Continued, The Arcane Arts
From: Storer.Ellsbeth
To: Rawlins.T.M.
Subject: Re: Obscuration
Dear Professor,
Is it just me, or is there now something deliciously and terribly charged about me calling you “Professor”?
It was nice to come home and see your email, but I confess you hadn’t left my brain in the intervening time at all.
I’ve half convinced myself that I’m misremembering, that it couldn’t have felt that good, and then I read a few sentences of yours and I’m positive my memory is actually underplaying just how perfect your skin felt on mine.
What was I supposed to be talking about again?
Oh. Yes. Obscuration. I’m aware that my certainty makes me sound a little na?ve, but I genuinely do think it’s possible for the basic principles of writ magic to be applied to human psychology and the brain cells that convince us we’re in charge when we’re making a decision.
I’ve been reading a lot of Apogodric’s work—his theories on whether writ magic could be applied to the self seem like they could be a helpful jumping-off point, because the purpose of his research was bypassing the decision-making portion of the brain, but I keep running into brick walls.
Is it possible this is the wrong approach entirely? What do you think, Professor?
Professor. God. Now I’m distracted again, imagining you asking me to stay after class.
Telling me to lift my skirt and spanking me with a ruler as punishment for going down this utterly useless Apogodric rabbit hole.
Am I a bad feminist, do you think, for how much this co-ed cliché turns me on?
The power dynamic of you being my adviser, of telling me what to do?
Because…it does. I admit that when we were in the Practicum testing my writ magic ritual, there was a moment when my breath caught because I imagined all of the terrible things I wanted you to do to me while my wrists were bound.
It feels like I might need to test a more powerful version of that ritual if my thesis is going to be as excellent as I want it to be.
Maybe, just for the intellectual challenge, I’ll write a ritual that binds one’s wrists and ankles.
I think it should probably last longer than two minutes, don’t you?
x
Ellsbeth