The Field of Practical Application | Early Afternoon
It was an uncomfortable balance.
Professor Dallium had her favorites, it was true, and today she hoped to let them shine like the chilly Bethas sun as she led her class out toward the Field of Practical Application for a group lesson. It would require concentration, she warned in the classroom after writing several explanations on the board, most of them having to do with the function of the eye and the nerves that were known to connect the retina to the brain in preparation for her planned magical exercise.
The thorn in her side was being loud again, and the greying professor adjusted her glasses but held back her desire to intervene. It was chilly outside today and, strangely enough, a thin dusting of very late season snow coated everything like powdered sugar despite the cloudless sky that had formed this late in the afternoon,
"Gods, the snow this season—can you believe it?" Rhys was dragging his feet in the stuff, leaving a trail behind himself and grinning. Truth be told, the lanky boy had obviously been stuck inside too long for his own good. This was his last class of the day and he was practically stir crazy, no matter how interesting the content.
"Only you'd be surprised, towhead." Smirked Jenowynn, the red-head rolling her blue eyes and looking away from him, aware that she was most likely starting a round of jokes at the taller youth's expense. Rhys was an easy scapegoat—over a full head taller than most of his classmates, blond, and intelligent in a way that he often forgot to remember.
"If you had any talent in Quantitative, you'd have understood Professor Lux's weather interpretations for the Spring." Added Kent with a tone that implied the auburn-haired boy thought himself far more clever than the target of his jibe.
Rhys' grin shifted then, as if he'd expected their mockery, and his blue eyes narrowed with something far more calculating than simple mischief, "I clocking understood the weather predictions just fine, but if you memorized the thing, you'd realize that this snow is a full three days ahead and twice as de—"
"Enough."
"—eeep." He couldn't help it. He just couldn't.
"Thank you. Keep that talk to outside of class, please." Professor Dallium disarmed the aspiring Seventen with a stern growl, arching a brow at the young Valentin as if she was quite aware he'd been planning a coy entrapment of his antagonists all along. She loathed Jenowynn Johannowitz with a passion, and it thrilled her when the tall blond creature put her in her place every time. Still, she couldn't let her class see her approval, and instead she turned toward another member of class and offered to the platinum-haired girl the contents of her satchel—an armful of blindfolds, "Charity, be a dear and hand these out to everyone, would you?"
Amber gaze blinking from behind her spectacles, she smiled and then turned to address the class, waving her arms to invite them all closer. Her breath made little clouds as she spoke, and her nose was already quite red in the chill,
"Now, we've spent the past several days talking about senses and the underlying systems that keep them at work within our bodies. Today, I'm going to pair you up and you all are going to be practicing some spells to test your knowledge of perception, starting with sight." With that, she waited for a moment until the young woman she'd assigned to hand out the blindfolds was finished before she began to point and assign students in pairs, saying their names as she went,
"... And, let's see, that leaves you, Miss D'Arthe, and you, Mister Valentin. Everyone pair off here in the Lawn and one of you put on the blindfold. Then, it's up to you to decide how to share senses and make your way back to the classroom without falling, taking off the blindfold, or speaking out loud after your initial casting. You have half an hour and I'll be watching."
Everyone knew she meant it, too.
She went on to explain the route that each pair would have to take to get to class again, assigning the two blonds a route across the Lawn and past the cafeteria, though she didn't say whether they could or couldn't go through the currently empty building so much as to point out the sidewalks, stairs, and topiary she specifically wanted them to walk past. When she was finished, Professor Dallium clapped her hands to announce she had nothing more to say, spoke a few crisp words of Monite that clearly connected her to her entire class with such enviably little effort, and then began her own walk back to the comfortable warmth of their classroom.
Chatter and complaining and planning and practice began to bubble up from the assembled students once abandoned by their teacher. Rhys' sharp blue gaze strayed from watching the Professor's retreat to the blindfold in his hands before he finally (finally) looked to the petite blonde who'd been chosen as his partner—
Good Lady, why? Why her?
A tiny, delicate creature, to say that she was pretty would have been an understatement in his teenaged mind, and such an admission intimidated the boy beyond any sane measure. He could talk to other girls, but not her. While they shared towhead jokes in common and he'd heard her father was Patrol Captain of the Seventen once he'd chosen his focus, he'd spent far too much of their shared classes avoiding her, vaguely aware that all he could think of in her presence was that one time in third form she smiled at him.
His grin faltered and he cleared his throat, holding the blindfold between them with excruciating awkwardness, as if it smelled worse than a wet kenser dredged through the Dives in summer. It took him a moment too long to meet her fascinating violet eyes hesitantly, and his voice wavered just a little with his question, as if he wasn't sure if he should be volunteering or if he should be making demands, "So, uh, Charity, would you like to wear the blindfold or be the guide?"