Aida was waiting for Sue at the entrance of the dining hall. Studying her expression carefully, Aida relaxed. Sue smiled at her with her usual bright demeanor, the cloud that had been over her face from lunch cleared up.
“Good walk?”
“Very refreshing,” Sue said briskly, scooping Aida’s arm into hers.
Dinner was a peaceful affair. They took a small table, with an unspoken agreement that they would have a more private dinner tonight.
Sue gasped softly. “They’re putting up the matches for the next star cycle!”
Whipping her head around, Aida saw Professor Lloyd pinning sheets of paper up on top of the board that listed their points. Then he carefully removed the score sheets, and replaced them with fresh score sheets. “Shall we go look?”
Abandoning their meals, Aida and Sue ran up to the board, beating the small stampede of other interested students. Sue clutched Aida’s hand. “It happened! You’re in!”
Her stomach clenching, Aida looked at her next opponents.
Ring 3 [Rank 11-15]
Day
Match 1
Match 2
Sparks
Natalie Wok (Fire) vs. Tera Trippe (Earth)
Abedi Bellow (Metal) vs. Shon Yanomo (Wood)
Mist
Tera Trippe (Earth) vs. Abedi Bellow (Metal)
Aida Loreh (Water) vs. Natalie Wok (Fire)
Shoots
Abedi Bellow (Metal) vs. Aida Loreh (Water)
Shon Yanomo (Wood) vs. Tera Trippe (Earth)
Ore
Aida Loreh (Water) vs. Shon Yanomo (Wood)
Natalie Wok (Fire) vs. Abedi Bellow (Metal)
Loam
Shon Yanomo (Wood) vs. Natalie Wok (Fire)
Tera Trippe (Earth) vs. Aida Loreh (Water)
“Wow,” Aida said softly. She really was going against the top fifteen. “Any chance the teachers will drop me back down when they see how poorly I do against them?” she asked, half joking.
“No way,” Sue said adamantly. “You proved your mettle in the preliminary matches.”
Aida looked at Sue’s matchups.
Ring 1 [Rank 1-5]
Day
Match 1
Match 2
Sparks
Suelina Heslia (Fire) vs. Caleb Tulver (Earth)
Ezra Riolt (Metal) vs. Levi Ashet (Wood)
Mist
Caleb Tulver (Earth) vs. Ezra Riolt (Metal)
Lara Lorr (Water) vs. Suelina Heslia (Fire)
Shoots
Ezra Riolt (Metal) vs. Lara Lorr (Water)
Levi Ashet (Wood) vs. Caleb Tulver (Earth)
Ore
Lara Lorr (Water) vs. Levi Ashet (Wood)
Suelina Heslia (Fire) vs. Ezra Riolt (Metal)
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Loam
Levi Ashet (Wood) vs. Suelina Heslia (Fire)
Caleb Tulver (Earth) vs. Lara Lorr (Water)
“Oh Sue, your first match…”
Sue’s expression tightened. “It’s okay,” she said, more to reassure herself than Aida.
Guiding Sue back to their meals, Aida soothingly rubbed Sue’s back. “Just…imagine he’s someone else.”
“I don’t think I can,” Sue said tightly. “Even if I close my eyes, I can tell by his mana it’s him.”
They fell back into silence, as Sue brooded and Aida tried to think of how to comfort her. She remembered those feelings back then, when she had unrequited crushes as a teenager. They were debilitating. She promptly lost track of whatever she was doing whenever her crush passed through her line of sight, and even when she knew her crush wasn’t around, she still couldn’t focus. She would think about every little glimpse throughout the day, fantasize about how to orchestrate an accident that would lead to a meeting, then a friendship, and then romantic love. Aida felt sorry for Sue, but had no helpful wisdom to impart. To be young and in love.
And honestly, part of her had no sympathy for Sue’s “predicament.” Like it or not, they will fall in love with you if they haven’t already.
When it was clear that Sue didn’t have an appetite for the rest of her meal, Aida coaxed Sue into spending the rest of the evening with her. “Let’s go on a walk,” she suggested brightly.
Glumly trailing after Aida, Sue made half-hearted protests about having already walked.
“Well, I didn’t walk yet. Please?” Aida pouted, putting on the puppiest eyes she could. Sue giggled reluctantly at her look.
“Fine. I can never say no to you anyway,” she said affectionately.
They exited the dining hall and rounded the girls’ wing of the building, strolling in silence. They finally approached the lake that Aida had seen from the library windows, but had never felt like she had the time to visit.
The lake was calm, and exuded a cooling sensation. There were a couple first-year students jogging around the perimeter. Aida took a deep breath. The smell of fresh water was foreign, but not unpleasant. It smelled…pure. Like wet leaves after heavy rain. There were some small waterfowl swimming in the center of the lake, lazily paddling their webbed feet. When Aida focused, she could hear the fish swimming below the surface, feel them pushing the water around with their fins.
“Wow, Aida, your mana control has improved so much.”
Startled, Aida pulled back into herself. She saw an orb of water floating in front of her, with a small fish trapped inside, swimming around as if it were in a fishbowl.
“I didn’t even realize.” Carefully, she lowered the orb back into the water, releasing the creature. “I can’t believe I just did that without using my wand.”
“Yeah! That means you’re much more in tune with yourself now,” Sue said enthusiastically. “Oh, this is so exciting.”
“Speaking of the wand…I touched the gem today, and I noticed I could see Lyn’s mana?”
