After cooking for ten minutes, a panting and sweating Zoe released her magic. The flames died down and vanished. Zoe plucked the ring from the kiln with a long pair of tongs. She dropped it on ceramic tiles and took temperature readings.
Room temperature.
Zoe frowned as she waved her hand over the ring. Lower and lower she moved her hand without feeling any heat radiating off. With a deep breath, she touched the back of her hand against the ring.
Shock ran through her nerves. She drew back almost immediately. With only a moment’s hesitation, Zoe gripped the ring in her hand. Not even the slightest heat touched her fingers.
It felt much like it had been stuck in the freezer. Unpleasant only in that it was colder feeling than room temperature.
Her next experiment consisted of leaving it in the freezer, of course.
She half expected to pull it out white-hot. It lay on the ceramic tiles, perfectly black. Not one to ignore caution, Zoe pulled it out with tongs once again. After a few temperature readings–room temperature once again–Zoe carefully touched her fingers to the metal.
Again, it felt much like it had been in the freezer.
Magical ice might act differently. Unfortunately, while she may have been a class one aerothurge and a class three going on class two pyrokinetic, Zoe barely scraped by her class five hydroturge exams.
She’d need help for that experiment. Help might ask questions.
With a sigh, Zoe leaned back in the couch of her home. She rolled the ring between her fingers, occasionally slipping it on one of them. The ring’s ability to resize to fit any of her fingers was a mere footnote in her notebook. She hadn’t even started investigating that property.
A hammering on her door had Zoe on her feet in the blink of an eye.
No visitors were expected.
Her dagger whipped out, aiming at the door. The ring she had been fondling found its way onto her finger. She slipped it off and into her pocket, keeping one finger half way in.
Ready to cast a shield or a lightning bolt at a moment’s notice, Zoe approached her door. A small part of her wished it was enchanted like her office door–one way transparency. Her pitiful teacher’s salary wouldn’t cover the cost and she wasn’t adept enough at order and chaos magics to do the enchanting herself. Not permanently, at least.
Still, there were other methods of seeing through solid objects.
Zoe drew a line in the air with her dagger. Rippling magic seared the bindings of reality. The line of magic pulled apart at the midsection creating a vertical eye shape. Nothing but the pure white of between lay inside. With a thought, the white changed to the scene just outside her door.
Blinking twice to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, Zoe allowed reality to mend itself. The eye-shaped tear stitched itself back together and vanished into nothingness.
Zoe palmed her dagger, though she kept it at the ready, and walked up to the door. It swung open to reveal a dark-haired, golden-eyed man with a smile full of pearly-white teeth.
“Rex?”
A flicker of disgust or even hate passed over his face. It came and went so fast that it might have been her imagination. Rex’s face turned to the polite and slightly roguish smile she first saw on him.
Zoe tried to keep her face as neutral as possible. She maintained her slightly surprised expression without mirroring his flicker.
Zoe trusted herself far too much to believe it had been her imagination.
“Hey, Zoe. Just got back into town after some business.” He hefted up a bottle of wine. “Thought we might catch up, yeah?”
“So you came straight to my home late in the evening?”
“Well, I got your address from Martina. I thought about stopping by in the morning.” He brought his free hand to the side of his mouth. In the loudest stage whisper Zoe heard, he said, “I’m not much of a morning person.”
Zoe allowed a polite smile to touch her lips, though she kept careful watch for any more flickers of emotion. “I spoke with Martina about you, you know.”
A lopsided grin split his face. He brushed one finger along his chin, almost as if stroking a nonexistent beard. “Did she mention what a handsome devil I am?”
“More like, ‘don’t get yourself involved with that pathetic display of walking pestilence. I regret the day I met him everyday,’ or something along those lines.”
He leaned back and let out a roaring laugh. “That sounds like Martina.”
It didn’t sound like half the joke he apparently thought it was when Martina said it.
“So,” he said, “this a bad time?”
A brief thought of slamming the door in his face crossed her mind. She wasn’t quite sure where the thought came from. Even with his flicker of emotion, Zoe wasn’t such a rude person.
“Not as such, no.” Zoe opened her door wider and stepped to one side. “Though I’ll let you know this: I intend to keep our interactions strictly professional. No relationships in the workplace.”
