literature

The ones

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Eye of "primrose" –  nah that couldn't be it. What was that stupid flower called? I ought to remember. After all, the flower was calling me. No wizard has discovered its secrets. That's what the Archmage had said. And he looked at me, then added: "maybe that's your calling."

That however was the end of his lecture. Anticlimactically I might add. Because what came next seemed and felt so instantly menial that I had almost forgotten that I was even at a wizarding college but rather the ass end of a bad frat house joke. Chores. They wanted me to spend hours cleaning their crap. I hate dusting! So many thoughts raced in my mind over this proposition, and I think more now, in retrospect, than did at the time, full of that dazed and instant conformity. I'd do anything they asked and with a stupid smile on my face.

Everything was new. Even bloody dusting. I quickly brushed the exceptionally ordinary synthetic feather duster across, around, and not quite adequately behind all sorts of trophies and shiny golden things that stood on the ends of the bookshelves in…well I still have no clue what room that was. It was like a sort of library, only tiny. Maybe it will turn out to be a mere foyer for some grand spectacular mansion of books. Magically flying around per wizards' call. With a floating orrey or something in the middle. Who knows, the stuff this place might have. For all I know there will be an extra planet or two in the model of our solar system hanging above the librarians desk, twenty feet in the air. But then again probably not. This place has a way of not being anything like you'd expect or guess beforehand.

Dusting gave way to re-stocking pepper and junk like that in the mess hall. It didn't strike me as odd in the least when I replaced a tray of fresh herbs with every salt and pepper jacket. But once again looking back on it was the weirdest thing. I don't even know what it was either. Some half-bred combination of lemon grass and rosemary, or something similarly pungent. So much of it was unused and discarded, it seemed like a waste, but who was I to judge. I was just too excited by the whole flurry of new, that it didn't even occur to me that I was no more than a bus-boy. Clearing cold cups of old coffee, nothing magical about that. But you have to understand it was and is. Somehow everything magical in the universe all funnels down into removing someone else's hastily disregarded coffee cup.

There is more magic in not being disgusted or annoyed or repulsed by the chill brown aftermath of someone's laziness, than in wild architecturally impossible feats of design, or than in plants, barbed like thistle on steroids, moving of their own volition.

My mind kept going back to that little shop where I had seen the eye of, whatever. I don't know what else they had there or even what kind of shop it was. I just know there were those thorny husky ugly stalks, stalking me, and that flower calling. From the moment I saw it and the moment the Archmage singled me out I knew I would be the one to figure it out. Like it were my own personal Pandora, I would unleash its clandestine properties on the world.

With a certain amount of pride I can say that I was only mildly agitated by the way those strange stalks clung to my shirt. It itched, hurt and bled but it was only the time it took to carefully unstick it from my clothing that I noticed. That was time wasted, time I could be looking at everything else. Time I could be using to learn. But I was careful with the thing. It had the shape of a churro but additionally, as I mentioned, the slender but threatening thorns of several plants combined. And the freaking thing just kept following me like it was attracted to cotton tees, or me maybe.

After chores we ate. I didn't touch my tray of genetically altered herbs, but I'm sure in time I'll come to savor them, put them on weird things, like tapioca cups and devour them with all the fervor of any other aristocrat showing off to the newcomers. There was a speech. I don't remember it. I just remember the sodas, flavors that only exist in Europe, but made by American brands that don't make soda at all. Quaker Oats Passion fruit soda. It was the wrong color and lost its flavor before I could move an inch down the 32oz gas station style plastic cup. Whatever. It's like juice now anyway. No wonder there was no line for it. I even thought about making it "my thing" something disgusting that no one liked. It'd be quirky but I'd make it cool. Soon everyone else would be doing it and I'd no doubt get ribbed for being trendy.

Bedtime already! Well, I guess I didn't have much to complain about, I was tired and after all I'd have a whole life here. Studying, learning, practicing practical magic. I wondered what sort of pranks I'd get caught doing. What sort of incredibly dangerous mistakes I'd stumble my way into. As I walked toward the dormitory I'd been showed on the tour, I thought about that flower again. The Eye of…What?! Then it occurred to me, why was remembering its name such an arduous task? The Archmage, I'm sure would tell me again, or the shop owner. Surely she'd have to know.

The things you think of climbing a crap ton of regular ordinary stairs. I reached the terrace after so many others. It was a sort pre-lights out free for all. I walked alone. There was someone I recognized in the mess hall, but I didn't feel like talking. Besides, she was someone I knew from a previous life, in the normal world. And to be honest I didn't care much for her there. I'll call her Brenda. Just because I don't like her doesn't mean I shouldn't spare her, or myself I guess, the embarrassment. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Anyway the terrace. Oh the terrace. What a spectacular and ridiculous place it was. Laid out before me, no longer "inside" the sun beat down from above. Maybe that is my memory from the tour mixing in but I swear it was even at bedtime. Dead center across the great cobblestone paved expanse, like a European town square, there were more stairs. They led up to the more veteran students' pads. Trees off to the right, but I hadn't gone over there yet and it was too far to see what was beyond them. The girls dorms I think. I went left. Toward a span of something curious, overlooked by the stairs and the older kids on them, was a sort of pit. Or rather a broken war zone mess of architecture. It should be condemned.

