Detention turned out to be a pretty good opportunity to get tutoring one on one with the most highly sought after maestras at magicians college. Stars knew the line up for Professor Alondra's office hours went out the door, across the corridor — and sometimes out the window and into the sky outside al-Maysan Hall when students who had mastered anti-gravity spells chose to show off and direct the line out there.

Not great for those afraid of flying or who couldn't yet.

Sentenced to two hours in Alondra's office every other night at hora duodecima, plus every dies Solis morning at the crack of crepusculum, Inyanga and Storm took the opportunity to learn. Constellation wasn't going to have a retributive detention policy whereby delinquents would be punished by digging holes in sand and filling them back up, or standing staring at a wall, or writing lines — Nope, delinquents like Storm Gloriam and Inyanga Kyu Numbia were going to do something productive and educational: examination grading. For fourth year students.

Provided with the answer key to multiple choice sections, an invisibility spell hiding the students' names, the girls worked an algorithm spell Alondra had taught them to mass grade the papers automatically — and then they double checked the results the old fashioned way, searing the correct results into their minds. Meanwhile, the delinquent rule-breaking scholars took advantage of their maestra for their own educational purposes.

"Maestra Alondra, does it ever get easier to derive link coordinates for destinations you haven't seen?"

"Maestra, I still don't get how to turn a recorded memory into a replay link."

"Maestra, what's the first step for spell-casting without pointing with the gnomon?"

"Maestra Alondra, can magic ever run out?" The maestra slammed a book closed so hard it snapped on Inyanga's fingers like a mouse trap.

"This is not your one on one tutorial," said Maesta Alondra.

"Ouch," said Inyanga, and her fingers went to her mouth. She looked to Storm for a little sympathy, but Storm glared with fiery eyes and was shaking her head.

"This detention is meant to be your punishment. If you're enjoying the extra instruction, these sessions aren't serving their purpose. We're done for the day. Come back tomorrow with three thousand words on application of portal measurements."

Maestra Alondra stood. "You can spend the rest of our time today in the library collecting your citations for the paper." She collected her books and left.

She left, even though the line outside her office for tutoring went out onto the balcony terrace and beyond into the sky. As Storm and Inyanga carried their piles of books out of Maestra Alondra's office, dozens of students gave them stink eye before slowly giving up and moving along.

It was kind of Storm to wait until they reached the empty corridor outside the al-Maysan library at the core of the floating sphere before giving Inyanga hell.

"Nice job getting us thrown out, starfire brains." Storm didn't stop or slow down to throw her shade.

"Me?" Inyanga ran along after. "I'm pretty sure we were both asking her questions for next week's examination."

"But you had to go and ask her whether magic can run out, like a reporter chasing a conspiracy for the hora septa news. Like you don't already know."

Storm stormed down the hall even faster, leaving Inyanga to call after her, "What do you mean?" and scurry along behind, past the 'no talking' sign, toward the doors into the spherical center of al-Maysan's core. Where she dug her heels in and slammed to a stop.

The doors opened out onto a cliff of bookshelves and into the anti-grav area. The al-Maysan core library was the hollow, perfectly spherical, massive space in the center of the floating building, where books lined every curve, held in place with sticking spells, and more bookshelves free floated in the air.

One didn't need to be able to work a flying spell to float into the middle of the study tables and shelves in the center, so Storm, of course, didn't even hesitate. She took a running jump and dived, then used the momentum she had generated to swim across the air to the stacks.

It wasn't that Inyanga was afraid of heights — she flew a moto part time. It was just that she didn't have much practice with free-style floating and her pulse always started to get crazy when she knew she would have to steer, brake, navigate, and avoid collisions in three-dimensional traffic. Without her moto's steering wheel, brakes, and protective shell.

But to get her answer out of Storm (and to recover important tomes for her studies), Inyanga was willing to swim out into the air, wade across the wide pool of space, and give Storm chase. She shout whispered when she got to her, conscious of the no-talking rule, "What do you mean, like I don't already know?"

"You know about the taboo," said Storm. She picked up a book off the shelf and started to read aggressively, hiding her face behind the barricade of its pages.

Inyanga swam around behind her to ask directly into her ear, "What do you mean, I know about the taboo?"

"The point of it being taboo is we don't talk about it," Storm hiss whispered back.

"But how do you know what you're talking about if you can't talk about it?"

Stormed grabbed her wrist and with a demonstrated mastery of steering magic, she pulled Inyanga along deep into the stacks as if being pursued by angry library staff.

"What? Why are you asking me that? Why are you still talking about this?"

"Tell me the taboo."

"No. I can't talk about it."

"Why do you know and I don't?"

"Maybe your brains are more defective than we thought, starfire brains. Did you forget?"

"Be helpful. When did you learn about this thing we're not supposed to talk about?"

"We learned it the first day of second semester. The evening tutorial of the required magical economics course. Instead of breaking into the smaller tutorial groups, the first session was held here, in al-Maysan library, as an assembly. That way every second semester student could hear all at once. It was like . . . an announcement. For everyone. Haven't you been coming to the tutorials?"

"I missed that day."

"Seriously? They said not to miss it. No exceptions. Yanyu sat there with a nosebleed from an accident in practical astrophysics. Ala was dying of fever. Literally dying. Girl has an immunodeficiency."

"I didn't know it was mandatory. I don't have time for bonus classes. I work a night shift making deliveries in my moto."

"You missed the most important lecture of all time just to go work for cien solidae an hora?" Storm shook her curls. "You are not going to last here."

