Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"I should be the one asking that," she said. "Where were you? You were supposed to be back hours ago."

"Uh…" Zorian floundered. "What’s the problem? It’s not like I’m coming in the middle of the night or anything…"

The annoyed look she was giving him told him he shouldn’t have said that. Not that he understood why – its not like there was a rule saying he had to rush back home after class, after all. Back in Cirin, his parents never cared what he did in his free time, so long as he didn’t neglect his duties or embarrass them in the process. It was an alien feeling to have someone concerned for him just because he didn’t come home on time.

"Look, I’m sorry but I had to meet with my divination instructor after class and the meeting sort of dragged on," he said. "Really Miss Kuroshka, you’re going to lose your nerves if you freak out every time I’m late from classes. It’s not the first time I’ve been held up after class, and its certainly not going to be the last."

She sighed and shooed him inside, apparently somewhat mollified by his speech.

"In the future, try to notify me when you’re going to be late," Imaya said. "Surely there is some piece of magic that can transfer messages within city limits, yes?"

That was a good idea, Zorian had to admit. "I’ll see what I can find," he promised.

"Good," Imaya said. "Your sister has been asking for you for a while now, you know?"

Zorian groaned. "She hasn’t been a bother, hasn’t she?"

"No, she’s a little angel," Imaya said, waving his concerns away. Zorian silently rolled his eyes at the idea of Kirielle being an angel. If Kirielle was so nice then why did Imaya want him to come home so badly? "She spent most of the day drawing, playing with the magic cube you gave her, and talking with Kana. Or should that be talking at Kana? I swear, that child is far too quiet. I have to talk to Kael about it one of these days. It’s not normal for a child to be so withdrawn…"

Zorian quietly nodded, pleased that the cube he made was such a success. It was nothing special, just a simple stone cube with a bunch of light-emitting sigils arranged into a childish puzzle. He found a design in one of the books Nora recommended to him back when she had been tutoring him in spell formulas and decided making one would be doubly useful: it would give him some practical experience using spell formula and give Kirielle something to pass the time with.

"Sounds like she had fun today," Zorian remarked. "What did she need me for, then?"

Imaya gave him a strange look. "You’re her big brother. She doesn’t need a special reason to miss you."

"And the real reason?" Zorian pressed.

"Kana dozed off and your toy ran out of mana and went inert," Imaya finally admitted after a second of silence.

"Ah," Zorian nodded. He noticed the design had very little in the way of mana storage, but he wasn’t feeling confident enough to redesign it while creating the cube. There was a reason why the cube had such rudimentary mana reserves, after all – large concentrations of mana tended to explode if handled inappropriately, and the cube was meant to be practice for beginners. Beginners that could totally botch things during the first couple of tries. Considering how many problems he had with simply recreating the design on the stone cube, he felt he had made the right choice when he had decided not to mess with the base design. He would simply make more of them if Kirielle still wanted to play with one – it was good practice, anyway. "She’s in her room, I guess?"

"No, she’s in your room, reading your books," Imaya said casually.

Zorian’s eye twitched, resisting the urge to march straight into his room and throw Kirielle out. In reality, he was lucky to have a room to call his own at all. Imaya still hadn’t found anyone willing to rent the other room in the house, and Zorian was grateful for it, since it meant he could keep the room for himself. Unfortunately, his ability to keep Kirielle out of it was completely nonexistent. Kirielle had no inhibitions about coming and going there whenever she pleased, and Imaya was even less inclined to stop her than their mother had been back in Cirin. She seemed to find Kirielle’s behavior natural .

And the little imp knew it! She knew she could get away with just about everything, since Imaya liked her better than she did him, and she exploited it to the hilt. That’s why, when Zorian loudly entered the room, she completely ignored him. She was lying on his bed with an open book in front of her, her feet comfortably resting on his pillow. As he watched her, she reached towards the plate of biscuits Imaya had brought her, intent on scattering even more crumbs over his bed sheets.

"Hey!" she protested. "Those are mine! Get your own biscuits!"

Zorian ignored her and studied the plate full of biscuits he had snatched away from his demonic little sister. "You know, originally I just wanted to get your attention and stop you from making an even bigger mess than you already have, but they do look kind of tasty…"

"Nooooo!" Kirielle wailed as he opened his mouth, threatening to swallow a handful of biscuits at once. She seemed reluctant to leave his bed to get them back, though. She probably knew he wouldn’t allow her to claim her spot back easily should she ever relinquish it, clever little imp that she was.

"Tell you what," he said, closing his mouth and putting the biscuits back on the plate. "I’ll give you your biscuits if you get rid of all the crumbs you put on my bed."

Kirielle immediately swept her hands over the sheets a couple of times, pushing all the crumbs to the floor in front of the bed. Her task done, she flashed him a cheeky smile.

"Ha ha," said Zorian humorlessly. "Now go get a broom and do it properly. I’ll eat a biscuit for every minute this mess remains in a room."

He punctuated his words by shoving one of the biscuits into his mouth. They were quite good actually.

Kirielle let out a cry of protest and jumped off the bed in a huff. She unsuccessfully tried to retrieve her plate of biscuits, but when she realized she couldn’t make him give it back (and when he ate a second one) she instead ran off to get a broom and a dustpan. Apparently she also complained to Imaya, because several minutes later she showed up with another plate of biscuits, so he didn’t have to steal from his little sister . Whatever.

Sadly, even after he recovered his bed from Kirielle’s clutches, she still returned to his room. Currently she was sprawled over his chest, having collapsed atop of him when he closed his eyes for a second.

"Why are you still here, Kiri?" Zorian sighed.

Kirielle didn’t answer at first, being too busy climbing over Zorian’s body like he was an inanimate object that didn’t feel pain and discomfort. Once she lay firmly on the bed with him, having wriggled sufficient free space for herself, she spoke.

"I’m bored," she said. "Your puzzle broke, by the way."

"It didn’t break," Zorian said. "It just ran out of mana. I can make you a new one tomorrow if you want."

"Okay."

A short silence descended between them and Zorian closed his eyes to take a little nap.

"Zorian?" Kirielle suddenly prompted.

"Yes?" Zorian asked.

"What’s a morlock?"

Zorian opened his eyes and looked to the side, fixing Kirielle with a curious expression.

"You don’t know what a morlock is?" he asked incredulously.

"I just know they’re these white-haired blue-eyed people," Kirielle said. "And that people don’t like them very much. And that Kael is one. But mother never wanted to tell me what the deal with them is."

"She didn’t, huh?" mumbled Zorian.

"No," confirmed Kirielle. "She said a young lady like me shouldn’t talk about those kind of things."