"Move a little to the left. No, that's not the left. Up some."
"Can you see anything yet?"
"Ok, yes I see a tree and I believe if I squint I can see a
grasshopper."
Lucius slowly rolled over until, bit by bit, the owners of the voices
slid into view. Marcus and Suffolk seemed to be supporting Wolsey so he
could see out the smallish window near the roof. Lucius groaned and
rolled back over, in his bed, once he realized what they were doing.
"You know the girls wear robes," yelled Lucius covering his head with
his sheets, "with the hoods up."
"Yeah, but if you look at em all squinty like you can just make out
their hair color. I think the third one from the back is a brunette,"
said Wolsey as he grabbed the wall to rebalance himself.
Lucius stretched soundlessly under his sheets then sat up in bed.
Gradually Lucius shifted his view from the three at the front of the room
to take in the room in its entirety. He had always found that, upon
waking up, it was good to take a minute to survey one's surroundings.
Often Lucius found his surroundings radically different from how he
remembered them before sleep.
Today, little had changed from the ordinary. The room remained the
small, spartan dormitory assigned to all students upon enrollment in the
Academy of Braneri. Four beds, with a closet to the right of each bed,
were arranged evenly about the room. The mid-day sun poured in through
the small grated windows near the high ceiling. The only personal area
allowed to students was an open space at the rear of each room;
students could decorate this as they wished. Lucius's gaze finally stopped
once he reached that area.
The back of the room usually housed an impressive collection of casks
containing liquids with names such as, "Ye Olde Special No. 6," and "Ye
Olde Caution Flammable." The casks were still there, that much hadn't
changed. They just seemed to be in much different positions than
normal.
"Explain to me something," said Lucius.
"Wuzzat," said Marcus.
"Why are all the casks stacked together in a pile over there," said
Lucius poking a hand out from under the covers and indicating the rear of
the room.
"Built a fort."
Lucius looked from the three at the window to the fort then back to the
three before answering. "Why?"
Marcus steadied Wolsey before answering. "Well, last night we went to
the Kobold place again right." Lucius nodded, internally cringing.
The Kobold place was located not far from Braneri. It took about fifteen
minutes to walk there and about an hour to walk back. Walking back
involved a lot of falling down followed by many, many attempts to get back
up. "Hole in the Wall" didn't quite describe the Kobold place; this
made it sound much too nice. The Kobold place would never buy walls.
Lucius could hear the barkeep now, "Walls is for them fancy lasses in
Medievia City. Me, I just needs me some good old fashioned dirt and a
proper board that, umm, fell off the back of a wagon."
Marcus now steadied himself before continuing, "Well it seems that at
the end of the night we came up a little short."
"How short," queried Lucius.
"We forgot to bring money," replied Marcus. "Anyway, we made a break
for it and once we got back here we figured we ought to build a fort.
To protect ourselves from any retaliation."
Lucius nodded thoughtfully, "You know you have a tab there right?"
"Well yes, but we forgot about that last night."
"Tab got a lot bigger didn't it?"
Marcus nodded vigorously almost causing Wolsey to fall again. Marcus
craned his neck up to Wolsey as he had steadied himself. "See anything
yet?"
"Third one from the back is definitely a brunette... or a blonde. Wait
no, sorry that's a tree."
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Ok, I'm leaving."
Wolsey quickly hopped down from the window as Marcus stretched back to
an upright position. Suffolk stood up as well, rubbing his back.
"Wols, have you gained weight since yesterday?"
Lucius swung his legs from under the sheets and stood from the bed
slowly. Once he was sure the room was done threatening to tilt sideways he
began rummaging through the small closet by his bed. After several
attempts at finding a towel, he decided the green one was cleanest. At
least it didn't purr like the blue one - he'd had trouble with the blue
one lately. He was pretty sure it had eaten the yellow towel with the
blue stripes. Meanwhile, Wolsey and Marcus were pulling on their
sandals. Suffolk nodded to Lucius, "Wanna go get something to eat with us,"
he asked gesturing east.
Lucius shook his head quickly, "Oh no! You're going back to that
Kobold place aren't you?" Suffolk smiled and nodded. "No! I'm not going
back there, last time we went there you guys convinced me to drink that
orange stuff and I woke up in a tree."
"You thought that you were a bird," offered Marcus.
"Not going!" yelled Lucius. The three laughed as they left through the
side door to the dormitory. Lucius blinked in the bright light that
came streaming in from outside. Throwing the towel over his shoulder
Lucius caught the door before it closed and stepped into the morning air.
