Chapter 3

True to her word -and to Cullen's delight- his mystery mage entered the library come the following day. Pain radiated from her as she clutched both her arms. Nonetheless, she said the first hello today and gave him a friendly smile. Joy uplifted his mood and he barely prevented himself from following her to talk. Off she went to the shelves.

Cullen planned on abating his perennial curiosity about a number of issues, the foremost being her name. He was going to drive himself mad if he couldn't at least find out her name so he didn't need to refer to her as "that girl" or "the new mage".

Curiosity and pity flooded him when she returned with her volumes and he saw her wincing the whole path until she reached him. What was so important for her to strain her body when a simple spell could fix her problem? This issue jumped to the forefront of his priorities retaining her. "You made it to class in less than ten minutes, I hope?" was all he gathered in terms of courage instead of saying what was really on his mind.

The twitching mage nodded. "A couple minutes less. I'm getting better. Bye." She began moving.

He shouldn't have done it. It betrayed the guarding templar standards of being as invisible as a vase stuck in the corner. Cullen stepped in the entrance, blocking her from exiting.

Her eyebrows shot up in shock. "Excuse me, Cullen, but I do have class."

"I understand. But..." Cullen intentionally pressed his gloved hand against the outside of her arm. It jerked, causing a downward slide of her books. He snatched them before they hit the ground.

"What are you doing?" She stared in confusion at him.

"Let me carry them for you. You seem ready to drop them."

"Again with the dropping thing. I'm fi- ah!" She rose quickly and hissed when she made a fast grab for her books, moving her arms too hastily.

Before she had the chance to protest, Cullen swept the hardbacks into his possession. "I am protecting these tomes with my life, you see. I suggest you allow me to do my job." He sounded authoritative, right? His insides quivered like those jelly desserts the templars were wanton to devour after dinners.

A quirky grin broke out on the mage's face. "Seems like this experiment is over."

She angled her shoulders away from Cullen but didn't protest further when her books stayed heaped in his arms. Cullen took that as a good sign. And when she began walking, he stepped alongside her with airy, albeit armored greaves. "Experiment? An assignment for a class?"

"No. For me." She continued to smile and Cullen's knees gelled into wobbly jelly with his stomach when she shone the genial expression at him for a second. "Templars probably feel envious of mages using floating to easily carry books instead of muscles as you do, right?"

Cullen processed the thought. He couldn't ascertain if "envious" was the right word, but he did get pangs of wishing when he saw the ease the mages had when carrying a load with only a flick of a magicked hand or a chant.

"So," the tester continued, "I wanted to experience the trials of a templar."

"By carrying tomes?"

"By carrying tomes."

Now it was Cullen's turn for a wry smirk. "Toting hardbacks is not exactly a full representation of templar training."

Making a face and rubbing at her bicep, the mage sighed. "It feels that way when you never carry so much weight multiple trips a day. That ought to count for creativity points. Endurance. Oh, and strength."

"Fair enough." This woman's sense of humor was starting to intrigue Cullen, especially since he sensed no wariness coming from her as he did with many other mages. The tenuous dichotomy between templars and mages naturally strained interactions and Cullen always expected this when interacting with them.

"Taking up my classmates' offers of magic to lighten my load was all too tempting. They saw me from the beginning of this term and considered me strange, but I wished to persevere. I didn't use regenerative spells for my arms. They would have defeated the purpose."

Week three of the new term was almost on them. Her experiment would have headed to the one month mark. Cullen shifted his arms to balance back the tall stack leaning east to the middle of his chest. "H-how long were you going to keep up not using magic to move books?"

A huge zing ripped through Cullen when she threw him a flighty look. "Until you talked to me."

Implications and wild musings bounced around Cullen's brain. He nearly dumped his baggage onto the carpeted hallway in his delirium.

Nothing happened, though, because the books grew weightless. They took residence under his chin but the gravity disappeared. It took him a moment to realize they were suspended in mid-air. Cullen's staccato heartbeat caused what he hoped was not a totally goofy grin to appear.

The sneaky spellcaster pointed at the left corridor at the junction up ahead. "That's how a mage carries things. You understand my take on 'templar training', yes?"

The awkward sensation of complete airborne objects in his grasp felt surreal. No gravity was akin to a dream in his personal dictionary. Not possible for him to do, but possible to do in this world. "I apologize for what I just said about how you perceived training. You are a templar."

So focused on the happenings of these hefty books having no mass despite seeing how ungodly thick one of them was, Cullen didn't know he made a joke until he heard laughter.

"Now you're a mage. Astonishing?"

Cullen attempted the unfathomable; he used only one finger to balance the literature. Pages and pages of knowledge he constantly heard slam and thud and plopped onto tables and shelves, reduced to the lightness of a quill. He could not stop gawking. "I-I'm sorry for acting such as this," he stuttered when he caught her eyes in his line of sight. "The occurrence truly is remarkable when experienced first-hand."

She stopped walking and Cullen saw her vision centered on one of the closed paneled doors. They were here. Disappointment came, naturally.

Her lovely words lowered to a whisper. "Care to revel in it again?"

"Sorry?" Cullen was nonplussed at his unexpected development. His mind was as blank as an unperturbed field, save for a lone and useless cow.

"Talking. Shall we speak again?" She sounded as if she were explaining a concept to him.

Cullen got the basics, but not the full explanation yet. "Right. Yes, that is fine." He passed the floating books to her.

The mage mimicked Cullen's practice of balancing everything on her finger, but instead twirled her finger and watched them spin. "I'll show you this trick sometime. Thanks for your help."

Cullen discreetly inclined his head in response and she opened the door. Once it closed, Cullen turned around and made his way to his quarters. He was pushing open the heavy oak when he remembered his quest for her name. He forgot to ask again.

No matter. There were going to be more opportunities.

- THE END -