21
Zachariah Fry
I hate the start of a new semester. To be frank, I hate this fucking place. I have been teaching here for so fucking long, and every year it is the same thing repeatedly. People come to me not knowing how to access their magic, or what even it is, and I help them and watch as they find their center, or I watch a center find all her perfect fucking males. Each year it is the same thing, repeatedly, and it’s never fucking me.
This year, though, it feels like it could be different, and I hate the way it fucking makes me feel. I have had thoughts like this before, and have been fucking let down every time. But unlike all the other times, my body is reacting. I know she’s here somewhere. When I was walking into the class, I caught her scent; it reminded me of snowfall on a crisp winter day. My cock has been rock fucking hard since I caught her scent. Being hard isn’t something new for me, but not having to fucking coax myself to get hard at first, has been a surprise. My heart has been beating out of my chest and feels like I am out of breath.
She has to be close, maybe in another classroom? I don’t see her in the five girls in this class. I would know the second I see her, or so I am told. Grabbing my attendance paper, I skim over every name. Just doing a rough head count, one of my students is missing. Our fucking pompous ass new Dean has listed all the students by sex, males first, and then the females, all of course by how powerful they are supposed to be. Each female has a number next to their name, indicating how many matches they are supposed to have. Having six females in my class is more than I have had in attendance for a few years. Maybe we are finally starting to bounce back as a race.
I begin calling out the names on the list. Not really paying attention to anyone in particular, as they call out here or some other shit like that. Once I start on the females, the first one on the list was the one who thought she could pout and throw a fucking fit because I moved her to the back of the room.
“Clarissa Augustus.” Oh, that explains the attitude and who “daddy” is. Fuck if I care, she’s here in my class and in here, my word is fucking law. I pinch the bridge of my nose as her nasally voice calls present. My god she is going to give me a fucking headache if I have to listen to her say more than three words a day. I call out the remaining names on the list and call out the last one on the list, knowing she isn’t here. As soon as her name leaves my mouth, I hear a muted whisper, a scratchy, damaged voice say something. Everyone irrupts into whispers.
“EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP. FARLEN NO-LAST-NAME. If you are here, stand up and make yourself known.”
The darkness in the corner of the room begins to move. I fucking wish I had a shifter's eyesight or hearing. Slowly, a small wisp of a girl steps into the row of seats in front of her, and into the light. Every fucking nerve ending in my body feels like I was just hit by a lightning strike.
She is maybe four feet two inches tall, and she is rail thin. Every inch of her skin that is in view is covered in scars and she is wearing sunglasses. Fucking god, the “special” case all the Instructors were notified about. She stands there in the light and her lips are moving, but I can’t hear what she is saying.
“THE NEXT FUCKING PERSON TO SPEAK THAT ISN’T FARLEN WILL SPEND THE REST OF THE SEMESTER IN THE HALLWAY.”
I can’t take my eyes off her. When I started to yell at the assholes in this room, she flinched and started to shake. She takes a few deep breaths and moves her lips again, speaking. Those fucking lips, even those have scars covering them. As she stands there in the light, the beams bouncing off her snow white hair, I finally fucking get it. I finally understand the drive some of these assholes show towards their centers. After one hundred and eighty years of teaching at this fucking hellhole, she’s finally here.
My phone vibrates on my desk, making me break my eye contact with her. I still can’t hear a fucking thing she is saying, though. Looking around the room, there are a lot of empty chairs, but I’m not even sure I could hear her if she was sitting in the front row. I point at one guy in the front row.
“Grab one desk and put it next to mine. NOW.”
He jumps up and grabs a desk and slams it on the ground next to my desk.
“Alright then, so I can make sure you aren’t fucking forgotten in the back corner of the room, Farlen. Your new seat is going to be right here for the entire semester. Or until you can learn to project your voice at a volume louder than what a mouse can hear.” A few people in the class laugh at that. I wasn’t trying to be fucking funny. How can anyone hear her at all?
She shuffles around and grabs her bag and a small recording device, and makes her way to the front of the class. She sits down at her desk, hiding behind her hair. This close to her, I can smell her. Just like I caught out in the hallway. Snowfall on a crisp winter morning. I can’t just stand here and stare at her, and I am going to need to notify the school as soon as this class is over.
“Now, one last time, Farlen No-last-name.”
Her sitting this close, I hear her whisper in a voice that is so raspy and broken that all I see is red.
“Here or some shit like that.” I can’t stop the laugh that comes out of me. She took those instructions quite literally. She jumps again at my laugh. I check my attendance sheet. Next to her name it says 1/7. So she has a match already. I am going to need to meet him so I can figure out more about our match. I change the 1 to a 2.
Turning back to the board and adjusting my dick, I begin to write about the different classes of magic on the board. I hear pens and pencils scratching against paper around the room. Once I have a good bit of information on the board, I look around the room. Farlen doesn’t have any paper out, or any writing utensils. What a fuckin worthless match she has if he hasn’t gotten her any of this stuff yet. I grab some paper off my desk and hand them to her, along with a pencil. She takes them and sets them on the desk in front of her. She adjusts the pencil in her hand a few times before she begins to write. Happy she is writing this shit down, I look towards the rest of the class.
