The collegia was quiet this time of year. With the last of the finals done, most of the students had gone home or into the city. A soft breeze rushed through the courtyard as Faidar and Siphis sat in the shade of the lympen tree, its immature fruit casting a faint yellow glow.

The wind tugged lightly at Faidar’s unbound hair, slinging dark bands across her vision. Inconvenient as it might be, they were in the off season and she wasn’t putting her hair up for anybody or anything.

Rolling her eyes, she almost threw her paper into the wind. Only a solid respect for the collegia and the inherent value of the parchment kept it within her grasp. Even if the author had done his damned best to devalue it with his ink.

“Another proposal?” Siphis asked, looking up. Her blond hair rippled in the wind, tiny finger barely poking through her fuzzy coat. She shook her head and reached for the letter. Faidar let her assistant have it.

Siphis read it as patiently as she did everything, though even she could not keep a grimace from her face. Letting out a long breath, she put it down. “This is the worst one yet.”

Faidar nodded, leaning back on her bench to let the breeze caress her skin. It carried the sort of lazy heat that made for excellent lounging. Such a shame she was behind on her correspondence.

“Still,” Siphis said. “I think it’s best if you don’t respond at all. The sekethi are stubborn, but you made yourself clear. Not responding is for the best.”

Faidar smiled at her assistant. The kortian woman was getting well into her adult years, but since she’d never settled down with a partner and had cubs, she hadn’t yet gone through her transformation. Kortian age was harder to read than human or sekethi. Where humans showed clear wrinkles, graying of hairs, and slowed down, the kortians only grayed slightly until reaching very old age.

Sekethi stood no taller than most human women’s waist. Their four-legged forms were incredibly difficult to read, however, the spiky growth along their spine made for much easier recognition of age.

Short spines for children, long spines for adults, split spines for middle-age, and finally wilting spines for the elderly. Clear, simple, easy. Kortians not so much. Their small size meant they could keep up almost until their bodies simply gave up. If old age showed, it was usually either in mothers or they were about to succumb to Apisaon’s ever churning wheel.

“I’ll throw it out for you,” Siphis offered kindly, her round little ears twitching as gave the letter one last scathing glare before stuffing it into her bag.

“Thanks, Siph,” Faidar said, and grabbed the next letter. Rippled and slightly runny from water stains. She pinched her lips shut. This was only another sign of how far she’d let herself fall behind with her letters.

This had to be from during the storm falls and that was months ago by now. Seasons had long since come and passed. She cracked open the seal and pulled out the stack of papers. Chicken scratch. While the words were correct, they were written poorly, as if by an unfamiliar hand.

She frowned and read slightly through it. Ranvir, she noted, skimming the brief introduction. Sentinel. From Limclea, she skipped onto the next pages. An Ability summary, she noted. Odd sorting system and what are those drawings? He’d scribbled circles on the margins.

Shaking her head, she put it to the side. Where all the letters demand a reply, but also weren’t offensive enough for immediate dismissal. “It’s probably just some joke one of my students are playing on me,” she said, shaking her head as Siphis looked at it.

They’d developed a system early on. Faidar checked most of her mail herself, mostly because she occasionally got sensitive information. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, she’d risen to such a position that she could no longer dedicate extended time to every letter and piece of correspondence she received. After skimming it, she would hand it off to Siphis to further sort it into distinct groups, pending Faidar’s approval.

Siphis took the letter, skimming the introduction, and moved on. Much like me, Faidar noted with a slight tug on her lips. Picking up the next letter, she found a faceless attempt at courting her work. They proposed she move to some lesser north-easterly city and continue her efforts. Their offer was at least within the suitable range, but simply couldn’t compare to the Kaesara and the collegia’s offers in terms of other resources.

The next letter was from another of the sekethi, though thankfully this wasn’t a multiple page long poetic description of the potential of their epic lovemaking. This was perhaps worse.

An invoice.

She made a low noise in her throat and looked over the numbers. They were fair. She was sore to affirm. The price for access to one of their braced for her experiments was well within the range of his power. Affordable, even. Not surprising, considering how isolated they are. Any of the sekethi’s prices are going to soar through the skies, well above expectations, or dive low into the ground. Rarely did they ever predict the hills and valleys correctly.

Not that most financial analyst could do that either, she thought, remembering an old conversation with a colleague.

“Take a closer look at this,” Siphis said, holding out papers to Faidar.

Stirred out of her distraction, she shook her head and took back the water-logged papers. She arched an eyebrow at Siphis, but began actually reading the words. She didn’t have to ask.

“Well, for one,” the bear-cub woman said. “It was sent from Limclea, Legea to be specific. That means it was sent through psykimes, through the lines. Yet, the paper’s still stained with water.”

Faidar paused her reading and looked at Siphis. “That is…” she cocked her head, hair rolling off her shoulder and tickling her neck. “I hadn’t considered that. Interesting.”

