i'm awake.

Richard

3:50pm on a Friday. Class, as well as the first week of second semester, is over. This early in the game hardly anyone stays after class with questions, and particularly not the weekend and all the fresh January snow of the Rockies beckons. Papers shuffle, bookbags zip, a great roar of indistinct conversation and laughter rises up as students depart the lecture hall.

When that great stampede of departing bodies is done, Eleanor may grow aware that she does, in fact, have a single question-bearing student. He stands to the front and slightly to the side of the podium, books clasped before him; silent, waiting. Perhaps she'd noticed him earlier, sitting in the back of the class, empty seats to either side of him. Arms folded, brow beetled.

And truth is, he looks distinctly out of place here: his hair exceedingly short and plainly mowed amidst all the two hundred dollar haircuts of the ivy league subset; his winter jacket some dark three-season-old no-name thing amidst all the North Faces that every other student seemed to sport. Books in his hands instead of a laptop, a tablet, a smartphone. And perhaps most tellingly: the heavy brow, heavy shoulders, heavy hands of one whose primary and perhaps only capacity lay in his body. One of the jocks wandered over from the undergrad campus, maybe, here on an athletic scholarship. Quickly realizing that while he's good enough for second-string college, he'll never be good enough for pro; scrambling for a livelihood.

No one would blame Eleanor if those were the direction of her thoughts. Likely more than one professor in a course he's taken or audited has thought that way at least once. And to be sure, he has the look of a sixth- or seventh-year senior: older than the rest of his brethren, yet perhaps not so successful.

All the same. A sort of confidence in the still way he waits to be acknowledged.

Professor Yates

[Let's see if I get the same roll for Despair. Original was 6 successes!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Professor Yates

[...we're keeping the original.]

Professor Yates

Eleanor @ 2:12AM[Despair]Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) VALID

This winter will go on forever. Through March and April. It will snow on May 1st this year, the temperatures icy. It is a long winter this year, and they do not realize they have not even reached its peak. Even when the sun melts the snow that comes down one day, it remains where the shadows of buildings hang over the grounds.

The Sturm College of Law building is one of the centermost structures on campus. It looks over the campus green, stands across the street from the construction that is transforming the Penrose Library to the Anderson Academic Commons, and it is flanked here and there by elegant brick and stone fraternity houses. The law school is over a hundred years old. The woman teaching this class has been here for one semester plus, as of now, one week.

She has a reputation.

She is rather young, and looks younger than she is, and while she is not unattractive, she lets her hair grow longer than is fashionable and does not do very much with it. She occasionally rakes her fingers through it, pushing it back and to the side, away from her face, tucking it behind her ear where it stays throughout her lecture. She is tall and slender and while not the most personally engaging professor -- no jokes, no real attempt to get to know anyone's names or goals in life, she is forceful. Her credentials are right there on her faculty page: her judicial clerkship, her years with the firm as a prosecutor, her reputation in Denver, her ties with local law enforcement and courts.

Her lectures are even but quickly paced things, and while it is tempting to type notes as rapidly as possible to keep up, Yates has a tendency to ambush. In two weeks she has singled out one or two students each lecture, returning to them again and again with sudden volleys of quick-clipped questions. Monday of this week one of them said I don't know to her fourth question. He was excused from the rest of the lecture.

In higher level classes she apparently uses the Socratic method. Seminars, inner and outer circles, the rest. But this is Criminal Law 101. Literally.

--

There is something about her that unsettles students, especially these students who can afford tuition here, who are used to affluence, who spend their weekends and 'sick days' at Copper Mountain and Vail and so on. They don't realize that the sense of winter will not fade whenever they are in her class, no matter when spring comes. They do not know how to look in the eyes of someone who feels like half a person. They do not know why they doodle water, always water, when going over their notes and remembering the cadence of her voice,

which is surprisingly casual, soft, even at its fastest.

