Lineage, Part 3

Somewhere the Kobbers have been before...

"Cola!"

The water remained unchanged. Brown eyes narrowed, and ten minutes of redrawing symbols with chalk followed.

"COLA!"

It was still water. This time, the girl said a bad word her parents would have prefered she didn't know and knocked the water glass over.

"That's a third level spell, Ags. You're a first year." Sunika said, the Ihmensel’jk running a hand through her wire-like hair before she turned a page on her homework. She'd long gotten used to her roommate's ambition.

"I should be able to DO this! I can see it in my head!"

"Not clear enough it seems."

That just provoked the young woman, having turned thirteen a mere two months ago, to start all over again. It ended the same way. Water and frustration.

"No one cares, Ags."

"Do you know what people who don't care about don't caring do, Sunny?"

"Is it some crap out of one of those dumb books you always read?"

"They're not crap!"

"Fine. Toilet paper. A step up." Another page completed. "Just do your assigned things."

"They're BORING! I can do BETTER!"

"No, you feel like you HAVE to do better. Because Hope is five years old."

The teenager had no response to that, mainly because Sunika was right. It seemed like the only one who cared that the five year old was doing better than the thirteen year old was her.

"...Just because I'm with the doldrums...."

A glare from the Ihmensel’jk.

"Sorry, no offense. I just...feel like I'm being...coddled? Held back? People don't want me to fail so I get the easiest stuff that a dog could do?"

"Ags...you don't have the Spark. You, me, half this school...we're never going to be able to match the ones who do. We're not gonna be purists. We're gonna learn what we can. That's why we're here, that's why they let us in to begin with. Stop whipping the water. It doesn't care."

Sunika knew, despite herself, her knowledge was falling on deaf ears. Her roommate and friend had a drive that the girl either didn't know or refused to turn off. No wonder. Maybe if this sort of thing that could potentially get you expelled...but you had to do a lot worse to get kicked out of Carnage Hall.

After all, the name was ironic.

---

The Vr'nigh School and Hall of Thaumaturgy. Vr'nigh, pronounced correctly as "Vernighted", was a word that roughly translated to 'Exploration and Great Discovery' from the language of one of the founders. If mispronounced, it sounded like 'Carnage'. The mondegreen had stuck.

Sometimes, she swore they all shopped at the same cloak store.

"Great choice is no gift! It overwhelms! It crushes contentment. drowns you in an endless whirlpool! You pass through life feeling you have accomplished nothing! You die in woe, in pain! We do not take your freedom, we GIVE freedom! Freedom from horrific illusions! Freedom of great burdens!" The man, in about his forties, preached, wearing a dark grey cloak. There were several others near him wearing black cloaks, and a very small crowd of about four students listening to the man preach.

"Who let the Cranks on school grounds?" Ags said.

"They hate that name." Bernard said, adjusting his thrice-round spectacles, as if he wanted to check if they'd somehow overheard.

"Their damn symbol looks like a crank! Their own damn fault!"

"Technically, it's a key. It's like saying a spade and a shovel are the same thing."

"Considering their schtick, it would make more sense if it was a gear." Ags said. The Order Of Understood Life (or Understated Life, Ags was not sure) were a recently formed group that basically perscribed to 'a place for everything and everything in its place'. Understandably, they really didn't like Blackbirds, people who told their nice, ordered life to go jump off a cliff if they felt they needed to get something done in a swifter, more efficient way. Ags supposed she had to give them credit for some balls. Their areas of power were more in Bertrand's town; she didn't know if she could go into someplace where she felt she was rejected with hostility.

"Hey Aggie!"

Especially since she didn't really have that problem here, her friend Renee waving at her. The students were fighting back against the annoying cult-types by starting a game of Calvinball. Angs didn't really understand the name, but the rules were constantly being shifted based on whoever could seize control of the game's direction, usually by the thaumaturgy that the Order/Cranks really didn't care for. What better way to show the audience couldn't care than a grand display of magic?

