Another day dawns and Ciaran rushed off to school, though his feet slapped the wet ground Ciaran enjoyed the freshness of the sun. The only bad thing was that he had to run, Solas had once again beat him out the door. Ciaran was able to catch up quickly with his long and powerful legs, but they were already nearing the academy. The two separated as soon as they met and headed off to their own classes.
Taking his seat Ciaran readied himself for today’s lesson by looking at his notes. Skimming over them he was reminded that Aether conductivity was how well Aether of a certain type passed through materials. Each Aether preferred different materials over others and Ciaran suspected that they would learn about this today.
Ciaran’s prediction was both right and completely wrong as Mr Luper declared that they would do a practical demonstration. With a few waves of his hand every table became an altar with a hole in the middle and several lines branching out. Each line went to a hole and was interrupted by a slot in the middle.
Mr Luper brought around several gems of different colour and placed them in the tables with the repeated instruction “Do NOT touch.” When every hole except for the slots in the middle of each line were filled, Mr Luper placed a tray filled with different materials at each table.
After this Mr. Luper’s instructions were quite simple, you just had to place a material in one of the empty slots and record the gem in the middle’s reaction. They had to do this for every material and every gem around the outside and missing one would result in punishment. For others the punishment may have looked daunting but most often it was what Ciaran considered a reward.
Ciaran had a decent idea already thanks to his lessons with Mr Burton, so he placed a piece of wood in the slot for the green gem. The gem in the centre lit up the most for the wood and other plant material while it had a faint or no response to other materials. Seeing this Ciaran remembered that lesson fully, Aether only passes through objects with similar properties to itself. Thinking about the jolly old man also reminded him that he had a lesson with him tonight.
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Ciaran was the fastest in the class to do his work, but even he had only gotten through half of it by the time the bell for break went. Instead of hanging with the others he decided to go for a run, the sun was out shining and the breeze felt nice on his face.
Once the bell rang once more, he returned to the classroom with a fresh mind and managed to nearly finish his work before he left.
Ciaran walked with Solas for a while listening to him about his day before turning off at Mr Burtons shop. Ciaran went straight through and entered the workshop; there he saw the hefty fellow wielding his hammer. Chucking his Satchell down Ciaran picked up a pair of tongs and began heating up his latest project.
The sound of clanking went on for quite a while before Ciaran’s body forced him to go home. But the boy didn’t want to, especially when he was so close to finishing his first axe. When he walked down the cobbled path to his doorstep Ciaran couldn’t help but feel like he had forgotten something but judging it to be unimportant he ventured inside.
The warmth of the fireplace replaced that of the forge and Ciaran gave his father a big hug, ensuring to impart as much soot and grime as possible. The mischievous child then rushed off to have a wash before any punishment could catch up with him.
That night Ciaran went to talk to his father in the basement, but there he saw something. A book, a book that contained nothing, that is what his mind told him. on the pages was multiple names, numbers and dates, but even though he saw all this only two things came to mind. The first thing was that there was nothing in that book, and the other was that it was a ledger containing nothing.
Ciaran didn’t know why, but it felt like the very depths of his mind sought to avoid that book, as if it were the most horrid thing to exist. And so, Ciaran ignored it and opted to go look for his father elsewhere.
The next night curiosity crept into his mind, and he ventured down to the basement once more and turned the key he “acquired” in the lock. But no matter where he searched the book was not there. Ciaran left the basement how he found it and concluded that it was a book with pages that had nothing on them and didn’t exist.