Today she has been energetic, punching the ends of her sentences, passionate in her questioning, seemingly fixated on getting them to understand. For a woman who some days has such a low affect that more than a few rumors have gone around that she is facing some terminal illness, it was obviously A Good Day. She cared. There was life in her eyes. She almost seemed like a complete human being.

For one student, more than likely, no amount of energy can hide the truth of what he feels in her presence. It is disturbing and familiar and discomfiting all at once; like being held under the water. Like drifting away from the light and the air, sinking slowly but deeply into the water. Like walking alone over a field, the naked branches of trees black claw-marks against the sky and the frost-hardened snow crunching under your footsteps, the noise eruptive in the oppressive, muffling silence of winter. Like being irreversibly broken somehow, more than losing a limb or an organ but pieces of your own identity, memories that tell you who you are.

No light in her eyes can hide that sometimes there is none, and sometimes they crackle with sheer power.

Not many people stick around, especially this early in the semester. They have too much to do, and it is Friday. They leave, and the woman down front turns to gather up her own things. She notices the man she assumes to be a laxbro coming her way long before he gets there, but she ignores him, sliding her laptop into her bag, putting away a dry-erase marker. Until he gets down to the main floor, and until she has shouldered her bag, turning anyway, seeing that he is still there.

Her eyebrows go up. If expressions spoke, hers would say:

Well? Come on. We both have places to be.

Richard

Professor Yates has only been with the school for a little over a semester. It's long enough for her to have taught one course, and it's long enough for rumors to have begun to circulate. Some students say she's the best professor they've ever had. Others dropped her course well before the first midterm, unable to withstand the barrage. There's speculation about whether she has some terminal illness, whether she's manic-depressive, whether this or that or that or this.

Whether or not these rumors have reached her ears, she has not changed the way she teaches. She drills into the students. She crumbles the fragile ice beneath their feet until the shambles of their own faulty logic pull them under. She teaches them by exposing the flaws. She ambushes. Sometimes her intelligence is brutal. On the good days, she seems to actually care whether or not they learn.

Already the class has winnowed down. On the first day of the semester, the lecture hall -- a large, case-study style auditorium of concentric desks -- was packed from floor to rafters. There weren't enough seats, and students were shoulder-to-shoulder along the walls. Today, scarcely a week later, there were more than a few empty seats, and by the end of next week, there'll be still more.

--

Right now every seat is empty. The classroom is abandoned. It's late on a Friday. No one -- not even Yates -- seems to want to stick around. And yet there he is, this one misfit student with his books in hand, this laxbro-or-similar who waits for her to acknowledge him -- if only with a raise of the eyebrows -- before taking a step closer.

His own eyebrows draw together. He squints over the professor's head at the board, as though looking into bright light. It is not difficult, at his height, to see over her. When his eyes return to her they must cast downward.

"Professor Yates, something of a theoretical question. When laws and statutes vary so much from region to region, do you believe there's such a thing as universal law, by which acts can be absolutely deemed right or wrong?"

Professor Yates

Her eyebrows lower again, when he starts speaking. She is watching his face, in that direct, unrelenting way she has that was immensely productive during her career as a prosecutor and is paring the weak from her class effectively here. The truth is: she is not a storm, she is not a knife, but there are first-years here who are already questioning their decision, who don't really want to do this, who aren't smart enough, who aren't tough enough, who don't even really enjoy this... and if they can't make it through a week of Professor Yates, they aren't going to make it in any firm or government agency or court.

She breathes in, straightening her back. She's not a terribly tall woman, only about average height, but given how slender she is one expects her to be either much taller or much more petite. She is simply 'typical'. She exhales thoughtfully through her nose, flicking her eyes to the side, then back to him.

"Laws vary from person to person and upon circumstance, as well," she says, which he knows is the case: "which is why in some places the lawful response to an act of killing is to then kill the killer, but the ones who carry that sentence out are not then considered murderers." It is an obvious argument, perhaps because of what she thinks of the question: "Your question sounds better suited to a discussion of ethics and philosophy, rather than law. Because then,"

she goes on, reaching for her bag again, "you will quickly run into the question of whether all dichotomies, including that of 'right and wrong', are false dichotomies."

