Solving a Problem, Part I
She beat her wings. The ground rushed past far below her. The wind whipped her face. The people that had once cast her out were so small now. All of her old problems were nothing. She was free.
She tilted her wings and curved her tail, circling around the court. Her claws grazed the treetops as she glided over the forest. People pointed and ran from her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have to care about anything anymore.
With another flap of her wings, she soared away. Away from the court. Away from the hate. Away from all her problems.
Roshil opened her eyes. She was on solid ground. Her bed. The blankets had been hurled about while she’d slept, but at least she was where she expected to be. She turned over and checked her identification orb. There was still time before the end of curfew.
She stared at the ceiling in the dark, or the black space where the ceiling usually was. What if she stayed in bed all day? For one thing, she’d never hear the end of it from Master Grund. He’d never had occasion to drag her out of her bed before, but there was a first time for everything.
Sitting up, she started to scratch a spot on her back, then caught herself. That particular spot burned, and she knew why. She didn’t know for sure — she refused to let anyone else see it — but she was confident that scratching it would only make it worse. Instead, she laid her fingers on it. Some small part of her thought that maybe it was getting better, that it’d shrunk. That part of her quickly ran for cover when the rest of her laughed at it, reminding her that life was never that simple nor fair.
She made her usual halfhearted attempt at making her bed (she was the only one that could enter her room, so why bother?), then climbed down to the floor. Grabbing clean clothes, she washed up. Before she threw on her undershirt, she examined her back again in the mirror. Among the scars that had once bothered her was that spot. Now that she could clearly see it, she could say for certain that it was not getting smaller.
“It’s spreading,” she grumbled, then threw on her undershirt and tunic.
While she’d been informed by Master Ekla that her body would be undergoing changes (she’d noticed many of them already), she was certain that wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Despite her grievances with the other ones, at least those were normal.
Roshil brushed her hair, then adjusted it so it was shielding her eyes. She’d learned that people didn’t bother her as much when they couldn’t see her eyes clearly. Master Grund didn’t allow her to take goggles out of the forge, and insisted that she didn’t need to wear anything over her eyes. He didn’t bother her about her hair, so she would have to make do with that.
She gathered up her belongings, then checked her identification orb again. Curfew was almost over, so Roshil sat in front of the door and waited.
“I’m starting my second year, and I still can’t leave until curfew’s over. What am I going to get up to that’s so bad?”
She could hear Master Ekla’s voice starting to list off everything, then Master Grund’s voice joined it, with the occasional comments from Kurgm and Oshal.
“I didn’t ask all of you!” she shouted at the empty room. She glared at the door, which she swore was judging her.
After another few minutes, her orb flashed to indicate the end of curfew, and she ran out of her room. Apprentices were filing out of the few doors that led into the rooms of the north tower. While in reality the rooms were stacked together, they all had magic doors that were connected to one of the four doors at the base of the tower. Roshil had asked how the system worked to prevent more than one apprentice ever leaving the same door at the same time, but Master Grund refused to give her an answer. Instead, he’d grumble something about her figuring it out herself.
“Hello, Roshil,” said a small voice.
Surprise, backed up by panic, shoved her frustration away. She drew a sharp breath and turned to face Aonva.
Aonva’s big eyes darted around the corridor, taking in every apprentice that walked past, working with her feet to keep her out of anyone’s way. They landed on Roshil, and she jumped and looked away.
“You’re… you’re up early,” Aonva said. “I… I was going to go to the library.” Her gaze dropped and her hands fidgeted. “Would… would you like to… um… I thought maybe you’d like to go with me. Not that you have to, I’m sure you’ve got something important to do this morning. I know you’re always busy with something, and I didn’t want to assume you’d be free now.”
“I’m free!” Roshil said. She didn’t know if she had anything to do, although she had a nagging feeling there was some schoolwork she hadn’t done yet. She was sure she didn’t have to work on it yet.
“Okay.”
They stood still until some apprentices shoved past them.
“We should get going,” Roshil said.
“Right.”
They started the walk through the castle, heading toward the door to the library.
“Um… your hair’s different,” Roshil said.
“Yeah.” Instead of her normal twin braids, Aonva had put her hair in a bunch of distinct strands, much like Lady Durwey did with her hair. “My hair doesn’t grow like yours. Because my family’s from Bywin, so our hair grows differently, and I didn’t like doing it in the braids, they were actually really uncomfortable, not that I’m complaining, I know people don’t like it when I complain, but Our Lady Grand Weaver gave me a book on different ways to style my hair that would work with it naturally, and this is a lot more comfortable, so I’m trying it this way.” She fidgeted with one of the strands for a moment. “Does it… is it bad?”
“No!” Roshil exclaimed. “It’s fine.”
Was “fine” the word she wanted? She wasn’t good with words. It was easier to ignore people. Except Sirshi; Sirshi didn’t care how weird she was. She didn’t think Aonva cared either.
“It took me a few weeks to get through the book with all the other work I have. Does Our Lord High Artisan give you a lot of work? That’s a stupid question, I know he does. I get work from Master Kaernin, of course, but I’ve been doing research with Our Lady Arch Mage, and that’s taken a lot of time too. It’d be so nice to read books faster, but I don’t want to miss anything.”
That gave Roshil an idea. What if they could read books faster? It’d help her get her work done faster and skip past the boring reading parts. It had been so much easier to learn when the other members of her tribe had shown her instead of telling her to read a dull book that would take her several hours. There couldn’t already be a spell to do it, otherwise Aonva would know about it, but maybe Roshil could make one.