Flashback Passing Grade

[Jorin Ertihan]

Season of Winter, Day 40, 504 AV "These problems are really hard, father!" Jorin whined. His father merely glanced over from his theorems and shook his head. "Don't stop. Keep going," he admonished. There were ten problems. There were always ten problems, each one more difficult than the last. Beads of sweat formed on Jorin's brow as he thought furiously, and his quill hovered above the paper. There are two iron spheres dropped from a tower four hundred hands high. One wieghs eight stone, the other twelve. If the force of a sphere of this nature is the product of their mass and acceleration how much force would they impart when they hit the ground, half a second later? Jorin had no idea where to start. Should he begin with the sphere? But he knew, from experiements his father insisted he carry out, that both spheres would reach the ground at the same time. So wouldn't their acceleration be the same too? Then it was the weight. Jorin glanced forlornly at his answer sheet. It only contained eight answers, of which only five he was relatively certain of. Six was a passing grade. He had no clue how to answer the tenth question. This one was his last hope. So how can he determine acceleration? Jorin dug into the recesses of his memory. There was an equation, surely there was an equation? Something about a certain force that pulled everything to the ground, and how falling objects accelerated at the same rate if dropped and no force pushed it back up. Jorin strained and strained, but he could not remember how the equation worked. His mind was just too out of sorts. And even if he did recall it, he remembered that the equation only gave him the velocity at the END of the fall, so he'd need to take the distance they travelled into account. What was it his father called that? Something about work, and how it ... conserved? Or was conserved? Jorin couldn't remember. A small bell rang, shattering Jorin's concentration. Time was up. Silently, his father walked over, picked up Jorin's answer sheet, sat back down, and eyed it critically, his quill making sweeping movements as it ticked off his answers. One. Two. Three. And then his father's hand stopped. He'd only gotten three questions right. He had failed. Again.

[Jorin Ertihan]

Season of Summer, Day 13, 505 AV Day after day, season after season, year after year, Jorin's father kept giving him set after set of problems. Always different, always difficult, and always in sets of ten. Never more, and never less. And not one time, did he ever pass. "Why do you keep giving me these problems when you know they're so hard?!" Jorin's face was red with the exertion of yelling, as he glared balefully at yet another answer sheet failed. He'd gotten five, this time. So close... "Don't stop. Keep going," was all his father would respond. Jorin slammed his palms down on his father's table, upsetting ink vials and causing papers to fly everywhere. "I can't!" he screamed, voice cracking. "I'm not you! I'll never be you! Why do you ... why must you ..." Jorin's father merely sat impassively in his chair. Almost like a carved statue. If he didn't know any better, Jorin would've thought him chiseled from marble. "The answers are there, Jorin, you just have to reach for them," he said at last, when he saw his son had calmed down a bit. But Jorin wasn't buying it. "Maybe for you, father. But I'm not smart like you! When you look at these problems, these numbers, you see patterns. You see order. All I see is chaos." Jorin's father was silent for a long time. "It's not my intelligence that allows me to see the patterns, son. Someday, I hope you'll discover what it is. And when that day comes, these problems will be as easy as the simplest of arithmetic. And when that day comes, you will have far surpassed me..." Jorin had stomped out halfway through his father's speech, so he did not hear his father's last two statements. Nor did he see his father get up from his chair, patiently bend down to pick up the discarded answer sheet, and put it lovingly away in a box in his drawer, where hundreds of others resided.

[Jorin Ertihan]

Season of Spring, Day 43, 508 AV "I'm going, father, and there isn't anything you can do to stop me!" Jorin was not angry. Just firm. He'd made up his mind; he was going to join the traveling troupe, and nothing his father said was going to dissuade him. "I know," his father replied simply. Jorin's mouth fell open. "Buh ... bu ... how?" he squawked. His father just looked at him expectantly. "You're my son," he replied after a pause, as though that explained everything. No, no this was all wrong. His father was supposed to scream and shout, to beg and plead for him not to leave home. He was supposed to reason and argue with him, like the first time he had brought the subject up, six days ago when the troupe first arrived. He wasn't supposed to just accept it! "I'm really going to do it!" Jorin insisted petulantly. His father gave him one of his rare smiles. "I know," he repeated. Sighing heavily, Jorin's father reached into a small drawer in his desk, taking out what looked to be an old and worn journal. From the looks of it, the leather cover had seen better days, but still visible on it was the stylized letter that was his father's mark. "There's not much I can give you to help you on your journey, son," his father explained, as he handed the book over to Jorin. Jorin took it like as though it might burst into flames at any moment. "But at least let an old man give you something to remind you of home. I've copied all my notes out of that book and had it re-made; most of the pages are blank. Except the first two." Jorin opened the book gingerly, and on the first two pages, he saw a set of problems. Ten in total. "Come home someday, son," his father was saying. "I know that this time, you will pass." Fin

[Eldritch]

Jorin :

Skills
Mathematics +2

Lores
N/A

Notes :

Nothing to note.

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