Emray sat on a bench outside the Instruction Hall, letting the chill winter wind whip across her scarf-covered face as the skyships passed overhead. The slate grey sky punctuated by the occasional shimmer of teal from the engines overhead helped Emray steel her resolve for the coming night.
All day students had been hurrying to and fro, chattering and gathering their fine clothes for the Winter’s Night Festival. At Professor Marigold’s suggestion Emray had gone out and gotten a more formal robe to wear with her student’s stipend, although he did foot some of the expense. The fabric was an earthy amber color with some autumnal orange highlights, which the lady at the store said complemented her bright hazel eyes and added some richness to her exceedingly pale skin. She had also been given a pair of clip-on topaz earrings held in place with a brass bezel, to complement her dirty blonde hair. Emray loathed having to have spent one-hundred and twenty gold pieces on such a frivolous purchase, but such was the price of cozying up to her peers. A few of the ladies in the market square had made some jealous glances at her purchase, so she must’ve at least gone to a decent tailor.
Emray’s robe still hung on its hanger, covered by a brown paper protector and slumped next to her on the bench as she stared into space. So consumed was she with the existential dread of extended socialization that she didn’t here the crunching of boots in snow until the sound’s maker was hovering over her with a grin of smug satisfaction.
“Look who decided to join the common rabble for an evening,” Luxom said, letting the words slide out of his mouth like honey.
“Not by choice, if you must know,” Emray replied, eyes still focused on the sky above her.
“The person who could force the mighty and reclusive Emray Alvurshi to get out for an evening of carousing and revelry must be quite the powerful personality. I simply must meet them!”
“If you’re going to keep making smart remarks, you may as well sit down. I’m in no mood to be talked down to in the most literal sense of the term.”
With a flourish of his tail sliding through the snow, Luxom sat down, sidling Emray’s new outfit away to make room. He also caught a look at the robes themselves, but Emray didn’t much care since everyone would be seeing it soon enough.
“Not a bad purchase,” Luxom remarked, “but I doubt you asked me to sit just so we could swap fashion tips while I prod at you with my rapier wit.”
Emray didn’t acknowledge him, but didn’t try to dissuade him either. She just stared at the sky, seeing how long she could tolerate his presence.
“I mean, far be it for me to make a judgement considering recent events,” Luxom continued, “but something tells me that you’re looking for a friendly ear and you don’t quite know how to ask for it without sounding rude.”
“You don’t have ears, so that can’t be it,” Emray replied, eliciting a hearty laugh from Luxom.
“Do my not-ears deceive me, or did you just tell a joke?”
“I made an observation that some may find humorous based on your draconic physiology and an idiom you recently employed,” Emray replied with a smirk. “So yeah, I guess I did.”
“Well if you have jokes inside that cold, bitter soul of yours then maybe there’s hope for you yet,” Luxom said, giving Emray a friendly punch to the shoulder.
Emray and Luxom sat for a long moment as she worked up the nerve to say something, anything, but Luxom beat her to the punch before she could.
“I think this is the single longest period of time I’ve been in your presence without you telling me to go away, so I’m gonna guess that my assumption was right?” Luxom asked.
Emray looked over at him, her eyes drifting onto his orange orbs with their slitted pupils. His face had the sort of quality that always seemed like he was on the verge of a smart remark, but it was now tinted with something like genuine concern.
“I’m not actually as mean as people think I am,” Emray began.
“That’s debatable, but go on,” Luxom interjected.
“Fair point, but I’m really not; I just don’t care about senseless stuff like other people do. I don’t like needless socializing, or fancy parties, or things that require a lot debate, conjecture, and talking in circles. Is that weird?”
“To answer your question, kind of,” Luxom replied, “but more to the point, why do you suddenly care what people think about you? If there’s one thing I think everyone has pinned about you, it’s that you don’t care about their opinions.”
“I’m going to assume you know about what happened between me and Elifas?”
“Whole Tower does,” Luxom answered. “It was kind of obvious when she walked into practicals with a bandage on her face and you were nowhere to be seen.”
“Then let me disabuse whatever the rumor mill has cooked up; it was a misunderstanding, but it was one caused by my overreaction to a sore subject. I slapped her when she brought up said subject during one of her trances, and I didn’t understand what was happening until it was way too late.”
“She once predicted my death during one of those,” Luxom added. “Said it’d be surrounded by friends and loved ones somewhere cold. I didn’t sleep great that night, I’ll tell you that.”
“And that’s the problem I’m having!” Emray continued. “You were able to brush of her casual prediction of how you’re going to die, but she mentions that the path I’m on isn’t what my parents would want for me and I go ballistic.”
“So you’re going to the festival tonight to try and get better at reading people and managing your emotions? Sounds kind of selfish if you ask me.”
“Is it? That one outburst has set me back by a year while I redo classes I’ve already done, forced me to take a class I’m not at all interested in or confident about, and gotten me barred from the lab. I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong so maybe I can make up for that to myself, to Irhüm, and to Professor Marigold.”
“And what about Elifas?” Luxom asked, sharply and with a bite to his words that Emray had never heard from him before. “She’s the one you hurt most with your little fit. She’s gonna have to spend tonight with a massive, unsightly conversation piece strapped to her face instead of the make-up that I’m sure she’s been working on for weeks because you couldn’t keep your anger under control. She’s gonna get stares from people all night at an event she set up and you’re concerned with how this is affecting you?”
Emray opened her mouth to speak, only to be brusquely cut off by Luxom.
“No, don’t try to talk your way out of this with me,” he continued, standing up. “You know what your real problem is? People only matter to you if they can help you in some way. You use people for their skills or their connections, but you don’t ever connect to anyone!”
“That is not true!” Emray retorted as she stood to face him. “I have people that I care about!”
“Name one, just one person, that you actually value as a person and not a convenient set of skills to advance your agenda,” Luxom shot back, folding his arms and leaning back.
“Professor Marigold is a very good friend of mi—”
“He’s your teacher on top of being one of the best artificers in the world,” Luxom interjected. “You cozy up to him because he has knowledge you can plumb the depths of in your field of interest and a recommendation from him could set you up with any of the Ronston guilds once you graduate. Try again.”
Emray tried to come up with another example, anyone else that she could think of as a friend, and found to her dismay that Marigold was the only one that could come to mind.
“Your silence speaks volumes, Emray,” Luxom said. “Have a hint from me about how this ‘caring about people’ thing works; you’re only doing it right when the people in the gutter have as much worth as the people in the castles.”
Without another word, Luxom turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Emray feeling far worse than she had before. The wind howled, and only now did she feel how cold it really was.
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