“Love? Are you OK?” Astrid’s voice lilted through the air behind Esmeralda; for a moment, she was confused why Silvia had called her “love”. Grimacing, she rubbed her eyes and stood up on the balcony with a grunt. “I’m fine. Just bad sleep.”
“Your nightmares.” Astrid’s voice was dour.
“Yeah. I’m just tired. I’ll be fine.”
“You always say that, whenever something’s wrong.”
“And I’m always fine! You can trust me, Astrid.” Esmeralda brushed past her partner and stepped through the large window; she let the blanket fall from her shoulders and began to change out of her sleeping clothes. Astrid went promptly downstairs without a word.
It was an academy day for Esmeralda and she tromped into the kitchen in a foul mood. Astrid spoke to her as she entered.
“I’m going to keep studying the artifact. Do you think anyone at the academy might know what it is?”
The question exhausted Esmeralda further. “No.”
Astrid looked surprised. “Oh, OK.” She paused, opening and closing her mouth as though unable to speak. When she spoke again her voice was quiet. “Be safe today.”
“I will be.” Esmeralda strode outside and shut the door with a clack behind her.
Her coat, heavy and grey and frayed in various places, whipped behind her as she rode, the bright blue sky unfurling before her on the highway. Her motor pummeled her ears on the way, and she walked into the academy with a splitting headache and her hair splayed out behind her in tangled strands. She fought with it as she walked to her classroom.
She stormed in bleary-eyed to find her students had already assembled. Esmeralda took a moment to gather her bearings, remembering it was an examination day.
Her anger seemed to simmer now, extinguished and replaced by sad resignation. Exam days meant she dueled each of her students one by one, testing them on how well they used the concepts and techniques they’d learned recently in a combat situation. Esmeralda knew she’d pass everyone; she was in no mood to actually keep track of how they did, and whenever this happened she just fought them out of obligation and gave everyone reasonably believable marks. Rask’s students were natives and refugees - no one was here for rigorous academics. She rolled up her sweater sleeves.
Barking out commands to her class she stood at one end of the room and called the first student up. From here it was automatic; Esmeralda could rely on old instincts that had been drilled in over innumerable years and fights, movements that were permanently etched into her muscles and mind, and she could detach herself from what was happening, like she was monitoring a machine. The combat would unfold like it always did; as a series of images, a sequence of actions Esmeralda was witnessing, not experiencing.
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Everything before her happened like a performance as one by one she coolly dispatched challenger after challenger, moving deceptively quick, her body reacting on a hair and each of her actions somehow building towards the next, like she were writing a symphony. There was little excess in her movements. Between fights Esmeralda used her rest time to stand and stare blankly out the door of the room, aching to lose herself amongst the scattered clouds in the thin, rectangular sky. She felt sick.
When she left the room at the end of the day the head of the school, Rask’s mayor, was waiting for her with words he was eager to share. A severe-looking man with his lips twisted into a deep frown, he spoke forcefully, all at once. Esmeralda, still numb from her class, let the words wash over her: she had started her class late again; this was the fourth, or fifth time this quarter; how did she think this was acceptable?
Esmeralda was dumbfounded. Her mouth hung open. “Well, of course I don’t think it’s acceptable-”
“Then why have you let it happen? This isn’t the first problem we’ve had with you, Ms. Vicario-”
His tone made Esmeralda snap. “Keep my name out of your mouth, worm,” she scowled. He was treating her like a child; she wouldn’t stand for it.
The man was aghast. He spoke in a dramatic whine. “Ms. Vicario! That was not an acceptable way to address your superior! Need I remind you we already offer you special treatment?”
“Special treatment? What is that supposed to mean?”
“Hmph! Well! For one, we require you here a full two days less per week than the other instructors!” The man puffed his chest out, clearly growing brave. He seemed to be uttering a speech he’d rehearsed many times in his head. “And the rest of them help out with the work around town! We don’t make you do that, and we pay you directly in food instead of coin - and we let you gallivant around with that little runaway of yours-”
This invocation of Astrid set Esmeralda’s insides boiling, and for just a moment she saw it, a flicker of an image as clear as the summer sea, of what she could do to the man. It would be easy; he was neither a fighter nor a particularly gifted mage; she could whip up some clever little spell - maybe turn the wind into razors - and she’d gash open his throat; his dull eyes would widen just how everyone’s did, when they realized all at once what the pretty young girl standing on their doorstep, or trailing them down the alley, or lurking in the shadows of their home had done to them, something so immense and final as to be unbelievable, even as they collapsed and felt their own lives slip away from them. She could do it, and calmly walk away, and get on her bike, and no one here would ever see her again. And if they found her, she’d kill them too.
“-and you can’t even meet our basic standards of conduct? That’s simply not acceptable, Ms. Vicario.” He clearly relished saying her name like that now, his own pathetic act of war, about as barbarous as he could dream to get. He was breathing quite hard as he finished his rant.
Esmeralda stared down at him, bored. The savage feeling had passed her, and with it went her interest in the conversation. She brushed past him on her way out of the building.
“Ms. Vicario! Where do you think you’re going?”
“Home!” She spat behind her. “To my little runaway!” The heavy wooden door of the building swung shut as she strode towards her bike. She did not wait to hear what else her boss had to say.
She arrived home to Astrid at the kitchen table, immersed in a book. Esmeralda said hello and Astrid asked her if she was hungry; she was, and they ate supper. Astrid returned to reading; Esmeralda, exhausted and at wit’s end, curled up in bed and lay there motionless as the sun set and the moon rose. Time passed by in a blink, as though it applied differently to her now.
Eventually, basked in the silver glow of the moon, Astrid got into bed, and detecting weight behind her Esmeralda closed her eyes and sank uneasily into a murky slurry of sleep.