"Hey, Joe!"
"Carl, Jimmy," I said, turning to regard the two boys as they rushed over. "You two pass?"
"Hell yeah we did!" Carl said. "I'm gonna join the Merchant's Guild!"
"The Bard's Guild proctor said he liked the cut of my jib," Jimmy added. "What about you?"
"Passed my machining and wizardry test," I said.
"Even though you don't know shit about material components?" Carl asked.
"I knew enough to pass," I said with a shrug.
The thing about magic was that it took energy to do. Human wizards typically used material components- items with some small amount of magical energy within them- to make spellcasting easier, but the elven tradition was a lot more straightforward: it was more time-efficient to simply get strong enough to cast spells without material components than it was to learn how to gather or create them yourself. Humans, though, just did more division of labor, and shunted that duty off to apprentices or even hired hands who didn't have any spellcasting ability whatsoever, until the modern day, when the production of material components was a big business, and elves still preferred to do without.
"Weirdo," Carl said affectionately.
"Eh, not that weird," Jimmy said. "Bard magic doesn't use material components either."
"That too," I said. "Anyhow, I'll see you guys around- gotta meet up with Talia, you know how it is."
They nodded, and I walked off.
I'd be the first to admit that I was not exactly comfortable with other boys. It wasn't just a humans versus elves thing, mind you- Carl and Jimmy were from Greenwood Village, from the families of humans who'd grown up around the same handful of elves who, lacking anything better to do, invested heavily in building up the community. My own father, Napoleon Ironheart, a masterful druid who was at least the peer of any Healer's Guild member, attended and aided with every single birth in the neighborhood, and hadn't had a single death on his hands in all that time. So if any humans could be trusted to be fair and even-minded about elves, it was boys like Carl and Jimmy, to whom elves were respected, friendly, and upstanding members of the community.
And yet... I just wasn't comfortable with them. It wasn't even that I felt like they were forcing it, that they wanted to be my friend because my dad was Napoleon Ironheart, and they wanted to get in the good graces of an immortal elf; I was a lot more comfortable around girls, and some of them absolutely looked at me like a piece of meat with the words "social status" written on it in gold leaf.
In the end, Talia was the only person I honestly felt I could call a friend.
But. Well.
She was one hell of a friend, I'll tell you that.
---
"I still can't believe you managed to get away with all that shit," Talia said, as we walked off of the stage, diplomas in hand and horridly cheap and uncomfortable robes draped over our real clothes. "You really mean to tell me you used the school machine shop to build your own machine shop?"
"Honestly, if anything, I was encouraged to do this," I said. "The shop teacher likes me, and he's the one who told me that a good machinist can use one machine shop to build all the machines he needs for a new one. And, well... I decided that that sounded like a fun challenge, and he slipped me some schematics."
"Still..."
"Also, it helps that I'm also, y'know, a wizard, and I could keep my personal projects in a Bag of Holding on the inside of my coat," I continued.
I was, in fact, still wearing my coat, even under the awful graduation robes. My coat was, really, a duster- a long, loose overcoat meant to protect a horseman's clothing from the dust of the road. Typically, a duster would be made from oiled or waxed canvas, but despite everything, my family was still one of some means, and I'd managed to secure for myself a duster made of leather, which had promptly been loaded up with every manner of preservative enchantment I could muster, turning it from a sturdy, reliable garment that'd serve me well for decades to something even an elf would consider an heirloom, with a lifespan measured in centuries.
Underneath that, though, I wore far more modest and common clothing- a cheap cotton button-down shirt and a pair of blue denim pants, plus a pair of sturdy, nice-but-not-fancy, leather work boots, with steel toe-caps to keep me from losing a toe every time I drop a crate.
"That reminds me!" Talia said, snapping her fingers. "I want a Bag of Holding too!"
"Sure, I can make one for you," I said easily. "You want it as a hip pouch, something you sew to the inside of a jacket, or...?"
"I," Talia said haughtily, "would like a Bag of Holding that's hidden inside my cleavage."
"...Okay, now that's a challenge," I said, frowning. "Because correct me if I'm wrong, but there isn't usually a piece of fabric solidly wedged into your cleavage, right?"
Talia was, for today, wearing fairly casual clothes, given the graduate's robe she knew she'd be wearing on top of them. She wore a stretchy shirt made of knit cotton, which was usually worn as an undergarment but which she decided was perfectly acceptable outerwear, along with a pleated skirt that came down to her knees, made of green fabric that'd been woven in Greenwood Village. Her own shoes were always very minimal and cheap sandals, which might well have been made from cardboard for all I knew; she was a practicing druid, and despite the fact my dad said no such thing, she claimed that shoes were unnatural and disturbed her connection to the living earth.
"Well, no," Talia began.
"So I'd have to put sticking charms on the outside to anchor it in place, so it doesn't slide around too much," I continued. "And I don't know how much you'd like having a bag glued between your boobs."
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
"...It's a work in progress," Talia said, sighing.
"Hey, knife-ear," a voice called, approaching us from behind. "Outta my way. I'm finally gettin' me a piece of that girl."
