In the following weeks, the four of them came to be an actual circle of friends. Before, it had just been two pairs: Dario and Woo-Jin, Maria and Aza. Dario and Maria, being cousins, meant the pairs would cross paths frequently. They were together as a group from time to time, but it was an acquaintance formed by forced proximity.
But as they entered their fifth year at Honeyoak, their wires had finally crossed.
Aza and Woo-Jin were a pair that hadn’t been expected, seeing how they seemed to detest each other just a year before. It didn’t help that the two seemed allergic to being openly romantic or using “labels”, but they seemed to gel together. How exactly, Dario still didn’t know, but they seemed happy together.
Woo-Jin and Maria had come to learn they had the same taste in poetry. Sappy, tragic sonnets that Aza repeated time and time again that she didn’t care for, not understanding the use of imagery and metaphor when the writer could just say what they meant.
“If the writer of the poem isn’t the speaker, then why write it in first person?” Aza had asked.
“It’s like they’re assuming a character, being able to put themselves into the shoes of someone else,” Maria explained. “And the reader is also able to understand that experience. Like, you don’t know what it’s like to hold your lover as they draw their last breath, and the writer didn’t either. But they're still able to capture that feeling and get you to feel it too.”
“But why would you want to know what that feels like?” Aza asked. “That sounds awful.”
“Catharsis?” Woo-Jin supplied. “Being able to dip into those strong emotions for a time, but still from a distance. And you can put it down whenever you want, come back to it later, or not at all. Unlike real life.”
Aza still didn’t understand the appeal.
Dario and Aza hung out on their own more as Woo-Jin seemed to get busier and busier with who knows what.
Autumn had given way to the beginning of winter, and maybe it was because of the days getting shorter and the air getting colder, but their aimless trots through the city always kicked up bad memories. Things that had settled to the bottom of their psyches, a thick layer of sediment was now being disturbed. Dario found that letting these thoughts tumble out of his mouth was the best way to clean the waters and keep his head clear. He didn’t know if Aza felt the same about this method, but she supplied her own laments all the same.
The two would often walk from one end of the city and back again, as no one could scold you for loitering if you looked like you had somewhere to be. New Meli, being a port city, almost everyone walked like they had somewhere to be and not enough time to get there.
The area where they lived, Honeyfield in was on the wealthier side, but being entomon they were still separated. It wasn’t a formal separation, as far as they knew, just entomon clustering in together as more and more of them came to the city, until they’d formed their own little borough. The “human” side of the city, Starton, really did feel like witches and wizards sealing themselves away in their ivory towers, the buildings and gated communities looking almost like they were literally made of ivory. White washed walls with edges gilded with gold, glinting in the sunlight. That part of the city didn’t look like it was the middle of winter. Fresh snow was always cleared away promptly, and the snow that settled on the building blended in with the white of the brick.
Aza had finally given up on the sleeveless tops, silently admitting that it was too cold by wearing a fur coat with bleach yellow stripes to look like bumble bee stripes.
“Maria’s your cousin on your dad’s side?” Aza leaned against the railing as they waited at the trolley station. “I thought your mom and aunt were sisters.”
“It’s a whole mess,” Dario waved a gloved hand dismissively. That was his answer to everything about his family. It really was a mess. “My aunt felt like she had a responsibility to help out after the divorce. But then my dad felt like that was her taking my mom’s side, and they had a sort of falling out. He doesn’t really talk to any of us.”
“You ever wonder what he’s up to?” Aza asked. Her pale face was flushed, cheeks red and splotchy. She already flushed easily, but her face had become constantly red in the chilly air.
“Of course. I mean, I tell myself that I don’t care, or at least I shouldn’t care, but I still wonder.” Dario scratched his neck under his scarf. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure. One person says he’s off in Danaus doing something or other, the next says he has another family in Silph. Gossip isn’t super reliable.”
Aza scoffed. “He could at least send a letter.”
“Does your brother send you letters?” Dario asked.
Aza didn’t answer, suddenly finding the fur lining of her boots very interesting.
Her brother, Lirio, had taken off as soon as he was done with school. And before that were her two older sisters, who also took their chance to get as far away from the city as they could once they were out of the house. Aza was the youngest of her siblings, technically the baby of the family, although she never acted like it.
“He’s probably busy,” she said softly. While her sisters seemed content not to look back, Lirio had promised to keep in touch. But that had been a few years back. “Or— he just said that to get me to shut up and stop crying.”
Dario wanted to deny it. Of course, he didn’t. He still cares. But he didn’t know Lirio. Aza didn’t know Dario’s father. And neither of them found comfort in the empty words they heard from other people, so why say the same thing to each other?
Dario took a deep breath, an emotional reset, letting it out slowly and watching the hot breath turn to vapor in the cold air.
“Then fuck them,” he said. “If they want to forget about us, maybe we should forget about them.”
Aza didn’t look up from the ground. “Yeah. Fuck them.”
