Exam Week

FALL TERM - November 3rd

I told Aisling about going out to the statuary with Aries and she had a different read on the situation. 

I hadn't meant to be talking at all. We were in the library, studying for exams. I had a practice astrological chart rolled out on the table in front of me and was supposed to be determining what kind of person this belonged to. A dull one, I'd decided. 

Aisling was flipping through a botany textbook, also bored. I don't know what really prompted me to tell her about it, but I did anyway. 

"So, Aries took you on a date," she said, a little too loud considering we were in a library.

I hushed her. Luckily no heads had turned. "No, of course not. It wasn't like that. This was just Aries being Aries." 

"You're not this dense, Zeph." Aisling slapped my hand. "You know how much he likes you. To lead him on is just cruel." It suddenly hit me just why my voice of reason sounded like Aisling. This tiny furious woman against all odds was telling me what I already knew, but didn't care to look at. 

"We're friends," I said. It seemed a bad time to bring up that I sometimes slept with people I considered friends at the Stag's Court. But this wasn't the Stag's Court. As to whether or not I would've slept with Aries… well, it wasn't worth really giving it much thought. Things were different there. Friends from back home knew from the start it was never serious. 

Aisling's glare sharpened. She wasn't going to drop this so easily.

"I'm not looking for a relationship. I told you that already," I said. 

"Well, obviously I know that, but does he? Did you tell him?" 

"Who's side are you on anyway?" Aisling slapped my hand again. This time it was loud enough a few mages at the next table over shot us a look. 

"I'm on your side, Zeph," she said. "I just don't want my friend acting like an ass."

I didn't like that Aisling was mad about this. It was an especially stupid thing for her to get hung up on, given it had nothing to do with her. But by dinner that night, when it was once again the four of us sitting together in the dining hall, I realized she wasn't completely in the wrong. The four of us had fallen into an easy routine over the course of the term. She probably didn't actually care whether or not I dated Aries. That wasn't important. It was about whether or not Aries and Noodle would still speak to either of us after this thing with Aries finally ran its course. I suspected, probably not. 

I was going to have to talk to him at some point. But for now, things were fine. Aries laughed at Aisling's jokes and kicked my leg under the table. Nothing had to change just yet. 

Nothing had even happened yet. I thought back on the day in the statuary, combing through the fine details. We'd talked. He'd confided in me and I'd listened. We practiced some spellcasting. There wasn't anything inherently romantic there. 

But then, he'd asked Kelyn Marblebrook about the statuary, hadn't he? A statue garden full of mildly suggestive marble figures. I knew how that sounded. And then, I'd gone and conjured roses out of season. I was showing off. He had to know that. But still, he'd plucked one of the roses and carried it with him back to the Court. 

I could have chosen any spell. I knew a few dozen at this point. Any one of them would have looked cool to Aries, but I'd chosen that one. I saw the rose bush and just acted. I knew how Aries would interpret it. I knew because of the way just looking at the statue of the naked minotaur had made him squirm. Because he'd gone out of his way to drag me and me alone all the way out there. I knew well enough what it was and given the chance to set him down lightly, I hadn't. 

Aisling's right. I am an ass. 

FALL TERM - November 6th 

This time around, no one had to remind me it was a full moon. I could feel the wolf clawing to get loose from the minute I woke up. I choked back half a bottle of the wolfsbane solution to tamp it down. The potion made the mark of Orendell on my bicep sting, but better that than worry about accidentally devolving into an animal. 

I kept more wolfsbane solution on hand to get through the rest of the day, though in recent weeks, I'd found it helpful to keep pretty much all the time. Whether it was Aries zapping me in the hall in passing or a stray spell in a duel during combat lessons, anything could wake the wolf. 

As far as how the full moon would go, Marblebrook had already excused me from attending coven meetings on those nights. Easy enough. Aries could now cast shadow step and didn't need my help getting to and from the Sanctum. Good. But as far as what to do about the whole painful shapeshifting into an animal? I really didn't have any formal plans. I was mostly just trying to wrap my head around the fact that that was part of my reality these days. 

Blackclaw pulled me aside after combat lessons. It wasn't so much that he liked me– in fact, I'm fairly sure he doesn't. But now that he knows this one little thing about me, it's like he sees me as some kind of pet project. As to be expected, I guess, from our resident werewolf expert. 

"You're coming with me tonight," he said. There were still a few student mages loitering after class. He wasn't going to say anything here to allude to the moon, I knew that. But also, it didn't really give me the room to argue. "You'll come to my office instead of going to your coven meeting and I'll be walking you north of campus."

I didn't like it, but well, he still knew more about any of this than I did. So, I nodded curtly and excused myself. 

It wasn't that I hadn't tried reading up on werewolves. There were books in the library, a scarce few, but I'd flipped through them already. Most were anthropological studies, one was a piece of romantic fiction that someone had mislabeled as memoir. I only needed to read a few pages before I realized it was smut. I checked it out with the others– it's one way to deal with a dry spell. 

The other books sometimes felt about as useful. It wasn't like Mesym had much of a reason to keep a book called Werewolves for Beginners: A Guide to Your First Full Moon. No, these were books for scholars who were not werewolves, written by other scholars who were also not werewolves. 