"Hello, John," I said, as Talia and I turned to face a gaggle of three big human boys. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
John was one example of what humans who don't grow up around elves are like: fully capable of acknowledging elf women as beautiful, but desiring them as trophies, and regarding elf men as obstacles.
"Listen here, knife-ear-" John began.
"My name's Joseph. I'll even let you call me Joe."
I bent backwards, dodging John's wild swing.
"Listen here," John repeated, growling as he stepped forward. "We ain't in school no more, and I can't get suspended for kickin' your ass up and down the street. So, pretty-boy, how's about you learn your place and- Hey! Put me down!"
Arcane spellcasting could be summarized in just three words: Mind Over Matter. A good wizard developed their skills of focus and visualization to hold a complex spell formula in their head in order to cast that spell on the fly... and a wizard who wasn't fucking around would figure out what spells they most needed in situations where that kind of focus just wasn't an option, and embed those spell formulae into rings they could just wear on their fingers.
I was wearing a lot of rings on my fingers, each and every one of which was my own custom work, made from carefully-scribed-and-rolled paper to hold the actual formula and a brass housing. And for reasons that included, but were not limited to, being a machinist who semi-frequently works with big heavy pieces of metal that I have to move around, one of my rings was for a spell of levitation, which was currently lifting John Courser, Colton Thompson, and Elias Smith straight up into the air.
"You're lucky I don't want your blood on me, or else I might've listened to you," I said as I continued lifting them up. The building they were holding our graduation ceremony in had high ceilings, about forty feet off the ground, and in lieu of a classical, self-supporting arch, the roof was just a flat plane that was supported by steel trusses acting as rafters. "Grab on tight, boys, because this spell ends when I'm done talking, and what happens next is your problem!"
Right on cue, I let go of the spell, and the three of them just barely managed to grab onto the rafters before they dropped. That was good for them, of course, because a forty foot fall had a serious chance of breaking their legs, backs, necks- really, any and every bone in their body. But, well. Now they had to figure out how to get down safely. I certainly didn't have anything in mind- I had not been kidding when I said what happened next was their problem.
"C'mon, Talia, let's get outta here."
---
"Have you been able to do that this whole time?" Talia asked, that evening. The two of us were in my room, where we'd whiled away countless afternoons and evenings, keeping each other sane through the endless death march of homework and studying. School was over, now, but some habits still remained.
"Not the whole time," I said. "Self-defense via arcane magic isn't always an option, unless you're okay with the risk that you'll kill the guy you're defending yourself from. And while I might have been able to get away with roughing them up a little... well, one, there's a reason I didn't just punch 'em in the throat: elves just don't get stronger as fast as humans do, and those assholes are on the stronger end of the human bell curve. One day, I'll be physically stronger than any ordinary human, but for now? I get to be part of the reason people think elves are weak and frail."
"And two, if you did kill them with magic, even if it was obvious self-defense... Well. Who's gonna take the knife-ear's side in that?" Talia said bitterly.
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Still... the more I think about it... The more I think I should've just done it. Use some basic attack magic to break their legs directly, teach 'em not to fuck with me." I sighed wistfully. "Oh well. Considering how life goes for me, I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to blow out some fuckwit's kneecaps sooner or later."
"Okay, now I'm a little worried in the other direction," Talia said. "You okay?"
"Been better," I said. "I finally showed up my high school bullies, but... it doesn't feel like an accomplishment. Some pathetic kids who straight up did not understand who they were messing with got levitated into the rafters. That wasn't really an unambiguous beatdown, honestly- felt more like a meanspirited prank. It just doesn't feel satisfying."
"Y'know what would feel satisfying?"
"Getting accepted into the Mage's Guild?"
"Getting to fuck the hot elf girl those losers were drooling over," Talia said.
"...Will you take a kiss and a rain-check?" I asked.
My answer wasn't verbal, but it was understandable enough, given how long it took for Talia to let me stop kissing her.
"I will be cashing that rain check," Talia threatened, once she decided she'd had enough for now. "Anyway. You still planning on joining the Mage's Guild?"
"Well, I gotta make money somehow, if I'm gonna pay for an expedition to the frontier," I said, a little surprised by the change of subject. "Mage's Guild makes a lot of money."
"You know it's a primarily human institution, right? Elves don't exactly get warm welcomes there." Unless they were my mother, in which case the Mage's Guild would debase themselves quite far in an attempt to bring her into the fold, but I wasn't my mother, so...
"Oh, I'm aware," I said. "But I've got a trick for that. Y'know how I'm a wizard, who casts Arcane magic? Y'know, your classic 'mind over matter' spells?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I've learned a thing or two about Occult magic, too," I said, grinning. Just because I didn't consider Jimmy to be a friend didn't mean we had no real interaction; he'd been very willing to share his Occultism study materials with me, for the low, low price of helping him make sense of it all. "The magic of narrative, practiced by bards and weird pseudo-intellectuals who somehow don't realize they're just doing what bards do but the hard way for no reason. And I've figured out how to weave a subtle spell that'll let me charm my way in without getting caught."
"You sure about that?" Talia asked.
I simply grinned wider, and leaned back in my chair. "I've got an interview with Magister Brown tomorrow, as a point of fact."
"...Oh."