Elemys (Part 1: Magic schools and dark stories)

Chapter 3: The magic championship

Sunbeams were passing through my bedroom window, slowly beginning to reach my eyes. Indicating it had risen for more or less three hours, it woke me up gently. Except that it was too early for me as I had slept for less than five hours.

I turned over in my bed, tried to put my sheets over my head, without any success and finally got up to go have my breakfast.

My father, brother and sister went out this morning to visit a stud farm. Only my mother was still home and I ated with her.

In the meantime, I received a message from Jade indicating she would arrive at 2:30 PM. I quickly calculated how much time I had left to prepare myself. Four hours and a half was plenty enough and I got back into my bed as I wanted to try asking Khalel some questions.

"Will Jade's application be accepted for one of the nine Great Schools of Magic?"

"Yes."

I was relieved from getting this answer, hoping it would be effectively right. I then tried my luck and asked him in my mind what would be my own result.

"Will my application be accepted?"

"..."

"Hey? Will one school accept me?"

"..."

I was suddenly seized with some uneasiness. Thinking that concentration could affect our communication, I didn't know if I failed to get his answers or if he did not answer at all. If it was the latter case, I could not understand why he would do that. Because I would fail?

While thinking about it, I got a strange idea. Could it be that he did not answer me because telling me this precise future event could affect that given future? It was a plausible hypothesis. At least more plausible than not answering because I would fail.

At this moment, I had only two possibilities left. Whether it was that I failed to get his answer because I was too tired, or it was to prevent the future from being affected by me knowing it. I just hoped I was not finding excuses based on the fact I decided that I could not fail.

***

Time passed. After lunch, I decided to take a bath as I still had one hour left before me. Once in it, I closed my eyes to rest a little, but was quickly brought back to reality as I heard the house bell. As it was at least forty five minutes early for it to be Jade, I didn't hurry, closing my eyes again to enjoy the bath as much as I could.

Approximately ten minutes later, I was brought back to reality again, hearing my mother talking loudly to someone downstairs. As I thought earlier, it was too early for Jade to be here, but it was even more early for the rest of my family to come back home. I still decided to quickly get out and to finish preparing myself just in case.

I went down to the living room five minutes later, and obviously Jade was indeed early. She stared at me, almost desperately asking for my help to get her out of the trap she seemed to be in.

Following her gaze, my mother saw that I was finally there, with the most sadistic smile I had ever seen on anyone's face.

"Ah! You're here my dear. We were chatting while waiting for you! So this is the famous 'buddy' you were expecting I suppose?"

And she insisted well enough on the word 'buddy' I used the day before. I immediately wanted to bury myself deep enough to never be found. She was at it again, embarrassing me to the max. I answered her minimalistically with a simple 'yes' before inviting Jade to come with me to my room.

"Why did you not tell me that you would come early??? Meeting my mother first thing when arriving here must have been awful! She's so unbearable when she gets some idea in her crazy mind... And so embarrassing!"