Talent || Variable twenty

Unlike Cacao’s classroom, where all the seats had been assigned by the teacher, this time the tables had no names on them.

Upon entrance, the students were told to stand under the blackboard by the teacheress, who welcomed each one of them at the door. Once all the students were inside, Sorrel Cave closed the classroom's door, then took a long look at everyone before she said, "good morning."

Confused, but still remembering what Cacao told them, they responded with, "good morning, professor".

"Very good," she smiled at them. "As you can see, you’ll be sitting in pairs at the same table for a year," she pointed at the desks. "So I want to make sure I can assign the best seats for you. Since not many people like to sit in the front, we'll start there. So, whoever wants to sit in the front, please raise your hand."

Six students raised their hands, among them Aspen.

"Six? That's great, please come over here," she beckoned them to approach her.

She discussed their preferences with them. Two seats, next to the wall, were promptly taken, and soon three out of five tables were assigned.

"Okay, can I have four more people? Anyone else brave enough to sit near the teacher?" she looked at Linden, who tried to back off and hide behind other students.

After seeing that, Yew sighed and stepped forward.

"Great," she applauded him. "Since there are no other candidates, you may choose, which of the remaining four seats you want."

Without hesitation, Yew sat at the left side of the second desk in the frontmost row. In the same row, across from him, Aspen was already sitting at the right side of the first desk.

For a moment Spruce looked bewildered at his friend's daring choice. However, after a brief consideration, he stepped out as soon as the teacheress asked for another student.

As the only volunteer, he was also allowed to choose from the remaining three seats. Obviously, he sat at the same desk as Yew.

The last two seats in the front row were hardest to fill, but starting with the second row, there were more and more students volunteering to take a seat.

Linden sat in the last row by the wall - farthest away from his mother.

The whole process of getting everyone seated, as well as getting them equipped with textbooks, notebooks and pens, took so long that there wasn't much time left for the actual class. Sorrel Arfaj Averin Cave, who anticipated it, briefly introduced herself, then set a short lesson explaining some basic concepts.

"We'll talk about two kinds of magic: spells and charms," she began the explanation. "Spells are active, and charms are passive. I'll show you an example."

She stretched out her hand toward the lonely chair in the corner under the blackboard, then turned her hand around, so that her palm faced upward. In response to her gesture, the chair lifted off the ground and began levitating.

"This is a spell. It lasts only as long as I concentrate in order to actively control my magic. If I were to lose concentration..." Suddenly the chair dropped to the floor with a loud bang. "This is what happens. The spell ends up interrupted."

Afterward, she approached the chair, and put her hand on it. She kept her hand in place for several moments. When she stepped back, the chair began levitating again.

"This is a charm," the teacheress said. "It will continue, even after I leave this classroom. However, charms aren’t eternal. Over time, they lose their effectiveness, and eventually they die out. As charms become weaker, they also become easier to break."

She turned toward the classroom.

"Charms and spells vary in strength, which is unrelated to magical talent. Your talent only decides how fast you learn, not how powerful your magic is. The power of magic is dependent on two other factors, which you’ll need to train while learning magic. The first one is stamina, which decides how long you can use magic, before you’re too tired to continue. Stamina is not only important for magic, but also for other activities of the body. If I organized a race, and had you run until you’re out of breath, we could easily see, who has the most stamina in this class."

She winked at the students.

"The second factor is concentration. It will be important for you to start early, because that is where the true power of your spells and charms comes from. Concentration means paying attention. No matter how much magical talent you possess, you won’t be able to cast even one simple spell, if you don’t concentrate on what you’re doing."

She looked at the clock above the door. "Before you leave the classroom today, I want to show you something."

She turned her palm toward the scrolls standing in the corner behind the chair, which was still levitating. She moved her hand gracefully, as if she was dancing, and one of the scrolls levitated to the ceiling. Then Sorrel used her other hand to draw something like an inverted number three in the air, which caused the scroll to unroll.

"Can anyone tell me what is on this scroll?" she asked but everyone in the class remained still.

Yew, who was sitting in the first row, could clearly see the ink, but had no idea what it could possibly be, so he decided not to answer. The scroll content was full of random lines and dots of ink and didn’t look like anything in particular. Sorrel smiled, rolled back the scroll, put it away, then opened another one.

"And how about this one?"

Once again there was no answer. She repeated the same question for the third and fourth scrolls, with the same mute response from her students.