ˋˏ-༻❁༺-ˎˊ
"The Ora colony was established in the southern part of the continent because...?" Dario read from a flash card.
Dario sat with Maria and Aza around the dining table at his house. Woo-Jin was supposed to come as well so they could study as a group, but he’d called a rain check. He called in a lot of rain checks as of late.
"Because of the abundance of gold?” Maria answered tentatively. “Which is used by the aurum industry to... make aurum?"
"That's only half a point,” Dario said. “This is a two-parter."
"Um... It was also to produce honey, right?"
"Nope," Dario said. "That was the Nyuk colony, and those efforts ultimately failed." Dario flipped the card over. "The full answer is 'because of the gold and quartz deposits, both of which are used for thaumaturgy and aurum production'. Watson's a real stickler for answering it in full."
Professor Watson taught modern world history by hammering facts into her students' heads with brute force. In their previous years at school, the teachers might take the time to understand the points in history they were learning about. Watson was more focused on getting names and facts and dates to stick in the soft grey matter of her fifth-year students, preparing them to regurgitate that information on their end-of-year exams, and then promptly forget everything. If something wasn't on the test, she didn't have time to cover it. So, of course, Nyuk and Inyosia get a passing mention, Danaus is only covered because it's right next door, and they're not on the best terms with Silph or Ora.
Maria hung her head in defeat. "Just let me fail this test and get it over with."
"You won't fail if you just do the reading," Aza scoffs.
"But I also have to do the reading for Merriweather, and my anatomy homework," Maria droned. "All of them assign homework like our other classes don't exist. And then there’s the Aptitude test to study for. Just kill me already."
Studying for an aptitude test was a bit of an oxymoron, "aptitude" being someone's innate and natural born ability. And the capital "A" Aptitude test was meant to assess just that. A person's natural magical ability. Of course, there was a written, academic part that was technically its own test, but it was taken on the same day as the Aptitude test, so people referred to them as the same exam. They both had the same high stakes, the results of both tests combined dictating where your life would go from there. A university, a trade school, a military academy, a magic apprenticeship. All of that was decided by that test.
No pressure, right?
"There's no time for dying, we still have flash cards to get through," Dario said, waving the stack of cards in the air.
"No," Maria put her head down on top of her papers. "I'm done. I'll study more later."
Aza tried to prop her head back up. "You know later never comes."
"'Later' is the night before the test. I work better on crunch time anyway." Maria put her head back down, her silky brown hair fell over her face like a curtain. "I need a nap."
"You can sleep when you're dead," Aza said.
"Then shoot me now," Maria mumbled.
"Maria," Nyota came up to the table and pulled on Maria's sleeve. "Can you get the bee bread down, please?" She pointed back towards the kitchen, her big eyes looking up at Maria.
"Where is it?" Maria looked up, pulling her hair out of her eyes.
"No, don't get it," Dario said. "She's not supposed to have any before dinner."
"Please," Nyota asked again.
Maria smiled at her. "I mean, she said please."
"Why don't you ask Mom the same thing when she gets home?" Dario asked his sister.
Nyota huffed, taking a seat at the table. "What are you doing?"
"Studying." Dario knew trying to get rid of her is a losing battle, so he went back to the flashcards. "Okay, Aza, this is an easy one. 'Gold is the basis for aurum products for what reason?'"
Aza opened her mouth as though she was going to answer, then closed it again, eyebrows furrowed.
"Are you serious?" Dario asked flatly. "Didn't you just say this would be easy if you did the reading?"
"I know this one, I'm just blanking." Aza snapped her fingers, trying to jog her memory. "Gold is used because..."
"Gold is good at storing essence, and it's stable enough for commercial products."
Dario sighed. "That's right, actually," he said slowly, moving the flash card to the back of the stack.
"She's a smart little owl," Maria said. "Aren't you?"
"She's a parrot, that's what she is," Dario said. "She doesn't even know what that means, she's just regurgitating information."
"Nuh uh," Nyota stood up in her chair, a tiny tot trying to make herself look bigger. The purple beads at the ends of her twin braids made her look even less intimidating.
"I mean, isn't regurgitating information what Watson wants us to do?" Aza asked.
Dario rolled his eyes.
Nyota was a voracious reader and seemed to have an eidetic memory. Impressive for a six-year-old. She had also always been a bit bratty. As a baby, she'd been a hair puller and a velcro kid. As soon as she could string full sentences together, she could hardly keep quiet, and she'd learned she could get a lot of attention by reciting long lists of information. She's a little genius, they'd call her as she recited the train schedule like a party trick.
Nyota had only been in school for a few months and was bumped forward to the next year, mostly because she was so ahead of the curve that she was endlessly bored and hard to control. The constant praise seemed to make her feel like she was just better than other people, which added to her being a brat.
Bumping Nyota up in school was meant to challenge her and keep her engaged, but they'd seemed to run into the same problem of her unending boredom. Having perfect recall would no doubt be useful to her when she got older, but for now, the Nyota issue seemed to be less about setting her up for success later on in life and more "how do we get this girl to shut up?". That had proved to be impossible, as she didn't have an off switch.