Richard

There are professors who seem eager to engage; who will gladly stay after class at even the slightest sign of interest from the student body. Yates seems different. She's already shouldered her bag once; she's reaching for it again. Her answer, to some of those weaker-minded students who have already scurried from her class, might seem dismissive, even unfriendly. Perhaps it is intended that way.

Clearly, her laxbro student doesn't take it that way. He grins -- a sudden and startling transformation of that low-browed face that otherwise seems so suited to caveman glowers. "Probably," he admits, "but I'm not in an ethics or philosophy class."

He shifts his books -- one of those enormous hands more than enough to contain the entire shifting lot of them -- and falls into step beside her as she departs the lecture hall. And continues, "Do you think there's no such thing as right or wrong, then?"

Professor Yates

She shoulders her back; there's no wince or strain, despite the weight it carries. She is used to it. She starts for the door, and he comes with her, which is also fine; she almost seemed to be inviting it, since her response was not a direct shut-down.

"Precisely," is her answer, interjected after he says he is not in an ethics or philosophy class. After all: she is not an ethics or philosophy teacher.

Does she think there's something right or wrong, though?

Yates glances at him, pushing open a door, and lifts her eyebrows curiously. "You're not a grad student, are you?"

Richard

The student shakes his head. "I'm a freshman," he says. The evenness to his tone and regard seems almost rehearsed; a practiced response to the surprise and the double-takes he's doubtlessly received.

"Also, Professor Yates," he adds a moment later, a little quieter, "I'm Awake."

Professor Yates

She could say something clever there, if perhaps a bit on the nose. Yates could make it cutting with a smirk or wry with a tilt of her head and a dry pull of one corner of her mouth. A bit old for a freshman, aren't you?

But for one thing, it would be rude. It would be unprofessional. It would be unnecessary. It would assume that her guess of his age is accurate. And it wouldn't really be clever, either. He's heard it before, and may expect it again, but it doesn't actually occur to Professor Yates to ask that. She is just confirming a guess, testing a hypothesis. He's not a grad student, or he wouldn't be asking a question that most people do get out of the way by the time they're a senior, and hopefully before.

Age has nothing to do with experience or knowledge. Sometimes it has a little to do with understanding. Which, if you think about it, should only make it easier for him to gain the knowledge, process the experience.

Also he's awake, capital A awake no less, and she's walking with her laptop bag into a hallway toward her office.

"I can see that," she tells him, without missing a beat, yet without mockery. Well: a bit of tolerant amusement. But then again, today is one of her good days. She has the energy to be amused, and even enough energy to not be mean. "I didn't catch your name," she mentions, turning a corner. She walks at a steady clip, quick and long-striding for her height, purposeful but unhurried.

Richard

There's this much to be said for that height, that length of limbs, that athlete's stamina: he keeps up easily. That steady clip that might leave an unprepared student panting between words is one that he matches step for step. He takes the corner with her. They have not left the building yet, but they have, perhaps, taken a flight or two of stairs. She asks for his name, but he redirects:

"I meant: I am. Awake."

This time the emphasis is harder to mistake. The directness of his regard, also, which is not quite the sort of gazelock that your average freshman student -- or even one quite a bit older than average -- can summon up for a rather intimidating professor of law.

"It's Richard," he adds, and shifts his books; offers his hand.

Professor Yates

There was no mistaking the emphasis the first time around. There's no mistaking it now, either, as he enforces it more firmly. Eleanor does glance at him from the corner of her eye as she walks, and this time she does not tell him that she can see quite easily that he isn't sleeping, or even sleepwalking.

Here is where he gives her his name, and the corner of her mouth does pull dryly for a moment, hidden in periphery.

