Dear, Selena.

I miss you. After more than an octlet of moving from safe house to safe house and taking lessons from Wizard Mulberry, I miss you more than anyone else from the Academy, even my brother. Is that weird? Don’t get me wrong, I do miss that little trouble maker and my heart aches for what he must be going through but right now I want a normal, boring exciting conversation about life in general, no magic, no shadow men. Promise me we can have a nice conversation over tea when I get back.

-Jet

P.S. please don’t try to decipher what I scratched out.

Quartz looked up into Chad’s eyes, then swung his ax at Chad’s side. Chad barely got the end of his staff down in time to block but he wasn’t able to get any weight behind it and Quartz felt the full force of his swing connect with Chad through the staff. The blow knocked Chad off balance and gave Quartz an opening to kick him in the chest, knocking him onto his back side. Chad tried to regain his feet, paused, then dropped his staff and flopped onto his back on the frozen mud.

“I would say you thoroughly won that one...again,” Chad said from his spot on the ground.

Quartz squatted next to him, not seeing the frozen ground as inviting as Chad made it look.

“Hey, at least you lasted a little longer this time,” Quartz replied. He looked West at the setting sun and noted the time. “I gotta get going. Same time in two days?”

“Yeah, see you then,” Chad said while still laying on the ground. “I am going to regain my breath for a minute or two before I head out. See you in two days.”

Quartz stood up and started jogging in the direction of the dining commons. He needed to make sure he had time to eat dinner before his shift at the dorms tonight. When Jet went missing—

“No,” Quartz shouted, “life goes on!” Thoughts like that still tried to pull him back to ‘nothing’ even all these weeks later. “When Jet had left to study with Wizard Mulberry”-that was a much safer thought.

When Jet had left to study with Wizard Mulberry, Quartz had taken on her job at the dormitories. It had taken a little bit of convincing after his week of inactivity, but he was able to hold on to his previous job and Jet’s job as well. Her job was one of his anchors to keep himself going, to remind himself that he needed to keep going for her sake as well as his own. He had also taken on a larger load of classes than he had previously, some of which Jet had wanted to take. It was harder to let himself languish when he kept himself busy. One downside to being so busy was that he now saw Chad only rarely, even though they were roommates. Chad had made it a point to regularly spar with Quartz every couple of days, but that was often the only time they saw each other while they were both awake.

When he reached the dining commons he was not surprised to find Mallory, Hillary, and Marcel waiting for him. They had been eating together most of the quarter. Quartz was pretty sure that it had started because Mallory, Chad, and Selena had wanted to have an eye on him at least once a day. Mallory was the only one of the three that had free time when Quartz needed to eat dinner, so the duty had fallen to her and she had dragged along Hillary and Marcel.

Quartz was happy with their little arrangement though. It was nice to hang out occasionally with people who did not constantly remind him of Jet and of that day. It was also nice to hang out with other people his age. At first, things had felt awkward because he had become an apprentice a full year before them and was pushing himself to advance more quickly than most apprentices. Nothing about their lives at the Academy overlapped. They had nothing magic related to talk about, which meant they didn’t talk about magic or the Academy; they simply talked. For the first time since he had come to the Academy—maybe even longer than that—he felt like he had his own friends.

Quartz didn’t realize it, but dinner with his friends had become the only place where he didn’t have to constantly remind himself that life goes on; it simply did.

Chad watched Quartz jog off from his spot on the icy ground. He had tried to play it cool, but that last kick from Quartz had really hurt. He enjoyed these sparring matches though. They gave him and Quartz a way to hang out without too much talking. Too much of the foundation of their relationship had included Jet and with her gone, they needed some time to figure out what their friendship would look like without her. Also, going up against a weapon other than a staff was a good learning experience.

“No, life goes on!” he heard Quartz yell in the distance. He didn’t think Quartz realized just how often he said that out loud, but it kept him moving and Chad was grateful for that.

Chad stood up and picked up his practice staff. It was lighter and not hardened like the official Academy staffs, but it still felt strange carrying it around the Academy. After the incident at the winter solstice, Selena had encouraged him, Quartz, and Mallory to ask a master for a sponsorship to be allowed to carry weapons. It had not been hard finding multiple masters that would sponsor them, but in the end, his sponsorship had come from Master Henry. Even though the sponsorships allowed them to carry actual weapons, Chad and Quartz had decided they would feel more comfortable carrying around practice ones. Chad wasn’t sure if Mallory hadn’t been able to get a sponsorship or simply decided not to carry a weapon.

Chad headed towards the tower for the second half of his kendrite class that day. To better understand the practical uses of kendrite, the class was held both during the day for charging the kendrite and at night to discharge it. Even though the end of the quarter was approaching, he still got odd looks from his fellow classmates when he showed up carrying the staff.

After class, Chad met Selena in the healer common room for dinner.

“You know, you should probably find some other apprentices to eat with,” Selena said once they were settled. “Technically you’re not allowed to be eating here.”

“Oh!? You do realize I have been eating here all quarter, right?” Chad replied. “What makes you bring this up now?”

“Well, since you started coming here, I have had to explain why to the other healer ‘darians and masters. At first, it was really easy to convince them to let it continue because of the events of the solstice. However, as that event has faded into the past, it’s becoming harder and harder to convince them to not make a big deal out of it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll start eating dinner after class at the commons. Will you be able to join me?”

“Sometimes. But it also really would be for the best if you started to interact more with other apprentices.”

“I’ve tried. It’s just really hard,” Chad said with a sigh. “While I feel like I am making good progress, my knowledge is still basically that of a novice. The other students in my classes are mostly much younger than me. The apprentices that are my age are either close to becoming abecedarians or are at a more advanced level than me but also moving at what feels like a slower pace. Honestly, I feel so lucky to have hit it off with Jet and Quartz like I did. I had kinda started to see them as my campus family. But with Jet gone, I am reminded just how much ahead of me Quartz is. I might be older than him, but he is a much more advanced mage than me. I feel like the only thing we can relate to right now is that we both miss Jet, which makes me feel like my presence hurts him.”

“I kinda know how you feel. I don’t have many people here that I could call friends. I still find it strange that in this place with all of these people, who are supposedly equals, it is still so easy to feel left out and lonely. But even if there are barriers in age or academic progress, it would probably do you good to at least associate with other apprentices. I am not saying you need to make friends. Just try and be amiable.

“While I enjoy your company, I feel like I am partially to blame for your lack of acquaintances. So, I will still try to join you occasionally for meals, but I will also step back to give you more opportunities to interact with other apprentices.”

The conversation puttered out from there and the rest of the meal was mostly quiet. Chad understood where Selena was coming from and he was sure that their friendship would stay pretty much the same. But after Jet’s sudden departure, this felt a little too harsh. Selena, Jet, and Quartz had felt like family by the end of last quarter and they had spent time together almost every day. Now Jet was gone, Quartz’s busy schedule conflicted with his own, and Selena was limiting their interactions. He was starting to feel very lonely.

These thoughts filled his head as he went to the library to study. He felt his motivation slipping away and decided to skip the library and just head back to the dorms and then the image of Quartz jogging away from their sparring earlier in the day popped into his head. Feeling a little silly, but also that he needed it, he started jogging towards the library and yelled: “Life goes on!”