Love Potion

Boots and Fang

It was safe to say I was rather rattled after soothsaying. In the length of the class I had had my death foreshadowed in three different dreams, and every time I turned my shoulder I saw Master Clotho watching my from the curtain shadows, her waspy hands folded in front of her. Several times she passed me, and now and again she would flinch, and mutter 'sunrise'. I was glad to leave the perfumatory classroom, and hurried quickly to curses & enchantments, where Kenzie waved at me. I felt kind rather awkward around him after the dressrobes thing. I waved timidly back. I had no other friends in this class. It was shared with Creepseeks: Ermis, Erik and Troy were in it, too. They made the occasional witty comment but kept to themselves. 

They were always like that. It was strange how you could just tell they were the 'main characters'. It was still so strange to me seeing them like this, sharing lessons with them, hearing them casually speak: these boys who I've read all about, been on their adventures with... I was wondering whether I would try to be their friends or not... it would be so incredibly remarkable...

"Right!" barked Master Weeds, and with the clap of his hands I snapped from staring at the three of them - I was just captivated with how real they were.

Master Weeds was an eighty-year-old, flub-bellied, dog-voiced, patch-robed man who seemed to love his job, or at least what he was teaching about. He had a pocked nose, wonky teeth and abnormally large hands.

"This," he continued brusquely, and slapped a mouldy-looking boot upon the table with nonessential force, "is a boot."

"Yup," I heard Erik mutter. "It sure is." I smiled.

Weeds put his wrists against his hips. He grinned yellow-ly. "You think this is a boot? You agree? These is a boot?" He looked around at us with mad eyes.

The class all mumbled agreeably. This was what Weeds was like: shouty, gets to the point with strange approaches, does the lesson his own way, and vigorously merry. He was like your slightly mad uncle.

He pounded his fist against the table. "I said, IS THIS A BOOT?" he bellowed.

"YES, SIR!" we all immediately chanted, slightly scared.

Weeds rumbled with laughter. "Yes, they are! No need to wet yourselves! HARHARHARHARHAR!"

He is a strange man.

"So, who wants to wear the boot?" he then questioned. He squinted around at us in a circle. We all avoided eye contact. "No one, ey?" he muttered, then, "YOU!" He pointed and stared pop-eyed at his victim, a knobble-kneed Snellicary boy with very pink ears. He pointed at himself as if to say, me?

"Yes, you," Weeds mumbled. "Would you like to put on this boot?"

"No, sir," squeaked the scared boy.

"And why not?"

"Because it looks like slugs have been living in it, that's why," I heard Troy mutter.

"It looks like the physical manifestation of trench foot," Ermis added.

"I wonder which homeless man Weeds borrowed it off," finished Erik.

The pink-eared boy swallowed. His answer to Weeds was much less witty, and much more feeble: "B-because this is curses & enchantments lesson... and so this boot is probably cursed... or enchanted..."

"Hrmmm," Weeds 'hrmmm'ed. He squinted his left eye and bit the inside of his cheek as he looked at the boy. "Well, you ain't wrong! But- how does this change things-" And Weeds reached under the table, and actually thwacked another rotten old boots onto the table. "Aha!" he cried. "Aye, you're right, a boot on this table is indeed cursed! But the other is not! So how will you tell? You- tell me! Which boots are safe and why?" He pointed to his next victim, a Creepseek, a girl with blonde pigtails and wobbly lips. She actually let out a squeak.