skymuffins | [Sept. 7/11] The Gardens, Afternoon

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[Sept. 7/11] The Gardens, Afternoon

It was not strictly the gardens that she had secreted herself away in. There were nooks and crannies all over the school grounds, filled with benches and trees and flowering bushes and vines. It was one of these, tucked around the very edge of the gardens proper and thus usually overlooked, that Sarah had claimed as her own years ago.

The nook was cold from the presence of spirits for all that none were visible at the moment. A statue of some ancient mage, in flowing robes, stood over her with his hands upraised. His pedestal made an excellent support for her back as she leaned against it and the grass was still soft and green—autumn had not yet touched it. Sarah toyed with the grass, unbothered by the chill of ghosts, and raised her face to the sun. Her lunch had been eaten and she had the afternoon free to do as she wished.

What she wished was to be exactly where she was, alone and forgotten by all but the dead.

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Sarah nodded at the change, glad for it because she had no way to say why she was being... the way she was, other than he had not done anything to her except treat her like a person.

She hesitated then mimed writing in a notebook, then eating, and then placed her hands up under one of her cheeks, like she was sleeping.

Sometimes she did all of that here. It was her place.

Raine was quiet for a moment, absorbing all of those gestures, and then he nodded a little.

"Then I'm sorry for intruding," he offered, softly. "I just thought that maybe you'd like your book back, and thought that maybe your free time and mine just didn't match up so well."

He'd been out and about, here and there, in an attempt to find her. But the murmurs had driven him back to the silence of his room on more than one occasion.

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and shook her head. If she'd wanted him gone, she'd have told him to go. Sarah pointed to herself and repeated the gesture where she'd invited him to sit down.

He wasn't at fault.

As for her time matching his... Sarah shifted her shoulders against the pedestal and then lifted her hands miming chatter. She did not like that either and they did not like her around. It worked for the best if she stayed away.

"They always have something to say, don't they?"

Maybe not the same things, but she'd been sitting at her own table back there for a reason. There wasn't any doubt about that. It got... tiring. And it got that way fast. Even the new students, for all that they were shunned by their seniors, were catching on to the fact that there was something off about Raine, and were taking just as many pains to avoid him as the upperclassmen were taking to avoid them.

"If I'm talking too much, you can let me know."

She nodded. Though, really, she didn't mind that much when he wasn't talking about the things that were like knives in the hands of the other students.

Sarah's eyes trailed after a girl in full skirts as she entered the clearing, bringing a cold breeze with her. Her outline was faded and flickered with blue fire and Sarah knew that this one had been a ghost for a long time. No one wore skirts like that these days. The girl waved her off, every inch of her the well-mannered maiden, and took a seat on the grass with an arch look.

Despite herself, Sarah felt the urge to smile a little. They had a chaperone now.

Sarah lifted her bag just a little and pulled out a textbook, then looked inquiringly at him. Did he have homework to work on?

"Hm...?" He blinked at the book for a moment, and then opened his mouth a little as he caught on to what she was asking. "Oh, right. I have... a bit of..."

He trailed off, rummaging through his bag to pull out a history textbook.

"I'm kind of no good at this subject, though."

Their chaperone gave Sarah an approving smile. Homework was definitely on the list of things they were permitted to do.

Sarah offered him a wry glance. She could help. She was two years ahead of him and the basic courses stayed the same no matter what their magic was. And she'd had one-on-one attention in all her courses. Sarah was good at school if only because of that.

"I guess this stuff would kind of be old-hat to you, huh? This was a couple of years ago, and all." Raine sighed as he looked at the textbook again. "For what it's worth, I'm doing pretty well at all of my other subjects. This one just kind of trips me up more than it really should."

The past wasn't his strong point.

She tapped her forehead, because she didn't dare to tap his, and looked at him inquiringly. Because of that?

It made a strange sort of sense to her. History came easily to her, but how could it not when she saw people from the past every day?

"I guess so," Raine murmured, looking at his knees for a moment as she acknowledged his stone. "The history teacher is understanding enough about it, I guess."

He didn't have to refer to it as a handicap in front of the rest of the class when Raine had blanked out completely on their first assignment. It had given the other students more fuel for the fire. But it meant that his expectations for Raine in history weren't so high, either.

Which meant that Raine was hell-bent on being the best student in the class.

Sarah wrinkled her nose at him. She could guess, though their teacher was nice to her. She pointed to Raine's eyes and then drew a line down the grass before pointed away from them then back at him. That was what Raine saw.

Then she pointed to the line and then behind them, into the past, and tapped the history book. She shrugged a little and carefully reached to place her hand on Raine's arm. They were opposites, she thought.

That did not make what Raine saw bad.

