EDITORS PICK 2020. A new student doesn't think her mother understands how magic works. Inyanga Numbia will be the first in her family to go to Magicians' College, and she's going to find out.
"Why doesn't Magicians' College just let anyone in?"
"Won...
Every other month at Magician's College, Yue would go broke and fail to pay her magic bills and Constellation would cut her off. Pretty ridiculous. The first of the month, her gnomon would run dry, no magic. It would cease to fire, and she would have to walk on foot, sans link, to the registrar's office to pay overdue fees. Total nonsense. Tuition fees wore her thin and she would give up every luxury to afford more food multiplication spells for her experiments in culinary fusion. She would fuse different foods together, melding bacon with a yam, infusing mascarpone into duck ragu, bonding steamy biscuits and figs and prosciutto into one mega mouthwatering bao bun.
A year into school she got a business going selling fig bao out of her moto. Her fusions were possible because she was an artisan. She became an artisan because she loved to eat.
Instead of growing large, she had grown tall, six feet and a couple of inches to fill to the brim with calories tasting her own experiments.
The business set afire didn't keep her in solidae because she would run up her magic bill to the ends of her funds and her credit to expand and sell new culinary arts to the foodies in the city. Anything she didn't sell in a day she started to give to the grayscale folks who hung out downtown, and it brought her joy to multiply her most delicious treats and bring them to the shelter and popular hangout spots and watering holes, to people whose faces would actually express joy at her cooking — so she would run up her bill to feed them too.
The reaction of the grayscales to tasting her creations . . . there was nothing like it. The way they let the pleasure play out all across their shadowy gray features, and made mmmm sounds and oh damn that's good noises of appreciation. Not like the pristine foodies with their crisp shirts and their silks and their pearl buttons, the ones who never had to worry a day about running out of magic or losing their color subscriptions; their lush bronze or brown or peach skin proud and full color and dolled up in mulberry or sapphire or rose red on the eyes or lips, who chewed down her fig bao with a poker face as if to show that they actually liked the treat they had just purchased three dozen of for catering would be distasteful.
Always maxing out her credit and getting cut off. Too busy cooking and studying to notice the cancellation advanced notices. Until Dawn pointed out that the company could charge whatever it wanted — well, much of it had gone unsaid, because of the censoring spell.
Her point stood. Why hadn't Yue thought about it before? Well, if they were going to charge whatever they wanted they could foot the bill for Yue's expenditures feeding high end cuisine to the poor. She linked right to the registrar's office and demanded, "I want to be reimbursed for all late fees. And from now on I'll be taking a 40% discount on Constellation's stated charge. I'm a loyal customer, and if you don't want to lose my business, you're giving me a deal. Where does all this money go, anyway?" Her own mind filled in the answer to that: research and development, magical advancement, providing sustenance to every Soliari, public utilities like roads and parks and rapid transit, and libraries, and keeping the weather nice.
And to some executives at the top who got to live large and cater their parties with Yue's bao, meanwhile she's getting cut off from the school's router every time she goes over her credit to feed the hungry . . . or, well, to impress the common people with her risotto ai funghi.
The complaint got escalated all the way to the top of the company, and then it came back down. No one from Constellation so much as met with her. The same useless registrar magician Yue always dealt with told her, "There's no negotiating. If you don't like the price of magic, you can give up your license and your memories of classified Constellation magical schematics."
Yue didn't like it, but she wasn't going to give up being a magician.
"Excuse me, Yue? What's going wrong?" the reporter, Malika Eun, asked. In front of the camera link, Yue tried to keep calm. Rebellion in public, on air, would make things worse. "I must have fallen behind on my magic bills. Sorry kids, there will be no sweet bacon potatoes today, and no," she gulped, "dessert."
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Thank you for reading Yue's Star Episode I. Yue is just one star in a Constellation, and she will appear in upcoming Constellations soon! If you enjoyed this short story, please leave a star. Thank you <3!