She would give him her own, but he knows it already. With some bemusement, she pauses to take his hand, shakes it without trying to prove anything. Her hands are long-fingered, elegant, fair, and though there's strength in them, they are without overt callouses. These are the days when everyone types everything, and she has grown up in that era: there is not even a rough spot where one might hold a pen. But anyone can tell from her skin that she takes care of herself; her hands would be no different.

"Good to meet you, Richard," she says, and down the hall, without inviting him nor indicating that he should go, she unlocks and opens the door to her office.

The Sturm College of Law is a relatively new building, despite the law school itself going back for a century. The University of Denver is a relatively high-class school. Eleanor is new to this post, but her office is not intended to reflect her experience here. It reflects, instead, connections she has with the courts of Denver and contacts abroad. It reflects the sort of success that she could help the best and brightest of her students achieve if she puts in a good word for them.

It is nice, and we will describe it later, but for now, Eleanor holds the door open for him as he comes in and sets her bag down on top of her desk. "Shut the door," she says, and nods to a spare chair, "and have a seat."

Richard

That hand of his is a contrast to hers. Not because he bears the rough callouses of a laborer, or even the distinctive callouses of a footballer. Quite to the contrary, his palms are quite smooth. His fingertips, though, are chapped and rough, and the sheer size of his hands matches his height. They're huge. Big palms, long fingers. He takes her hand with a hint of ingrained gingerness: the sort of long-learned gentleness of someone who might otherwise thoughtlessly sour every first meeting crushing fingers.

"Nice to meet you too," he replies. And, since she has not shooed him away, he continues to follow her. They pass through the sleek, well-warmed halls; brightly lit classrooms and well-appointed conference rooms. Bulletin boards advertising this talk, that symposium, and also here is a modernistic coffee-and-end-table-set for $100, MUST GO BY MONDAY, MOVING!

They arrive at her office, then, and she holds the door open, and so he walks in. The room, spacious as it might be, seems a little smaller for his size. Smaller still when he shuts the door as bid. He puts his pile of books down on a handy surface and folds himself into the spare chair she indicates. Textbooks, all: the top one an assigned text for her class, though the battered condition and the plastic dustcover indicates it comes from a library. The ones under it are startlingly diverse. [u]Applied Chaos Theory[/u] reads one. [u]Introductory Quantum Mechanics[/u], another.

While she settles in, his eyes wander the walls. He takes in whatever diplomas, wall art, or plant life she may or may not have in her office.

Professor Yates

There is light in here, fair colors, large windows. Success, it promises. You, too, can leave these halls and become something powerful. Or maybe that impression comes from Eleanor herself. Eleanor, however, fills this room. Not with her size, no: Richard eclipses her easily there. The room seems smaller because he is in it.

The room seems colder because she is there.

The seams of the room are cracked, are opening, are broken, and everything in here seems shattered somehow, no matter how firm and solid it appears to the eye.

The light through the windows comes to them mottled, as though through fathoms of icy, icy water filling your lungs.

--

Eleanor does not look at his books. She doesn't want to pry. She looks at him, standing behind her desk as he puts his things down and seats himself. For the moment, she remains standing. There are plants here, but someone else takes care of them. Some of them bloom in winter; one is a white cyclamen. Her eyes remain fixed on him as he looks around.

"Why are you telling me that you're Awake, Richard?"

Richard

The question brings his eyes back to her. He is a little surprised, and perhaps a little caught off-guard. Why is he telling her? The heavy brow furrows again. He already has lines on his forehead, because of course he does. He doesn't moisturize, he forgets his sunscreen, he frowns all the time in her class and in every other, as though squeezing knowledge into that great lunkhead of his was just so difficult.

Which it clearly isn't. Not if those are the books he carries around. Still; one can't help the way one looks.

"I don't know," he says. "Because you are too?. And I had a notion that people like us were supposed to introduce ourselves to each other. And ... stick together. Or something. I haven't had a lot of contact with other mages, actually, so I could be wrong."

