The Door To All Marvels

A Matter of Money Immaterial (2)

“Right. Well, the assignment is about the natural transformations… which is a totally bs assignment anyways, I that basically nobody knows how those actually work anyways.” Compared to Mingtian, instructor Bao was… incompetent was a harsh word, but also not totally inaccurate. “Bad news, that means there’s no real right answer, and a whole lot of wrong ones. news, we can pretty much put down whatever we want so long as we use enough fancy terms.” That earned another snort of laughter from Avyr. “Let’s see…” she pulled up her homework sheet, and focused and—Time really flew.

Almost before she knew it, late-morning sunlight was streaming in through the windows, catching on scattered wrappers and more than one empty mug of tea. Avyr, of course, had drunk his own herbal brews— which was a shame because the tea he’d chosen had actually been good— and they were out of homework to do. Qi theory had gone by fast, history had been a slog but also pretty easy for the most part, the less said about formations the better… the only annoying one had been guided studies, and that was more because she couldn’t help Avyr with his homework at . How he could keep on top of all those different types of plants, and their varieties, and their … all she knew was the difference between and , and . Heavens forbid she come across a flowering tree…

She snorted to herself at the thought, leaning back in her chair and sipping some more on her fifth and definitely she swore this time for real mug of tea. “Next…” there wasn’t anything next. Still… it was a . They couldn’t very well just sit around and do nothing. “The library should be open around this time. I’ll go grab whatever Mingtian has written up for me today, and get to work on that.”

“Wait a second, would you? So eager to abandon me here?”heless. “The Dragonspine Mountains were… cold. And to think that I spent most of my time in a sauna and left with the impression that they were frigid…” he shook his head, wryly. “But they were , too. I won’t go so far as to say that East Saffron is — there is a great deal of benefit, to living in the heart of civilization like this. Everything is so to get to, so long as you have a bit of money. Out in the wilderness, though…”

“It’s freer, isn’t it?”

“In a sense.” He was silent for a long while, not looking her way, bathed— for a moment— in that spilled over sunlight. Long enough that Lily almost started to worry that she’d offended him somehow— “nostalgic,” he finally whispered, the faint mewl of it carrying through the small room. “It was . I hadn’t lived in the wilds like that since… since I fled to the northern continent.” Lily didn’t make a peep— it was rare, for Avyr to talk about where he’d come from.

She understood, she supposed. She didn’t bring up her parents. Avyr didn’t often bring up his.

One small strange fragment of understanding, shared between them. What an odd empathy…