Spider Queen (Completed)

Call it love

Monday morning Ruby reported for her lessons, her bikini was packed in her tog bag. Ruby couldn't wait to show May her new bikini.

The kilns in the workroom had been cleaned and the boys were nowhere to be seen. Thirty something bottles of water were stuck in a huge bucket full of ice against the wall.

Jenny looked at Andy and said, "Hey Andy, I want you to go and join the two boys at the bar, I don't want you staring at Ruby's butt now do I". "And lock up when you leave". "We will be done by noon and you're welcome to check out the strippers butt's if you want to" she said. "Yes ma'am" Andy said before he locked the door on the way out.

They put on their bikinis; it was going to be extremely hot according to Jenny.

They both carried their 'fire-buckets' of sand to their respective kilns and closed the side wall of the kiln. Ruby could see her bucket of sand from Friday's test through the opening of the kiln door. Ruby noticed Jenny had a scar on her back that looked like a 7, when she asked Jenny about it Jenny said it was from a childhood accident, nothing major, she just fell out of a tree.

"Now we leave the door open and blast that kiln with so much hot Calistherm that the kilns burn white" Jenny said. "It's more of a show and copy than a tell and do" Jenny explained.

Ruby started pounding her kiln with the hot Calistherm, it took them almost 40 minutes to get the kilns hot enough, the fire-bucket was glowing a very bright grey as opposed to its normal black. The sweat was pouring off their bodies, they had each drunk two bottles of water already and had both their bodies were dripping with sweat.

"The furnace is as hot as we can get it now" Jenny said while pouring water over her face, "You now need to lift enough glass out of the bucket to make one marble". When her glass was floating like a bubble in the kiln Jenny explained further, "Then you focus a small pin sized pulling force in the middle of the glass bubble". "The pulling will force the glass to become perfectly round, then while pulling you heat the centre even further until the glass bubbles". "The hotter you make it in the middle the more bubbles you create, the stronger the pulling force the smaller the bubbles will be Ruby". "It's tricky but not difficult, use half your glass to make marbles, as soon as you feel the marble is right pull the marble out of the kiln, let it cool a few seconds outside the kiln then drop the marble onto the sand". "Those marbles are going to be harder than steel.

It took Ruby half an hour to finish all her marbles, Jenny had finished in five minutes, while Ruby was concentrating Jenny kept pulsing both furnaces with Calistherm to keep the heat up and held the bottle of water up for Ruby to drink from every few minutes.

Then Jenny asked Ruby to make anything she wanted to from the left over glass. It took Jenny about five minutes to create a 1 foot tall glass bonsai.

Then it was Ruby's turn, Jenny kept the furnace hot and Ruby cool. It took about an hour and then Ruby dropped the sculpture gently on the sand.

They cooled the kilns with cold Calistherm and then delicately cooled their glass creations. Jenny told Ruby, "I can only teach you the basics Ruby, perfection comes through practice only".

They both were sitting on a workbench looking at their handiwork. The marbles were all different in sizes and patterns.

"You know that urban legend about boys who have marbles that are perfectly round and harder than steel" Jenny asked.

Ruby nodded her head in acknowledgement.

"It's true" Jenny said in a naughty voice as she lifted all the marbles by magic, moved them across the room and dropped them into a bucket on the side of workroom where the apprentices had put the marbles that they had made. She stirred the marbles around in the bucket with some indigo magic. Tomorrow the apprentices would bag the marbles and ship them to the toy store. The marbles Jenny and Ruby had made today would become part of boyhood urban legend.

"May is beautiful" Jenny said while looking at the slightly green half size glass sculpture of May's head, "I assume it's May of course".

The sculpture of May's face had been difficult to make when Ruby had entered the zone. When Ruby focused on May's face she had felt a feeling of love flowing through her into the Calistherm into the glass. Ruby recalled everything she could about May, the curve of her eyebrows, the slant of lips, the world around Ruby slowed down. Love had flowed out of Ruby into the glass in the kiln. Her mind drifted in a cloud of love and a song of joy of erupted from her heart into her mind. The hour Ruby had spent in the zone had been amazing"

Jenny turned May's sculptured face to the side and looked again at the sculpture with a puzzled look on her face. "Wow" Jenny said.

Jenny showed Ruby an almost invisible green flame running around in the glass slowly. Ruby said the color of love was almost always green not pink as most people thought. Green was the color of the love energy of the heart. After Jenny switched off the light in the workroom the green flame showed much more prominently. "You pass the formative magic with an A plus" Jenny said."However you still have to finish all the other lessons as well, so from now on there are no more tests" Jenny said smiling. "You really love May don't you" Jenny asked?

Ruby nodded, smiling softly.

On Tuesday morning it was time to make Essvee ink. It eventually took three days for Ruby to master the process so Ruby had Friday off.

It took two days for Ruby to learn how to take a piece of glass and mold it into millions of small hollow balls with 8 tiny holes in each ball. On Thursday she had to drop the microscopic balls into a small thimble sized crystal container filled with Calistherm and Essvee magic. The magical ink in the thimble would soak into the balls through the tiny holes. Ruby then sealed the microscopic holes.

Then the ink filled balls were magically transferred into a long tube with a ball point. The long tube and ball point were going to be the next week's lesson.

Ruby filled up 8 tubes with the Essvee ink. Then Ruby slid the tubes by hand into the big sleeves. "Look, an Essvee Calistherm ballpoint pen" Jenny said holding up the final product. "Let's see how they make that in a normal factory" Jenny asked sarcastically. A normal person would think that the pen wasn't working but anyone capable of looking in Calistherm or Essvee would be able to see the writing. When the ball point of the pen moved over paper it would draw the microscopic balls out of the tube and crush them on the paper. The magical ink would rush out. The broken glass balls would mix with the ink and form a protective layer over the ink as well. The glass fragments wouldn't be able to be seen by a normal person because they were non reflective.

"I feel like a spy" Ruby said.

"Maybe the spies did use it, who knows" Jenny answered.

"I just realized you can kill a human being with magic" Ruby said.

"Yes, magic is even deadlier than the biggest man with the nastiest weapons, that's why you must always be weary" Jenny answered, "Now on a lighter note..."

Jenny took 4 pens for herself and gave the other four to Ruby. "See you Monday and no you don't need to bring your bikini ever again"

On Friday morning about 3AM Ruby had tidied Mays flat a bit and put some snacks in the fridge before going to bed, she slept with May's pillow in her arms. Ruby had set the alarm clock for 12 noon. She wanted to be waiting at 2 o'clock when the B&B landed. At about six in the morning a breeze blew through the room and Ruby in her sleep pulled the sheets closer around her.

In her dream May had just dried herself with a big green towel after swimming in a bikini with green hearts. In the dream May came and lay with her in a silken hammock next to the side of a huge lagoon filled with love. May turned Ruby onto her back in the hammock and looked down at Ruby with her beautiful green eyes. "I Missed you" May said to Ruby. Ruby answered "I missed you too" Ruby said, little did Ruby realize she was talking in her sleep as well. "I love you" the dream May said. "I love you too" Ruby answered in her dream. In the dream May kissed her gently. "Wake up silly girl" Grandma Grey said in her dream "You're dreaming about something real".

As Ruby opened her eyes she looked into the real May's green eyes. "Hello beautiful" May said, "and by the way, you talk in your sleep as well".

Wow, they both had the most awesome kiss ever, they cuddled in and slept until noon. They both went to the market on their sk8boards and sk8ted hand in hand through the market for the rest of the Friday afternoon. Something in both of their lives had now changed forever.