Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #2 (Chapter 1)

The Sable and the Statue

by rooibos_chai

An unexpected opportunity drags a college dropout back to campus: with one final project, he just might be able to graduate after all! But this particular project requires quite a bit of introspection, which is difficult for someone who's never been comfortable with themselves. Thankfully, a childhood friend is also here to help, and in the end, the experience might just be even more transformative than expected...

(Note: this standalone story is set in the same universe as The Fox and the Fight)

— rooibos_chai

Chapter 1

“Jackson! Order up for Jackson?”

I jumped--I couldn’t help it. That was the thing about being part-small-fuzzy-animal: you got that same instinct to completely panic at sudden surprises. Or at least I did, and it seemed hardly fair that I inherited all of the anxiety but none of the small-and-cute parts of my heritage. Nope, just panic, even when it wasn’t even my name that had been called.

But then I felt a hand on my head, giving me a soft quick scritch behind where my little furry ears popped out of my messy hair. I let out a breath, and Jackson gave me a reassuring smile before pulling his hand back and stepping forward to grab our coffees.

If it had been anyone else, that physical contact would have been its own source of anxiety, but Jackson and I had been friends for literally forever, and he always somehow knew when I was freaking out and how to calm me down again. I had always been cautious and uneasy about hugs and casual physical closeness, but Jackson? He could touch me as much as he wanted to--wait, that sounded wrong.

Jackson pulled me out of my thoughts by raising a cup of coffee and then tilting his head towards the door. I nodded gratefully--it wasn’t like the campus coffee shop was even that busy today, but I still felt sort of weird here, like everyone could look at me and immediately see ‘dropout’ branded on my forehead. I shivered. Yeah, better to go outside and find somewhere quiet, where we won’t be bothering anyone.

I followed Jackson out, hurrying to keep up with him as we started walking through campus. I felt my shoulders hunch up, and I had to keep repeating in my head: it’s okay to be here. You’re with Jackson. No one minds. Non-students are here all the time!

We passed by some freshman girl with mouse ears and a backpack almost as big as she was, and for a moment our eyes met. I immediately glanced away, heartbeat racing all over again, even though she didn’t give me a second look. I knew this was a mistake, I knew-- 

No. I was overreacting again. But even knowing logically that a lot of my anxieties weren’t real didn’t keep them from still feeling real. I was just wound up so tight that it felt like I was going to explode, that everyone could look at me and see… and see…

What exactly? A worthless college dropout? A big creepy guy? A mental-health wreck barely keeping it together? Everything felt wrong, but unfortunately, all of those were all too true.

I let out a sigh. And then, desperately trying to keep from spiraling even further, I cast around for something to say, something to talk about with Jackson.

“Thanks for getting the coffees,” I muttered.

Yeah. Genius. Real conversation starter right there.

Jackson glanced over at me, his big blue eyes just as open and unguarded as always. “No problem!” He grinned, and the grey dog ears at the top of his head twitched, standing straight up in perfect triangles. 

I tried to grin back, but the expression on my face must have been less than convincing, because Jackson’s face immediately darkened with a very familiar worry.

“Hey, um, really though, I’m glad to order for you,” he said. “But you know, you can always give them a different name. They’re not going to care.”

I stared at him. “Huh?”

“That’s what you meant, right?” He tilted his head, looking confused. “You don’t like hearing your name, so you always felt weird about ordering at that coffee shop. But you can just make something up to tell them.”

“Th-th-that’s not what I meant!” I protested. “I was just saying thank you for getting the coffee. I don’t hate my name, really. Who hates their name?” My voice dropped lower and lower into mumbling. “Besides, I couldn’t do that, not if I paid with my credit card, because that has my real name on it, and then if they looked they would think I was weird for trying to trick them.” I swallowed.

Jackson shrugged. “Plenty of people use nicknames. Oh! I know, you can just have them call you--”

“No, no, no,” I interrupted, knowing exactly where he was going. “Only two people are allowed to call me that, and one of them is…” Then I realized what I was saying and I cut myself off with a grimace. Oh my god, way to go, idiot. That’s just what Jackson needed: someone insensitive bringing up his dead mom.

But though a tinge of sadness touched his eyes, he just smiled. “Sure thing, Smudge,” he said. “If I’m the only one, then I figure I better make full use of that privilege.”