Marcus and the others were already heading to the gate laughing in the
new morning. Lucius jogged to the corner of the dorm and peeked around
hoping the girls would still be marching to chapel. He frowned at
seeing only an empty Braneri quad. Well not quite empty, persay, there
were guards, professors, and statues, but none of that was particularly
interesting.
Braneri was never built to be particularly interesting. The head
master's exact words to the architect were, "Make it look academy-ish." In
this spirit Braneri was given simple brick buildings surrounding a
rectangular green, climbing ivy, and finally completed with statues.
Braneri had slowly, over the years, become a place where a young adult could
go to avoid a real job.
Lucius shook his head and walked back into the dorm and down the hall
to the baths.
When Lucius got back from the baths Marcus and Suffolk where standing
in the side doorway staring at something outside. "Where's Wolsey?"
queried Lucius.
"Drank the orange stuff," replied Marcus still not taking his eyes off the
something outside. Lucius finished pulling on his robes and walked over
to the doorway. Outside was Wolsey, nicely roosted on the central
statue in the quad, just between the head and the extended arm.
"Nice nest work there," said Lucius pointing to a particularly
well-placed array of twigs.
Marcus nodded and jabbed a thumb towards Suffolk, "He was just saying
that. Wol's really got a nice place going there."
"Have the monks tried to beat him off the statue yet?"
"Not yet, but we think they're going to get to him any minute now,"
said Marcus as he peered towards the administrative building. The
monks were usually there this time of day.
Lucius watched Wolsey for a few minutes as he ran to several other
trees and gathered sticks to enlarge his nest. He eventually settled down
and began to engage in what appeared to be preening. "I'm going to the
library," announced Lucius once it became clear that the monks weren't
going to notice Wolsey anytime soon. "Maybe I can find something there
to put him back to normal," said Lucius nodding towards Wolsey.
"You can read?" replied Marcus, with a note of astonishment in his
voice. Despite this surprise on Marcus's part he still did not take his
attention from Wolsey, who continued to preen.
"You can't read!" said Lucius after a few minutes of quiet astounded
blinking time.
Marcus shook his head, an amazing accomplishment considering that his
eyes never moved from Wolsey's nest. "Always got by on my looks and
natural charm."
"You look like a troll and the only thing I've ever heard you say to a
girl is 'yarrg'."
"Girls find that charming."
"What, the complete inability to speak?"
"No, the strong silent type."
"You weren't silent, you said 'yarrg'."
"Girls like 'yarrg'."
Lucius resorted to another full minute of calming astounded blinking
before responding, "If you can't read why haven't the professors throw
you out?"
"I'm not really a 'student' in the typical sense of the word."
"What are you then?"
"Janitor."
Again, Lucius found a good round of blinking to be in order. "Then why
do you live in the dorm and go to the lectures," he paused for a
thoughtful minute, "sometimes?"
"Dunno, everyone seemed to think I was a student so I just sorta went
with it."
Lucius looked to Suffolk for some sort of help. Unfortunately, Suffolk
was completely engrossed in trying to see through a bit of wall on the
second story of the female dormitory. In response, Lucius quietly let
a little part of his mind go insane. He had always found this much
easier than to try to keep a grip on whatever sanity he had remaining.
Lately, Lucius had noticed that most of the professors routinely had
intense conversations with ham sandwiches. He was beginning to understand
why. "I'm going to the library," repeated Lucius as he slipped between
Marcus and Suffolk.
"Its haunted again," replied Suffolk, who had finally decided that the
bit of wall was going to remain opaque for the time being.
"What again?" said Lucius turning to face Suffolk, "Thought they fixed
that."
"Didn't take."
"The priest was in there for nearly an entire day. Part of the rose
garden melted he used so much magic."
Suffolk didn't answer, he was concentrating on thinking the wall to become
going transparent. Lucius stared at him expectantly for a quite some
time before Suffolk made any reply, "I'll be manning the fort if you need
me." Lucius quietly let another bit of his mind go insane.
Lucius plopped the last stack of books down on the table and finally
got to sit down. He stretched, then chanted a few words and a fresh
stack of papers popped into existence. He chanted a few more words and a
quill appeared and floated slowly down to rest on the pile of papers.
Lucius smiled to himself as he began work on getting Wolsey back to
normal.