“Alright, now we are going to go over what each class of magic feels like inside of you. I want all of you to reach deep inside of you to where you feel your magic. I don’t want you to try to pull it out. I want you to just touch it, get a feeling for how it feels, how it flows through your body, and where it is located inside you. I will start with the first on the list and make our way down. Hopefully, by then, we will determine your class of magic.” I glance over at Farlen. She still hasn’t gotten very far into her notes. She writes something down, then erases it fast and tries again.
I can’t focus just on her, even though every fiber of my being is begging me to go over to her and see if she needs any help. I look at the first name on my list, supposedly the most “powerful” individual I have in my classroom.
“Alright Anthony, stand up and try to feel for your magic.” I watch him as he closes his eyes. Why do they all close their fucking eyes when they do that? You can still access your magic with your eyes open. It's fucking safer that way.
“When you think you have found it and can touch it, raise your hand.” I wait for a few minutes and he raises his hand. Took him long enough. I let my own powers wash over me, calling them to my eyes and focusing on him. His power looks like a swirling thunderstorm. I study it for a few minutes to see if there are any other storm-like powers that are going to show themselves. When nothing else shows, I nod.
“Alright, put your fucking arm down, you could access your magic, and your power is based on storm magic, you will be attending classes with the druids, as your power is a force of nature, and they deal with all nature.”
I make a note on his file on my computer, which will send a notification out to the druid instructors. They will decide which class he is in.
I glance over at Farlen to see how she is coming on her notes. She is still on the first fucking sentence. How is she this slow at writing?
Shaking my head, I will figure it out later. Calling on the next name on my list, he follows the instructions of the previous student. Little miss nasally claps her hands and is calling out platitudes to the fuck. If that was me, my magic would shrivel up and curl away from me to have her voice directed at me. As she still calls out to him, I finally feel my boner start to shrink, well I guess that is one benefit to the annoying as fuck female. She’ll keep my raging boner under control around my match.
“Sit down and shut the fuck up so he can concentrate.” She purses her lips and sits down in a huff. I keep my eyes on him and wait for him to raise his hand. After about ten minutes, I have him sit down. I glance over to see how Farlen is doing. Seeing as she is still writing, I move onto the next student.
I make it through five of my thirty-two students. Only two of them could access their magic.
“Alright everyone, before we meet again in two days, I want you to practice feeling for your magic. I want you to feel deep within you, to where you should feel the pulsing and swirling of your magic, and for the love of all the fucking Gods, do it with your eyes open. Closing them could cost you your life one day. So practice doing it with your eyes open. Center yourself, and find your calm. It will be easier to do in a quiet place at first, but have someone you trust close by in case it escapes and causes some havoc. Do not attempt to do anything else with it, just find it, and remember the way it feels when you do find it. Before you leave for the day, come see me, and I will give you your class schedule. This is subject to change as we determine your type of magic.”
Everyone begins to put their stuff away, and I glance over at Farlen. She is still writing down the things from the board. Anthony walks over to my desk, and I print off his new class schedule. As I hand the paper to him, I hear a phone go off near me. I glance around to see who left their fucking phone on in my class. Farlen has her phone in her hand and is pressing on the screen.
She looks at it and looks around the room, like she is trying to find someone. She doesn’t see what she is looking for and taps on the screen again.
“New match found for Farlen's no-last-name date of birth 46th day of midsummer. Match name is Zachariah Fry Incubus, date of birth 1st day of winter. Location of the match is North West Academy, in the North West Territory.”
You could hear a pixie fart in the room with how quiet it was. Everyone is looking between Farlen and I. As more and more students come forward to get their papers, some males clap me on the shoulder and congratulate me. Fuck, they need to get the hell out of here so I can contact the fucking administration and let them know before the rumors spread like wildfire.
As more and more of the students make their way out of the class, I notice a male standing out in the hallway, eyes never leaving Farlen. He looks like he is a few inches shorter than me. He is wearing glasses and is standing there waiting, his arms crossed and one leg propped against the wall behind him. I swear I can see the hearts in his eyes as he just stares at her. This must be her other match, either that, or someone is about to get a fucking fist through their teeth for looking at her like that.
As the last male in the group gets his paper, I wave the stranger into the room, making the females wait a minute. He walks in and glances around. He stops next to Farlen and crouches down to her. And is whispering to her. She is nodding her head at him or just looking down at her hands. So someone she knows. Shifting my attention back to the females in line, I hand them their paperwork, tempted to add a healing schedule for nasally but bite back on my vindictiveness, and get them all out of here.
As the last one leaves, I am just here with Farlen and the other male. He is standing up, his arms crossed over his chest, fists curling up and relaxing, then curling up again. He walks over and closes the door to the classroom, then puts his hands on Farlen's shoulders and squeezes them, never taking his eyes off mine.