“No. No way in the hells am I wearing that, Mister Meriel!” Mary groaned, looking herself over. Meriel could only sigh for the umpteenth time that day. How could finding a suitable dress for a young lady be so hard?

  He could have just walked into one of the dress-shops in the inner city and let them make one dress for her from scratch, or several if she needed, but that would arouse a bit too much suspicion about his funds, and so he went with the second best option—scrolling through the wares of the merchants around the Academy, trying to find something suitable for tomorrow.

  But that was when he’d found out that Mary was truly peculiar to what she would and wouldn’t wear. “Surely there’s nothing with this dress too, Mary!”

  “But there is! Don’t you see?!” She retorted, looking herself over in the mirror.

  He seriously couldn’t tell what she disliked about this one. He counted how many she tried on at first, but quickly decided that it was a useless thing to do after ten refusals. “Listen, Mary. It’s a standard Blue and White dress that the academy students wear, even the spell-sword ones we saw inside the academy walls. Ziggy was nowhere near this argumentative when we went shopping for his own set of clothes.”

  “Ziggy is an elf! He could wear a rag around his waist and he’d still manage to look majestic, somehow! Mr. Meriel, let me pick out something a bit darker?” She turned to him, giving him what must have been her best puppy-eye expression. “Pleaaaase?”

  Meriel should have refused. He knew that she’d bring condescending glances from her classmates and teachers were she to wear black in the academy, but truly, at this point, he felt out of options. He never liked shopping much, and today drained him far more than he’d expected it to.

  “Okay. But it can’t just be black. It has to have some other colors in it as well. I won’t have you cause us any trouble, Mary.”

  “Thank you! Oh, thank you!” She smiled and hurried towards the other dresses at the other side of the store, already beelining towards the section that Meriel had done his best to avoid before. He sighed and remained standing near the dressing cabins, not willing to walk through the shop again himself. How could one of the children be so easy to dress, and the other give him such a headache?

  He should have been teaching the two some magic fundamentals by now, but he simply found no time to. Between dealing with the paperwork, having to register Ziggy in the academy, and the other preparations, something as complex as learning magic was hard to prepare. He’d have some more time soon, hopefully.

  “Found some!” Mary suddenly exclaimed, coming from around the corner. In her hands were several dresses, all of them almost exclusively black, though Meriel saw some other colors in the mix as well. Their fabrics were as one would expect of an establishment such as this one. Uneven cuts, buttons that looked to have been reused several times over. All things Meriel expected, but it still pained him a little not to be able to buy better things for Mary and Ziggy. Not that either of them minded, of course.

  Ziggy seemed as indifferent to clothes as a lion would be to grass, and Mary seemed to find every part of non-beggar life completely fascinating and otherworldly.

  Meriel tapped his finger on his forearm as he waited for Mary to finish trying the first dress on, shocking himself when he realized that there was a rhythm to the tapping. A song, one that he could not remember the name or the lyrics of, yet it still remained in the depths of his memory.

  “Look, Mister Meriel! Isn’t it pretty? And elegant, like the spell-swords look like?” Mary finally moved the curtain to the side and stepped forward, her chin high and her lips turned to proud smile. As opposed to Mary’s style of clothing as he was, Meriel had to admit that it fit her really well. The black top, with the golden rims, turned into a short cloak behind Mary’s thighs, yet the skirt was shorter in the front. The pants were a bit larger than she was, but not by much, and by Meriel’s estimation, she’d grow into them soon enough.

  All in all, the outfit fit her well, and the contrast between her hair color and the clothes made it look more elegant than it would have been on another person. It was a bit silly that a twelve-year-old should worry herself with elegance, but if she were to become a mage in truth, she’d have to lose some of her childhood years to something more. Becoming the laughingstock of your peers in the first year could go a long way to deciding your future in the academy, Meriel knew that from experience.

  “It’s pretty good, though we’ll need to go give you a haircut as well to make it seem more fitting. Your hair is a mess of dirt and grime, Mary.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t ruin the moment, Mister Meriel! Look how pretty it is! Told you I knew what colors would look good on me!”

  “Yes, yes. Now go try out the other ones, and then we’ll go to get you that haircut.”

  She scrunched her shoulders and looked at the ground, an expression that Meriel discovered she’s hesitating on telling him something. “What is it, Mary?”

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  He prayed that it wasn’t her finding something wrong with this outfit as well.

  “I.. I just feel a bit bad about you buying me all these clothes, Mister Meriel. They cost quite a bit, and a haircut probably doesn’t cost nothing either.”

  He chuckled silently. Considering his finances at such a young age? Though he probably shouldn’t be as surprised; there was nobody more sensitive to money than the people who had none. “Haven’t you seen me conjure gold before, Mary? I am going to be fine, no matter what I buy you. You don’t need to worry.”

  “But still. It feels a bit wrong. It’s like…” She paused for a moment. “I just keep taking from you, and you expect nothing back.”

