Celeste Academy - Date with Agatha

One of the earliest memories Carida had of her childhood, was that of her first taste of coffee.

The first barista for miles around had opened up a small shop, and her grandfather wanted to see what the fuss was about. Having made the mistake of bringing her along while babysitting, he gave into Carida's childish nagging and bought her as small a cup as could be bought to placate her.

She hated it. After sipping the dark and bitter brew, Carida swore off it for years.

Times had changed since then. Carida's sweet tooth had remained, but the popularity of the bitter drink had exploded. Innumerable small coffee shops and cafes had popped up around town, to the point of being impossible to keep track of each. Carida couldn't help but notice how near every closed up shop and warehouse would sprout into a new hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. It was like a weed to her mind, popping up through the smallest cracks and spreading across the entire town.

On this winter's day, Carida sits inside one of those to sprout up.

Agatha's directions had been perfectly precise about where to find the small cafe, and it was so close to the academy that Carida must have walked by it many times. Both being the case, Carida silently chided herself, having been wandering about lost about in the cold until Agatha popped out to find her. So tall and lanky - uncharitably, gangly - was Agatha, that there was no mistaking the looming girl as being the one Carida had been messaging via her dating app.

With the winter howling outside, a chastened Carida quietly cradles a steaming mug in her lap while peering about. Behind the the nondescript entrance was a quaint world of dark wood and old couches, the walls lined with old photos from around the city. Agatha and Carida sit in the corner of the store, their coats slung over the arms of the aging sofa they share as the fireplace before them crackles happily. The owners had sought to bring some of the ambience of a wood cabin to the city, an atmosphere which Carida thought all the more pleasant for the conditions outside.

Beyond the wind outside, a handful of other patrons produce a low hum of chatter in the background. Mostly other students by the looks of them, Carida noted with mild interest. There was no such hum from her partner, however. 

Agatha remained as quiet as she'd been since they met, silently sipping her brew from its branded porcelain cup before setting it back down on the coffee table set between the fireplace and couch. 

Carida couldn't bring herself to imagine how bitter the black coffee Agatha had ordered must be, compared to her own mild latte with an embarrassing amount of sugar.

The silence gave Carida time - perhaps too much of it - to read Agatha's face. Not that this was an easy task by any stretch. At best, she judged her partner placid; perhaps a little downcast. So far was she from a sunny disposition, that Carida idly pondered if 'moonlit disposition' was a term. As Agatha subconsciously rubbed her artificial arm once more, Carida thought it would describe her companion well.

"Is it nice?" Agatha gingerly enquires.

In answer to Carida's confused pause, she continues. "The coffee here, I mean."

"Oh, uh, yes. It's really nice."

Carida scolds herself for answering so obviously by reflex. While more of a tea person herself, it was true that she liked it; to the point that she might take up drinking the stuff in future. Yet she also saw the timid smalltalk for what it was; an attempt to break the ice, from someone unused to starting conversation. Even now Agatha avoids eye contact, her eyes instead settling on the fire ahead for want of something else to focus on. Carida hardly blamed her. She herself was carefully directing her own eyes away from Agatha's right arm, after all.

Mostly hidden by her black turtleneck sweater, perhaps by intention, her hand still shows what Carida picked up on her dating profile: her left arm was an artificial limb. Carida had seen the odd documentary and news article showing off the latest developments in prosthetics, but the person beside her almost seemed to have the arm of a porcelain doll rather than anything mechanical or electronic. Despite having no intention of prying, nor staring, she wondered how well those efforts had truly worked.

A pregnant silence falls between the two, the air between them feeling little warmer than that outside. Agatha seemed sincere in wanting to meet despite her timidity, and she had also paid for Carida's coffee before she could stop her, so Carida felt some obligation to do her bit in pushing the date forward.

"So," Carida began. "You go to the academy as well?"

Agatha nods, her fingers fiddling in her lap. "My attunement is in engineering."

"You mean you're studying engineering?"

"No," corrected Agatha. "It's my attunement. There's only a few of us, which works well."

Carida stops herself from heartily agreeing for the wrong reason. Agatha was unsurprised by the hesitation of the girl next to her, having had to explain the discipline more than once.

"To take something basic, think of a steam engine. How might that work with magic?"

