milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Didn't do what?" asks the red-haired girl at a nearby table with paper, book, and No.2 pencil. She's looking at the startled boy with interest.

While it might look as though she's innocently parsing sentences into their component parts, with specific emphasis on prepositional phrases and the differences between adjectives and adverbs, she's secretly formulating a theory that homework was invented by demons. It's fully possible they're posing as fourth-grade teachers.

"Turn the keep into... this. Merlin is going to be so angry." Maybe Horvath did it. Of course, then he'd want to know how Horvath got to be so good at illusions.

"I don't think nobody turned anything into this place - it's been like this since I got here," replies the girl, glad to have a distraction from grammar.

"Merlin?"

"My master." Abruptly he realizes that if he isn't in the keep, he cannot assume her rank. "Mistress." He bobs a quick bow to make up for his earlier rudeness.

She can't help but laugh a little at being called 'Mistress,' and being bowed to. It's so strange!

"Your master? Oh, then you're a magic-handler!" she says, covering her mouth to hide any lingering giggles. Mustn't be rude. "Very cool."

"I am an apprentice sorcerer.... madam?" It's deeply tentative, because there isn't a little man-child out there that likes being laughed at.

Her eyebrows rise in surprise. And... um... wariness.

"Sorcerer?"

".... Yes?" She isn't going to laugh again, is she?

The girl is definitely not laughing. She'd never met a sorcerer's apprentice, before, much less an apprentice sorcerer.

But... he doesn't seem like he's going to curse her or anything? Maybe it's safe?

"I'm Rae," she says, experimentally.

"I'm Balthazar." This... really isn't how he's ever done an introduction, ever. "... I've never met anyone named Rae before."

"And I've never met anyone named Balthazar before."

Kid, your name is weird. Also, too many syllables.

"Some of the kids at my school are apprentices, too." Sometimes they show off what they're learning, at recess.

"... School?" Balthazar starts there in his quest to understand phrases he doesn't know.

"Yeah?" she says, confused by the question. School is... school. Monday through Friday, eight to three. "It's where we have classes? Lessons?"

"Our tutor taught us, when I lived in my father's manor. He taught us Latin and history and philosophy."

And mostly despaired of ever keeping a tight rein on the youngest of his Earl's sons.

"Latin? Wow." They don't start offering foreign language classes until high school, in New Arcadia.

"I've got... English - though I wish they'd spend less time on grammar and more time on actually reading stuff - and Social Studies, Life Science, Math, P.E., and Art or Music depending on the day."

He mouths the words 'life science' in complete bafflement. He wouldn't know life science if it smacked him in the face.

He might be able to protect himself, but he wouldn't know what it was.

He looks confused for some reason. Rae doesn't know what about, so she's left unsure what to say. Um...

"So what's it like, being an apprentice sorcerer?" Rae asks, fiddling with her pencil. Her bet is on 'scary,' but she's fully open to being wrong.

"Well, there's another boy, he's Horvath, and he's my best friend. And we're learning how to channel energy, and he's having us read the Encantus." He babbles, mostly from relief to be back on more familiar conversational footing.