[Wright Memorial Library] A Call to Learning (Chembolo)

[Malvora]

Timestamp: 34th Summer AV 513; early morning

She wasn't quite sure why she was awake at this hour, but something...something was bothering her. It was, quite possibly, the fact that she had her first Glyphing lesson the day before and that the idea of magic had kept her up. Alternatively, it could be because she had sensed something in her sleep which had awoken her. Either way, she was awake now and it was time to do something. Perhaps she could dedicate more time to studying her alchemy...or her glyphing. Either one was worthy of dedication.

She got dressed, much to her distaste, pulling on a simple shirt and a pair of pants. She left behind her cloak, for the summer sun was too warm for such a garment. She finished dressing and then found a tie for her long locks. They were becoming a nuisance, but she loathed to cut them, for they were quite beautiful and gave her an exotic feel. As she left her room, she made sure the door was locked and gave herself a quick once over in the mirror. She looked...decent.

As she strode out into the sun, she winced at the sun's hard glare initially. She did not care for the harsh light of the sun, even though she knew it lit up her dark locks like a dark, sinister flame. She walked rapidly to the library, entering it quickly and then finding an abandoned corner to work in. She could work on her Glyphing, she decided. That was the class in which she had a final, therefore it took precedence over her own personal studies.

She had borrowed a copy of one of the Glyphing books last time she had been in the library, and having already devoured it, she returned it and found a second book from which she could gain new insights and information. She was eager to begin her studies and became deeply involved in the book after only a few sentences.

[Chembalo]

The sun had not yet risen above Zeltiva. It was still dark and comparatively cool for the summer. This was early twilight, Chembalos favorite time of the day. As usual the red panda had woken up far earlier than most of his human peers. He reflected on the previous day. If his first formal lesson in Glyphing had made one thing clear, it was that he would have to do a lot of additional studying outside of class, if he was to achieve his goals.

After he got up from his pillow, he first cleaned himself, by licking his paws and rubbing his back against the furniture in his student apartment. Then he changed into a human. He looked at his pile of clothes. “I honestly don’t understand why people love clothes so much. Especially in summer”, he thought.

Ever since a heat wave had hit Zeltiva a few days ago Chembalo had felt drained. Red pandas did not tolerate overly high temperatures well. That is why he had at least tried to get things done in the mornings and evenings, napping in the midday. Even though that was not always possible, like yesterday.

With a sigh he put his clothes and his cloak. He had been told he would have to wear those when moving around university campus. Then he left for the Wright Memorial Library. Once he was there he took a few of the books recommended for his Glyphing class. While looking for them he was amazed at the size of the library. And he had thought he had gotten a lot of books to read as a child.

When he had placed all the books on one of the desks and had just about started reading, he noticed someone entering the library. It was a slim, young woman he met before in yesterday’s class. Was she going to repeat the lessons, like he was? He saw her sitting down at a desk in a secluded corner, apparently not noticing him. Even though he did not remember her name, Chembalo approached her. She was already submersed in the book she was reading, but Chembalo interrupted her and said “Hello young Lady. We met yesterday in Glyphing class. Are you doing some further reading as well?”

[Malvora]

He had startled her. A first, she thought to herself, lips twisting into a grin. She was rarely startled, and jolted at the sound of his voice. Looking up, her dark eyes surveyed the man. In his twenties, she decided, not unattractive. There was something pulling her to him, but she pressed this out of her mind. He smelled, ever so faintly, of some sort of leaves, but this too she ignored. It was early in the morning, she was perhaps imagining things.

"I am no lady," she responded, abruptly remembering that disputing greetings was unlikely the way most responded to them, "I mean, I am called Malvora. We met in class yesterday, yes. You are..." she dredged up the memory. She had not interacted overmuch with the red haired man, though she had a keen memory which served her well for learning, "Chembolo, perhaps?" She paused as she examined him, there was something strange, something that was nudging on the outskirts of her memory, but whatever it was, it eluded her.

"I am, reading that is. I might practice some runes later on today, but for now I'm trying to get some insight into the basics of Glyphing," she paused, "perhaps you'd like to join?" This was the polite thing to say, though she was often not very open with people who joined her. She searched for something to say that was conversational. There were a great many topics that she could dredge up, but none of them worth pursuing.

"Do you have magic?" she asked him, her eyes alighting at the idea. If he did, he would become all the more valu--interesting to her. She had some small amount of Alchemy, but nothing that was fancy, nothing terribly valuable. She wondered if this man had any...Chembolo, the name was quite strange in her mind and on her tongue. She pondered it a bit more, before letting it rest. Malvora was no more a common name than Chembolo.