Great. And now I was blushing. Why was I blushing? 

 “A-anyways, where are we going?” I hastily said. I glanced around. ”There’s a bench right over there that we can sit at. That would be fine.”

“Oh, um, I had somewhere else in mind,” Jackson said. Now all of a sudden he was looking away from me.

“Where?” I said. I stepped forward, reaching for my coffee, which Jackson still held in his left hand.

He stepped back, staying out of reach.

I suddenly realized his tail was moving, swaying back and forth.

“Hold on,” I said. “Wait. What is this?”

“What is what?” Jackson asked, sounding conspicuously innocent, even though his tail started moving even faster.

“Oh my god, are you serious?” 

“Serious about what?”

I pointed an accusing finger in his direction. “You’re up to something. This isn’t just hanging out. This is a plot. That’s why you insisted I come to campus.”

“No, not at all!” he said, sounding wounded. “‘Plot’ sounds nefarious. This is more like… a scheme? No, that’s still not right.” He hesitated, clearly grasping for a word that didn’t come. “A proposal?”

My eyes went as wide as saucers. “You’re proposing to me?”

Now he was staring back with wide eyes of his own, suddenly caught completely off guard. His tail froze mid-wag.

“N-n-no!” he said, suddenly blushing. “I mean, like, this is a proposal. But not like-- I mean like this is a proposal for a plan. An arrangement. A-- um.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Totally. Of course.”

For a moment, we looked away from each other, and I tried to will my heart into slowing down. What was wrong with me? Why had I gotten so excited for a minute? I knew it wouldn’t work between us, obviously. Not since--Well, I had put those feelings away a long time ago. And just because he was so stupidly cute that it made strange emotions well up inside of me sometimes, that didn’t mean anything. That didn’t make the two of us together any less impossible.

“A-anyways,” Jackson said, “it’s just a bit further. I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

“Okay,” I muttered, following after him. “But… You’re not trying to get me to come back to school, are you?”

“Well…”

I stopped suddenly in place. “Jackson, I--I can’t. I know I should, my parents keep calling and leaving long voicemails trying to tell me to get my shit together and finish my magical science degree, but… I just can’t.”

Jackson also stopped. He turned around, and this time, he did hand me my coffee. I looked down at it in confusion, just in time for him to wrap an arm around me in a hug.

“I don’t want you to come back to the magical science department,” he said softly. “I know exactly how stressed that made you, how unhappy you were. I’d never ask you to do something that clearly made you so miserable.”

Tears pricked at my eyes, and I relaxed a bit into his hug. Of course: my parents insisted that I was tarnishing the family name, that I was squandering my potential, but Jackson would never tell me that. It was ironic, really. I spent my whole childhood being praised for my talent and brilliance, and yet Jackson was ten times the mage I would ever be. Sure, I had some intuitive connections to magic, particularly in earth elements, but I had quickly learned in college that intuition would get me nowhere in a theory course where you had to exhaustively work out magical proofs. Meanwhile, Jackson, who had to work like hell for anything he did, had thrived. It was probably because he was the true amazing and brilliant one all along. Was there anything he wasn’t good at? He was definitely the best person I knew for giving hugs.

I sniffed again, and Jackson gave me one last gentle squeeze before letting go. “It really is right here. I’ll explain everything, let’s go inside.”

I looked up to see… the fine arts building? Which was certainly a familiar space to me--at least the east wing of the building. I knew the drama department clustered around the theatre in the back, and there were several music programs housed in the west wing, but the east wing was art, and art had been my minor.

Or, well, to be honest, art had been the only thing keeping me sane in a world of increasingly incomprehensible and overwhelming magical science classes. I had started taking a few courses for fun in my freshman year, and over time I just spent more and more of my electives on art, because they were the only classes that I actually enjoyed. But, then, college wasn’t supposed to be about what you enjoyed; it was about gritting your teeth and getting out with a degree that could get you a job. 

At least according to my parents--I suppose for me, more accurately, college was all about pushing yourself until you completely fell apart in your senior year and had to drop out.

Now, as Jackson led me into the building and down all-too-familiar halls, I felt an all-new pang of regret and sadness. I guess students in the art programs were working on their capstone projects, because as we walked past one studio space after another, I could peek in and see students hard at work on all kinds of really impressive paintings and projects.

And then Jackson opened the door to another studio and gestured me in. Did he have a friend doing something? Did he want to show off their work to me?

