In the morning, I would dress in the apprentice’s uniform waiting in the wardrobe. I would blindly follow the other freshly branded first-year students to the refectory, then to the orientation. I would sit in a curved room with vaulted windows and oak desks. The professor would take us through the school rules, schedules, classes, and then point to a large charcoal sketch affixed to the paneled walls—an elaborate diagram of terranium ore.
The professor would say, “We will start at the beginning.”
I would sit among my peers, whose eyes would slither in my direction, and wish for the first time in my life that I were home in Scurry.
In the evenings, I would lay awake in that small characterless room, unable to sleep. I’d summon dust from the candelabra, from the narrow windowsill, from t