[Chembalo]

Just Malvora then. This suited Chembalo well. He was still unsure what to call who, having simply not enough experience in the matter. Chuckling a little, he realized that she in turn had almost, but not quite remembered his name.
"Very close, but It's ChembAlo, not ChembOlo." As she examined him with her looks, he just looked back and wondered what she was thinking about.

"Yes, I would very much like to join you learning. Although yesterday was not the very first time I heard about Glyphing, I'm sure it's best to get a very firm understanding of the basics. And practicing is always a good idea, I think." Chembalo was indeed very happy she invited him to join. He never had a study partner before, but had always thought it would be very helpful.

"Do you have magic?", she asked. He noticed how her dark eyes flashed when she said it.
Getting a warm feeling as he heard the question, he proudly proclaimed "Indeed I do. I can do some Morphing. I don't have a model yet, but I will work on that as soon as possible. Do you want me to show you what I can do? I also know the starter lessons of Hypnotism, but I don't think that I can accomplish much with that. And now we are learning Glyphing here, that qualifies as a kind of magic too, doesn't it?" He spurted all that out much faster rate than usual. Getting obviously excited, he wanted to share all his achievements so far. Staring at her intensely, he now eagerly hoped for an opportunity to practice and maybe show off a little.

[Malvora]

"My apologies, Chembalo," she replied as he corrected her, flushing a bit at the mistaken name. Still, she had been very close and the slight mishap was forgivable. She smiled as he agreed to study with her. She liked having study partners, at this rate she was going to meet everyone in her class and be studying with them. The idea was not unappealing, as she was rather fond of getting together with other people. The man was welcome. However, his response to her question was even better than she had anticipated.

"Please," she murmured, as he offered to demonstrate his magic, "do. In fact, can you use a..." she searched for a word to describe herself as, "person as a model. If so, feel free to use me." She smiled winningly. Her darker persona was making a push to the surface, hoping to see the magic in use. After all, magic was a fascinating topic no matter which personality was more dominant at the moment. She was a bit addicted to magic, already, and getting a demonstration was highly appealing.

"Morphing, you say, and hypnotism. Interesting combination," she murmured, quite interesting indeed. Morphing, well that was a magic that she shied form, worried about the idea of losing herself. Who knew what kind of dangers she would encounter if she started to lose her concept of self? Still, she wouldn't mind getting to know a bit more about it. Perhaps spending more time with this Chembalo man would help her learn more magic. Hypnotism, on the other hand, now that had it's perks. Imagine, being able to cast a magic that could effectively control another. While the part of her that rebelled against harming others was repulsed by the idea of controlling others for vindictive means, her more malicious side was begging her to ask for lessons in learning hypnotism.

[Chembalo]

Chembalos mouth fell open when Malvora flat out offered to be his model. He looked at her intently. Smaller and slimmer than him. Dark skin, hair and eyes. Pierced ears and nose. And now that she was smiling at him he noticed that her teeth were extraordinarily sharp. Morphing into her would be a challenge, but that was the point. It was not impossible, but it would require time watching and studying her and of course practicing it.

However, he already liked the idea. Like he had said, he was looking for a model and someone who he would spend time around anyway seemed like a good choice. But did she understand the implications? Did she even know what a model was? He sat down on her left.

"I'm amazed at your offer. Yes, it is possible to use a person as a model and now that you mention it, I think you would be an excellent choice. But do you understand what that means? It would give me the power to turn into you at will; far faster and saver than generic Morphing. Here let me show you."
He took her right arm, placed it flat on the table and put his right arm next to it. Then he fixed his eyes on their arms and started moving his left arm in swinging patterns up and down his right one. At first there was no visible effect. Then is own arm started changing color, it got progressively darker. The shape of his hand changed slightly to emulate the one next to it. The whole process took about three minutes. When he was done his own arm had not changed in size, but other than that it looked to him exactly like Malvoras arm. Around the upper arm it gradually looked more and more like his own.

"You see?", he said while wiggling the fingers. "To get your whole body as a model I would have to watch and study it for a while. And from what I can tell most hu...people are rather shy when it comes to something like that."

He wondered how she would respond to that and briefly remembered that their point for being in the library was to study Glyphing, not Morphing.

[Malvora]

Chembalo's reaction was priceless. She had to admit that the man looked rather amusing as his mouth dropped open at her offer. She could feel his eyes on her as he took in her appearance. She was exotic looking, had she been a human she would have possessed an appearance that was entirely unprecedented. Given her Zith blood, however, she was no more exotic than any other halfblood. She had gotten much of her father's coloring and only a bit of her mother's build, though she retained much of the slim and slender appearance that was common of her Zith race.

