Chatoyant College Book 8: From the Earth

Chapter 20: Spark of Life

Monday, November 11

Edie had said that there was snow the night before, maybe half an inch, but by the time Corrie woke up that morning, it was gone. She was half glad and half disappointed. She was glad because snow would undoubtedly make it harder to run—she already had to keep at least one eye on her path, since there had been frosts and frozen spots were rather dangerous—but she loved the way snow looked, and she'd been looking forward to seeing it cover the campus which, if you ignored most of the buildings, was already very pretty. Well, it was still only the second week of November. There would undoubtedly be more snowfalls, and maybe some of them would stick around.

After Jasmine's class—during which she got a paper back and refused to look at her grade since she was sure it would discourage her—she had a break before biology. She intended to take advantage of that break. She wanted to try the magic she'd read about the night before, and she knew the perfect spot.

As she made her way back to the west side of campus and left the academic buildings, the crowd thinned out. When she reached her destination, as she'd hoped, there was no one else around. Even the dorm windows she could see from here had their shades drawn. People didn't tend to have much interest in the statue of Vertiline Gravette.

That was the main reason she'd chosen this spot, but there was a secondary one. Maybe, if she did it right, she would be able to find out if there was a spark of life in Vertiline. The Miranda Swick book said that all things had magic in them, but living things had far more, humans still more, and humans who could do magic the most by far. Vertiline Gravette had been a student here, so if there was something still living and capable of magic inside that statue, there would be a fair amount to find. The trance technique that the book taught would show her, at least in theory. It was all in theory.

Corrie looked around for a good spot and chose one a couple of feet away from the statue, where the grass was still thick on the ground, though most of it had gone yellow and brittle. She just didn't want to sit directly in the dirt. She slid her bag off her shoulder, set it down a bit away from her, and settled down into a cross-legged position on the ground.

She cast her mind back to what the book had said—she had it with her in her bag, but she didn't want to pull it out and page through again unless she had to—while trying to find a good way to arrange her hands. Crossed across her chest was definitely too restricting, and having them loose in her lap just felt awkward. She finally settled on putting them on the ground next to her. A stronger connection with the earth couldn't hurt.

Now it should be fairly straightforward. She closed her eyes and sent her awareness outward. It was the opposite of what she'd done to look for her own magic; instead of looking within herself, she was looking everywhere else. She started taking slow, deep, steady breaths and imagining herself with roots growing out of her hands and legs, reaching down into the earth. This, so the book said, was called grounding.

She started to feel calmer and more relaxed—enough so that, though she was surprised at feeling that way, the surprise didn't really affect her. She could also feel her body settling further into the ground, her fingers sinking into and almost twining with the grass. Her spine relaxed, too; it was like the earth was doing all the work of supporting her body.

But she still couldn't sense anything.

She knew it might take a while. She was prepared for that, and tried to keep herself from being annoyed. She could still sense her own magic, though it was fainter since she wasn't looking for it, seeming lighter and cooler and farther away.

She kept breathing, kept herself connected to the earth, and kept pushing her awareness outward. She focused on different mental senses; after all, she could see, feel texture, and feel temperature when it came to her own magic, so it stood to reason that she would be able to sense the earth's magic in different ways. But she could make no connection to it.

She was so focused on her search that she didn't even notice that someone had come up to her until she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes flew open and her breath caught as she lost her connection to the earth. "Hey, are you okay?" asked the person who'd startled her, a red-haired guy she didn't recognize. "I just wondered why you were sitting by yourself out in the cold..."

She forced a smile onto her face. "Don't worry. I was just meditating."

"Oh." He lifted his hand away and took a step back. "Sorry to interrupt."

Corrie shook her head. "That's okay. It wasn't working anyway." She collected her things, nodded to him, and walked back toward Gilkey.