Professor Yates

Because you are too has a question at the end of it. Eleanor is still standing across the desk from him as he explains what he thought the supposed-tos were, and reasons, and he doesn't really know. She smiles thinly, though there's warmth to it. It's hard to see warmth in her, with the way her resonance chills to the bone. But it's there. Today is, after all, one of her good days.

Reaching for the armrests of her chair, she lowers herself to sit and leans back, still watching him unflinchingly.

"How long have you been Awakened, Richard?" she asks. Her tone almost seems kind.

Richard

The truth is, there aren't all that many years between them. He's in his mid-20s at best. Late-20s, perhaps, if the depth of those aforementioned lines in his forehead are any indication. He's had one career already, and it was a reasonably though not awe-inspiringly successful one. It's over now, though, the way so many athletic careers end: early, and due to some soulcrushing combination of injury and just not being good enough anymore. In some sense, he's already peaked. That peak is well in the rearview mirror.

In another, his life has barely even begun yet.

"Long enough that I'm a little ashamed to count," he answers. There's a wryness to his mouth. "Particularly when I have so little to show for it." He bites the insides of his lips for a moment, thinking. "Ten years? A little more?" A hand rises, scritches at the short hair just behind his temple. Then he presses his fingertips together, elbows on the arms of his chair. Shrugs.

"Like I said, I haven't really done anything with it. I had a ... sort of a mentor early on, for about a year or so. But there were a lot of other things for me to focus on, and I think he got the sense that this -- this magic stuff -- wasn't really the center of my life. I think he was flabbergasted and insulted, and I didn't really try to mend that fence. So we kind of fell out of touch."

Professor Yates

Ten years. Eleanor blinks. And he hasn't done anything about it. Sort of a mentor for about a year, but he focused on other things. When he realized that magic existed, that reality was a lie, that he could manipulate the fabric of the universe, he focused on other things.

"I don't blame him," she says, calmly, though without rancor or even judgement. She's surprised; she doesn't hide it. She's a little bewildered, and doesn't hide that either. But she is not insulted. She is curious. "So if discovering that you could change reality with will alone did not seem like a meaningful use of your last decade, what was, if I may ask?"

Richard

"I swam."

That's the simple answer. It fits. It fits his height, the length of his limbs. The lean, powerful look to his shoulders and thighs, even through his jacket and hoodie and sweatpants. It fits the hoodie and sweatpants too. Of course he wouldn't bother with decent clothes. His work uniform thus far has consisted of trunks, goggles and swim caps.

"Went to the Olympics twice. Came back from Beijing with two bronzes and a silver. All relay events. Came back from London with less, and never even made it through the heats in the solos. I was good," he sums it up, deliberately and brutally frank, "but I was never great.

"I guess I thought I would be ten years ago, though. I guess that seemed more interesting to me than being able to bend reality with my mind. Theoretically. If I study and practice and meditate on the nature of everything for a few decades. And also risk waking up a giant human cockroach if reality decides it doesn't really want to bend the way I bent it."

Professor Yates

Went to the Olympics twice. Beijing. She probably would have heard his name if she'd been paying much attention to the Beijing Olympics at the time. He was good, but never great. And she remembers what she heard once about silver medalists: you did not win the silver. You lost the gold.

Eleanor is listening. She has a talent for it. People find it easy to talk to her, not because she's so warm and comforting, but because there is much about her that seems blank, that seems distant, that seems like she will not do things like Judge or Decide or Retaliate. That she will not even have powerfully strong feelings or thoughts in response to you. It makes it easy to just talk and keep talking. But that impression is only half true; somewhere in there, she is deciding what she thinks of him as she goes.

"Kafka," she says, like an item of punctuation to the end of his thought. She tips her head to the side. "Am I wrong in suspecting that your feelings and guesses have changed since ten years ago, since you're sitting in front of me now?"

Richard

Kafka. The corner of his mouth quirks: "Yeah."

