunted. "It's not all fun and games."
"I know," I doodled on the dirt with a stick as we fell back into silence. "Could I join your apprenticeship program?"
"No," he immediately responded.
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because what?" I teased. "I'm probably already a better wizard than a grouch like you."
"As if," Erigor grinned and rolled his eyes. "The jobs they do there aren't for kids like you."
"What do you mean kids like me?" I pouted. "You're a kid too, you know?"
"Yeah, but they're..." he trailed off, his eyes lost in thought. "They aren't jobs for you, so you should stop asking."
"I see," I narrowed my eyes. The whole situation gave me a bad gut feeling. "I'll stop asking then."
"Good," Erigor got up and brushed his pants off. ""
Honestly, I wished I'd pressed harder for answers, but Erigor wouldn't have answered anyways since he was quite the private person.
I guess I'll just let it go for now.
…
