Sparkly

Chair

"What on earth are you doing?" Darius said, catching his breath.

He'd overslept. Rushing to class he thought he might be just early enough to apologize to the teacher before she left, but instead the teacher was gone, all the chairs were piled up nearly to the ceiling, and his classmates were gathered around them.

"We're building a chair tower." Sana said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"You're not usually late." Kylis observed in a way that was almost a question.

With all the nightmares Darius had been having, it was hard to get enough sleep. And besides, he had already completed the test and gained a cursed weapon. He'd already succeeded in the task that all these lessons were preparing them for.

Darius shrugged, looking at the artlessly arranged chair tower.

"I think it's missing something." Sana said.

Darius opened his mouth, then closed it, not sure what to say.

Kylis gasped and pointed his fingers.

"Paper chains!" he said knowingly.

Darius blinked.

"Yessss." Sana said, digging in the arts and crafts drawer for materials.

The arts and crafts part of these lessons, which were about knowing yourself, were the part Darius had understood the least.

He'd had to make a collage for lessons, and he'd ended up making one about all the sights in town he liked, such as the antiques shop, candy shop, the grand gates, the massive bridge over the lake, and an abandoned house that had the fading remnants of a unique paint job.

He'd felt a bit out of place when most of the other students brought collages of their insecurities or the demands of society, but he'd gotten a passing grade.

He vaguely understood the purpose of the collage, but the chair tower was beyond him.

Well, anyway. He needed to find the other teachers and give them an excuse for not being here tomorrow. And then he needed to find a way to get to Trace Mountain in under a day.

"Darius, I'm going to give you the privilege of deciding our color scheme." Kylis said, elbowing him.

The dubious privilege.

"Orange, green and purple." Darius joked, naming what he thought was a hideous combination of colors.

"Unique, I like it!" Kylis said, getting out the construction paper.

"Wait, that's not what I-" Darius started.

"Hm?" Kylis glanced at him.

"Never mind." he said. "I'll be back after I've hunted down professor Sosen to apologize to her."

Kylis nodded.

"Aww, you should contribute! You chose the colors after all." Sana said.

"Sorry." he said as he backed away from the milling mob of students.

"So formal!" he heard her say as he shut the door behind him.

He breathed a sigh of relief. When there wasn't a clear goal, he couldn't relate to people sometimes.

"Yeah, you don't really need to attend lessons now that you've got your sword. Congratulations by the way." Professor Sosen said.

"Thank you. On that note, I have some business to attend tomorrow as well." Darius told her.

"That's fine." Sosen said, waving as she walked past him.

He headed back to the classroom, since he'd said he'd be there.

"What do you think?" Kylis said.

Although not that much time had passed, the chair tower was wreathed in an long length of paper chain. It was incredible what the students could accomplish together when they were determined- if only they could direct that toward something useful.

"Hm, the color scheme looks better than I thought it would." Darius said, looking at the strange... thing... in front of him.

"How did you think it'd look?" Kylis asked.

Terrible.

"Uh, I didn't really think about that." Darius said.