Jokes and Clothes

– Okay! Back to the formation for defense – The students began practicing, he thinks they began, there's really no way to tell if they were doing it or not.

– The trick is to balance the folding without removing the other side – Bernadette murmured close to him.

– And if it doesn't work you could always search hangers – Kees replied.

– They prefer to be called executioners – Sean decided to join.

And you know what, he is joining too – This joke is unfolding itself pretty nice – They are smiling at this point, the ones that are around them are either holding their laughs or looking very confused. 

– It's because we are thinking outside the box – the best part is how Sean is using his hands to explain.

– The amount of dad jokes is too high, it's time to square up and end this! – he can hear how someone just let a snort with Bernadette follow-up.

Officially the four of them have the same sense of humor.

– Let's just seal it up and put it in the storage of jokes we will never say again –

He should probably go back to make at least some progress with one formation, before the Madam notices they weren't at all practicing. He closes his eyes to better concentrate in changing forms, feeling that his Spirit Zone starts becoming solid? He started pinching it and folding his sphere, but trying to keep all the sides intact while doing the others is definitely hard.

At least four times one side will go to its normal form, one time his entire right side went back to normal. He needed to do it all at once, or one part would fall apart, the process is to compress it and start folding everything at once.

He couldn't visually confirm if it was completely correct, even if he felt the frames established.

– Bernadette? – she was staring at nothing for a while, but was fidgeting with her clothes. When he called her name, she moved her head in his direction, he felt that all her attention was on him.

– Huh? What happened? –

– Do you know a way to, well, know if one did it right? – he felt a bit sheepish with the intensity of her gaze, more when asking about this.

She nodded and looked at the circle on the floor, there was no one at this moment.

– Yeah, the first one would be the Image Zone – he tenses about the thought of going to the part where he would be the center of attention – But I see you aren't comfortable with that, so that would lead us to someone using their own Spirit Zone to detect yours –

– Wait, what? Can one detect other Zones with theirs? – he is going to ignore the fact that he would be labeled as somewhat shy and decides to focus on the Spirit Zone. That's less complicated.

– With time and exposition of other Spirit Zones, it comes handy with time too – she scratches her hair – That's how usually the teachers help us when we have that question. I can do that –

– Thank you –

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– Bernadette, I have made the form already… –

– Oh sh, okay, sorry for that. Huh – she is looking around him, then starts to walk, circling him – I'm surprised, most of the students of the eighth class will have a diameter of three, sometimes four. And yet you have a defensive form around of ten meters –

She stays silent for a moment, inspecting what he could say is his Spirit Zone.

– Even if you increase your Zone on purpose, the density would decrease and feel like droplets. How big is your Spirit Zone? –

He doesn't think he ever knew what the size was, after all the one occasion he could have known about it, it ended up being never answered.

– I, i don't know… –

– Let me guess, they never told you what three point fourteen means – That came from Kees, he feels how Bernadette also makes a questioning face – Not the first time I see it happen –

– Then what does it mean? –

– It's over thirty – they wait a bit for more – There is really not more than that, usually is the Image Zone where you know how big it is –

And that's a no no for now – Anyways, going back to the reason I was looking. The formation it's uneven, one side is bigger than the other, in your position would be the backside – he really didn't feel it, Bernadette stopped him from starting again – Don't, it always takes more time and energy when doing it like that. Be in the stage where you let it go in the end when the form is made, from there you start moving it –

He could only describe it as holding strings, he was feeling how it moved, and with every change he made Bernadette was saying if he needed a little more or less. When he heard the approval of Bernadette he kept the sensation of his Spirit Zone.

– You really did it fast –

– Hehe, the Spirit Zone was the only thing I knew how to do –

– How long have been you doing it? That size isn't normally acquired in a pair of months – Sean looks at him from up to down – So, you are a talent or just many years –

– It's years, five years, it's getting close to six now – he heard a shout from somewhere behind him, when he looked it seemed like someone also got it.

– That's comprehensible – Bernadette said it was like giving reason to someone. A bell can be heard, the class is over – What do we have now? –

– Biology –

– Aughh – They waved goodbye to Kees and Sean, now they need to face the wave of students getting out of the place, and get to the classroom in time.

