When Snow Falls

-Chapter 13-

I yawned, bored out of my mind. Nutcracker and I had been in the library for what felt like forever, trying to get me to pick up some of the nonsense he threw at me.

Nonsense like pagontus, which made things stop moving, kinisiv, which actually made things move, and elit, which summoned items to me, no matter where they were.

So far, my favorite spell had been the let's take a break spell that Nutcracker almost screamed in frustration.

That break had been almost an hour.

My mind drifted to the conversation I had with Raoul that morning. In the three days that passed since he woke up, he had done just about everything up to leaving his room, the latter ending in a pile of vomit on the floor four hours earlier.

Nothing much better had happened to me, either. After my swallow of pride the other day, Nutcracker took it upon himself to teach me magic singlehandedly. All I succeeded in doing was setting the rug, chair, and pretty nearly the bookshelf on fire.

Needless to say, it wasn't going well.

"Now what?" Nutcracker asked tiredly.  He was spread-eagled on the forest green carpet, staring up at the glass ceiling.

I sighed. My stomach pushed into the chair I leaned into. "I don't know. I don't really want to set anything else on fire."

"Considering that I'm the one who has to put it out, I don't like that idea either."

"We could eat?"

Nutcracker swung his arms around in the air. "You just did."

That was good. I couldn't eat another bite without pulling what Raoul had done earlier.

"We could... go outside?"

Just the mere thought of that repulsed me. Outside was not on my agenda.

He shared my viewpoint. "Ew, no."

I flipped over so my feet were in the air and the top of my head was barely touching the ground. I stared at the bookshelf in front of me. "We could lay around and try to figure out what to do?"

"Already doing that."

My eyes flicked back over to the bookshelf. Reading was always a good plan, but it felt weird when people watched me read. I'd have to get Nutcracker to leave to room somehow.

Then again, he was staring straight up at the ceiling.

Getting up to go ten feet, then turning around and come back seemed like such a waste of time, so I decided to try magic again. If it failed and I set the bookshelf on fire, the I could at least watch Nutcracker try and put it out.

I focused my attention on a random book. I was past the point of caring what it was about; as long as it had words that I could understand, I'd read it.

Kinisiv.

The amount of movement from the book section was zilch.

I shut my eyes, the exact opposite of what Nutcracker had told me to do. It helped me concentrate.

Kinisiv.

THINK OF THE BOOK. PICTURE IT.

Ow! I winced. The random thing-person inside my head was loud.

Why are you yelling at me?

THIS IS HOW I TALK NOW.

Well, talk quieter.