And then a hesitation. And a shake of his head. "I'm not going to claim to have come one-eighty from how I felt then. Some part of me still resists the idea that just because I can do something means I'm obligated to devote my entire life to it. Not every kid who can bang out Chopsticks on a keyboard is destined to be the next Mozart, and not every kid who can bang out Chopsticks on a keyboard should make that ideal his goal in life. Most things just doesn't work that way. I never understood why Charles thought magic should be an exception to that.

"But well. I thought I'd be a great swimmer, and I wasn't. So now I'm back to the drawing board. Exploring and experimenting. Law. Ethics. Math. Physics. And, yeah, magic. I audited your class because it looked interesting, not because I knew you were Awakened. I didn't know.

"I'm sitting in front of you because I do know now. And, like I said: I haven't met that many of us."

Professor Yates

He's a little defensive. Or seems so. Eleanor doesn't take too much notice of it, since the majority of her career has been spent listening to people who literaly are defending themselves. She just nods in understanding, and gives a small shrug.

"It may help you to know that not all mages who study and advance their abilities make it the center of their life. I became a lawyer and now a professor, and it hasn't stopped me from meditating on the nature of reality. It's a shame if what little experience you had with the Awakened led you to see that as the only option. Mage or swimmer. Black or white. Win or lose. Right or wrong. All dichotomies," she mentions again, "are false dichotomies."

Eleanor sits up, leaning forward a bit, arms resting on the table. Not elbows. Her forearms are flat, her palms to the wood. "You can honor your gift without making it your identity. Just as you can honor a talent and drive for athletic achievement without allowing it to dominate who you are. Which it's clear you didn't: if it had, you may as well have ceased existing when you stopped swimming competitively."

She smiles a little. "I keep getting the impression there is something you want from me, but that you do not know what it is, or don't know how to put it into words. Am I wrong?"

Richard

Something about that resonates with him. It's there, though subtle: a glimmer in his eyes, a spark as some synapse connects. All dichotomies are false, she tells him, which he isn't certain about yet, but: he discovers he wouldn't mind debating that one with her. And she tells him: you may as well have ceased existing, if you allowed competitive swimming to dominate who you are.

"Well, I'm still here," he says. It's a slight little joke, much like all her humor and smiles have been slight. Perhaps it's her presence, that frost and dissolution that cloaks her. Perhaps it's how he is himself.

Another hesitation, then. A hint of care and carefulness in how he approaches this topic that -- she's right -- he's been circling without quite understanding himself. "You're not wrong," he says; let's start there. "I do want ... something. I want to at least make contact. With you. And maybe through you, with others like us. Maybe even with ... whatever it is this 'gift' is, as you put it.

"I don't believe in luck or predestination," he says, "but I know something about chance. And the chances of me ending up at this school, in this year, auditing your class of all classes -- they're pretty slim. I can't help but feel I should grasp the opportunity. Whatever that opportunity might actually be."

Professor Yates

She could tell him a thing or two about predestination. But she doesn't argue. Belief, and the will of belief, is the most powerful force in the universe. It is why she can do what she can do. He goes on, though: the chances are slim. The opportunity is there, and he feels compelled to grasp it.

Eleanor is quiet for a few moments, then takes a breath. "What did Charles teach you?"

Richard

"He was never really my teacher," Richard admits, or perhaps clarifies. "Or I should say: I was never a very good student. I know the basics. The Traditions, and the others out there -- Marauders, Nephandics, the Technocracy. I know the Spheres. I have some notion of the history of the Ascension War, but I think that was before my time. And I have vague idea of this ... ideal of Ascension that we're all supposedly still striving for.

"I never really stuck around long enough to learn -- you know. Actual magic." A quick quirk of his lips. "I have some sense of the world and its underpinnings. I can see some of the strings. But I never had the time or patience to sit down with him and try to learn to pluck those strings.

"I tuned out most of the philosophy too. He was a Chorister, and everything was wonders and creation and miracles for him. Meanwhile I was trying to make it through high school while training eight, ten hours a day. Maybe that was part of the problem. His world was diaphanous and spiritual, all higher planes and energies. Mine was..."

