Another day, another trip through the mirror. Fog's mirror-self checked her motivations for entering Oz today, and her mind gave up glimpses of sub-par marks in red pen circled on the tops of recent history class assignments and tests. All the way from an A- to a C+.

Her intention that day was to practice memory enhancement spells, and her mirror self concluded that she had used her own discernment to come to a solution to her study problems that fell in line with her personal code of ethics. It also certainly couldn't harm anyone in Oz.

All Frost could see in the mirror world were the mean angelic faces of the previous partners she'd had in mind-reading class. The girls who thought mean, bullying messages to her — on purpose. Their heads swam through her head like collectible trading cards.

Now that she knew what everyone thought of her, and that it wasn't good, she wanted something more. She wanted to crack through Divine's concealment and raid her mind for weaknesses and humiliation.

Not knowing what she might find there, she didn't have a plan yet as to what she might do to Divine once she got inside. Her mirror self, discerning that to this point Frost had no intention of harming Divine or anyone else within, allowed her to pass inside.

The twins greeted Prospero at the host stand, where he would wait on days when a new student was coming. Fog had started the habit of quoting Shakespeare's The Tempest at Prospero every time she entered Oz, as a private joke with the wizard who took his name from that play. Today she said, "To be your fellow you may deny me, but I'll be your servant whether you will or no."

Frost rolled her eyes, but Prospero laughed heartily like he always did.

On the way down the metal stairs to the bar, Fog begged her sister, "Come to memory spell class first."

Tripping down the steps behind her, Frost teased, "What, you need me to hold your hand?"

"Let's pretend it's that." Fog's Converse sneakers hit the basement concrete and she pulled her sister along just by launching off mid-conversation. They moved through the bar like two horses keeping pace. "Yes, I need you," she went on. "I also feel that you spend all your time practicing mind-reading, which is a spell you're already good at. It would benefit you to branch out. Who knows, maybe you're a whiz at memory spells, too."

Frost projected a silent message to her twin as they passed into a tunnel. She spoke into her sister's mind: Or maybe you want to prove you're better than me at everything else.

The entry bottleneck to memory spell class created a queue, giving Frost time to see, as they slowed and fell in line, the hurt look from Fog.

"What?" said Frost, but Fog gave no answer as they moved into the cavern of a classroom. This one had real desks, if old as dirt, with wooden chairs attached to desktops, the kind from antique schoolhouses.

As if trying to heal the wound, Fog put a finger to her temple, the sign indicating permission to enter. The surprisingly boring teacher code-named Sauron gave an uninteresting opening lecture while Fog, in the private thought message to her sister, made a more valiant attempt at hyping up the class.

In Frost's head, she said: This is going to be cool. Memory spells will allow us to restore memories that have faded. They will help you out in school. So much of what we learn fades as time passes between when you formed a memory and when you last retrieved it. With a spell, you can improve recall, turn short-term memory into long-term, and rebuild past scenes until you can picture a moment from a decade before as if it happened a minute ago.

Half-listening to the direct message from Fog's mind to hers, Frost also listened to Sauron's lecture because one aspect of memory magic caught her ear. The old man in the black robes had said, "New students must first master the improvement, enhancement, and restoration of memories before they can be taught the second lesson: memory removal.

"With a spell, bad memories can be eradicated, distracting embarrassments extracted. One could be made to forget anything you wanted them to." One could be made to forget anything that you didn't want them to see, anything that caused others to judge you, anything humiliating you had done. Anything that made them dislike you.

She kept this in mind throughout the whole class, and by the end, she felt inclined to agree with Fog. These lessons could be very valuable. She kept what she had learned in mind as they went together to mind-reading class with Willow.

"Don't pair with anyone you have built strong rapport with," came Willow's frequent mantra.

The best pillow in Willow's memory class was the large, flat navy one. Frost dragged it to the ideal position in the class. The best spot to glance from face to face, to check who was staring, who was judging. The constant soothing light from the wide windows and her pillow seat restored her peace.

Thursdays were for strings practice. Which meant Kudzu was absent. As if in hopes of torturing her victim more, Divine snagged Frost for a partner.

