Arcanum

12

No matter how occupied our minds had been with the strange notebook that we had found in the cave, by the time we got back to university we had all more or less forgotten about its existence. Iphi was the one that had it in her possession anyway, which meant it probably wouldn't see the light of day for a long time. Not if she was intent on studying it thoroughly and possibly deciphering it. And everyone that knew Iphi knew that something like this was one of her favourite things, even if she didn't really find anything. She loved to make things interesting for herself.

Maybe she was romanticising college life. We were all probably romanticising it heavily. The late hours finishing essays and translations, being pretentious, especially when we met one of the other students, feeling like we were somehow something better for studying Classics... but how else were we supposed to enjoy it? Without romanticising the experience it would all have been incredibly dull and boring. We needed to make something more than it actually was out of it. We needed to live in our own little world, where everything happened for a reason and where everything had some deep purpose, because we would have gone insane otherwise.

So as soon as we all made it back to university, we started walking around campus like we owned the place. I'm pretty sure we all thought that we actually owned the place. Of course we didn't, and all that other people could see were a bunch of pompous brats whose education had gone to their heads, but we didn't care at the time. I'm not sure if I even care now. We thought we were amazing, we were geniuses, we were the rulers of the world and everyone wished they were us. In reality, most other students probably had no clue who we were.

It was starting to get incredibly cold around the time we came back to university, which seemed nice at first, because we could just stay inside and read our books and have long discussions by the fireplace, but really it was exhausting. It was freezing cold and since Allen and I rented an apartment that was old and badly insulated, we quickly forgot what it meant to be warm and comfortable. We were probably sick a lot of the time, because it was so cold in our apartment, but that was the price we were willing to pay to have a nice place with history and a beautiful interior. We managed the cold somehow, even if it meant sleeping in the same bed to keep warm.

We never really talked about those nights, but I had to admit that I liked falling asleep next to Allen and waking up next to him. It was comforting to have someone so close by, especially since I had already known him for such a long time. There was something magical about it and talking about it would have destroyed all of that. We both knew it, so we just kept quiet, even to each other.

While Iphi was getting bogged down in coursework, Faye took her place. She wasn't the same as Iphi, not even close. She was the complete opposite to her, but somehow she managed to fill the space that Iphi left whenever she was off to go to the library or write her essays. Normally, Iphigenia didn't say much when she was around us. She seemed to like being in our company, but she didn't participate in discussions much. She was mostly in her own world, as usual, and would only chime in with a smart remark here and there, when there was something she could contribute. Still, it felt wrong when Iphigenia wasn't around for some reason.

It was different with Faye. Faye had a warm presence and she liked talking to us. She would sit around the fire with us and tell us stories - things she had learned in her Folklore lectures, gruelling stories and cute little fairy tales. It was fascinating to listen to her. Faye had a way about her that made everything seem to stand still and made stories come to life. We'd often sit around the fire, draped over our books and our essays, our translations and presentations and we'd go into a study break and Faye would start telling her stories and before we knew it, it was way past midnight and we realised that we would all be feeling awful during the lectures the next morning.