Post by Eragon on Oct 12, 2012 16:37:48 GMT -5
Back Again
Kat walked into Brom's classroom. She needed something to distract her--anything. Brom sat behind his desk, leaning forward over some scroll or another from his shelves lining the walls. Even those had not been enough, for the few other chairs in the room and the table in the center of the room were stacked with mountains of books, parchment, and scrolls in haphazard disorder. He looked up at her and leaned back, his pipe in his mouth. She stood there before the desk with her backpack over her shoulder and a despondent expression that she was doing a very bad job of hiding. Her eyes were still slightly red from crying back in LA. She'd dropped her bag outside her room, unable to bring herself to go inside yet.
"Well?" he asked staring at her and blowing a smoke ring up towards the ceiling.
"I wanted to ask you something," she replied.
"If you came to me for relationship advice get out," he said gruffly. Kat glared at him. She was not in the mood for Brom's blunt criticism. "I did not. I wanted to ask you something about magic."
"Well now we're getting somewhere. What is it?"
"Your magic doesn't require a physical medium to work. I want to apply that to the magic I use."
"Mixing different methods is dangerous," he said, his blue eyes flashing. Why did they have to remind her of Drew's? Reminders were everywhere, constantly bringing up the good memories until they ended with him saying "No Miss Holly . . . Get out of my sight." That made her cringe inwardly and want to go die in a hole.
"Kat!" Brom slammed his hand down on the table and she jumped, drawn back to the present. She shook her head and tried to clear it.
"Sorry. What did you say?"
"That mixing methods is dangerous," he growled irritatedly. "Especially if you can't pay attention."
"Won't happen again," she promised. Brom puffed another smoke ring off his pipe, bigger than the last. "Hmph."
"So will you help me?" she asked, looking him in the eyes. It hurt, but she needed him to so she could have some project to drown herself in; muggle school was too boring for that. Brom paused, scrutinizing her as if to ascertain her commitment.
"Fine," he conceded, his face unreadable. "But you have to listen to me and not try anything on your own."
"All right." Apparently I have a listening problem. I might as well learn now. Maybe it would keep her from making stupid selfish decisions again in the future.
"Let's get started then. Grab that large blue book off the top shelf and clear a space," he said nodding towards the worktable. "Start reading." Kat grabbed the thick, dusty volume and blew the dust off the cover. Fun. She gingerly replaced the jumble of texts from a chair and table to a corner of the room, merely distributing the mess. She dumped her bookbag down with a thud and sat, opening the book to the first page.
Chapter 1: Magical Theories
She clenched her fist under the table without realizing it. He wasn't going to discourage her that easily. Seven hundred pages of understanding magic using the ancient language. Piece of cake.