He makes a fist: five fingers closing into a solid, compact shape. It's not a violent gesture, nor an angry one, but it's very defined. Definite. Forceful.

"It was solid. It was tangible and real. And that's how I liked it."

Professor Yates

It relieves her to see that he knows the basics. And that he admits it wasn't that Charles wasn't a great teacher, or a teacher at all, but that he wasn't a good student. They didn't mesh; their worldviews, their realities, any of it. She doesn't start going through the history of the Traditions with him -- there are books about that, most of them rather boring, all of them written from the perspective of someone who either really liked or really disliked how things turned out.

"Richard, do you know what a chantry is?" And he might. She almost assumes he does, at this point, but if the answer is no, she gives him a brief idea. Then: "There is one, south of here. Some others that I'm acquainted with live there and care for and protect it. I do not always get along or agree with them, but some of them are of my own Tradition, so we remain in touch. There is a library there as well, but they can be a bit paranoid about letting people into it. I'd be happy to introduce you to them, if you want.

"And if not, or you'd rather take it more slowly, then you can just come chat with me on occasion. If you have questions, or ideas. Forgive me if I'm being presumptuous, but you seem like you may be a rather self-directed learner."

Richard

Again with those quick grins, the fast-spreading little expressions that almost transform his face. "I know what a chantry is," he assures her, and so she tells him: there is one here. And there is a library. And she would be happy to make the introduction.

Or not. If he'd rather take it more slowly. And at that he nods: yes. "I appreciate the offer," he says. "I'll drop by every so often. You have office hours -- what, Wednesday afternoon? Maybe I'll come by near the end, when there aren't so many other students around."

A pause. "Would you mind," he adds, "if I asked what your Tradition was?"

Professor Yates

"Not here," she tells him, interjecting when he asks about her Wednesday office hours. She shakes her head as she says that, definitive. "At least: I won't restrict you to office hours, and those are primarily for law students, anyway. I'll let you know if and when you need to leave me alone, but you can also stop by my house to talk. I live in the Cory-Merrill neighborhood," which he knows isn't far from here.

She shakes her head, too, at his question. "I don't mind," Eleanor tells him. "I'm a Euthanatos. By the ranks we are generally organized into, I'm what is referred to as a Disciple."

Richard

Maybe just a beat of hesitation there; an awareness, and then an overcoming, of the societal dictates surrounding college professors and students and the like. "All right," he says, and retrieves from a jacket pocket his cell phone. "Exchange numbers?"

And so they do. Or perhaps they only exchange emails. Regardless, some form of contact information is entered in, and then there's the question about Tradition, and then there's her answer.

Here, again, a beat of pause. He's heard of the Tradition, of course. Charles -- ten years in the past now, possibly dead or gone or Ascended or something by now -- had his thoughts on it. They weren't always kind. But then Richard and Charles hardly ever agreed on anything, and little of what was taught to him by that other man has managed to stick.

"Okay," is what Richard says to that. It's a thoughtful okay. And on that note, rising, he picks up his books again. "Thanks for the talk, Professor Yates. And -- well. Thanks for everything else, too. I'll be in touch."

Professor Yates

They trade numbers. Cellphones. She gives him her email address as well, the one that isn't related to the university. It's just a basic Gmail account. There's no hesitation on her part, but then: she didn't lock the door and threaten to dig through his mind or anything when he said he knew she was a mage. She is taking him at his word, and though she may do some cursory research on him after he leaves her office, she is not concerned yet. She is unafraid.

And the fact that professors and students, especially those who happen to be reasonably close in age, should not be fraternizing outside of appropriate settings, is exactly why she doesn't want this freshman auditor coming around her office every week. But he doesn't mention his discomfiture; she doesn't call it out.

She smiles, as he gathers his things to go. "I hope you are," she says, quite seriously, to his promise to be in touch. "Have a good weekend, Richard," she adds, as he goes to the door, as she turns toward her computer. "You can leave the door open."