sic semper tyrannis

nitimur in vetitum

Unfortunately for Alhaitham, Kaveh's curiosity was not satiated after the story. In fact, it only seemed to get worse.

Kaveh had never been one to pay too much attention to his studies. He performed well without trying, aced every test without studying, and could answer questions in the bat of an eye, even when his tutors correctly assumed he wasn't focused. Kaveh was truly smart and Alhaitham was sure he could learn anything if he just put his mind to it, the problem was that he wouldn't bother.

No, Kaveh learned what he had to and anything outside of that was cast to the wind unless it happened to spark his interest. Alhaitham didn't quite understand that. The prince was enamored with the arts. He'd fallen for architecture and pretty blueprints and watercolor paints that he'd used until the colors were no more, bleeding together across his palette. There was no room for anything else, even if said anything else were things Alhaitham personally considered more important.

"I just don't understand," Kaveh complained after one such session with the Sages, crossing his arms and huffing to himself as they passed through one of the hallways back to the prince's room. "They want to teach me so much, but it's not even real. History with no wars, no conflict, bleh. It's a lie, that's what it is. And we can't even learn anything really interesting! Where's art? If they can't show me something real, they can at least show me that much."

"The Akademiya looks down on it," Alhaitham answered.

He always ended up repeating the same things. The Akademiya didn't see the functionality in creating just to create. There had to be purpose, there had to be structure, there had to be functionality. If someone did something just to do it, there was no deeper meaning. There was nothing they deemed valuable in that, so they discouraged it and squandered any spark they came across.

And yet, Kaveh continued burning.

"I know that," Kaveh threw his hands into the air, exasperated. He let out another sharp huff, balling his hands into fists at his sides when they came down, and then he stared at Alhaitham with a look that showed nothing but trouble. "What if I just defy them?"

"Your parents wouldn't hear the end of it," Alhaitham sighed in return. "And you'd miss the world outside of punishment."

It'd truly not go over well. He'd seen Kaveh disciplined more than once, locked away in his room with no books, no art supplies, nothing at all. Sometimes they'd hold his lessons all day, not leaving a chance for anything else, or sometimes they'd force him to continue his spar until he physically could not continue. Nothing was quite pretty to watch.

Kaveh huffed a third time. It was clear the anger was boiling over inside of him, but he had no idea how to take it out, no idea what to do with it. "I hate how logical you are sometimes."

"If I wasn't like this, you'd have long since worn your instructor's patience and been given up on," Alhaitham said, but they'd finally arrived at Kaveh's room and he pushed open the door, holding it open for the prince to enter. "You need me."

Kaveh giggled at that, slipping past him into the room and immediately taking a seat at his desk. "I never said I didn't. You cheer me up."

"You detest me," Alhaitham retorted, though he followed suit. The door fell closed behind them and he took his usual spot on Kaveh's bed, sitting at the edge while the prince pulled a book from a nearby shelf and flicked through it until he got to the page he wanted.

When Kaveh finally settled on one, he smiled back at Alhaitham. "I detest you the way the sun detests the moon. You cannot have one without the other, but they chase each other away all the same."