"Turning into me, oh trust me, Chembalo, that is far more dangerous to you than it is to me. You'll find that becoming me has it's...downsides shall we say." She had a feeling that Chembalo was well on his way to becoming a very good friend to her. She could practice Glyphing with him while he studied her and spent time around her and then he could practice his morphing. Perhaps, as he gained skill, he would be willing to teach her. She would enjoy being able to disguise her appearance at will, of course the study that it would require...it would be astronomical to say the least.

When he transformed his arm, her eyes widened and her mouth curled into an elated smile. He had some power in this morphing that he practiced then, some amounts of practice. The arm was not an exact replica, for it was not as slender as her own, but it still had so much of the characteristics that she half expected it to move when she moved her own hand. It was delightfully uncanny.

"Shy?" she gave a slight laugh, though it was truly humorous as she imagined being shy around anyone, "I find that the reason that I maintain modesty is because I know that others would be uncomfortable around me. I am not uncomfortable with my body, and if you have no problems looking at it than I have no problems showing it to you." She eyed him, almost in a challenge. Indeed, she was thrilled by the prospect.

"However, I cannot imagine that the patrons of this dear library would appreciate my stripping right here to demonstrate, so perhaps we should do a bit of Glyphing and then head to a dorm room later in the evening. I find that the afternoon summer sun is a killer on my eyes and tends to induce headaches which is why I usually turn in during that time. We could grab a bite to eat as well."

[Chembalo]

It was far more dangerous to him than to her. What did she mean? It didn’t seem like she was talking about the inherent dangers of magic. What downsides of being her was she talking about? It made him worry about her and he almost wanted to ask… but this was not the time. They would have enough opportunities to talk this through later. It could not change his decision anyway.

He smiled when he heard that the idea of shyness concerning her body was as laughable to her as it was to him.
“It is settled then. You will be my first model. Thank you for that. And of course you are right; the librarians don’t like it if people are too revealing inside their domain.” He got up and said “Anyway, let me quickly grab my books, so we can continue with Glyphing.”

While carrying the books over from his original desk, he looked at his still morphed hand. His goal was to maintain the transformation until the strain became too large. Moving his thoughts over to Glyphing he wondered how much easier the task would have been if he had used a focus rune. He sat down next to Malvora again and opened a book. A determined smile spread across his face; he was going to repeat all he needed to know with her and then practice drawing until they could continue no more.

[Malvora]

"Prudes," she scoffed as she thought of how careful humans were to keep their bodies fully covered, "clothing is so tedious and constricting. An unnecessary annoyance in the summer, and while necessary at times in the winter, it is still an annoyance." She huffed under her breath, thinking of the ways that humans were illogical. Her mother always chided her when she ran around unclothed, but had not enforced that until they had moved to Zeltiva where decorum was a necessity and five was getting a bit old to be uncovered at all times. She had been soundly lectured the first time she ignored her mother's rule.

She nodded at him as he went to grab his books. Some studying, for perhaps the next few hours and then she would like to turn in for awhile, at least until the sun had died down. Then they could return. She pondered the implications of inviting him back to her dorm, but shrugged. It was all innocent enough, a simple act of learning. He would become more advanced in morphing and she would begin to get a better idea of how morphing worked. She wondered if she could learn enough of it to transform her skin temporarily. It would do wonders for helping her hide against those that would persecute her for her parentage. Racist petchers.

"We could read some and then practice a few runes? I still need some work with my focus glyph at the moment. I'm not sure if I'm quite prepared to take on another rune without first having mastered this one, and I'm sure Professor would be pleased if we got it down. The other students...I just wish I had managed to get enrolled in the first class. Everything would have been so much easier, you know. I mean, of course you know...you're a new student too..." She realized she was babbling and shut up.

"Right, so, which book would you like to start with?"

[Chembalo]

"Yes, they all are. I mean, I don't mind wearing clothes, unless it' really hot outside. But I don't see the point of it either." It was true, as long as temperature or social norms didn't demand a certain dress, he did not care much either way. However, he had never met somebody else who thought that way. It was an occurence he found quite interesting.

"Reading and then practicing. Sounds like a good idea", Chembalo said, after he had listened to her. She had sounded very worried. "I'm sure we will be fine. It was only a single day we missed. All we have to do is make up for it here and now. Speaking of which...", he pointed at the book he had opened, "I think this is a good starting point: 'Introduction to Glyphing'. I have been using it before and it has helped me, I think."

Flipping the pages with his still darkened hand, he turned to the chapter about focus runes. it contained introductions, examples, explanations. It was all they needed now. Of course a book could never match a lesson with Professor Marin, but fortunately for them Glyphing was a branch of magic, which was comparatively easy to learn from books.

He showed the book to Malvora and said, "Do you know what I liked most about focus glyphs so far?"