Taya lies on her side, staring past a wrinkled lump of covers at her reflection in Adenne's mirror. Her arms curve across her chest: rising, falling, rising, and falling again as she breathes.

It's eerie how quiet the rooms are at this time of day. Everyone in her wing is either in class or out in town, avoiding class. Nobody ever stays in the middle except Taya.

She rolls over to face the wall. When Taya goes to town, she goes to lose herself in shops and crowds. Pao has few of either, but what few it has offer an escape from school. At least she can sit by the town wall and read a book - a book that she wants to read - until the sun sinks below the skyline and drives her back to school.

"It's not because I won't cast," she announces to the empty room. "It's because I can't."

She doesn't have to be a long lost princess and she doesn't need to one day wake up as an amazing, beautiful, swan in a pond of ducks. Fairy tales are her dreams, but she doesn't need them.

What she needs, what she falls asleep wishing for each night, is magic. One spell. One spell for her peers to use her name. One spell to know that she can do something right. One spell to be normal.

Taya slides into a sitting position and grabs her bag from the foot of her bed.

She'll try again and she'll try alone. Maybe with a channel and some privacy she'll have the confidence to cast something. Adenne will be back soon, so she might as well try while she has the chance.

She fingers her book after leaving several handprints on the dusty floor and pulls it out into daylight. Taya settles in the center of the room, crosses her legs, and thumbs through the book for the right spell. Everyone learns Fire first, or at least everyone she's heard of.

Mankind always turns his hand to Fire. Fire is his first light and first warmth, from the age of ignorance into the age of spells. Failing to cast Fire is like failing to be human.

She smooths the page flat, brushing across the finely scripted incantation. She can do this. If some shivering spell-less human at the dawn of time can rub sticks into a flame, she can summon a spark. Right?

Taya reaches into her bag and carefully pulls out the laquer box. She cradles it in her palms and stares at it. Someone trusts her. She can trust herself if someone else does.

She sets the box aside with a gentle clink and lifts the channel by its finely linked chain. The amber pendant shines with a spectrum of golds when the light catches it, flickering with its own captive fire. It spins right then left, finally facing Taya and swaying as her breath stirs the air.

Taya's seen it before, though she can't remember when. Sandborne-Sensei's worn it. And Riverbale-Sensei's worn it. Maybe even teachers need channels sometimes? Maybe strong magic can't be summoned without a focal point, and that's why she's never cast before?

Or maybe she's just channeling her optomism.

Taya lifts the necklace over her head and tucks it beneath a sea of hair. The pendant rises and falls with two deep inhalations and exhalations. Her fingers curl around the pendant, the channel, the golden fire, the trust.

"Please," she whispers. "Just one spell."

And then her voice goes quiet, her mouth forming around each word of the incantation, shaping the spell to her blind reflection.