"Oh, I see!" comes a bright Carida. "Instead of feeding coal for fuel, you could heat the water with magical fire."

Agatha had expected the answer; it was perfectly reasonable, yet also mistaken. "That's the trick," she explained. "Coal gives off a reliable amount of heat you can roughly calculate. When the first railway engineers tried applying magic to trains, the boilers would often explode from pressure."

She continues without a break, now in her element. "Magic is inconsistent, from person to person and spell to spell. That makes it difficult to design around physical tolerances."

Carida sits back into the soft seat, taking a long sip of her drink while thinking over Agatha's lesson. It was true that application of magic for infrastructure was relatively mild, even in these modern times. The trolleys servicing the city had only just begun experimenting with magically-driven lines, after all. Agatha's logic seemed sensible, and would explain such difficulties in mixing technology and magic. Carida takes another sip as she comes to her satisfactory conclusion, Agatha reaching forwards to take her own cup from the coffee table.

It's then that a sudden sharp smashing sound resounds around the entire cafe, Carida's heart skipping as a deafening silence comes over the otherwise buzzing shop. Recovering from nearly spilling her drink on herself in fright, Carida looks down before her see the source. Shattered ceramic fragments of what was once a cup remain in Agatha's vice-like grip, brown coffee running over the ashen white of her hand and pooling on the coffee table before them.

While panicking would be a fair reaction, Agatha instead - after heaving a small sigh of disappointment - hastily fishes for a handful of tissues from her coat pocket and collects the pooling liquid as best she can. By the time the helpful barista has skittered over with a sponge to put things right, most of the mess has been already contained. All that's left is for them to pick up what they can of the cup's remains, while Agatha dabs at her prosthetic to clean it as best she can.

With the barista making short work of the cup's shards and promising another coffee as she leaves, an awkward silence reigns once again between the two, made all the more noticeable by the chatter of those around them returning. A dazed Carida simply looks down at the mug held in her own hand, its thick ceramic finish and sturdy appearance giving her pause. 'Agatha broke this like a tomato,' she thought to herself. 'And while distracted in conversation at that.' It made her wonder at the inhuman strength that magically-imbued limb could apparently muster. With the fuss largely over, Agatha reflexively adjusts her glasses while looking downward at nothing in particular. It felt as if all the progress Carida had made in breaking her companion out of her shell had been reset.

"It happens sometimes," explains Agatha in a barely audible whisper, unmoving.

"That's... not mechanical, is it?" asks Carida, timidly broaching the topic while trying to catch her eyes.

Deciding demonstration easier than explanation, Agatha brings her hand to the air between the two of them, showing her arm clearly as she pulls her sleeve up behind her elbow and holds the forearm afterwards. As she moves her fingers up and down, Carida notices that the movements are quite different from Agatha's otherwise gangly movements. The pale white limb moves slowly and deliberately, lacking the smooth fluidity a normal elbow, wrist, or fingers would have. She doesn't quite manage to hide the focus her limb requires for even basic movements, Carida noticing the look of mild concentration on Agatha's face upon glancing up at her.

"I lost my arm in an accident when I was young," Agatha explains stoically. "Growing with prosthetics was hard, but I realised I could funnel magic into them to help. I worked with my doctor, and we came up with this."

She pulls her sleeve back down, its thick black cotton once more covering the hard material beneath. "The joints are too loose to use without magic, but work well when imbued with it."

"It's so close to a normal hand," exclaims Carida in genuine amazement. "That's really cool."

"This is after years of training, and I still do exercises every day. Even magic has its limits."

The two look to their side as the barista excuses her intrusion, offering a new cup of coffee in hand. Carida takes stock of her companion as Agatha accepts the cup between profuse apologies, placing it on the still slightly stained table before them. In all her life, Carida had never met so tall a person with so small a presence. Both she and her companion were in silent agreement on this matter, for this was the product of a lifetime's careful cultivation for Agatha. The seed of anxiety had long been set in rich soil, with the periodic water of embarrassment ensuring its flourishing.

Yet the date wasn't without merit, to Carida's mind. While her companion hadn't smiled once in their time together, she'd seen how quickly Agatha's timidity evaporated when talking about a subject of interest to her. She took pride in her somewhat esoteric knowledge, and Carida held out hope that this might be an opening for coaxing more out of her. Thinking back to her dating profile, she considered her next angle of approach.

