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The new crop of freshmen is mostly pretty ordinary. They're fresh out of middle school, playing with new identities, seeing how the batch from this neighborhood react to the batch fed in from the other side of town. They're bonding or forming petty enmities over music and fashion and flash-in-the-pan romances; they're developing opinions about their teachers and the quality of the cafeteria and how early they have to get up in the morning to catch the bus.
Here, sitting by herself writing in a prettily-bound notebook, is a twelve-year-old. Must have skipped a couple grades.
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deepest_magic
deepest_magic
Isabella shoots a few nervous looks in their direction over the course of the lesson, but doesn't say anything else, until the school day is over and she says:
"What was it you said you wanted to know?"
against_all_trouble
"I'd probably start with the 'magic book' part, but whatever part of the story you want to tell first, I'm about equally scared, confused, and curious."
against_all_trouble
"Would anyone believe me? I probably wouldn't if I hadn't seen it. and I'm not going to steal it!"
He pauses with a thoughtful look, then continues, "And besides, we were trying to make friends before you were apparently a magic princess. I'm definitely not going to be a jerk now!"
He pauses with a thoughtful look, then continues, "And besides, we were trying to make friends before you were apparently a magic princess. I'm definitely not going to be a jerk now!"
deepest_magic
"You wouldn't have to steal it, or outright convince anyone. You'd just have to get someone interested enough to pick it up and look through it." Pause. "Queen."
deepest_magic
Isabella looks at them warily, but says:
"Once upon a time a ten-year-old girl fell into a magic wardrobe in an abandoned mansion. She met fauns and dwarves and talking animals and dryads and unicorns and griffins and Father Christmas and an evil witch and a thinly veiled Christ allegory, all of whom were very excited about the land seeing its first human in centuries, and when the evil witch was defeated and the hundred-year winter thawed into a new spring, she was crowned the queen of Narnia and ruled for a fifteen-year Golden Age, and she had dozens of mostly magical Christmas presents, and then - she got on her horse and went for a ride and wandered past the wrong tree - and came out the wardrobe again and found that she was ten, wearing her old jeans and her old t-shirt and her old sneakers, and all her gifts were gone except for her infinity notebook. And the wardrobe. Was. No. Longer. Magic." Shrug. "So she remembered the way back to her father's house, and went - home."
"Once upon a time a ten-year-old girl fell into a magic wardrobe in an abandoned mansion. She met fauns and dwarves and talking animals and dryads and unicorns and griffins and Father Christmas and an evil witch and a thinly veiled Christ allegory, all of whom were very excited about the land seeing its first human in centuries, and when the evil witch was defeated and the hundred-year winter thawed into a new spring, she was crowned the queen of Narnia and ruled for a fifteen-year Golden Age, and she had dozens of mostly magical Christmas presents, and then - she got on her horse and went for a ride and wandered past the wrong tree - and came out the wardrobe again and found that she was ten, wearing her old jeans and her old t-shirt and her old sneakers, and all her gifts were gone except for her infinity notebook. And the wardrobe. Was. No. Longer. Magic." Shrug. "So she remembered the way back to her father's house, and went - home."
ladysunday
"And skipped ahead in school, to prove she was an adult as fast as she could..."
against_all_trouble
"I hated being treated like a kid enough when I was one, let alone the queen of not-Earth. Did you actually do SCA?"
deepest_magic
"Yeah. Talked my mom into it and went with her. I wanted a bow and arrows, and it's convenient to explain the accent lapses and the calligraphy and a few other things. I considered begging for riding lessons but there's no way I'm getting my own horse so it's not necessary to explain why I can handle one."
against_all_trouble
"I want to congratulate you on your excellent plan, but you're really twice our age, aren't you?"
deepest_magic
"I'm probably not twice your age. I'm subjectively twenty-seven." She swallows. "Jolt doesn't begin to describe it."
ladysunday
"OK, so that might have helped more two years ago. And I guess the book was proof you weren't nuts. But still."
deepest_magic
"If the book hadn't come with me I don't know what I'd have thought."
against_all_trouble
"I'd probably have called it a really vivid dream, eventually. And written it down. Maybe tried to find a way back, if it kept feeling so real."
deepest_magic
"I'm fairly sure I have to have been shunted back for some reason. It may have been impossible to make the time continue to match up in such a way that my parents wouldn't miss me, that's my dominant hypothesis. I've tried the wardrobe again, it's just - it doesn't work anymore. I don't know what else to try."
against_all_trouble
"Something might be weird about the wardrobe that you could study. But when there's an obvious Jesus allegory walking around and actual physical Santa Claus delivering magical presents, I guess you can't expect normal rules to apply. Maybe it's astrology and there won't be another time it can work for decades."
deepest_magic
"The obvious Jesus allegory is named Aslan, there," she murmurs. "He's a lion. And Father Christmas prefers to be called Father Christmas. Astrological reasons seem - unlikely, but I can't articulate why."
against_all_trouble
"Suggesting astrology was a joke. Well, mostly a joke. I don't know, I've never seen magic work."