More To Come

After her first challenge her father winds a ribbon around her wrist, a white one that he ties in a bow. She watches with curioustiy, wondering if it is a part of some strange gift he means to give, or a lesson on binding or unraveling, be he steps back and doens't say a word, returning to his work. She stares at her wrist, tugs on the ribbon, but it will not loosen.
"Keep it on, there will be more to come," her father says without looking up. He is thinking and when he does he is in no mood to talk.
She goes to the corner to peruse the books she has already spent long hours studying. There is only one shelf she is allowed to touch, the one with ilustrious pages of runes, histories and alchemical signs with which she has become intimately familiar. This time she ooks at the shelf above. The words on the spines of the volumes mean nothing but she chooses the one on the far right, a blue book thinner than its fellow tomes, beginning the same way she did with her own shelf, from left to right, in order.
She turns to her father, watches his eyes go over a diagram on the desk she will not understand for some time, and slowly pulls the book from its spot. She is delighted, and feeling roguish, when he doesn't seem to notice. She hugs it to her chest and finds her favourite reading spot, in an arm chair in a square of light  cast by the window, curls up into a ball and begins to read.

Text by Lucie MacAulay