Sue clapped her hands together. “That’s amazing! You’re finally catching up!”
“Am I?” Aida asked eagerly. Sue nodded back, equally excited.
“Yep! I don’t think too many of our classmates can yet - I know Ezra, Levi, and Caleb can, and I think Dev and Lara, and obviously Myk can.” Sue made a face. “But honestly, it’s pretty hard to attune yourself to a crystal. I don’t think I did it until my second year, and I don’t think I could even do it if you gave me a different crystal,” Sue said thoughtfully.
Interesting. “Have you tried combat without using your wand?”
Sue shook her head, her long hair rippling out, glowing as it caught the last of the light from the setting sun. “I can do some small things without my wand, but I’m actually terrified to experiment without it. I don’t want to accidentally set anything on fire,” she whispered conspiratorially.
Aida laughed. “Yeah, water is safer to experiment with.” Thoughtfully, Aida tried replicating what she did without her wand, but was unable to even incite a small wave.
“You’re trying too hard,” Sue said, watching Aida. “It’s more like a meditative exercise. That’s why Professor Bruce pushes us so hard in the meditation exercises…so ironic, forcing us to disengage when it’s supposed to not be a compelled effort.” Sue settled down into grumblings. “Anyway, I can kind of do stuff with a candle, but it’s really hard for me to not just…connect with the flame, you know? And I just want it to burn brighter and brighter, and see how big it can get - but Professor Bruce says what I’m doing is letting the flame run wild and not controlling it, but what if that is what I want?”
Aida listened to Sue’s animated complaints with a smile. Her personality really did suit that of fire - bright, lively, never staying still. When she was in the combat ring, her focus was white-hot and utterly terrifying. She was a controlled - yet uncontrolled - burn: steadily consuming her opponent, but unable to be stopped. Aida shivered at the thought of having to fight Sue.
“Aida, what do you want to do when you graduate?”
Caught off guard by the question, Aida glanced back. Sue had stopped walking, and they were now at least fifteen feet from each other. Sue was standing with her hands clasped behind her back, her feet together, her chin dipped. She looked like a chastened child, apprehensive of the consequences. She looked up at Aida, capturing her in her lilac eyes. Aida could see the restrained hope in her eyes.
Sliding her eyes away from Sue’s, Aida looked over the lake. What do I want to do?
Levi hadn’t given her any detailed job descriptions yet, so she didn’t know what the prominent career tracks were in this world. Adventurers made sense, but it was too broad and vague. Connie had offered her a position at their hot spring…Aida was certainly intrigued, and she had enjoyed the thought of helping people relax, recuperate, and expand their awareness the way hers had.
What would I want to do, if money was no object?
Before deciding to drop out of college, Annie had considered working in social services. She had been so let down by the system growing up - a mix of bureaucratic nightmares designed to impede the dispensation of help when she and her family needed it the most, and the soulless operators who fielded her calls and visits, devoid of empathy as they repeated “there’s nothing I can do” like a mantra - that she was convinced she could do a better job. However, the older she grew, and the more she worked, the more she realized the social service workers were trapped in the rut with her. Wanting to help, but unable to. Seeing how the government consistently misprioritized funds, refusing to help the hardest and most deserving workers despite their claims that they cared about the people - Aida felt the familiar anger bubbling up inside her.
They weren’t able to afford the physical therapy for her father when he was injured, and couldn’t even make him comfortable while he was recovering. As a child, all she had wanted to do was hold her father tightly - so tightly that she could take his pain away. But she hadn’t even been able to do that.
Levi’s words about being a Healer floated through her mind. “You can make good baen there.” In the real world, she had immediately dismissed the thought of any medical profession in her future, daunted by the tuition and time costs. But here, where she would be a Maglica grad…
“I want to be a Healer.”
Aida was surprised by the confidence in her own voice. She nodded, more assured in her choice. Healer Luk had worked some amazing treatments on her, and she already had the Heal skill at Lv4. Her heart panged. If only she could use Heal on her father.
Sue’s eyes widened. “Aida! That means we can form a group together!”
Aida shook her head. “We can’t, not when we’re right out of school,” she said gently. “I don’t have enough mana to be able to heal major injuries - and none of the funders would be willing to pay for me. I need to find a job that lets me learn more about the body, and how I can most efficiently heal. I need to find some way to optimize my mana usage.”
Sue deflated as quickly as she had inflated. “Oh.”
“But give me some time, so I can learn, and I think we can definitely make our own adventuring group,” Aida said reassuringly, smiling. “I need to at least be able to do what Healer Luk does, right?”
“Right,” Sue agreed wanly. She rallied, raising her fist in the air. “Okay, so the plan’s still the same! I’ll continue to become stronger, and you learn to be the best Healer in Wyndia, and then we’ll team up and no one can say a flaming thing about it!”
Thrusting her fist in the air with Sue, Aida echoed her. “No one can say a damp thing about it!”
They both collapsed into giggles, linking their arms together again as they continued their walk. Sue was warm, her natural heat keeping the cool evening chill at bay. Aida’s heart was full. Having a plan - a goal she felt good about - it provided her an anchor she didn’t even know she needed to stay grounded. The goal buoyed her up, and illuminated her path, making her fears about blending in to Maglica Academy seem so much smaller than before. Much more manageable.
Aida squeezed Sue’s hand. “Thanks for being such a great friend.”
Sue said nothing, returning Aida’s squeeze. Her mana glowed around them, making Aida feel like, for once, she was the main character in her own life.