***

They started with cells and how everything was formed with it. According to each species and its adaptations to the environment, organisms have structures whose functions allow them to live and respond to changes in the environment. Thanks to structures, chemical processes and specialized systems, organisms meet the common characteristics of living beings: growth, reproduction, feeding, respiration, movement, excretion and sensitivity to respond to stimuli such as light, sound and the heat.

That could summarize the introduction of the professor. And what could be the first month of classes.

Bernadette has a love-hate relationship with the subject.

And he loves it.

It has so many uses for hunting, he discovered that he already knows parts of the class from before. The subtle ways in how animals behave, the way the paws change, even the length of the claws, the teeth, the tails, the places they frequent. All of it serves to track animals, or know if there is a predator close!

The plants can also give away the type of animals that are around.

He ended up participating in that class more than the others, even Bernadette was a little surprised by that change.

Now he was getting ready to go to the library with Bernadette, she asked him what he was going to do later, he needed to return a book and get another. They ended up studying together, he waited in the library taking a small table for the two as more students were taking the other tables.

But even with the library packed with students it is still silent, he has seen people asking for keys and going to rooms, he got a glance of one of them, a large table with a bunch of chairs.

When passing aside one he could hear chatting, muted enough to not disturb the others outside.

The funny part is him not trying to show his complete surprise in what everyone wears. He forgets sometimes he is surrounded by nobles, he is still used to the shirt waist and walking skirt of his mother when they go to the city. And only for the city.

No one is willingly wearing skirts or dresses on the mountains, it will stain and rip almost twice a day. Not even Susan, who likes to put thought into her clothes, doesn't wear them when hunting, well, not yet, the last time she was seeing how to keep using a dress while hunting. She stayed with the divided skirts of cyclists.

Hehe, it's funny how no one that is a teenage male noble wears things similarly to what he saw Lord Etzler wear. Not the full on suits, anyways it is not like the fashion has stayed that consistent this past decade.

Most of the boys are using pants, a dress shirt in different patterns and a jacket or sweater, there is always wool from greens, browns, blues and whites. The girls wore pretty cotton dresses of vivid colors with designs, silk gloves that have their own embroidery at the end, their jackets and a hat.

He sat down to start preparing his things to study – Hi, sorry for the wait – the chair at the other side moved, a gloved hand with a blue sleeve can be seen. Maria arrived.

– Don't worry, I took this table for us – He would have got up and helped her to accommodate, but she sat in a moment. She was wearing a white dress with a blue serge and a black hat with roses, the hat makes her short hair look more pretty – the hat suits you –

She smiled at him – Thanks. My mom gave it to me this year, it was her favorite cloche – Bernadette was getting her things out to study, a pen and a notebook.

He gets the book he will use and so is Bernadette.

They only chatted when one had a theory or needed a rephrase in wording, apart from that they were silent. The silence reminds him of his multiple times reading with Liam, he thinks he may have grown used to touch, from arms, feet or legs to leaning into each other.

He was studying chemistry, tomorrow they have that class and friday would be physics. Maria was with a book of photons.

An introduction to chemistry started with formation of chemical compounds, the internal structure of atoms, protons and neutrons, the electrons, and a periodic table of elements. Something tells him he will need to learn it, the entirety of it.

– hey Bernadette – he receives a hum – Why do I have a feeling that I will need to memorize the periodic table? –

– Because you do, learn it. They always ask it – she said – Name, symbol, atomic number, molar weight, everything. All things in the universe are made up of these base substances, including us, so to successfully work any transmutation we need to understand what are we changing –

– Transmutation? –

– Alchemy. Every mage needs to pass through alchemy to get "magic", after all mages are just skipping the part of making arrays or circles in the physical world – And now he has the attention of teacher Bernadette, that's good – All the professors of chemistry are Alchemists. They are the best to teach that, sometimes they do physics too –

It looks like she remembered something – What is it? – 

– Nothing, nothing. Just remembered the words of our teacher – he tilts his head – Sorry, can't help you with it. You are going to understand when you meet him, he always says it in the first class –

She waited a minute, before getting back to her book.

– I hope you are good at running – Bernadette went back to her book and notes.

'Why do I need to be good at running??

Also, what is considered good at running?'