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| Details |
| Author: | Mishell |
| Summary: | Mayellen asks for permission to go on a picnic, and gets another question answered entirely. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Warlock Picnic
“I need your advice again,” Mayellen said as she approached her teacher. This time he was seated outside on the grass, reading a book.
Mr. Bennett closed the book, marking his place, and looked up at her attentively. The sun shone down into his face, making his pupils contract and drawing attention to the pale, almost colorless shade of his irises. Mayellen sat on the grass nearby so he wouldn’t have to look up, and passed him the letter.
He scanned its contents once, then read it a second time more slowly. After a brief pause, he passed it back to her without a word.
“What do you think?” Mayellen asked him calmly, tucking the letter back into her satchel.
“You did not ask me a question.”
Mayellen sighed gently. “This is what we were talking about last time we spoke.”
“I remember that conversation. Do you?” From anyone else it would have been an irony-edged barb. But she knew him, by now. Everything he said was exactly as it appeared on the surface. He was legitimately asking her if she remembered, and that was all.
“Of course I remember.” Mayellen felt her face heat slightly. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
“About what?”
Talking with him was maddening sometimes. She used to think he was baiting her, pretending not to understand. She would say something and he would seem to forget it two sentences later. But over time she’d come to learn that he was simply unwilling to answer ambiguity without first clarifying it. To do otherwise, he believed, risked potentially dangerous miscommunication. She respected that, but she also continued to find it frustrating. She’d been raised in a household that gave benefit of doubt to sloppy half-sentences.
Of course, no one else in her household dealt with demons.
“The letter,” Mayellen said carefully, “describes what she has in mind. A nice sunlit picnic in a beautiful location, far away from the Slaughtered Lamb or any other warlock stuff. Just food and friendship. Exactly the kind of thing you always encourage me to do. To travel, get out into the world, appreciate nature, socialize. But you still don’t want me to go.”
“Mayellen.” She tensed at his tone. He was never harsh, but his voice always firmed up a bit when she had disappointed him. “Once again I must ask you to listen to what I say to you rather than what you imagine I am saying. Listen to my words and only my words. If there is something you do not understand, ask me, so that I may clarify.”
A ripple of irritation passed through her. “Okay, please clarify. Do you, or do you not want me to attend this picnic?”
“It is none of my concern.”
Mayellen blew out a frustrated breath. “You gave a whole speech! About warlocks seeking out each other’s company, the temptations, and so on, I haven’t forgotten! Do you expect me to believe you just said that randomly, and that it had nothing to do with this picnic?”
“My intention was to remind you what to watch for. That is my responsibility as your teacher. I left the decision up to you, as it is beyond the scope of your studies. If I wished to forbid you to go, I would have said, ‘I forbid it.’ I did not say that. What I did state very clearly was that I have no authority over your activities outside the classroom.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings about it.”
“My feelings about how you conduct your personal life, should I ever have any, are irrelevant and should be disregarded by both of us.”
“Why?” Mayellen blurted the question before she’d quite realized how revealing it was. She felt the blush steal over her face, watched him watching it happen, studying it, making his calculations.
When he spoke again, it was in his very gentlest voice. “I do not wish to have a personal relationship with you, Mayellen, not even a friendship,” he said. “I am sorry.”
Mayellen felt her eyes fill with tears. Saw him noticing that, too.
“I hope that you choose to continue the relationship that we do have, however,” he said, “as you are one of the most promising warlocks I have worked with. You are an excellent student, and I take great pleasure in teaching you.”
She had never heard him say the word pleasure in the entire time she’d known him; her face found an entirely new temperature somewhere in the volcanic zone.
With great effort, she managed to meet his eyes. “Is it wise for me to try to learn demonology from someone I have a crush on?” she said. There was no point in pretending, anymore, that he hadn’t noticed. His lack of commentary on it had been respect for her privacy, no more.
“I believe it has given you ample practice in trying to focus under challenging conditions. From my point of view, that is a positive. But if your feelings cause you genuine suffering, then you should find another teacher. Suffering and demons are a terrible mix.”
“I’ll… think it over,” she said. Slowly she stood, and his gaze followed her. Calm, unruffled, patient.
“That is all I have the right to ask of you, Mayellen. If you decide not to work with me further, at least allow me to make a recommendation. I would hate to see your potential go to waste.”
For some reason, that started up the waterworks again. “Fine,” she said, wiping at her eyes and tucking away her humiliation. You are not the boss of me, feelings. I see you, but you don’t actually matter in this particular instance. “I’ll let you know when I decide. And I’m going to that picnic. Not that you care.”
“I genuinely do not.” He said it so kindly that it was suddenly hard for her to breathe.
She turned and walked away, observing as her own feelings roiled around inside her, ironically aware of their futility even as she couldn’t escape them. Working with him had given her the power to cut the strings her feelings had once attached to her. She was no one’s puppet… not even her own. When the storm calmed a bit, then she would make a decision, and not a moment before. None of the thoughts she was having right now were at all helpful.
So she simply observed her anger and shame and longing, like snarling animals fighting each other in a pen, and stood outside the pen, safe from their teeth and claws. It wasn’t the animals’ fault. They were doing what they were designed to do. She did not hate them. But she had the power here.
And then the metaphor hit her in the head, and it was all she could do not to run back to Mr. Bennett and hug him, tell him she didn’t want another teacher, beg him to forgive her for being so slow and stupid at understanding what he was trying to impart.
She’d give him the news the way he’d prefer it. A nice tidy letter in a day or so, once her feelings had time to settle. Calduin Bennett was not a very good friend, but she had to admit, he was a very good demonology teacher.