Slice of life

 “This isn’t working,” said Ernest.  He was sitting on the edge of the sofa with an old blanket over his knees staring avidly at his phone.  Outside winter had brought the darkness in already even though it wasn’t yet five o’clock and so the room was mostly illuminated by the light reflected off Ernest’s face.

“What’s not?” asked Barry, his flatmate.  Barry had just arrived home from work and was taking his coat off in the hallway, hanging on a peg, and then taking his shoes off to leave on the doormat.  Barry liked things neat and tidy at all times.

“This relationship,” said Ernest.  He sighed heavily and put the phone down.  “Turn the lights on, will you?  I can’t see anything in here.”

Barry came in to the living room and turned the lights on.  A single 100W bulb without a shade illuminated the room starkly.  The carpet was beige and stained; the coffee table was orange and sticky with something that wouldn’t scrub off; the couch looked like it had been used as a dog-bed for years.  The darkness had been better.

“With Jamela?” he asked.  “Or did you change her already?”

“Hey hey!” Ernest stood up, the blanket falling to the floor and revealing he wasn’t wearing trousers.  His pale, unmuscled legs looked flabby and dead in the light, and his underpants were wrinkled and worn.  “I’m not that bad!”

“You dated Shirley for three days before deciding she wasn’t good enough for you,” said Barry.  He was of the opinion, privately held, that everyone who’d dated Ernest that he knew about was too good for him.  He was saving money to move out and live by himself and nearly there, and there was nothing about Ernest that was making him regret this choice.  Ernest, as though to reinforce this, belched.

“She was a minger,” said Ernest, which was a reflexive reaction to anything that he didn’t like.  He paused, thinking about it.  “Well, she wasn’t that bad,” he conceded to himself.  “I sort of liked her, but she kept wanting to split the bill.”

“And you wanted her to pay all of it,” said Barry.  He left the living room and went into the kitchen.  The fridge was mostly full, so Ernest couldn’t have been up for too long so far today.  The left-over pasta from last night was there, in its pan, and Barry stirred it thoughtfully.  It would do.

“Well, I’m not working, am I?”  That was a familiar whine.  Barry took the pan of pasta out and poured a little milk into it.  Closing up the fridge he set the pan on the stove and turned the heat on.

“You stopped working last year,” said Barry.  “You said you’d had enough and you needed to find what you loved doing.”

“Yeah!”

“Which seems to be sitting around the flat all day mooching off your latest date from that app.”

“Yea— no!”

“And complaining that no-one wants to pay you to do that.”

“Whose side are you on anyway, mate?”  Ernest’s head appeared around the doorframe.  He sneered at the pan of pasta.  “I was going to have that.”

“Lucky I got here before you then,” said Barry.  He stirred the pan, mixing the milk in as the cheese sauce started to melt.  “It’s my pasta, you should eat your own food.”

“Everything in that fridge is yours.”

“True.  Doesn’t stop you though, does it?  Anyway, what’s wrong with Jamela then?  She seen through you already?”

“I don’t know what you bloody mean,” said Ernest morosely.  “Can we share the pasta, mate?”

“No,” said Barry.  “I’ve got a squash game at eight and I’m not messing around trying to keep you happy tonight.  Make your own food, or buy it, I don’t care.”

“Might get a pizza then,” said Ernest.  He disappeared, but a moment later his voice floated back through the doorway.  “You want pizza too, mate?”

“I’ve got pasta,” said Barry patiently.

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

Barry stirred the pan again, which was starting to bubble now, and decided to make one last try on Jamela’s behalf.  “What’s wrong with Jamela then?”

“She’s not bloody here, is she?”

“So?”

“So I only dated her because I want someone to warm the bed,” said Ernest.  “Yeah, is that Malt Street pizza please?  I want to order a large pepperoni.”

“Warm the bed?” said Barry, half under his breath.  “What the hell?”

After a rancorous exchange with the pizza shop Ernest hung the phone up.  “Yeah, she’s fine and that, but really I was just cold and needed someone in the bed with me, but she’s acting like she’s entitled to see me now when she feels like it.”

Barry tipped the pasta out on to a plate.  “And that’s bad?”

“Yeah mate.  She’s not keeping the bed warm and she expects me to go out and see her.  In places.”

“You could just get a hot water bottle,” said Barry sighing to himself.  “That’ll keep the bed warm.”

“You got a tenner for the pizza, mate?”

“No,” said Barry with feeling.  “No I bloody haven’t.”

