LTSV - Side Stories - 2- The Bath Scene (Patreon)

Cecily’s body ached as she lowered herself into the hot, sudsy water and finally let herself deflate. She’d put magnesium salt in with the soap shavings and hoped it would do something to keep her from stiffening up in the night. At least her bath smelled nice.

It had been a mistake to go home for the break. She should have tightened her belt and dipped into her savings to buy food for the weekend. Father wouldn’t go looking for her if she wasn’t convenient to hand, no matter how upset he was with her. She had foolishly forgotten that there’d be a reckoning for her taking Fergie’s spot in class 1-A. She should have stayed away longer and then she could have gotten off with just a slap or two. Instead, she’d gone home to Rousseau House without thinking and father had been waiting with his walking stick.

Joining the First Aid Club had been a good choice. They’d gone over basic Negentropy spells during the first week of the term, which included stabilizing bones and closing lacerations. Cecily had ended up needing to do both. She felt much better than she had that morning after she dragged her reluctant body back onto campus and before she got enough to eat to risk using any mana. 

She stayed in that bath until the water went cold, letting her sore muscles take in the fading heat of the water while her thoughts wandered.

Cecily knew she was going to have to be very careful. She’d forgotten, after just a week, that her stepfather wasn’t above making sure she wasted her time. She would have to make a plan to ensure that she wouldn’t be forced to drop out of school at the eleventh hour. She needed her diploma if she ever wanted to get out of her stepfather’s house. Fergie had been too quiet during the week and she’d stupidly dropped her guard. Well, she’d learned now, hadn’t she?

When the water was finally too chilly to stand anymore, Cecily stood up out of the water with the intention of going over to the manastone basket so she could re-heat the water. The door opened as soon as she got to her feet, leaving her exposed in more ways than one.

“Ah?” 

Cecily found herself face-to-face with Senior Coventry, who had just let herself into the shared bath chamber. She was dressed in a silk dressing gown with a violet motif painted on the sleeves and hem. She had a small wooden basket in one hand, which was full of bathing supplies. Her hair was still stubbornly flopped over one of her eyes, but Cecily had ended up on the side where nothing could impede Senior Coventry's view of—well, everything.

They stared at each other for a long, heart-stopping moment while Cecily stood rooted in place until the spell broke and she shrieked. She plunged back into the water to cover herself and soapy water sloshed over the edge. 

Senior Coventry didn’t say anything, she just turned and left—leaving Cecily to try and swallow her heart down from where it had gotten lodged in her throat. 

She’d seen. She’d seen everything—and then some!!

That knowledge beat in her chest like a war drum all through the night and into the next day, when she showed up for class with sandy eyes and a dull complexion. Class 1-A was on the smaller side, since there weren’t that many mana powerhouses born in any given year, and people were already making friends—people who weren’t Cecily, that is.

The other girls in 1-A, Julia Morrowood, Annette Lancaster, and Amelie Belleforest, had already cliqued up before Cecily ever met them. They were nice, and all, but Cecily sensed that she had nothing in common with them. They were all avid equestriennes and were planning to go on an art tour together during the first school break. They’d all joined the art appreciation club and ate in the Salon where you had to order off a menu and pay. Meanwhile, Cecily walked everywhere she went, got a little bored by art discussions, had chosen her club for its utility and lack of fees, and she ate the meals included in her tuition at the dining hall. She knew she should be interested in the same or similar things as the other girls, but those interests took a kind of family support she would never ever have.

The boys were as hard, if not harder to approach.

Randall had started the school year already overcommitted and it had only gotten worse. Between the club duties his brothers had signed him up for and his work as a junior student representative, he was already meeting himself when coming and going. Now she’d heard that he was up for a spot to shadow the Student Council. They made time to eat lunch together, but Randall almost always had work with him. Cecily helped him however she could, but she was starting to get worried about his health and it had only been a week.

Bryn Havard, Prince Andrei’s knight and companion, showed up right before classes and left as soon as they ended. He was a quiet boy and very serious about his duties to his prince. Cecily saw him more often than most because she kept running into Prince Andrei outside of class, but he didn’t volunteer to join the conversation very often. 

The other two boys seemed to be another pair of friends of long standing with no room for outsiders; Alan Greenwood and William Noir. They were in the literature club, which only made sense for William.

Alan Greenwood had the reputation of being a bit of a wild boy, but so far it seemed to Cecily that he just really cared about justice and didn’t care about being nice. He’d still hold doors for the ladies in class and, if a bug showed up in the classroom, he was the one who would go catch it and take it outside. He’d also move the desks for practicums without being asked. So far, he seemed like the type who you had to watch for what he did and not judge him by his attitude because his attitude was hot, hot, hot. He wasn’t the type to sit still if he thought something was wrong and Cecily had heard rumors that he’d already been in a fight. 

William Noir was a quiet, studious boy and just a touch arrogant. Cecily had to admit that he had some things to be arrogant about. He’d tied with her for having the largest mana reservoirs in the school and they both still had a few years left to grow in, so he could still outstrip her. The Noir family  had thrown at least five Archmages in the past century, so she liked his odds. The current Archmage, Lady Solvere, was said to be related to them through a connection two generations back so one could make the argument that the number was as high as six. He was as academically gifted as Randall, but less inclined to administration and so had fewer regular tasks for the school. That meant he could keep up with his personal reading—and boy, did he keep up with his reading. Cecily never saw him without a book in his hand.

