Mentor's Life

Chapter 1: Karkussa

Once once once upon a time there was ten nothings.

The first of these nothings was a girl. Young lady, actually. Her name was Karkussa. And she was a mentor.

She went to mentoring school, naturally, where they learned to mentor. You see, the land she lived in was a land of adventure and magic and gritty reality. So there were plenty of young heroes coming up all the time with grand schemes to change things and end the world as we know it. So of course, there had to be mentors to keep them straight.

This particular mentoring school was in the corner of a small country known as Wilshusen. It was called "The Mentoring School for Mentors" and it was where all the mentors were mentored before they began their career of mentoring. Wilshusen was a very out-of-the-way place on the corner of the continent near the ocean. It was so small that it didn't have any states or provinces. If you were from Wilshusen you were from Wilshusen. There were a couple small towns, but that didn't really matter because noone outside Wilshusen cared. Karkussa went to the Mentoring School of Mentors in Wilshusen and that was all anyone needed to know.

Bradley also went to the Mentoring School of Mentors, and Karkussa rather fancied him, although she didn't tell anyone because mentors weren't supposed to fancy people; not really; because it's hard to mentor when you're constantly preoccupied with someone else. There wasn't much to recommend Bradley to the eye, not really; he was tall and black and somewhat bony, rather thinnish, with thick black hair that stuck off his head like an overly populated pincushion. There wasn't too much to recommend Karkussa to the eye either; at least, not in her opinion, although she didn't think she was ugly, per se. She was short and brown and bony and stout like a workhorse, and her eyes were beady green and her hair was a tangled brown. And anyway, both she and Bradley were hard at work learning to mentor, so that was that.

Nincussa was the head of the school. All feared her, mostly because she had the power to kick anyone out, and to be frank there wasn't much use for mentoring abilities in daily activities. What I mean by that is that it's hard to quit learning to be a mentor and go live on a farm or something instead, because there's not much use for inspiring pep talks or fancy swordplay on a farm. You just have to know how to farm things. Which they don't, not in mentoring school. And so anyway, everyone feared Nincussa for her power of kicking out, which was to be feared. As mentioned.

The school itself was a squarish building, on the edge of a rocky outcropping. Actually, this was the edge of the country as well. The rocks stood about fifty feet in the air, and on the other side of them was the sea, which could constantly be heard smashing and fighting against the rocks. The school nestled right against the cliffs, in constant danger of rocks falling, which was why there was a forcefield around the whole thing. It shimmered blue if the light caught it, or if someone ran against it, which when it wasn't Karkussa wasn't too often. It shielded the building from the rocks, and then extended about half a mile away from the school in all directions, shielding it in a sort of dome.

Karkussa lived in the dormitories, where all the students lived, male and female. It was a test given by the school to see if they could remember they were mentors, not ordinary children off the street. A certain Bradley lived only two doors down from Karkussa, and she had to remind herself often of her duty. It was especially awkward if she met Bradley when either of them was coming back from the showers.

"Hello, Bradley," she would say, clutching her towel to herself if it was her, or trying not to stare at Bradley's towel if it was him.

"Hello," Bradley would say, clutching his towel to his waist if it was him, or staring at the ceiling if it was her. He never said her name. Karkussa was half convinced he'd forgotten it, except that he sat next to her in mentoring class and dueled her every other week.