  Meriel only smiled at that. “I do not expect you to pay me back, Mary. You can just rely on me a little, you know?” He squeezed her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “And either way, you are going to repay me by being my student. I expect great things from you, seeing your mana-manipulating techniques already.”

  “But… never mind. Thank you, Mr. Meriel. Again,” she gave him a shy smile and went behind the curtain again to try a new dress on.

  Meriel just shook his head. This was one of the lesser things he would give to her—one of the least valuable ones. If she began thanking him so much for little things as these, she'd have a lot of thanking to do in the future.

  Meriel sat in a chair, looking at the hairdresser styling Mary's hair. She was a stocky woman, that hairdresser, but clearly practiced in the skills of hair cutting and styling. She immediately discovered that Mary's head was full of lice and quickly began removing them by applying some kind of tincture Meriel hadn't heard of before.

  Meriel half expected there to be hair salons for the not-so-fortunate people of the city as well, but quickly discovered that it wasn't the case. Same as in the past, common folks practiced the art of cutting your own hair. So he decided to move into the richer district once again and actually paid someone who knew what they were doing.

  He even considered getting a pair of scissors himself, but once he told Mary that he'd never cut anyone's hair, she quickly told him off and said that she'd rather have her mess of hair than whatever Meriel could conjure.

  The snips of the scissors soothed Meriel into the soft cushions as he looked around. It was truly a nice building. Marble under his feet decorated by several other gradients of gray, beige and black, with lines of green woven in between. The ceiling full of some paintings which Meriel couldn't quite place. They looked too abstract for him to make sense of them but they were still pretty to look at.

  “Sir, how did you even let your little sister get so many lice? This is preposterous!” The woman said as she looked over Mary's head once again. Meriel was getting used to being called her older brother by now, though their age difference was quite a bit too large for them to be siblings.

  “It isn't by any fault of mine.” Meriel chuckled as he looked at Mary. “She's just a bit too energetic and hands-on for me to keep her out of harm's way. Do not worry, I'll pay you handsomely enough for your troubles.” And for her not asking further questions, was the unspoken part of that sentence. The woman nodded with a grunt, the meaning not lost on her.

  “I sure hope so. I haven't seen so many lice since I last visited the slums in Mura.” She shook her head and continued scrubbing the weird lotion onto Mary's head.

  Mary herself didn't look too bothered with the state of her head and instead looked into the mirror as the woman worked.

  It took what felt like ten hours for the washing to be finished, and after that, she still had to cut her hair from the mess it was. But in the end, who stood in front of Meriel was a very nice-looking young lady. The dress combined with the haircut made her feel unrecognizable from the girl she was before, and Meriel had to admit she would fit in with the other ladies at the Academy nicely. She still wore the first dress she selected, though he ended up buying her five—which was three more than he bought for himself.

  “Now, your turn, mister.” The woman sat, not looking at him directly but instead sweeping Mary's red hair from the chair and the floor.

  “Me? But I haven't come here for a haircut.”

  “Oh nonsense! Look at that mess!” She pointed at his own hair, and Meriel looked into the mirror.

  “She's right, mister Meriel. You really could use a haircut!” Mary added, smirking at how he became flustered.

  His hair didn't grow while he was in the stasis spell, but it had been a long time since he'd gotten a haircut before he got locked in, and even more time passed after he got released. While he made fun of Mary's head being full of dirt, his own wasn't much better. The ends really looked like they were about to fall off from his scalp.

  “So be it!” He said and sat down, losing himself to the touch and the sounds of scissors.

  It was late evening when he finished cleaning the cooking utensils, but it was a good day after all. He was excited to go to the Academy again, to visit his alma mater, although he wasn't quite sure if he was excited for being there himself again or whether it was the fact that his own two protégés would get to join as well.

  He didn't teach them much, of course. Ziggy mostly spent his time sleeping, and Mary herself just followed in his shadow wherever he went, which meant she spent most of her days walking behind him or talking about one nonsense or another. She was so chatty that Meriel often found himself completely zoning out, but he still tried to pay attention.

  Trying to teach her how to take in mana was the first step, and although she did do it by reflex, she still needed practice before he’d teach her any real spells.

  He walked into the bedroom with the three beds, two already occupied, and checked on the children. They already seemed to be sleeping, but the forcefully neutral expression that was on Mary's face told him that it wasn't quite the case. He softly stepped closer, pulling the blanket over Mary a bit higher.

  “Are you okay, Mary? Why are you not asleep?”

  “I'm just nervous about tomorrow,” Mary murmured, not opening her eyes.

  “You'll be fine. Me and Ziggy will be there, okay?”

  “Aren't you nervous as well? About showing too much magic? About...”

  “No.” Meriel found the answer to be the truth. “Whatever will come, I'll protect us from it, okay?”

  She opened her eyes and searched for something in Meriel's own. Finally, she nodded, and closed them again.

  Milestone progress:

  Followers (Bonus chapter): 1000 Achieved!!! Bonus chapter next week!

  Followers (Bonus chapter: 1075/2500

  Ratings (Bonus chapter): 61/125

  Patrons (Commissioned map of the continent): 8/10