The point was that she liked her classmates and even the idea of them no longer looking at her as an ordinary schoolmate and, instead, as an object of pity made her stomach drop down into her shoes. She’d dealt with that all through day school. Her stepfather hadn’t always been good at avoiding her face or hands so there’d been a few close calls with the city guard when a well-meaning parent or shopkeeper would report him. It didn’t go anywhere, of course, so the other adults in her life had to choose silence in case their interference made things worse for her. Since they couldn’t do anything to help, they just pitied her instead.

Granted, Cecily wasn’t above accepting help because of that pity. She would have never gotten into Breckenridge without the aid of her teachers, who would normally leave that sort of thing to their students’ families. 

It was just, she’d been looking forward to having a clean slate. 

Cecily was occupied by that thought and others like it when the teacher released them for lunch break and she went to change into her outside shoes. In retrospect, she should have known to shake them out in advance. It was spring. The bugs had just woken up and centipedes showed up everywhere in the Capitol, much less an old structure like the first-year’s class building, but she toed out of her soft classroom slipper and stepped into her loafers without any thought. Sharp pain lanced through her foot and a startled yelp escaped her mouth as she fell backwards and kicked the shoe off. 

There, right in the ball of her foot, was a round button-like thing that had a sharp bit that had bit deep into her flesh. It had sunk deep into her flesh, too deep for her to be able to pull it out right away. Her hands were shaking and her instincts were screaming at her to leave it alone, but at the same time it hurt so much!

All her classmates whirled and converged on her, drawn in by her high, thin keen of distress.

“Cece!” Randall slid to his knees at her side. “What’s wrong?”

“T–there was s–something in my sh–shoe…” Cecily gasped, still caught between the opposing instincts of ‘get it out!’ and ‘don’t touch it!’

“It’s her foot,” Alan said and dropped into a squat at feet and gently caught her by the ankle. Cecily reflexively tried to jerk away, but he held her still. He made the kind of shushing noise you used to calm down animals at her and Cecily hate-hate-hated the fact that it was working on her. She buried her face in Randall’s shoulder so she wouldn’t see what was about to happen and make it worse by squirming. “Shh, shhh, I’ve got you. One pull and…” he deftly pulled the thing out in one smooth motion and pressed his thumb down on the puncture wound underneath to stem the bleeding, “...there! Oh, that’s nasty.”

He held up a long tack with a thick post that was sharpened to a wicked point and broad, flat base.

Cecily caught her breath and managed to get it together enough that she could cast ‘cleansing’ on the wound and then close it. The puncture site still smarted afterwards, but she could finally breathe. She rubbed the tears out of her eyes and squinted at the tack. She’d thought that a nail from the cubby had fallen into her shoe, but this one looked like a long cut steel upholstery tack. “Where on earth did that come from?”

“That sure is a question, isn’t it?” Alan asked, holding up the tack. “Do you have any enemies?”

She bit back an instinctive ‘yes’ and forced herself to shake her head. This was Fergie’s work, no doubt. Apparently, Cecily catching a beating from their father wasn’t going to satisfy her stepbrother this time. “Not that I know of,” she said. “Are you sure it didn’t just fall in there?”

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice spoke from the corridor and they all turned to find their Prefect standing in the entrance to their classroom. “I heard a scream. What happened?”

Cecily couldn’t help it. She froze and stared at Senior Coventry, still half-turned into Randall’s side. She saw him notice the change in her mood and the fine tremors that sprang up in her hands. Shoot. She needed to calm down, but her mind couldn’t seem to reach the rest of her body. Why was she here? She was a second-year! The Prefects didn’t have to do their rounds until after classes were over! And only in the dorms!

“Miss Rousseau found a tack in her shoe,” Alan explained. “She’s alright now.”

Senior Coventry came over to examine the tack being held up. “Hmm,” she said as she came over to look it over. “This was in the shoe cubby, you said?” She frowned. “I don’t recall seeing nails like this elsewhere in the building.”

“It looks new from the forge,” Alan agreed, turning it this way and that. The tack did, indeed, have the blue sheen of newly forged metal.

“Please make a report to the Student Council,” Senior Coventry directed them. “I will trouble someone to escort Miss Rousseau to the clinic for treatment.”

“I–I took care of it!” Cecily managed to say, while also pleading with her whole soul for Senior Coventry to just go away already. Her heart couldn’t take this! She just wanted lunch!

“I’ll escort her to the nurse,” Randall replied and there was something cold in his tone that Cecily didn’t recognize or like.

He was taking this the wrong way, she could tell. What could she do to distract him? Think!

“I want to go to the dining hall,” she said. “I cleaned the wound and closed it, already. Please?”

Senior Coventry considered her and it was hard to guess what was going on behind her clear, amethyst gaze. She came down on Cecily’s side. “She should eat, if she’d used Negentropy on herself. Afterwards, please have the nurse inspect the wound. Novice mages can trap debris inside the wound and invite infection. Good day.” 

She turned and left as suddenly as she’d arrived, leaving Cecily to wonder just why had Senior Coventry been in the first year building? 

-Fin | Cecily Side Story 2

A/N: She was going to check on Cecily to see if she’d calmed down and was ready to talk about the bath incident. Then she realized Cecily was scared of her, so she backed off.