#nico goldeye

[whimsicallywiddershins]

Another reason why the the Circle of Magic is so so good: the teachers and the school setting are done perfectly!

There is none of that Harry Potter bullshit where the teachers and adult figures were neglectful, incompetent or abusive. The teachers in Circle of Magic are amazing. They all have different teaching styles, but they dedicate themselves to their students and do a wonderful job. They make mistakes, but realistic ones and then they fix them.

Not only are they great teachers, but the Winding Circle Temple isn't just a school, it's a home. Hogwarts was a school, and the students lived there, but it never seemed to be a good home. There are very few adults, all intimidating and not very personal. There is unchecked bullying and very little free time. It's just never ending school with some holidays thrown in.

The Winding Circle Temple, on the other hand, feels like a home. First, a temple is such a neat setting for a children's book. They actually talk about midnight service, religious figures and holidays, and philosophy. It's very neat.

The kids have plenty of lessons, but they also have free time, and the teachers are also good caretakers. Lark teaches the kids handstands and tumbling. Frostpine told them stories. Rosethorn taught them how to make sun lotion. Gorse gives them treats whenever they drop by. Lark and Rosethorn take the kids to markets and festivals. Throughout it all, the adults are responsible, teach the kids all sorts of life lessons and skills, and are really amazing adult characters.

This is how a school type book should be written.

#tamora pierce #circle of magic #my favorite books #book reccs #magic books #ya books #teen books #good books #sandrilene fa toren #briar moss #daja kisubo #trisana chandler #rosethorn #lark #frostpine #nico goldeye

[nimblermortal]

I could use some motivation to get the below story moving again. I stuck Niko up a pole and I can't get him back down again. If someone could say, "This looks interesting!" or just chant, "Get him down! Get him down!" that would be helpful.

Niklaren - Nico to his friends, since he hadn’t been able to make Goldeye stick - spent his twenty-first birthday blindfolded and bumping into things, and mourning his friend Zanya. With his eyes open, lashes crushed against the blindfold, he still saw flashes of visions, brightness and color disproportionate to the light that filtered through Lark’s soft weaving. The blindfold was to remind him that he couldn’t see, that everything he still glimpsed was a mirage.

They were only guessing at the treatment, and it hadn’t worked for Zanya; but by his birthday, Nico was no longer getting visions with his eyes closed, the terrible day-dreams that had haunted him all the way to Winding Circle. He’d developed a slow, shuffling walk, kicking out first to see - ha - if anything was in his way. And he had started to listen more, remembering his visions never came with sound. And he had time to think, because Winding Circle was very quiet.

The week after his birthday he told Rosethorn at dinner (Rosethorn, to whom he would always be grateful for the simplicity of her treatment) that he was thinking of traveling, once they agreed he was ready to take the blindfold off.

“I’ll break off my studies,” he said. “I ton’t think I really ought to be learning more, at this point. I’ll just… travel for a while. See the world. For real, I mean.”

He was talking because Lark and Rosethorn were not When he faded out, the silence remained. He raised a hand to the blindfold, and let it drop. It was red, light-woven and silky, and he closed his eyes against a vision beginning to form in that haze.

“You didn’t show him?” Lark asked.

“No sense in showing him anything when he can’t see.”

“Rosethorn.” Lark got up and left the room. Nico, bemused, applied himself to his book, pushing peas around with his spoon, reflecting that every meal was a surprise these days.

He heard Lark come back only seconds before she took his hand and put a disk of metal into it. “Here you go. I think this is the shortest way to let you know.”

Nico let go of his spoon and explored the circle with both hands. Light and cold and with a raised pattern - someone had worked hard on this. He traced the pattern softly with one finger, two long arcs intersecting at the ends, a circle between them -

“This is pity,” said Nico in disgust, dropping the mage medallion on the table.

“Yes,” said Rosethorn. “They expected you to be inhumed by now. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

It took Nico a moment to answer, sorting through anger and self-pity and renewed grief. “I’ll return it. I’ll turn it down. I didn’t earn this.”

“Really,” said Rosethoen. “And what comes after that? At some point you return to get your accreditation, show them your mastery of vision magic by - looking into the past, perhaps? A feat you do by accident now. And that makes you worthy, where merely failing to die did not.”

“And what is my alternative? Accepting a medallion out of pity, merely because I did not happen to die?”

“Or you take this and you use it to make them proud to claim you,” said Rosethorn.

“Eat your peas,” Lark added. “You don’t have to decide now.”

“And if you want a graduation that means something,” said Rosethorn, “I think you’re good enough with that blindfold to start washing dishes.”

#theory and chalk #this is not something I am going to be proud of #it's going to require some editing #but it is something I am enjoying writing #so long as I don't stick Niko up a pole and then never want to get him back down again