Again, that cold touch, meant to be reassuring. And again, Raine couldn't help but smile slightly. It was reassuring. She was the only one in the school anymore who tolerated his company. And, while he was coming to feel more and more as though any attempts at physical contact would be misread as an attempt to dig into things that he didn't have any business digging into, coming from someone else, it was... actually pretty awesome.

"History seems kind of counter-intuitive to me," he explained, still smiling a little. "Like walking backwards. Why retrace your steps when you can't see where you're going, if you can just walk straight ahead and know exactly what's sitting in front of you?"

He could grasp the concept of history, though. After all, he could remember the things he'd done, and the places that he'd been. But digging beyond the very basic, anything that he needed for day-to-day life, tended to give him a headache.

"I don't quite get how you manage it, honestly."

That was actually a bit of praise if you listened closely enough.

She thought about that and how he'd explained it, keeping her hand where it was for a long moment before realizing something. Sarah reached for the book he'd brought back and looked inquiringly at him.

Could he remember everything that had gone on in the book?

Leaning over just a little she tapped his history book then the novel again. Was it possible that he could treat that textbook like the novel? Like a story.

The fact that her head was dipped enough that it would be hard to see the faint ghost of colour on her cheeks was a bonus. She was not used to compliments of any sort.

"You'd think it would be as easy as that, huh?" He pursed his lips, looking at the textbook again. "I've tried to treat it like a work of fiction. But I just can't see it quite right. Like, I understand the things that have happened, and I can remember dates and places if I really apply myself to it, but then someone will ask me to explain how one event relates to another, maybe a war that was caused by... something else...? And I just draw a blank."

This and this and that happened. Why did they suddenly have to be connected?

"And then I start tripping over things, anyhow. Science and math are easy. I can guess the answers before the problems are ever worked through." And that came out a little heavily on his tongue, yes. But it wasn't cheating if it was just intuitive, was it? "When I pick up a book, it's usually so that I can just figure out the ending all over again."

He didn't read a book for the sake of reading it. And he couldn't handle sitting down and watching a movie with some sort of plot resolution in mind.

Her lips twisted, vexed at how hopeless his power made any sort of entertainment. Did he ever get to have fun that wasn't something he already knew about?

Sarah considered that. He had not realized that she would lend him the book. Nor had he realized she would let him sit. But he had seemed to have expected the cold of her skin.

She pulled out a binder and a pen and before she thought about it too hard wrote:

What about me?

Then offered him the binder with a bit of an almost sheepish shrug. She knew she shouldn't ask.

He accepted the binder, looked it over and pursed his lips faintly.

"What about you?" He bit the inside of his cheek a little, his gaze flicking back toward her. "What can I tell about you, you mean?"

She flushed, embarrassed to have asked and sorry to have put him on the spot, but she nodded, toying with her skirt, not quite daring to look at him.

Sarah thought that she probably shouldn't have asked at all. But it was too late to take the question back.

Raine was quiet for a moment, looking at her intently, his expression distant, as though he was daydreaming, struggling to remember something long forgotten that had never really been clear in the first place.

And then he frowned.

"I guess... mentioning that I'm pretty new at this wouldn't get me off the hook, huh? I mean, it's not anything personal, but sometimes there are... kind of like blind spots. I can't think past them."

She studied him for a long moment, wondering if he was lying. He had looked like he was truly trying but...

Well, she thought, scolding herself for being a fool. If he did see things about her, perhaps he didn't wish to upset her. Sarah leaned back and sighed, just a little.

There was no way for her to tell.

"Sorry," Raine offered, not entirely certain what to make of that sigh, himself. "What I get from other people isn't really everything people seem to think it is, either, though. It's usually just gut feelings and whispers and shivers up my spine."

Unless he was sleeping. Then all bets were off.

That was true, she realized. He would only really be learning to shift through the information his magic gave him now and it was only the beginning of the year. Perhaps he was telling the truth.

She shrugged at him, not quite sure how to reassure him that she was, in fact, pleased, and reached to pat his arm before pointing at the history book. He should study and he still had her binder.

"Right, sorry," Raine murmured, sheepishly offering her binder back. She was probably going to need that. "What homework do you have?"

If it was anything but history, he could probably help her out with that, too.

The binder was a comforting weight as she took it and flipped through the dividers until she found the section she wanted, the one marked by a green tab. From her bag Sarah pulled another textbook and held it up. Economics.

She made a bit of a face at it because, really, it wasn't her favourite subject. The most interesting thing she found about it was the fact that her green tab reminded her of money and while money wasn't precisely what economics were about, she hadn't known that back in grade nine, when the subject that first been introduced. Then, she had thought it was just about money. Now she knew better but the correlation between her tab and her subject still amused her, in any case.

With a sigh she set the book on her lap and flipped in open. She supposed she'd work on it. Even if it was dull.

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[Sept. 7/11] The Gardens, Afternoon

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