"I got the question right, does that mean I can have some beebread?" Nyota clearly expected a reward for her little party trick, as usual.
"No, and we're trying to study," Dario said.
"Maybe you're studying a little too hard." Kamari came out of the kitchen, scooping Nyota out of the chair. "Sorry if she's bothering you."
"It's alright," Maria said, stretching her arms up over her head. "It's getting late, we should call it a day."
"We aren't done, though," Dario protested.
"It'll still be there later," Kamari said. "We're having dinner soon, so you need to clear the table anyway."
With Nyota in his arms, you could see how she took after her father. Deep, dark skin with thick, tightly curled, pitch black hair. Nyota didn’t have her markings yet, but it seemed likely she’d get the same pale half circles under her eyes that Kamari had.
Dario, on the other hand, was almost a carbon copy of his father, the same warm tawny skin, the same dark hair. The same eyesight too, complete shit in both eyes. Their mother’s genes seem to have been skipped over entirely for both children. The only thing either of them managed to get from her was her bad habits.
Aza looked at the clock. “Shoot, it is late,” she said as she started putting her books away.
Dario gathered up the flash cards. They’d been working since they got back from school, working for hours and still only making a dent in their assignments.
“You girls can stay for dinner if you’d like,” Kamari said.
“Yes, please.” Maria smiled.
“Oh,” Aza hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to intrude, sir.”
“Yeah, go back to your own house,” Nyota said in her father’s arms.
“Baba, that’s not nice,” Kamari told her. “It’s no bother, really,” he turned back to Aza. “And I said you don’t have to call me ‘sir’.”
She paused at this. “I don’t think I can do that, sir.” Aza shifted on her feet. “I’ve got to get home anyway.”
“Well, don’t work yourselves to death,” Kamari called over his shoulder as he took Nyota back with him to the kitchen.
Kamari usually told them they shouldn’t be hunched over their books all day. That they were still young and should make the most of it, seeing as they’ll have plenty of time for stress later on in life. He had never taken the aptitude test, having only come to Ora as an adult, so maybe he didn’t understand exactly how it worked. He'd been a soldier at some point, earning him some scars and three missing fingers on his left hand. He'd worked as a dock worker for a time, and now worked for the postal service.
There were a few minutes of shuffling papers, putting away pens, and figuring out whose textbook was whose. The three groaned among themselves about how they wanted the solstice to come already and give them another break from classes.
“Aza, you said you weren’t going anywhere over the break, right?” Maria asked.
“Yeah,” Aza said, buttoning her coat. “What about it?”
“Well, I'm going up to Smallmeadow for a week or so with my parents,” Maria said. “You should come. It’ll be great to get out of the cold for a while.”
Smallmeadow was further north, and a lot more temperate, almost year-round. The city was like that on its own, no magic interference required. It was more jarring to spread the solstice in New Meli, people trying to have a summer celebration when it was clearly the dead of winter.
“Oh,” Aza pulled her gloves from her pocket. “I’m not really sure if—”
“Dario’s coming too,” Maria cut in. “It’ll be fun.”
“It’s pretty short notice to get a ticket and everything.”
“I’ve already talked to my mother about it. See, my brother was supposed to come too, but he bailed at the last minute. We already have the extra ticket, so it’ll be fine if you tag along.”
“That sounds great,” Aza pulled her gloves snugly, as though the task needed her undivided attention. “But I’m not sure if I can make it—”
“I thought you weren’t busy. Woo-Jin’s going to be out of town too, it would suck if you were here by yourself.”
Aza sighed, looking away. “I’m not going anywhere over break because I have to work. ”
“Oh. Right.”
Aza’s eyebrows knitted together as she kept her eyes on the floor. “It’s funny, because I know I’ve told you this before.”
“You did,” Maria said quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose at the realization. “I forgot, I’m sorry.”
Aza pulled on a wool hat, the flaps covering her ears. “Everything is just in one ear and out the other with you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, okay? I just assumed. That’s my bad.”
“You assumed I could tag along on a thousand-mile trip on a whim? It’s like you forget not everyone’s parents are practically made of money.”
“Hey, I was just trying to be nice.”
“Yeah, you're trying to be nice because I’m like, your pet that you take with you only when you want.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aza scoffed, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “You know what I mean.” She walked to the door.
Maria followed. “No, I don’t think I do. I’m so sorry that I want to hang out with my friend. Goddess forbid I try to be nice to you.”
Aza turned and glared at her. “You’re not being nice. You’re pitying me, like you always do. And I’m sick of it. So just go. Go away already, see if I care.”
She opened the door and left, the cold winter air seeping into the apartment for a moment. Maria locked it behind her and groaned.
“What was that about?” Dario asked bluntly, peeking his head out from the dining area.
“Nothing,” Maria grumbled, pushing past him back to the dining room.