On the first three scrolls, Yew saw nothing but lines and dots, but on the fourth one, he saw something like a faint image among the lines and dots, but he still couldn’t tell exactly what it was.

Sorrel smiled at the students. "I’m sorry, if you think that I'm making fun of you. I know that most people see nothing on these scrolls, but actually those are images - very beautiful paintings. However, these paintings were created with powerful magic, so that only the most magic-talented people can see them."

She looked lovingly at the scrolls.

"It is a tradition of Hecate, to always show these paintings to the new students in order to check if we have any exceptionally talented individuals. I was shown these scrolls on my fourth day in Hecate, and all I could see were two lines on the first painting, and one line on the other three. I was very confused at that time, because no one else could see it."

She turned her head around and once again looked at the students. "Please don't feel bad, if you haven’t seen anything. That’s normal. It doesn’t happen often that we have a student with an exceptional talent."

Yew listened to the teacheress, and was glad that he didn’t speak up. If he had said anything, his magicless cover would have been blown up with a huge explosion, figuratively speaking. He already knew that he had a magical talent, and maybe, a fairly above average magical talent, but an exceptional talent was a bit too much. Thus his determination to keep his magical talent a secret grew even stronger.

"Professor Sorrel?" someone asked in the back of the class.

"Yes, lad?" she responded with a nod.

"You said you saw two lines, but were there others, who saw more than that?"

"Of course," she answered. "In the history of our school, there were many who could see more than that. Our chairman saw fourteen lines and two dots on one of the images when she started Hecate."

Yew was stunned speechless, when he heard the number fourteen. At that moment, he promised himself that he’d never ever speak of what he saw. If the school's chairman saw fourteen lines and two dots, then what would happen, if he told them that he saw more than fifty lines and another thirty or so dots?

"Professor Sorrel," Aspen raised his hand and spoke as soon as she nodded at him. "When you said that scrolls appear empty to us, do you mean that they should appear white in color?"

"That's correct," she answered, "white empty scrolls for most people, and black lines on white background for those exceptionally talented in magic."

Then Aspen calmly stated, "I saw a violet background on the first one, and the fourth scroll appeared to be dark blue."

Sorrel looked genuinely surprised. She glanced at the scrolls, which were standing back in the corner, then she spoke to Aspen, "did you really see colors?"

"I did," he nodded his head with certainty.

"Based on the records," she spoke faintly as if she was about to lose consciousness, "the first scroll is a painting of a meadow covered with violet flowers, and the fourth scroll is a painting of a starry snowy night. The most prominent colors on the fourth scroll are black and dark blue."

All the students stared at Aspen, including Yew and Spruce.

"But I’ve never heard of anyone seeing colors," Sorrel continued, while the whole class stared at Aspen with wide eyes and open mouths.

"I’ll need to ask the chairman," she said. "Stay here, and don’t leave. I’ll be back soon." She teleported out, soundlessly and without a trace, like an illusion.

"Are you kidding?" Spruce said toward Aspen, then he looked at Yew. "My roommate is a genius."

Aspen looked back at him, and other kids around also looked at Spruce.

Sorrel soon teleported back. She was smiling peacefully, as she said to the boy. "The chairman notified me that this has happened before. Although it didn’t happen in the last two hundred years, which is why I didn’t know about it. Seeing a different color on the scroll means that you have a very high level of concentration."

She glanced at Aspen before she turned to the rest of the class. "It’s something, which anyone can train to achieve. And if you want your spells to be strong, you’ll certainly need to practice concentration."

Suddenly a lot of kids in the class voiced their disappointment. They thought that they had a genius in class, but it turned out to be a typical hardworking student, who simply paid attention.

"Well, that’s all for today," she said. "Tomorrow I’ll tell you more. In the meantime, please start reading the first chapter in your book." She looked around the class, before she announced, "goodbye, students."

The students stood up and responded with, "goodbye, professor," then they hurriedly left the classroom. On their way out, some glanced at the levitating chair, wondering if it would continue to levitate tomorrow.

While leaving, Yew glanced at the teacheress, who gazed at Aspen with a difficult countenance. He knew that adults sometimes kept secrets. His own parents already taught him that. So, he didn’t really believe that Aspen saw the colors purely because of his concentration. There had to be something more to it. Sorrel knew that, but she wouldn’t tell them.