I leafed through a few hundred pages on werewolf community structures, family packs, historically significant werewolves– notably none of which were from Caburh– essays on family life, and mating practices. A few went into detail on werewolf biology, how physiology changed through stages of shifting, with detailed illustrations. It made me a little queasy thinking they'd probably gotten illustrations like these dissecting dead werewolves at various stages of the process. A few included mentioned fatality rates of new werewolves during their first shift, pretty much as Aries had described it, but the scholars circled back to vaguer wording: death due to causes unknown. 

All that was to say, I wasn't feeling any better about all of this when I'd gone to meet Blackclaw at his office. 

"Do you have everything you need?" Blackclaw asked. 

I raised up my little flask of wolfsbane solution. 

"Is that it?" 

"What else would I need?" I genuinely wanted to know. 

Blackclaw laughed. "For starters, last time you could have used an extra pair of trousers."

"I'd like to keep the ones I'm wearing in one piece actually."

Blackclaw kept laughing. I was beginning to get the sense that my life was the punchline. 

FALL TERM - November 10th

I haven't had much of a chance to jot anything down this week– it's exam week. I had a paper due for Sigils. A written astrological chart reading for Divination. A custom magical weapons design for Magical Weaponscrafting. And a mock duel for Blackclaw's class. If I know anything at all, it's that Divination will surely be the death of me, even if it is Marblebrook's class. 

Aisling kept asking if I've had a chance to talk to Aries. But it's exam week. I haven't. 

Aries is about as buried by the workload as I am. He's spent probably more time in the library than I have, usually in Aisling's chosen alcove, with the couch and the everblazing hearth. It seems like an especially bad time to break his heart. 

So instead, I sat with him on the loveseat and read through a few sections of my Divination textbook and let him sigh against my shoulder while he read through his book on Sigils. Aisling popped in and out, studying a little less, and Noodle dropped in a few times, but made it clear it was only for the company. He liked studying somewhere a little noisier if he could. 

It was only because Aisling and I ended up dining alone one night that any of this came up. Noodle had come by, scarfed down something quickly and with squinting, tired eyes, had announced that he was going to bed early tonight. Too much studying. And Aries was still in the library. He'd be working through dinner again trying to catch up to where he felt he'd ought to be. 

I too had spent too much time with my head in a book today and know I wasn't much good company like this. I was staring at the little black hairs on Aisling's cream cardigan when she said, out of the blue, "You can just admit you like Aries." 

"I told you already, we're friends," I said. I had said it enough by now that it finally felt true. 

"And you still haven't told him you won't date him… so maybe you changed your mind? I don't care if you did, but just tell him and let us all move on. Will you?" 

"It's exam week, Aisling," I said again. 

"But after we've got the Masquerade, then a break. You've got plenty of excuses, Zeph. The whole will-they won't-they is making me and Noodle sick." Of course Aisling and Noodle were conspiring over this. I'd been vaguely aware that they seemed to have their own private jokes now. It wasn't hard to imagine that most of them revolved around me and Aries. 

"Are you going to tell me about the dog hair on your sweater?" I asked. 

Aisling brushed her hand over the wool. The little black hairs clung on. "I probably just hugged Noodle or something."

"They're black, Aisling, not blond. Are you still harassing the groundskeeper?"

Aisling eyes flashed from hazel to amber. "Leave Brian out of this." 

I'd definitely touched a nerve there. It felt a little too good given how she'd just been digging at my love life. I pressed deeper. "Is Brian a part in any of this?" 

Aisling crossed her arms. "It doesn't even matter." Her tone alone told me that wasn't true. 

"Tell me anyway," I said. 

Aisling huffed. "Obviously Brian is cute or whatever, but… we cast that ritual to summon familiars almost a week ago. I know that it worked. I saw that it worked. And then just nothing? I just kind of thought if something was coming to meet us, it'd be here by now. So, I don't have a familiar. I still like the hounds with their stupid, droopy muzzles, and floppy ears. They're so silly. I keep thinking it would be nice to take one back to my room just to keep. Make one of them my familiar." 

"You've just been cuddling with the dogs?" 

Aisling's flashed a wicked grin. "I also learned a nifty little spell that unlocks all the kennel doors simultaneously. Brian hates it. But, yes, I like cuddling. What's wrong with that?"

"I could cuddle you," I said. 

"Pass. I've seen you cuddling with Aries, it's gross. I'm convinced you don't understand what platonic looks like." 

"Oh, come on." I threw open my arms. 

Aisling wrenched away. "Zeph, you really are the worst." She crossed her arms over her chest but let me pull her sideways into a half hug. She exhaled slowly and let herself go limp in my arms. "I know you're my friend and I'm not that lonely or anything, I just got my hopes up." 

"Maybe we can try a different summoning ritual. There's got to be others. It's not even like my grimoire had an explanation of what it meant by deathless familiar. Familiar we get, but as to what makes it 'deathless?' Even if it did work, maybe it was never a familiar summoning ritual to begin with." 

Aisling groaned into my shirt. "You're probably right." She was swaying slightly in my grip. It wasn't weird hugging her or anything, but I'm pretty sure it was a first. Given she was probably the best friend I'd ever had, it seemed a waste. I took that moment to go one step further and planted a light kiss on the top of her head. 

"Eww, Zeph," she squealed. "Why'd you have to make it weird?" 

But she'd grabbed my hand and kept me there, still hugging her anyway.