Siphis gave her a kortian smirk, the ears laying back slightly and showed the barest hint of teeth. “On top of that, he uses an unfamiliar, but functional, organization system. Unorthodox training, and see those?”

“The scribbles?” Faidar asked, pointing to one.

“I think those are Ability notations.”

Faidar snorted and shook her head. “Don’t be silly.”

“With all due respect,” Siphis said. “He’s supposed to use sand, and that’s a half-link from my own mud. I’m sensing a resonance. My intuition acts up when I look at them. There’s something in these, and he claims they are notations.”

Faidar smirked, but continued reading on until. “That…”

“Yeah, I saw it too.”

“What is his approach?”

Siphis didn’t reply, instead letting her think through it herself.

“He’s a Foreigner, isn’t he?” Faidar almost ripped the papers getting back to the Ability notations. “This is Foreigner notation?” she looked at Siphis, despite knowing only one person could answer. “If this is… no one’s ever come through who already had any significant knowledge… Not in…”

“Two centuries, maybe more.”

Faidar grabbed her own jaw as she scoured the letter for more information. “Well, at least he’s not perfect,” she said once finished. “His use of Armol’s Construction is elementary, at best. And he’s flat out using Kynthia’s Engine wrong. But his own principles, the ones he hasn’t named…” she looked up at Siphis. “We’ll need to test the circles, but draft a letter asking him to come visit.”

Siphis gave her another smirk, ears flattening and canines peeking out, but nodded. “Want to test one now?”

“Absolutely, I do.”

They packed up their letters, throwing the dismissed pile out as they passed a trashcan. Obviously, some element of the circle was unfinished, since they remained inert within the letter. Likely, they would need a ready supply of sand mana, something neither of them could provide.

“I’ll stop by the dean’s office,” Faidar said. “Prepare a circle in one of the training rooms.”

If it was true notation, then it might actually be able to use the Ability, if only on a rudimental level. Siph nodded, and they split up. Presently, Faidar stopped in front of a heavy oak wood doorway, knocking impatiently.

A moment later, the dean answered his door. Dean Apelles was a shorter pot-bellied man in his late forties with a receding hairline and a slightly overgrown, curly beard. “Faidar, what can I do for you?”

“I was contacted by a suspected Foreigner and need to check one of his notations,” she said, jumping right into it. “Do we have anyone on staff with sand mana? A guard or another professor?”

A flicker of silver flashed in Apelle’s eyes as library mana opened lines of information within his mind. “We have a guardsman, Nabis, though he’s supposed to be off duty today. Is it important?”

Faidar considered. She’d already left the letter alone for months, unchecked in her growing pile of correspondence. Water logged and worn, the stamped ink letters slightly runny from the long exposure. The man likely wasn’t waiting for another reply. More than likely, he’d forgotten about it and moved on with his life.

“Deathly important,” Faidar hedged. “As fast as possible,” on the other hand, she was interested now and waiting would be a pain.

Dean Apelles sighed and nodded. “Let me grab him, though this is coming out of your paycheck.”

“That’s fine,” she replied. “We’re in training hall B1.”

He nodded and headed off. She soon joined Siph, who’d finished writing the circle in chalk and had written in coal as well. She’d also laid out a bag of sand in case that would help, though tracing the intricacies with such a coarse and rough material would be tough.

“They’re on their way.”

It took fourteen laborious minutes before they arrived. The disheveled guardsman following behind the Dean. “This it?” he asked, looking at the circles. Siphis was still trying to get the sand one right, but the material wasn’t cooperating. As he examined them, the guardsman frowned. Slowly, he stepped closer to the chalk circle, touching a finger to it.

Mana rushed forth, energy traveling into the circle. She sensed the guard’s tentative approach, only letting a small amount out at a time. Until finally, the mana filled the circle and… nothing happened.

“How much mana is in the circle?” she asked after a minute and the glow started fading.

The guard shrugged. “Probably a couple dozen points.”

Siphis looked up and frowned. “Ranvir’s supposed to have hundreds of points in draw. His Ability probably isn’t that sensitive.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Faidar said. The dean said nothing as he’d found the letter and started reading, though he wasn’t just comprehending it but committing it. Silvery blue flashes of library mana storing information.

“Try imitating sparring practice. Put that much mana into it,” Faidar suggested.

The guardsman shook his head, then ducked into his shoulders. Mana glowed yellow within the circle, brighter and brighter. Flashing, Faidar squinted and raised her arm, feeling something patter against her bare hand and clothes.

The light dimmed, revealing tiny grains of sand, already dispersing back into mana. The guard looked surprised, but didn’t straighten, keeping one hand on the chalk. “Was that good enough, ma’am?”

“Yeah,” Faidar said, swallowing hard. “It was.”