An endless stream came from Divine's head. On her turn, Frost ignored the message that repeated, "No good showoff, no good showoff" and instead, took the allotted time to explore the barrier partitioning the rest of Divine's thoughts.

The trick to discovering a spell seemed to be following instincts through rigorous trial and error. It was easy to visualize Divine's barrier as a stony wall strengthened with mortar and piled high. In her mind's eyes, Frost imagined that the wall was already full of cracks. The picture became a wall that was thin and poorly constructed. Unlike the solid ancient walls built by knowledgeable engineers, this mental barrier would be more like a wall of pebbles put together by a child on a beach. Wet muddy sand formed the foundation.

The young magician had followed no constructs of engineering. She had completed no calculations. She didn't even listen in class, as far as Frost could tell, so no way could the wise instructors' instructions and guiding tenets have found their way into the formation of the spell. She wouldn't know how to pack mortar evenly (metaphorically) or how to stamp building materials between frames (so to speak), how to balance irregular shapes, to reinforce weak areas, or how to determine which materials could bear the most weight. All of this was a construct Frost made up, but she knew she would be right about the strength of Divine's concealment — or lack thereof.

She relied not on a strong concealment spell but on the agreement of her fellow students not to try to breach it.

Running imaginary hands over an imaginary wall, Frost imagined that cracks and holes penetrated the barrier without her even lifting a finger to break through. Peering inside one gap, she saw the teenage bully preying on a girl who was smaller than her. A miniature of her, in fact.

As if peering through a keyhole, Frost watched Divine hit her sister, unaware that she was being watched. And moving down the stone wall, she peered in another crack, another memory, the little one chasing a mother halfway out the door with suitcases.

"Take Ruby," a sharp voice commanded from the fair woman who looked like the future of both girls. The elder sister grabbed little Ruby in her burgundy lace dress, shiny black mules kicking, pinning her arms. The little girl being abandoned kicked and cried with wet screams, panting until she had exhausted herself and went limp.

On to the next crack, in the calm orderly rows of mundane school where the only sound (at first) was Divine's voice in stream of consciousness trying to work out a math problem on a test. Then she gave up. "No one will ever know if I take the answers from someone else's mind." She broke Willow's oath in class in the middle of a test, scanning from mind to mind. As if a radio had turned on, voices filled the space, "You have to flip the y-axis now, I think. . ." and "nineteen X plus B times cosine" and "that would make the correct answer to number 13 . . . C." Without doing the work, Divine filled out C on number 13 on a bubble sheet in confident bold #2 pencil.

Inside another crack, Divine's mind-reading spells stole gossip, too, from the girls who sat with her in the cafeteria. The chatting was interspersed with ghost-like disembodied voices. The words coming out of mouths would quiet, and then Divine would hear continued commentary. After the girl seated next to her said out loud, "Oh yeah, Braydon wants you, Maisy," the stream inside her head went on, "But not as much as he wants Ari. Tough luck. Maisy looks so stupid swooning like they're getting married."

Through another crack, the passing back from desk to desk of A grade on a Spanish test she hadn't earned.

Frost scoured from crack to crack for Divine's real name, just so I didn't have to keep calling her a name that implied she was the queen of the heavens. Through one hole in the wall, the name appeared next to a driver's license picture: Frances Munster.

Frances. Didn't have quite the same ring to it. Though to be honest, it was a pretty nice photo for a driver's license.

Peering through just one more, there was 'Frances' lying in bed, belly down, legs kicking with black socks rolled up the knees, on a laptop. A familiar face filled the screen. Kudzu's. Frances was Facebook stalking him. Clicking through photo after photo in the album, she clicked a drop-down menu and clicked download.

Fodder for a prank? Or did Frances like Kudzu with a burning desire she couldn't fight? How had she found his real name?

Eavesdropping thoughts, most likely.

Yet as the time came to an end, and the class began to pack up, Frost had no time to dig further and find out.

Thank you for reading Frost and Fog. This story updates often, and always on Fridays! Please leave a star as you pass through if you liked the story 🌟 Thanks and be well!