Examination Day

And for sure this one's a bit of whimsy, reader.

Professional obligations. Some of us have to keep up with those sorts of things. Continuing education. How did we spend our time? Ethics training.

This story came tumbling out when I wondered, how would wizards do such things?

For this week's free story, dear reader, join me and Marilois Friend as she shows us what it's like for a wizard to tackle...

Examination Day by M. K. Dreysen

Normally, Marilois Friend began her day with tea. Nice, warm, soothing tea. Drop of milk, a little lemon. Feet up with the sun and a newspaper.

The New York Times, a habit she'd picked up in school and never quite put down. Those years on Long Island, Marilois had kept the Times as her daily paper, giggling every day because it was really the local.

She'd picked up the Post, too, but that one for the gossip and the comics the Times never deigned to carry.

These days, Marilois read her comics online. When she had time.

Yesterday morning, she didn't have time, for the tea or the comics. What she had, when she woke up to it blaring in her head, was a realization.

"Test day. Damn." And then the race was on.

Shower. And while the warm water started, the coffee pot and the thermos out on the counter in preparation for what dripped down to the carafe.

No time for anything with her hair, so just cap it, towel off brush teeth then shake out the cap and tie the whole of it at the back of her head.

Test Day meant dress for speed and maneuverability. So good walking shorts and a sturdy button-down cotton shirt, both with plenty of pockets, and hiking boots.

Fill the thermos, grab an apple and head out the door.

"Wait for it," Georgina, Marilois's parrot and longest serving familiar, said.

Theo, the mixed mutt, panted his smile. Osiris, the cat and youngest of the trio, had never seen Test Day before. "Wait for what?"

For Marilois to run back through the door for keys and wallet and phone, that's what. "Right, bye gang, don't pull down the rafters or get the cops called on me while I'm gone."

Georgina and Theo laughed, in their own way, while Osiris did a quick sprint around the house. "Where's she going where's she going?" he asked.

"It's Test Day," Theo answered, once the cat had slowed down long enough to listen.

"I hope she does well. Tests are important."

"She'll be fine," the parrot answered. "The only real question is how many times she gets lost getting there."

****

Marilois didn't get lost getting to the airport. Airports were too big to hide, and had far too many people going through them to do it.

Finding her airplane, on the other hand, was the first opportunity for her examiners to step into the game.

That's why Marilois's preferred airport only had three terminals, all within walking distance. She may have had to change gates twice before the universe let her board her plane, but at least she made it before they closed the doors.

"At least this time, I don't have to exit through the toilet," Marilois muttered to herself as she made her way to her seat.

"Pardon?" the man who had the window seat asked.

"Nothing, just settling in for the ride," she responded.

Her row mate nodded the all-accepting answer of the air-weary and turned back to his phone.

No, for this Test Day, unlike a couple years back, Marilois just had to take the bumpy ride all the way to landing at the smallest jet-capable airport in the Ozarks.

Instead of sneaking to the bathroom halfway through, closing the door but not latching it, focusing her inner self in just the right way, and dropping through the hole in the toilet to the great blue yonder.

Marilois would take a bumpy ride, even with the sleep interruptions, over that free floating moment of terror. The forever depths of nothing that ended when the weightlessness of her flying spell took over.

She didn't even worry about the next step.

Finding her rental car. "Go past the baggage carousel, the door to the lot's on the wall on the other side. We've got the first three rows."

"Just hit the button," Marilois reminded herself. The one that would tell the little Hyundai to beep its alarm at her. Only, she walked the agency's rows three or four times, pushing the button every few steps, and heard nothing.

The car had found its way over to one of the other agency's rows, she realized. Eventually. Once her mind clued in to the fact that the alarm horn echoing from all the way across the parking lot came from her little rental Hyundai trying to help out.

Any other day, Marilois would have asked her phone for directions. But not on Examination Day.

Test Day meant that, once she'd adjusted the mirrors and the airflow and patted the dashboard in just the right way to let the Hyundai know it was appreciated, Marilois sat back in the seat.