"You mentioned you like gardening, Agatha? I was kinda thinking of starting a vegetable garden for my cooking magic, but how did you get into it?"

Carida's nose for how to work others was proven right, Agatha perking up just a little at the topic. "My mother's work meant she had to go abroad a lot," Agatha explains. "So tending the garden to keep it alive was up to me. I ended up liking the company, I think."

Carida eagerly continued after the bait had been taken, stuffing down her confusion about how plants might provide meaningful company. "What does you mother do?"

"She researches Old World magic. We're actually very alike; my curiosity just went in another direction."

"Ah, so she'd be in Europe for long stretches?"

Agatha nods simply, thinking little of the question as she takes her cup in hand and blows on the coffee inside. Carida missed the nonplussed look on Agatha's face, the result of her glasses quickly and entirely fogging up from the steamy brew. Things started to click together, given Agatha implying she'd lived alone for such a time in the past. Perhaps her solitary nature was a learned behavior, or simply a natural inclination which surreptitiously worked well with her life circumstances. In any case, her ability to take care of herself so well earned more than a little respect from Carida, who was admittedly prone to loneliness and far too dependent on others this far into adulthood for her own liking.

Having set her coffee down and begun wiping her opaque glasses with a cloth from her coat, the severely nearsighted Agatha reflected on the girl seated next to her during the moment's downtime.

She'd been intimidated at first by the obviously quite social student, having seen her about campus with what must have been her group of friends. As Carida described herself in their brief chat online, Agatha remained somewhat baffled at the prospect of surrounding oneself with people at all times of the day; any interaction with another required time alone to recharge, after all. This seemed inverted for Carida, with her time alone distressing her and requiring the presence of others to feel normal, for lack of a better term.

While Agatha had considered this bridge perhaps too great to be crossed, she reflected on how she'd enjoyed spending the cold day with her partner so far. Her arm had given her grief once again, but Carida's earnest fascination with such magic was endearing. A girl who Agatha had assumed - perhaps with a tinge of jealousy - to be too preoccupied with socialising to deal much with schoolwork, had turned out to possess something of the same curiosity which Agatha assumed unique to she and her handful of other engineering-attuned classmates. It had been on their recommendation that Agatha attempted dating in the first place, and she noted to herself that she must thank them later for cajoling her into it.

Putting her glasses back and replacing the cloth in her coat's pocket, the feeling of her phone against her fingers reminded her of a picture she'd once taken. Warming a little to the girl beside her, she pulled it out and unlocked the screen, pushing herself to show it before her instinctual caution took over again.

"Here, Carida."

Agatha could practically hear her heart as she raised her phone before her, its plain black case staring back at her. Carida looks over with her cup still at her mouth, taken off guard by her date acting so proactively.

Setting down her coffee, Carida takes a proper look at the photo Agatha had brought up in her app. She notes with interest how starkly different the image is of what she'd seen of Agatha until now, to the point where it takes her a moment to connect the girl in the image with the quiet, pale loner beside her now. In the bright blue summertime sun, A dirtied Agatha stands proudly clutching a huge sunflower to her chest, face and overalls shaded by the wide-brimmed sunhat perched on her head. Beyond the simple cheeriness of the photo's composition, though, something else takes Carida's attention. Something just peeking out around the vivid yellow petals before the subject's pale face.

"You have a really cute smile," notes Carida, almost without thinking.

Agatha instantaneously recoils, hiding her downwards-peering face behind her phone as she blushes. Carida's reward for her honesty doesn't go ignored, for even now she can see a little of that same smile so poorly hidden. 'It's no less cute in real life,' she thinks, knowing what to say next.

"Do you grow vegetables?" Carida asks. A tentative nod is the reply.

"How about I come over and try cooking some with magic for you? I do it all the time for my roommates."

"Yes! Of course you can! I mean, that would be good. Yes."

Agatha soon settles down, her face returning to its placid downcast look once more. Her excitement had been genuine, if entirely unintentional. With that, Carida realises that she's just inadvertently signed up for a second date.

'Well, it's no matter,' she thinks. 'Maybe one day, I'll be able to see that smile without her hiding it.'

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