But the room was empty. There was something vaguely person-sized under a white sheet, but no busy artists at work or anything. I walked in, looking around curiously. Ooh, there was a pretty good collection of sculptor’s tools laid out on a worktable in here, several steps above what I had used in my courses, in both quality and selection.

Oh, but I shouldn’t touch other people’s stuff. I quickly set down the chisel I had been toying with, but my gaze kept drifting back towards the tools, like I was a kid trying to resist the urge to touch all the candy on display at a sweets shop.

Jackson cleared his throat. “Anyways, I guess I owe you some answers.”

“I’ll say,” I muttered. 

“I was just hoping that Ms. Tveit would already be here to help explain.”

I suddenly froze, my hand halfway towards picking up a cool-looking rasp. “Wait. Professor Tveit is involved in this?”

She was terrifying. They called her the Ice Queen, though ironically not because of her completely implacable demeanor. It originated in the ice sculptures she did every year for the holidays, where she would head out to the quad with a chainsaw and a stoic expression, and by the end of the week there would be a frozen castle with spires and minarets that you would swear had to be made by fairies. I had her for three semesters straight, and one time she called a small sculpture I had made out of alabaster ‘promising,’ and that was the best day of my entire academic career.

I couldn’t face her now. My eyes darted all around, trying to find some kind of way out. Maybe I could open a window and flee? This was just the ground level. Yeah, I mean...

With the click of heels on the studio floor, Prof. Tveit briskly strode in, and immediately I was pinned in place by her sharp glance. She was dressed as impeccably as ever, not a single feather in her eyebrows the slightest millimeter out of place. In her hands, she held a clipboard with some papers attached.

Shit.

“Ah, Blakely. You’re here,” she said, her voice completely calm and unreadable.

I nodded robotically. God, she was just so cool. And I had to admit, I always kind of appreciated the way that she always called students by their last names. Not that I hated my first name. Really! It was just… I liked my last name, and so it was a nice change of pace. That’s all.

“What classes are you taking this semester?” she asked crisply.

I winced, wishing I could shrink into the dirt. When I glanced over, Jackson looked sort of worried and uncomfortable, but he tried to smile at me.

“Um, none,” I finally forced myself to say. “I’m… taking a break.”

“And how long do you expect this break to last?”

I stared at the ground, this time definitely unable to answer her question.

“I’m sorry,” I finally murmured. “I really did want to finish. And my Art minor meant more to me than anything else, but…”

“It’s not a minor,” Prof. Tveit said.

I looked up at her in surprise. “Huh?”

“You say minor, but…” She raised the clipboard flipping through a few pages. “According to your transcript you have completed enough classes in the fine arts program to be eligible for a bachelor’s degree.”

“I… what?”

“If we take your magical sciences coursework as the necessary science electives, and… yes, you have the required coverage of humanities as well. A little weaker than we would normally advise, but acceptable. The only thing you are missing, of course, is the capstone project.”

I stared at her. “But… even if I… my parents would never--”

“I do not care about your parents, Blakely,” she said. “They do not have the required hours of coursework. You do. When can I expect your capstone project?”

“B-but…” The words dried up in my mouth as she kept fixing me in place with her piercing stare. Finally I said the only thing I could think of: “Why? Why would you do this for me?”

And then, suddenly, the intensity of that gaze lessened. She pulled her glasses off, wiping them off with a cloth from her jacket pocket. As she did, she spoke, and her voice now was softer, less frozen. “You know, it was Greg who first let me know that you had taken a leave of absence.”

I gulped. “Professor Alvarado?”

“Yes. He came to my office, quite agitated. He insisted that I simply must make an exception and figure out a way to keep such a promising young artist. I believe his exact words were along the lines of ‘such a singular talent cannot be allowed to go to waste.’”

He had said that? I hadn’t thought he liked me at all, given how hard he pushed me in all my projects. Though my classes with him had ended up with good grades in the end.

“He’s wrong, of course,” Professor Tveit said, and my blood suddenly froze in my veins again. But then I noticed something totally unfamiliar: a smile playing along her lips. “Not about your talent, but about that being the reason to help you. You’re not worth caring about just because you’re skilled. You’re valuable because you’re my student, and I take care of my students. All of them.”

