The Blind Side of Ingenio

Part I

Enthuzimuzzy: a mocking synonym of enthusiasm used in the 19th century

Podsnappery: Forrester writes that this describes a person with a "wilful determination to ignore the objectionable or inconvenient, at the same time assuming airs of superior virtue and noble resignation."

~ • ~

Amahle was walking down the stone hallway, her head stuck in a book about quantum physics when she crashed into her best friend of almost a decade, Figaro.

"Careful, Ama, one of these days that'll be a wall," he joked as they both regained their balance.

"I'm so sorry, are you alright?"

"Don't fret, I'm perfectly okay. How was your first night?"

Amahle and Figaro went to the Institute of Ingenio, a school that had just been founded for people like them-people with a genetic mutation that enhanced their intelligence.
As they spoke about the maze that was their new home, Figaro noticed each crack in the stone walls of the ancient castle. The gods-or something similar, they couldn't be sure-who had created the Institute, Aelia and Usiku, had repurposed an abandoned castle to build it. The structure was still antiquated and dilapidated, but was now filled with current furniture and art, giving it a feeling of renewal and homeliness.

It seemed to Figaro that the pathway to his wing of the castle had changed overnight, causing the walk to the dining hall to be shorter this morning than the last. Amahle simply dismissed it.

"But you've forgotten that you never think clearly in the morning," she reminded him.

"Mustn't it have been the shift in light?"

The boy reluctantly agreed with a brisk nod of his head that nearly threatened to dislodge the fiddler's cap resting atop it.

Walking through the classroom door, the pair sat on padded wooden chairs next to each other and shifted the piles of books and supplies from their satchels to the shelf built into the next row of chairs. A woman with auburn hair wrapped around itself in a braided bun was writing her name on a blackboard at the front: Professor Evings. She was clearly very unusual. For instance, unlike all of the other women in the room, she wasn't wearing a dress or a skirt. Instead, she had on a blouse and a pair of trousers that would ordinarily be worn by men.

"The library is simply divine; have you been to see it yet?" Amahle asked a few seconds before a Louis XIV clock in the corner chimed 8 o'clock, its ornate hands pointing to the corresponding azure Roman numerals.
She nervously ran her hands over her floor-length navy skirt, looking down at its minute embroidered flowers twirling around the hem. A single honeybee was depicted buzzing from this ring to its nest a tad higher. This was Amahle's favourite skirt for just that reason: it made her think of the cycle of things and of how each little thing-including her-fit into it. She had wondered for some time now what it would be to be challenged by an educator, instead of simply being put to work.

"Welcome, Ingenio students, to your first class of this year. For the next hour, we will be studying honours calculus," Evings began her course.

Even though Evings' teaching was much more advanced than that of an ordinary teacher, Amahle and Figaro were too engaged in their previous conversation to pay it much attention. The young girl was just telling her companion about her roommate's surplus of enthuzimuzzy, which greatly antagonized her considering her podsnappery disposition.

It was then that an astonishing event shook the class like the first clap of thunder in a storm. Amahle looked up to see Professor Evings flicker out of existence for but a millisecond. In that moment, the silence was a blanket over the hall, until she was there again, lecturing as though she had never left.