Inyanga shifted with discomfort. If her feet had been on the ground, she would have shifted her weight from one side to the other. Instead, she found herself subconsciously wiggling in the air.

Maybe opening up to Storm would create some empathy — if the girl was capable of it. "My umama and grandmama work full time to pay for my tuition. Both of them. And they have to shell out for immortal life fees, or they'll grow old and die, and pigment spells, or we'll lose our color and everyone will know how poor we are — there's three of us, three immortals, three of us in a family with no magicians.

"I know your cognomen. Gloriam? Listen, Storm Gloriam, your ancestors were Constellation executives. Mine washed dishes, drove wealthy people around, planted and harvested produce, tended gardens. Some made music and others died when they couldn't pay immortality fees. And my umama wants another baby. She's always been crazy, but I don't want children, so when I become a magician, I'll help umama with the new baby, and the baby's immortal animus and the monthly fees. I'll earn enough to support them when I work at Constellation. But for now, I need to work my way through school. My family is living paycheck to paycheck."

"Is that why you shaved your head?"

Before she could stop herself, Inyanga's hand was at the back of her skull, palm full of stubble. Storm's curls had never looked so envy-inducing. But the time for opening up and being nice was over.

"What kind of vain, attention seeking, spoiled little rich girl would spend time, and money, which is time, trying to look beautiful on campus? We're here to work and learn, not look pretty. Why do you waste so much time on your stars damn hair? You walk around here like a super model, rich girl. You're not a model, you're a student, and I'm going to come out on top in every single class because you're still wasting time going to the beauty parlor when you oughta be working."

Nothing could have surprised Inyanga more than the hand Storm put on her shoulder.

"We all need to take breaks. We all need a little self-care. It's our subconscious that absorbs lessons when we stop working so hard. Long-term memory forms in the background when you stop thinking about it. Plus, taking the time to form relationships, like the one I have with my stylist magician Sabra, is good for mental health, and thus good for memory integration. I go dies Saturni afternoons. You should come with me, spoiled rich girl's treat."

"I don't need charity," came out of Inyanga's mouth before any kind of more strategic answer could come to her.

"Obviously," said Storm. "You don't need charity. You have a job and you work around the clock taking care of your family and keeping up with your studies and you got it handled. It's just you should be allowed to do all of that and still . . . have hair. So I'm offering."

"As a friend? Are we going to be friends? You and me?"

"In my limited rich girl experience, when girls start hanging out getting their hair did, they become friends."

Inyanga laughed and shook her head and missed the coils that used to tickle her shoulders when she did. "So predictable."

"Not that you don't look pretty with it shaved. It's just, it's been over a year of that look."

"Uh huh. Well, as long as you know, I'm mostly only agreeing to do this to get information out of you about the taboo."

"Inyanga." Storm's hands went to her hips and her head titled to show she was about to give Inyanga real talk. "You're supposed to know the taboo. You're a second year magicians college student. You're supposed to know. This is information you're supposed to have." Her voice was getting louder as she insisted the importance. "I can't tell you, but it's not a secret, and you really need to know. It will impact every calculation of stellar energy you ever make, it's not an insignificant impact on the economy of magic. You'll need to know in order to pass any of your classes." Storm was near shouting now.

"How's that possible?" Inyanga demanded back. "I'm in the top of my classes, fighting it out with you for top place, and you're telling me because I don't know this one thing, from one class, I'm gonna outright fail?"

Storm was hushed, back to a near whisper, but a shout-whisper. "You missed a big fundamental piece of how magic works. Period. So I recommend that as soon as you can, you get yourself over to—" Storm's mouth kept on moving, but Inyanga couldn't hear the words anymore. No sound met her ears, had she gone deaf? She tried to speak, to say, "What? I can't hear you?" but she didn't hear a thing come out of her own mouth either.

Storm's hand went to her mouth, her entire face breaking out in panic, and she started to freak out. Both girls put their hands in front of their faces and screamed silently into them.

Inyanga wasn't deaf. She could still hear a thousand pages turning in the library, like hummingbirds' wings, and the near silent sound of a hundred books sliding in and out of shelves, across tables, and into backpacks.

Over Storm's shoulder, she saw a being, gnomon in hand, gliding toward them like a specter. The being's spider web white hair and wrinkles made Inyanga's belly clench. It was one of the ancient immortals who had reached old age before immortality had been invented, and had never paid for the expensive eternal youth spell. So few remained in the population, and Inyanga knew that the unkind fear in her belly was the reaction to the unknown, to the other. Not to mention a revulsion of death, decay, entropy, things she had never experienced in her lifetime.

She put a hand on Storm's shoulder, either to pull her away or turn her so she could see what Inyanga couldn't tell her was coming up behind her, she hadn't decided which she was going to do yet, but now the elderly being was upon them, with one finger to mouth. If Storm could jump she would have — because her knees bent, but without a floor to push up from, nothing else happened except a hand going back to her mouth to cover a shout that made no sound.

The elderly librarian reached them and said, "No talking in the library." The voice tore out through ancient vocal chords, sounding like fabric ripping with each syllable. "This is your first warning. If it happens again, the mute spell stays on all week. You don't want to know what happens if I catch you a third time."

Storm and Inyanga exchanged silent screams with their eyes. The being went on, voice energized and a little more full bodied, with excitement.

"If I had it my way, the mute spell would blanket all speech automatically upon entrance to the library. Apparently that would be against some kind of emergency code. This spell will fade within one hour of your leaving the library."

Thanks for reading Constellations! If you enjoyed this part, please leave a star for Inyanga.