The Art of Imagination

Chapter 8

Sweet and spicy oil lingered on her lips. With a sweep of her tongue, she swallowed what was left of her meal and got to her feet, bidding goodnight to whom Ingrid considered her new friends.

“I’m going to meet Amelia,” Ingrid explained when Daphne gave her a quizzical look. “She’s my tutor.”

“Oh.” A grin broke out across Daphne’s face. “Well then, good luck and keep your head clear!”

“Thanks,” she replied, finding the latter greeting to be rather odd. “I’ll do my best.”

When she left the premises of the dining hall, Ingrid felt a rush of cool air against her rosy cheeks. Inhaling deeply, she set off in lit passages, round orange capsules attached to the walls burning brightly.

Ingrid soon found herself running upstairs to reach the T level of classrooms where her tutor awaited her. The corridors were eerily empty. The other students were obviously either in the recreation rooms or back in their dorms.

Reaching her allocated classroom, Ingrid cautiously knocked on the door. Light shone beneath the door, spotlighting her shoes but she couldn’t hear a single sound from inside. “Hello? Amelia?”

The knob jiggled beneath her touch and she twisted it open. Nudging it back, Ingrid spotted a figure by the lightboard and shut the door behind her. “Good evening.”

“Evening, Ingrid,” Amelia called over her shoulder, hands moving elegantly across the black screen. Everywhere her fingers touched, it left an imprint of white streaks. It seemed she was writing notes.

“I brought my things.” Ingrid held up her notepad containing her poorly drawn school map from earlier along with a new pen. “Wow. This reminds me of when I was learning history.”

“Did you ever learn about Imaginist history?” she queried, pausing to give her a questioning look. “Just wondering if you had any foundation knowledge.”

Ingrid shook her head. “Not quite as much. I know of the Dark Ages and Cerulean War but otherwise, everything else has just been normal history.”

“Those usually are the focuses of the exams.” Amelia nodded approvingly. “Take a seat and I will show you the basics of some theory you’ll need to know.”

Excitement caused Ingrid’s heart to flutter eagerly. She took a seat at the front and held her pen at the ready, the heading IMAGINATION scrawled neatly at the top. “Should I copy what’s on the board?”

“Hang on, those were my notes for me,” Amelia responded hastily, pressing a panel to the side of the screen. All the white script vanished, leaving the lightboard blank and black. Smack bang in the centre, Amelia’s fingers wrote out the word IMAGINATION, encircling it neatly. “Tell me what you know about imagination, like what its purpose is or what exactly imagination is.” Amelia turned to face Ingrid expectantly, leaning against the board.

Ingrid tapped the tip of the pen to her lips thoughtfully. To be honest, she hadn’t exactly thought or considered such questions before – and she hated herself for it. Now she appeared absolutely helpless as Amelia waited for an answer in the silence.

“Nothing?” Sympathy coloured her tutor’s tone. “You really were sheltered, weren’t you?”

The tutee ducked her head in embarrassment. “My parents weren’t avid imagination practitioners.”

“So I see.” Turning, Amelia swiped her fingers across the sleek surface, drawing a line protruding from the circle. “Well then, we can start from the beginning.” Her fingers spelled out What? “Imagination is, by definition, a mental creation our minds conjure. It is also considered to be mere concepts or images that do not truly exist in reality.” She shortened some of the phrases into bullet points beneath the What? heading. Tapping the panel nearest to her, she drew over the points with a big red X. “Wrong. That is the normal definition of imagination, how people who aren’t Imaginists define it. They don’t understand what imagination truly is.”