Closed her eyes. Opened her mind. Listened. Drifted. Waited.

For the barest hint. "Right. That way."

"That way" meant pull out of the parking lot, turn left and feed down the hill to the interstate. Sure, a nice easy start.

Until the snow flurries started.

The Hyundai's radio chimed in with a helpful reminder. "Don't forget folks, we're in the mountains. June snow, now isn't that a treat for the kids!"

"Thank you," Marilois said. "I guess it's Weather this year."

At least it wasn't Time. Or, and Marilois shuddered in remembrance, Chaos.

No, she just had to concentrate and fend off the snow flurries at the top of the mountain. And the flash flood at the bottom.

Wind her way between the pair of tornado funnels, until she could safely point the Hyundai up the gravel road that appeared just when she needed it.

The fog that came on when the gravel road let out at a tiny little open parking lot, that she couldn't really do anything about. Fog had its way of sticking around.

So Marilois locked and beeped the car, then stood in the slow-moving cloud that roiled its way around her.

The path lay just over there. Marilois kept her eyes focused on her boots until they found that path. Somewhere off in the distance, the tornadoes howled themselves into another go-round.

She ignored the sound of their fury. And the drip of the fog as it caressed her face and neck.

She even ignored when the touch of the fog turned to ice. She had only to put one foot in front of the other, and trust the path. Until it came at last to a gate.

A simple gate, this. No fence, even, just a pole resting on its stops. Blocking her path. She could walk around, if she wanted to.

Marilois didn't walk around. Instead, she reached out with her mind. Until she found her destination. There, just a few more hundred yards' travel up the mountain.

Marilois let the here and the there rest in her mind, until they balanced properly. And then she took a step.

Into the Examination Room.

Where Uriah Stoop waited for her. "Marilois Friend, Wizard in good standing, it is your Examination Day."

Every so often, a Wizard required recertification. Unlike most other professions with similar recertification requirements, the Order gave no set time interval.

Just a feeling in your mind, the kind Marilois had felt this morning, that the time had come. "Yes," Marilois answered.

"You swear that you've kept to the Ethics of our Order?"

"Yes." The Promise, the one that she and her brethren had all sworn to on first gaining their titles.

"You have maintained and broadened your Learning?" Education, of the world and how it moved. Of people, and how they lived.

Of herself, and how she belonged, or didn't, to this world. "I have."

"And I'll happily swear to your passage of the Trials," Uriah said. "How'd you like the snowfall? I thought it turned out rather well for June."

Marilois smiled. "You did well, old friend."

"Go ahead and sign."

She did that, thrilling at the scratch of the quill on the parchment. Online classes and cell phones were as much a part of their Order's lives as they were for the sleeping world.

But the Trials, and the feel of the quill on the parchment as Marilois attested to her dedication to the Order and their craft... Some things couldn't be replaced by digital tools.

"Do you have time for a drink?" she asked Uriah.

"Oh, I think I can slip away," he answered. "Paul's due next, but not for another couple of hours. There just aren't that many flights this way from Hawaii."

The two wizards headed for the bar and the companionship of their fellows.

****

Back home, Georgina woke from her evening nap with a Realization. When she fully understood the idea in her mind, Georgina flapped around the house in excitement.

Her friends gathered at her roost, once Georgina's excitement woke them from their own sleep. "Tell us, tell us," Osiris begged.

"She passed," Georgina cried, flapping her wings.

"Well, of course she did," Osiris answered. He started grooming himself to show how unnervous he had been.

Theo snorted, and then shared a knowing look with the parrot before trotting off to find his warm bed again. "She'll be back tomorrow then?"

"Yes," the parrot answered. "But don't expect an early arrival. She and Uriah have opened a bottle." The parrot, and then the dog and the cat as their connection to their human partner caught up with the parrot's longer experience, shared the warm taste of well-aged whisky.

"Oh that's nice," Theo said. "Yeah, it'll be a late night."