Dropping about a story or so the cobblestone gave way to a sandy beach-like dune. But it wasn't smooth or pretty. It was littered with ugly jagged crystals, razor sharp and stained crimson and blue with first years' blood. I have no clue what or why the blue stains were. Some reaction between the white blood cells and the magical properties of the crystals? Maybe it was the blood of some non-human students but I hadn't seen any. Who knew. Right now I had to figure out how to get down this thing because beyond it was my dorm. As I tried negotiating my way around the cruel geode gauntlet, stepping once or twice hesitantly into the sand and retracting my foot back again, I sighed. I wasn't going to get through this unscathed. It must have been some sort of hazing or ritualistic prank. Should I go get the Archmage or some other staff to fix the broken stair or ramp or whatever else might have been here before this disaster?

Nah, I'd tough it out, I thought. It was getting dark now. Maybe this courtyard place really was a room inside the college and someone had twisted the dimmer on the sun. Just then I saw the easy way out. Oh duh. I felt so dumb staring at cheese grater, as I later found out it was called. Just a ways further to the left of it was, well, if nothing else an easier way down. It too looked like an accident waiting to happen. Like something that could get any other school closed immediately, indefinitely, in the outside world of red tape and overzealous complainers. Here, at a magical college I guess it was normal?

It looked like King Kong, or I guess more non-realistically some giant or golem had bashed the cobblestone up. There was a sort of half circle crater, the square stones clinging as if for dear life to the crumbling edges that dropped down about two stories. Maybe it would be easier to take the dune. I had my bags around my shoulder and really didn't feel like jumping, or tossing them. Maybe this was a test, some way to see what sort of magic any of us could already do. Well I couldn't do crap. I just knew stuff. Normally I'd have lowered myself over the edge and dropped, but something about it told me, pretty certainly I might add, that that was NOT the way to do it. So I wormed my way around it, finding lower platforms or fallen stones that looked stable enough to hold my weight. Somehow with only minor scrapes and bruises I repelled down it. I since retracted my theory of its construction, the way the blocks formed patterns and clung together was almost intentional. It looked scientific. Maybe the jacked up stairs were some lasting memorial to the misuse of first year bravado.

Undoubtedly there was a story behind it. Some legendary dunce, or prank that 'serves you kids right' attitudes sort of left there. But it didn't matter now. It was time for bed. That was all there was. Had to get to my bed. I needed to restart my system, let my subconscious deal with all the weirdness. Let my dreams take over. I didn't think about anything on my way to my room. So much did I think of nothing that I couldn't recall how I got there when I did. I didn't get a glance of what it looked like, or where I put my stuff or whether or not I had undressed. I probably hadn't though. I have a history of just dropping into bed like a stone in a pond.

I don't know how I slept, because as suddenly as I had fallen asleep, I awoke. At home, in my own bed. I laid next to my wife, the baby on her chest, sprawled out drooling on her neck. It felt weird waking up, but I knew it was true. I was selfishly glad the baby wasn't sideways again kicking me off the bed. My first child had actually done this. He had scooted and kicked, scooted and kicked till I fell off the bed. Why on earth didn't we think we needed a king-size? Anyway as I laid there I couldn't shake the feeling, or the image of that flower. It was bluish white, like it had an ever so slight bioluminescence to it. And I was going to open it up like Pandora.

It was the baby's birthday. I had lazily procrastinated most of the chores and getting ready the day before. It was my day off from work and I had drawn, and dinked around on my computer as usual. Hadn't gotten any writing done sadly and I felt like a failure. It was pretty typical of me to do this. I was a writer. I'd think up some great concept, put some really cool characters together and slap on some scenes. Then I would take eons to get anything else done with it, while I sort of just managed to squeak by on ten bucks an hour four nights a week.

So often it felt like I was just coasting, irresponsibly like I had done all my life. I complained more often than I liked but not half as much as I felt like. I loved my family, still do, and spent a decent enough time with them. Though lots of it was, 'nah I don't feel like it, let's do this instead.' But we had a fun enough time. All pretty typical.

That first night, despite the knowledge that I'd be back there somehow resting just beneath my skin, I doubted. I dismissed it all as a dream. It wasn't of course and I went back, the very next night. I found out later that through dreams is exactly how they kept the place running. Half the students didn't even know, that in the real world their bodies were lying in bed, dreaming. The other half were so tied to the real world they didn't even know that when asleep they were there at the school. And that how it was when you were there, kids would separate. There were the dreamers: the ones who thought this was it. There were the anchored: the ones who were basically sleepwalking their way through magic education. Last of course were the Ones. We all called ourselves "the ones" because we were fully aware of the truth.
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