Of exams and otters

"David Suture."  The name was called by a thin man with a long neck and a reedy voice.  He was wearing a dark suit and white shirt with no tie, possibly because it would have emphasized the length of his neck even more.  He stood in the doorway of the Practicum holding the door open with his arm and looked out into the hallway where three students were standing.  David put a book back into his bag, took a deep breath, and stepped forward.
"Come along," said the thin man.  "Lady Arabella is unforgiving when it comes to timekeeping."
All three students reacted with dismay: until this moment they had known that Lady Arabella was a possibility for an examiner but not that she was actually here today.  David let his breath out, and then took another deep one, trying to control the shakes.  His nerves were never good at exam time, and this had just made everything ten times worse.
"Come on," said the thin man.  He extended his hand, which stretched out unnaturally far until it grasped David's arm, and pulled him to the doorway.  "When you get inside place your bag on the table to your left.  You may take out your wand and any foci that you want to have available to you during the test.  Books, notes and prepared items must remain in your bag, and there will be a watch on it and you to ensure you are not cheating.  And remember your manners."
The Practicum was a medium-sized room that was almost oval: at one end it squared off and doors led out to storage areas and a preparation room.  Usually the room would have twenty desks laid out in it and a long demonstration bench at the front, but for the exams the desks had all been moved into the storage rooms and the long bench pushed back against the wall.  Lady Arabella was sitting on a laboratory stool in front of the bench with an otter curled up on her lap.  Its nose twitched as David came in, and it opened bright blue eyes and watched him.  He set his bag down on a small table and hesitated for a moment.  Then he left the bag behind, his hand checking that his wand was in his jacket pocket, and walked out into the cleared space in the Practicum.  As he walked he noticed that the floor was covered with a fine white sand and that the walls were shimmering faintly, as though there were a heat haze in front of them.  He guessed that they were wards around the room in case anything went wrong in the exam; it made perfect sense that the school wouldn't want to risk a nervous student setting it all on fire or summoning Ilkelb-ilkbir ta'qamar.  He stopped in the middle of the room, turned to face Lady Arabella, and bowed.
Lady Arabella was old but still beautiful: she had the timeless looks of a film-actress and eyes that were so deep men were said to have drowned their souls in them.  Her skin was like the finest vellum, pale and soft, with a radiance like sunlight trapped in diamonds.  One hand rested on the otter's back, her fingers lightly stroking it, and the other was resting on the bench.  Just behind her was a sheet of paper and David wondered if it was the exam questions or just for her to make notes on regarding his performance.
"Suture," she said, her words curt and precise.  "Your father is an Alchemist, isn't he?"
"Yes ma'am," said David, a little startled by the familiarity of the conversation.
"I visited him yesterday. I asked him what his expectations were of you."
"I... believe they're high, ma'am."
"Do you."  It wasn't a question, just a dismissal.  David felt his face flush and he sought for the right and polite words for a reply, but before anything came into his mind Lady Arabella had picked the sheet of paper up off the bench and was staring at him with a directness that made him start shaking again.
"Start with a demonstration of the five elements, please," she said.
The first four questions were little more than canonical exercises, things David had practiced almost every day since entering the school, and as he ran through familiar motions and extended his will in ways that were nearly engrained in him he found himself losing his nervousness.  His mind relaxed a little and his muscles stopped tensing everytime Lady Arabella spoke and he found a central point, a sense of timelessness than in athletes would be called 'flow'.
"Thank-you," said Lady Arabella as he released his will and a pretty illusion of flowers broke apart into a whirl of colours and evaporated.  "The basic technique is acceptable.  For the first demonstration of power, please demonstrate how the Laws of Contagion and Symmetry may be combined."
He stared, his mind struggling to understand what was being asked for.  Instead of telling him what to do, she'd left the task undefined, asking only that he put together two of the Laws of Magic and demonstrate that he'd used them.  He considered the Law of Symmetry, wondering how on earth it could be combined with the Law of Contagion, and felt his stomach turn.  He felt just a little dizzy.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Suture?"  He was sure that she was glaring at him now, angry that he wasn't reacting.
"No," he said reflexively.  He tried to make himself believe it.  "No."
"Then proceed," she said.  Her hand caressed the otter, and a mad idea crossed his mind.
"Might I have a hair from your pet, please?" he said.  His feet were taking steps towards her without him willing them to.  She raised an eyebrow, but turned her hand over.  There were two silvery-grey hairs adhering to her fingers.
"It would seem so," she said.  There was a sensation of a strong will around him and he stopped.  One of the hairs from her hand lifted up and drifted over to him as though carried by an invisible servant, and he held his own hand out to accept it.  It drifted down and settled in his palm.
He concentrated, applying his will to the hair and then invoking the law of Contagion.  The hair, being from an otter, remembered what it was to be an otter, and in a bright coruscation an otter made from starlight formed.  Instinctively he reached out his other hand: an otter was too big to hold in just one.  As the shape firmed up he reached again, shaping his will like a potter shapes clay on a wheel, holding the Law of Contagion firmly in place and now reaching for the Law of Symmetry.
As within, so without, he said.  Language wasn't important for magic, only intent.  The otter made of starlight turned its head and looked at him, and with an instant of shock he recognised its eyes as his own: he had intended to create an exact duplicate of Lady Arabella's otter, but instead the Law of Symmetry had taken the nearest living creature for its model and he had created a simulacrum of himself in an otter.
The starlight otter leaped gracefully from his hands to the floor, and the real otter sat up on Lady Arabella's lap, eyes bright and nose twitching, considering the newcomer.
"You are the only student today to pass that test, Mr. Suture," said Lady Arabella.  Her otter cocked its head, and then decided to jump down from her lap and go and greet the starlight otter.  "And you have made a most interesting choice."
"Thank-you," said David.  As Lady Arabella's otter touched noses with his own there was a wrenching sensation as though a much greater will was imposed and he struggled to hold his spell together.  For a few moments he succeeded, and then something unravelled too fast for him to catch and the otter disappeared in a scintillating helix that writhed its way to the ceiling.
"You will need to know yourself better, Mr. Suture," said Lady Arabella, but for the first time since he'd entered the room she was smiling.