Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 4] Ch. 7 Dova's Plight

Vlad

I met Sunny Wilkensong, the Captain of the School's Magic Knight division, at the Northwest training field. We greeted each other and wait for my students. Sunny is a charismatic man and has a following of women who would kill to become Mrs. Wilkensong. However, he is a nice enough guy who just likes to show off. He is a jock and likes fighting, although he does have a knack for using magic during physical combat. He was the best of his year and that's how he got the position at this school.

When my students arrived, we ran them through conditioning drills to warm them up and then moved to the obstacle course. There, we had them maintain the element of their choice in a ball floating in air. In the meantime, Sunny would throw small cloth pouches of colored powder at them. After an hour they were a multicolored mess but at least they had fun.

It was important that they did have fun. School wasn't just a place for learning and burying yourself in books and test... even if that was your kind of fun. Dova helped me understand this a long time ago. These were precious years around peers that one should enjoy and excel at every opportunity.

It was the last day of school this week and there was a week long break coming up. Nelfa liked her time off as much as she liked the students time off. She was infamous for meddling and prying into other people's love lives and made up plenty of holidays, events, festivals, and other activities for the students and teachers to mingle. Normally this upcoming week off was just an excuse for the pervy Headmaster to see which students were close to coupling up so that she could nudge them along and watch from the shadows like a creepy stalker. Yep... that's our headmaster or so I've been told since she often goes on decade-long world trotting adventures after her Husband.

When we finished training, the kids were joking and teasing one another. I drank in the moment since I may not get many more. It's not that I don't have faith in my students but-

"You have a promising bunch, it reminds me about when we went to school." A voice behind me chilled my bones as I heard the dirt shift under her footsteps.

I couldn't even turn to face her. Why was Dova here, now? How do I even talk to her after everything I did to her? Even if I could reasonably argue the point that I saved her life, I also personally jeopardized her professional career, and invalidated all of her research on Ley Line magic through the creation of Sorcery, that had a foundation in it like it had always existed. She was banned from pursuing Sorcery which held every breakthrough in her field of study. She was suspended from teaching. And here I was teaching a brand-new class, making leaps and bounds in magic, and having fun.

Throw on top that I've been blatantly avoiding her since the incident, I don't know how to talk to her as a friend let alone a colleague after everything that's happened. I, not so figurately, ruined her life and reaped untold benefits at her expense.

After a long silence she continued. "... Soooo. How is everything?" She asked timidly standing beside me as we watch my students from a distance.

"Fine."

Fine? FINE! Spirits piss! Why couldn't I think of anything better to say? I never was good at small talk... or any talk. What did we ever talk about anyway? Magic circles? Runes? Geography? Did I ever even talk? I knew I was awkward but was magic the only thing I could ever talk about? I'M SO LAME!!! And now I'm just standing here in this ridiculously bright outfit and stupid hat!

Someone, call the Grand Magus, I'm ready to fall on my sword now.

"... I see..." I could hear the tone change in her voice.

Well if she didn't hate me already...!

"... Next week we have some vacation time... well not like I'm really working much now... heh~" She laughed awkwardly.