Jackson was smiling now, too. When I glanced over at him, his tail was wagging all over again. He knew about all of this? How involved was he?

“I’m not insisting that you get a degree,” Professor Tveit continued. “You don’t need a piece of paper to be happy, and plenty of people make do without. But I want you to find your own path towards fulfillment, and I believe this is as good a place to start as any. So let me ask again: when can I expect your capstone project?”

“By the end of the semester,” I whispered.

“Very good,” she said, marking something down on the clipboard in her hands. “Carry on, then.”

“W-wait,” I said, frantically trying to think of questions, or objections, or anything. I mean, I had the time now, for sure--I wasn’t doing anything other than moping around my tiny apartment and trying to figure out what to do when my meager savings finally ran out. But… I needed tools, and an idea, and…

“You may use this studio as you wish,” she said. “I trust that will be suitable?”

“But what do I… Is there a theme, or any requirements for the capstone, or…?”

Then, it was the weirdest thing, but for a fraction of a second, Professor Tveit glanced over to Jackson. I looked over, too, just in time to see him giving the slightest nod. But maybe I was imagining it? I wasn’t sure what was going on, and everything was so overwhelming that I wasn’t sure I was processing the situation correctly.

Professor Tveit cleared her throat. “When looking through your portfolio, I noted one omission. In all of your coursework, in every medium, I’m not sure that you’ve ever completed a self-portrait. I also believe it’s something of an unofficial tradition for outgoing seniors to do a project that reflects their hopes and ambitions for the future, albeit often in a metaphorical way. So I would recommend a combination of the two; perhaps an idealized version of your future self, if you will?”

Oof. Most of the time I thought about my future, I couldn’t envision anything at all. But I couldn’t tell her that, so I just nodded.

“I will look forward to your work,” Professor Tveit said, and then turned on her heels and walked out, leaving me alone with Jackson again.

I slumped in place, the sheer adrenaline keeping me upright during that whole conversation suddenly running dry. Immediately, Jackson was at my side, his hand resting on my shoulder to squeeze it gently and let me know he was there.

“Oh my god,” I groaned. “You knew about this? You set me up?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking sheepish. “I hate to spring it on you, but I just… I know you. I figured if I told you all this directly, you’d find some way to argue, or say you weren’t worth wasting anyone’s time, or something.”

“Well yeah, because--”

“Don’t,” he said, sharp enough that it shocked me into silence. Then he looked up at me with his gentle blue eyes. “Please don’t put yourself down. I really do care about you, and you heard your teacher: plenty of other people do too. Let yourself have this? I know you can do it, I know you can make something great. And then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

I let out a sigh. But… even though I did want to argue with him, something about being in this space again, about seeing the tools and the studio… it really did give me the itch again to make something. After all the time I had spent hiding away in my room, it was like all that stifled creativity was on the verge of overflowing. “Okay,” I said. “But… I’m going to need something to work with.”

“Oh!” he said, grinning broadly. “As it turns out, I can help with that.” He walked over to the sheet hanging over something, and dramatically pulled it off, revealing a block of stone that had to be at least six feet tall.

I stepped over, reaching out to touch the stone. Oddly, it was like no material I had ever worked with before--or even seen, really. It was a beautiful pink color with whorls of darker shades, and smooth to the touch. I was expecting it to be cool sitting in the open studio like this, but the stone was almost warm. Had it been in the sunlight from the window or something?

“What is this?” I asked.

“A rock!” Jackson said proudly. “Isn’t it nice?”

“No, but, what kind of rock? Where did you get it?”

Jackson shrugged. “I found it.”

“You… found… a block of high quality stone that probably weighs a few thousand pounds?”

“Yeah! You really think it’s high quality?”

I stared at him suspiciously, but I couldn’t quite tell if his tail was wagging because he was still up to something, or just because he was happy that I was going through with his plan. Finally, I gave up, and turned back to the stone, my fingers brushing across the surface once again.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think this is going to work.”

 

Ingredients for a good Rooibos Chai:
1 fresh egg, ready to be cracked
1 part comedic misunderstandings, as spice
1 part sappy romance, to sweeten

Stir vigorously and simmer over a low heat.

For more, check out her Scribblehub and Patreon! 

— rooibos_chai

 

Santa's Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 / Everyday Sweets #2 (Chapter 1)

Follow to catch The Sable and the Statue (Chapter 2) on May 19th

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