Not like magic was the only rule of thumb. That was why people almost fought to get Ags on their team, and the one who got her used her as point man (well, woman) half the time. There were other talents in the world besides magic.

Of course, even as she blitzed, danced, and dunked, Ags was the only one, it seemed, who couldn't see that, frustration on her face every time someone got an advantage over her via the thaumaturgical arts.

Though to say it went unnoticed was incorrect as well.

---

"...Permission to speak freely, madam?"

Evangelina Stavros' response was to look down her own glasses. If Bertrand's were called thrice-round, hers could technically be called 'score-round', though they were custom made by her and hence didn't have any shorthand name. Grouchily sitting in her chair, Ags stared back.

"...I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Yes and no." Evangelina said. "Aggie..."

"I haven't cheated! I haven't been sneaking around breaking rules! Why else would I be here in the school master's office, AUNT ANGIE?" Ags, or Aggie, said, turning a term of affection into a semi-curse.

"You're not here because of your father, if that's what you're insinuating."

"And Hope?"

"...Hope is not here because of her father either."

"Are you SURE?"

"Very much so." Angie said, her words containing a deep gravity that made Aggie realize she'd stepped over a line, and she quickly skittered back over it. Watching her sit and sulk, Angie realized she was poking the edge of her own line. It had been some time since she'd had to deal with unruly teenagers, and the fact that it was hard to tell the difference between the best and brightest and the bad seeds at times, if you were going by their attitude.

"...I am happy that you're doing things that aren't putting anyone at risk. But you're not."

"I can do better."

"I know. I know the feeling. You are not getting anything resembling a free or easy ride, I give you my word on that. Once you step out that door, you are any other student. And your learning capacity will be assessed and forged based on that fact. The lone advantage I will give you is that you can be absolutely certain that potential has been weighed and measured with as fine a point as my school can give you. The same with everyone else here. EVERYONE. Are we understood?"

"...yes, ma'am."

"Get to class then. And just in case you think otherwise, the students here are too busy being...well, like you to talk behind your back." Okay, that wasn't WHOLLY true. But it was less than Aggie thought, and that was really all Angie could offer. She hoped it would be enough.

It never was.

---

Teenagers. You could probably run the world's whole power infrastructure on the energy wasted trying to keep them from behaving in self-defeating ways.

"Cola!"

It was a simple task. Induce carbonation in a glass of water. Implant a gas into a liquid. Beyond simple, when higher ranks were based around literally turning reality into clay and re-shaping it before reality got mad and killed you, or drove you mad, or worse.

But her water remained water.

And Hope...

She'd actually made a damn soft drink equivalent. Her whole class had drank it...

Thud. Thud. Thud.

How do you know you're good? When people are more shocked and surprised at how well you're doing than angry. When the opposing team shakes your hand and means it, and other teams hold you on their shoulders as you hoist the trophy.

The Graceful Dragon, Greased Lightning. And she was just really starting to come into her development. And she had so many options to develop it.

"Cola!"

And she couldn't even manage a failure. Sunny had turned the water into sour wine, which at least was INTERESTING. She couldn't even manage a laugh.

She wasn't sure what she liked more. The crossing of the ribbons, or whenever she and hers got to shoot down anyone who claimed she had cheated in some way to get there. What good was winning unless it was wholly under your own power? It's why in that regard she didn't mind the third places, the fifth places, the non-wins. There, people were just better. It made it when she was taste sweeter. Track. Triathalons. Spot-movement, which in other worlds might have been called free running or parkour...

"COLA!"

Water. As dull as dishwater in every way shape or form.

What shapes and forms you? Others. So many others in your life, some good, some bad...and one does one's best to have as much of the former as one can...and she never really had issue there. She'd never needed one of those cliche tales on becoming a functioning human being. She'd just managed it. She had plenty of it. Friends. Circles. The joy of the group...

She had a lot. She didn't want more, assomuch. What she wanted was...

She could do BETTER. She had to. Didn't she? Wasn't that behind all their eyes? Higgghhhhh hopes? They had higghhhhh hopes?

She could, she would...

"COLA!"

Water.

 ...whatever it took.