10 Zi’da 716
Violet was sitting at the small table in her home in a straight-backed chair. A piece of parchment had been flattened neatly on the wooden surface and there were an inkwell resting above the top right corner. There was the scratching of the quill that filled the house along with the crackling of logs in the fireplace. A lantern was giving her light to write by. She had been to the library earlier to read up on the original Jacadon and the assignment professor Krome had given his students, even if she was not officially one- yet.She scribbled the last few words on the parchment in a slanting cursive writing and laid the quill down by the bottle of ink. Violet’s warm breath blew against the wet ink on the parchment to help it dry. She touched the pad of a finger gently against the writing, and, when it didn’t smudge, she rolled it into a neat cylinder. She stretched lazily before getting up from the chair and leaving her written work on the table for in the morning. Opening the lantern door, she blew out the flame within with a soft puff of her breath.
The next morning she had awoken to the sunrise and the smell of smoky logs that had withered and burnt out during the night. She cleaned herself up, brushed out her golden hair, and dressed in black breeches, a flowing crimson blouse, a black leather belt, and black knee boots. She had boiled some water to cook eggs and ate them with a slice of crusted bread. When she was done, she grabbed her parchment and snapped her black cloak around her shoulders. She stepped out into the streets of Midtown and began the trek to Rynmere University that was located in the Crown.
Violet always marveled the white-washed building when she saw it. It was a great feat of architecture. When she entered the ground floor, she spoke to the woman manning the desk for the humanities department. Though she was hesitant, she mentioned that Malcolm was teaching his class in his regular classroom on the ground floor now that the leak had been fixed. She thanked the woman and went down the hall until she was outside the classroom door. She leaned against the wall and listened to the hum of voices through the wall, not wanting to disturb the class.
She waited until all the students had filtered out and Malcom was sitting alone at the front of the classroom at his desk. Violet quietly stepped in and approached the desk, unfurling the parchment as she did so. “Well I did it,” she said plainly, as if he would remember what she was talking about. His chair moved back from the desk and she slipped between him and the desk, resting herself on its edge as her eyes looked down at her parchment. “While the Jacadon turns to stone upon its death, including the winding labyrinth of its stomach, its heart turns into a precious metal. This is why the stone labyrinth cannot be the heart. Also, if the Burning Mountains are believed to be its spine, the labyrinth is better placed for the stomach.”
It wasn’t all of it, but just a piece of what she had written. She rolled the crinkling parchment back up and set it on the desk next to her. “For you… professor.” There was a hint of something lingering in her pale blue green eyes.
