A Good Start
I’m up early to document and shelve the couple books that were left overnight.
I feel like it may disappoint Mistress Vincenza that I couldn’t get even a kiss, but I feel strangely not disappointed with myself. If she sees me working happily, maybe she’ll ignore my mildly grievous failure?
“I heard you coming home last night.” Her movement behind me is quiet, but definitely startling. “The time was completely reasonable. Did it go well?”
“Yes!” I turn around, face beaming. “She agreed to a second date, and it’s going to be when I’m ghoul hunting this weekend!”
She sighs into a smile, fleeting but real. “It’s good you aren’t heartbroken. Your lesson is delayed, but not your homework. The next book for you to read is under your door. The Lich’s Memoir: Abridged.”
“D-did—Hold on. Did you place that there when you thought I was heartbroken?”
“Yes.” She straightens her body and face back into her calm, authoritative self. “You are expected to read it in the next eight days so I can review your understanding of the topics before you leave.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, Mistress. Repeat yourself, this time with proper honorifics.”
“Sorry. Okay, Mistress.”
“That’s an improvement. And ‘okay’ isn’t professional, but I’ll be kind.” She retreats to the desk.
And I follow. “She made me order chips.”
“Hanna?”
“Yes. She—Do I have to add ‘Mistress’ after that yes?”
“You know you don’t,” she growls with thinning tolerance.
“I’m sorry.” I thought it’d be cute to say and… “Are all Ringborn so touchy?”
“Isn’t your friend a Ringborn? Is she touchy?”
“Not with me.”
“Then it’s just the Ringborn who are paid to be touchy.”
I rub my arm. “Did I cost you a lot for that date?”
“You won’t be punished for failure to get laid. Or choice.”
“But I do have to do it eventually, right?”
“A kiss works too, sometimes less.” She spins her eyes. “A week is nothing in the eyes of a necromancer. Did you notice how young our patrons typically look?”
“Very?”
“Sure. Very. They’re practiced enough to look the age of their choice as long as they arbitrarily prefer. So will you, should you land into one that looks good on you.”
“Do you think I look good enough at this age?”
“Age can only ever be gained with time; it carries proof that you’ve existed. You may be attractive if you keep this face, but you will forever be perceived as an inexperienced teenager, even as centuries pass.”
“Is that why you chose to look old?”
“You—“ Her fist curls and her voice struggles against itself to strain out, “I didn’t have the same choices you did. Necromancy wasn’t even a legal form of study until I was thirty.”
Thirty… The Immortal Queens took the throne thirty years ago… Woah.
I offer a conciliatory, “it looks nice on you anyway.”
“Your platitude is empty, apprentice.“ She snaps, “take a floor walk.”
“Sorry.”
“Is she finally overworking you?” Piero asks.
“No, she’s just keeping me off the desk.” I pick a cigarette butt off the floor. “Is she typically kinder to her apprentices?”
He hastily excuses, “you’re different. And, besides that, how’s having magic?”
“What?”
“Necromancy requires study, but there’s so many basic things you can do now!
Remember, focus on your eyes, and not just these two.
” He taps under his eyelids. “Your mind’s eye is the most important one.
The Ring doesn’t understand Roversellan, so you have to speak to it in concepts if you’re trying to make it give you a spell. ”
“That’s helpful. When I can access the Ring, I’ll remember that.”
“You can’t access it yet?” His eyes widen. “Oh, you poor thing. I couldn’t imagine she’d be mad at you for that. Don’t take her anger to heart; it’s towards someone you’ve never met.”
I grip tightly onto a bundle of my hair. “I didn’t really fail. We’re having our second date at the end of the week.”
And now, his eyes have narrowed. “...Uncomfortable?”
“I didn’t know her that well. We’ll be able to socialize better while hunting ghouls anyway.”
“You know, it really is just a kiss. It won’t last as long, but it’s just one kiss. And after starting patronization, it’s easily kept up with smaller acts like hugs. Like a needle prick, it’s just one little uncomfortable pinch and you’re done.”
The comparison gives me a shiver which runs deep into my blood.
“Or are you uncomfortable because of your own girlfriend? If that’s it, you can always invite her; I’m sure Vincenza will cover you both.”
Why did he assume…
I test him with, “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Then just listen to my original advice!”
This is an entirely traditional necromancer’s garb. What do people see in it that’s so homosexual? It’s not overwhelmingly inaccurate, but I’m still deadly curious.
“W-what if I had something other than a girlfriend?” I ask.
“A… otherfriend?”
Is he struggling to find a word for an ungendered companion? I guess I don’t really know the proper term either.
I’ll ask Vincenza if she thinks I look gay. Whatever. “Uh, have a good day, Piero.”
“And to you, Vincenza’s lovely apprentice.”
I keep to cleaning up the floor before returning to her. Work will make my apology seem more sincere, won’t it? I hope it will, because it’s mildly tiring my arms out.
Mistress Vincenza’s latest project was for me to shift the shelves until all the spacing was equal, and fuck me, nothing in ‘youth literature’ is in order.
And I can’t shift it until it’s in order.
And once it’s in order, everything I shifted before my last break is slightly messed up and needs to be fixed.
Who even comes here to read youth literature?
“Catarina, you’ve been here for nearly twenty minutes. That’s far too long. You can stop here and return to the desk,” she orders in a voice still callous, hovering over me.
I grind my teeth. “I’m sorry about insulting you, earlier.”
“Insult? I know you didn’t think you were insulting me, and I wasn’t under such an illusion either.”
“C-can—Can I ask why I shouldn’t have said that, Mistress?”
“What?” She glares from above. “Your question isn’t malicious; you won’t be punished for it.”
“Will it be an—“
“No.”
I step around her. “I’ll take the desk then.”
“Great.” She continues opposite of me, towards Piero.
Absolutely, every part of me wants to eavesdrop. Except all my guilt and shame which demands that I march back and take order at the front.
The sheets cover me. The walls sing. The wind whispers. Yet, I can’t stop repeating those words.
“Guilt and shame,“ I mouth without vocalization.
There’s something to how they feel; I want to be closer to them. Because they’re all I can feel.
My chest has gone empty. And it’s obvious why: my life has gone empty. My happiness—my goals and all my future—is locked behind a dream I’ve fallen so head first into that I haven’t even internalized its price.
I need a patron. But I need to play gymnastics to fall for someone.
I need to try. But I don’t believe that I can.
I need to be hopeful. But I can’t even want what I need to hope for.
I need to want magic. But my mind won’t let me want something so foreign and impossible.
The space of my chest hollows further and further with each thought, each excuse to justify my sad existence. It can’t be that, can it?
No, it’s the anxiety of being hated by Mistress Vincenza, being useless to her, that weighs on me. Her limited pride gave me something close to purpose. If she looked at me and smiled, for even a moment, the emptiness would go away.
There’s no sleeping like this.
I jump from bed and flee into the night to purchase my repentance.