Lilia's Tale: Freyja's Endeavor

Chapter 25: News

I was taken aback by what I just saw. I remembered her having difficulties with magic altogether and though my absence was nearing a week, it wasn't a significant enough length of time that such drastic changes were to be expected. She was looking at me, her eyes full of hope. I simply replied with a nod of the head.

She slowly rose up, gleaming like a child being given a present. She took a few steps closer before asking, her voice pitched higher than ever before:

"Did I do it?"

"Yeah. Yeah you did."

Her already large smile grew ever larger and brighter. She ran up to me and tackled me for a hug. I couldn't tell if she was crying or not, but it was out of happiness

"I did it!" she screamed again my ears.

I wasn't sure what exactly I should do in this situation, so I just somewhat waited for her to calm down. It took an unbearably long amount of time, but she eventually did. She let me go, wiped the tears off her eyes with a smile on her face and said:

"I'm sorry, I was a bit too excited there."

"It's fine, don't worry. I remember being happy about my first spell too."

"Well, it does feel special."

"Don't let it get to your head though. It's not because you managed once that you always will. Hard work pays off."

"Yes. You're right. I just...You know, I'm just happy."

"I know. Once you feel calmer we can continue if you want."

She nodded and went back to where she was. I took the opportunity to look around to hopefully work on my own magic. I did see two water magic spells being used. I automatically took control but reflexively gave control back. The resulting pain was minimal and the students didn't seem to notice anything wrong.

"Okay, let's continue," Sayuri said right as I was done.

"Yes. Let's do that."

We continued for a while to have Sayuri use the same spell on me over and over. It didn't always work but the success rate approached nearly eight out of ten tries. She eventually got heavily tired, likely due to having overworked her magic circuits, so we stopped.

It wasn't too late yet so I offered for her to go rest until dinner while I'd do some patrolling. It had been long enough I thought it best to get myself accustomed to the place again. She agreed and we parted ways.

Nothing noteworthy happened, all the way until twilight. I went ahead and had dinner with Sayuri, we bathed one after another and went to sleep. I was glad I had finally had a day with little to no trouble, falling asleep with my mind at ease.

Next morning came and lessons would be restarting. It was the same to me as it being the first day considering I didn't even have time to take much of any time to attend said lessons, though that added to the quickly-dying excitement. I went in, listened to the teachers, and learned nothing new.

The afternoon was magic practice, which was far more interesting to me. Unfortunately, nothing special happened either. The bully I remembered did not do anything, we simply all worked on our own sides. Sayuri improved her magic fairly significantly in just a single night, is all I could say.

This continued for the entire week. On Saturday, Mark approached me in the afternoon with a letter in his hand.

"Who is it from?"

"Your father, apparently."

I could barely contain my happiness, though it was quickly broken by worry. Why would he need to send me a letter?