Somewhere between the eighth and tenth pages of spell proofs Lucius
heard what could only be described as a cross between a frog exploding and
the sound of autumn. Lucius started and looked around, he saw nothing
other than dust and books and thusly set back to work. There where few
students in the library since most students liked to use their days off
to do things like drinking the orange stuff at the Kobold place.
Lucius finally just decided the sound was just one of the librarians going
crazy and returned to the paper.
"Ummm, wook," came a voice very close to his ear. Lucius turned to see
what appeared to be the grim specter of death roughly two inches from
his face.
"..." responded Lucius; the soiling of ones robes rarely makes any
sound. Save in the case of another Braneri student, nicknamed 'RUN, HERE HE
COMES!,' to remain unmentioned here.
"Woooook," said death, extending its arms. Lucius was beginning to
feel like having a deep philosophical conversation with a ham sandwich.
Death sighed quietly to itself then reached up to toss back the hood on
the robe it wore. When Death shook out its long hair a very small part
of Lucius's brain reported that maybe, just maybe, he was not
encountering death. Another distinctly male part of Lucius brain reported that
if you looked at her all squinty like, this female happened to be
attractive. The girl cleared her throat and coughed rather daintily, "Oh,
excuse me. Can you tell me where mysteries are located? I tried to ask
the librarians but they went insane when I did."
"Yarrg," responded Lucius helpfully.
"Yarrg," repeated the girl.
"Yarrg," said Lucius, adding a nod this time. Brunette, he noted
absently. High cheekbones. He whimpered slightly.
She looked Lucius up and down for a few moments before finally reaching
a decision, "What's your name?"
"Yar... umm Lucius."
She nodded, "I'm Emilia." She then dropped an impressive stack of
books onto the table and sat down directly across from Lucius. Lucius
suddenly found himself very aware of his feet and knees. Emilia leaned
forward peering over the books. "Smells good," noted Lucius whilst another
whimper escaped him. "What are you working on?"
"Umm... a spell proof," replied Lucius.
"For?"
"Well you see, my friend seems to think he's a bird."
"Orange stuff?" she said, not taking her eyes from her writing.
"Yes."
Emilia flipped open one of the books on her stack, drew out a sheaf of
papers, and tossed them across the table to Lucius. "That should take
care of it," she stated, still not looking up.
Lucius read the papers carefully then, after a few minutes shook his
head. "This won't work."
"Why not?" she replied finally taking her eyes from the papers and
looking up. Green eyes, another whimper.
"Well, its just seven pages of tiny well-drawn little dragons," said
Lucius turning one of the sheets around so she could see it. "This one
appears to be dancing."
Emilia leaned forward peering at the indicated dragon. "Hmmm, yes his
name is Iago." She then leaned back and smiled brightly at Lucius.
Lucius turned the paper back around and shuffled through the pages for
a few moments, slowly gathering courage. Finally he looked up,
"Ummm..."
"Yes?" she asked, smiling much too brightly.
Lucius sighed and then decided it was best to get this over with,
"You're insane aren't you?"
"Yes," she returned, still smiling.
Lucius nodded and looked back down to his papers. He wrote a few more
lines of the proof before looking back up. "Would you like to go out
sometime?"
"Yes," responded Emilia, setting back to work.
Lucius nodded a second time and then set back to work. About an hour
later he finished the spell proof, carefully closed all the books he had
been using, smiled to Emilia, and then fainted out his chair. This
was, of course, Lucius's usual reaction to any female agreeing to go out
with him.
Emilia later finished her work, packed away her books, and flew out of
the library on what she thought was a magic dragon. A senior librarian
walked over as he saw this and sighed. Drawing a notebook from a
pocket he wrote a memo to requisition a new chair. Then he turned towards
Lucius speculatively.
Lucius awoke in the trash pit outside the academy, his pockets had been
gone through and his sandals stolen. All in all not a big loss since
all Lucius had in his pockets was a shiny rock, now stolen, and Lucius
had taken the sandals off another student unlucky enough to have passed
out in the library. Lucius hummed quietly as he walked through the
night back to campus, somehow feeling a circle completed.
Once back in bed the conversations were short before sleep claimed them
all:
"Night Lucius."
"Night Suffolk."
"Night Marcus."
"Night Suffolk."
"Night Wols."
"Squaaaak!"
"Didn't take," said Suffolk from the edge of sleep.
Copyright (c) 1992-2018 Medievia.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Mudslinger is a trademark (Tm) of Medievia.com, Inc. No portion of the MudSlinger may be reproduced without the express written consent of Medievia.com, Inc.
