Elements' Eyes (Book 1: Going-Through)

A Surprise 1.3

***

Keernah wasn't intrigued by Flarea's promise too much. The only gifts she could ever get from the teacher were notes she had to put down by her own hand on her own paper. Anything else just did not exist for Keernah. She speculated Flarea had found an outstandingly beautiful song. It was a pity one was forbidden to sing loudly when wintering. Actually, wintering was one big pity overall.

But what could Flarea get from her student as a keepsake? There was absolutely nothing Keernah could think of. People did not have many songs now, and the ones they had were not beautiful at all. As for the cealds' songs, Flarea didn't seem to like them very much – it was probably impossible to express their true beauty with a human throat, even though the cealds themselves found Keernah's rendition interesting. Maybe Flarea did not actually believe that those creatures existed, and Keernah couldn't really understand why. The teacher must have decided that a talented girl with all too vivid imagination needed to outgrow her childish games and get down to serious training. Was it worthwhile now to try and convince her one last time? Keernah strongly doubted it. It was all in the past. She only wanted now to make the teacher happy with the results of her hard work.

"Well," said Flarea with a sigh. "Eals is going to come back any minute. There seems to be so much to check on yet, but I'm always being picky when there's no need. You know the basics perfectly, your skills are almost flawless. It might be a good thing that you couldn't take lessons as often as my other students and I didn't have time to tell you hundreds of irrelevant details which I love too much. With the others, I just can't resist doing it. Sometimes I think they'd rather jump out of the window from me."

She grinned and went to an invisible shelf.

"Your gift now! To tell you the truth, I'm still not sure you'll see it. I can touch it, but I can't touch you: maybe there's some difference? It's all so strange and inexplicable. I still hope, anyway, that you will see it."

She walked back to the table and smiled broadly for the first time in hours, because Keernah apparently saw the stack of papers – and nothing like that had ever happened before. Out of all material things, she could only see Flarea's clothes while they were on.

"If you don't know what to give me in your turn," Flarea said, as if having overheard Keernah's earlier thoughts, "then don't think about it: I've already got the gift. I'll remember your face now for a long time. Honestly, I'd like to see a person who's able to forget about teaching a student from another world!"

"Teaching a ghost," Keernah noted out of habit. Her voice became hoarse from agitation, and she slowly reached her hand for the paper sheets. Flarea laid them on the table. Keernah poked her finger into them and pulled her hand away in disbelief. They were real – totally real for them both.

"You should read the contents yet," Flarea suggested, enjoying Keernah's astonishment even more than she'd thought she would. "A ghost, you say? Do you know that it's incorporeal remains of the dead that we call ghosts?"

"So do we," Keernah muttered absently with her eyes glued to the sheets.

"So! If you and these notes are the remains of the dead, then I'm not afraid to die, for I can hope to become something like this too."

Keernah got frightened and raised her eyes on the teacher.

"You don't need to die," she said spontaneously, unable to get a joke now. "But where did you find it?"

"A funny story," Flarea began but suddenly turned her head, as if at the sound of a slamming door. Then she signed to Keernah to wait and left the room.

The girl only had time to see that the sheets were slightly crumpled and the paper was yellowish but evenly colored and pleasantly smooth. It was apparently factory-made. Now that sort of paper was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile all the scraps and pieces Keernah still had at home were already written up and down with the most valuable notes.