A Finch on the Rooftop

It was the third week of winter that I met Finch.  It was free period, so as usual everyone but the bookworms or the outcasts were out in the courtyard.  Me and a few others were playing with a ball.  No real game, just tossing it around.  Jimmy, me, Francis, Leo, and Tools.  Tools was the only one with a nickname by that point; we still called Leo Ed back then.

So anyway, Jimmy all started riling me up, same way he always does, but back then we all had thinner skin, didn't know he just liked seeing us all squirm.  So I threw that ball real hard at him.  First time I'd actually wanted to bean a kid in the face with something.  I was only 8, an only child, and we'd had a pretty dull first year at the academy.

Trouble is, I missed.  and then, after all that windup, that little kiddy rage, I missed spectacularly.  Ball went way clear of him, hit a rock, bounced off a tree, hit the courtyard wall, the brick, not a window, we didn't break any of those until at least spring, and then managed to go rocketing off onto the roof.

That was five stories up, and that wasn't a light ball.  First time I actually showed promise at graduating as a mage instead of a husk.  Some kids didn't do that much in their whole ten years, but all the mages managed something like it in the first two, generally.  Nobody believes the fairy tale of the ninth year master mage.  Well, maybe some of the kids who turn into husks, but that's more out of desperation.  Anyway, I was about third in our year, so it wasn't the most talked about display, but it put me up there.  Not until a few kids actually put together what happened beyond that I had just lost our ball onto the roof.

I didn't mind being ganged up on by the other guys and told to go get the thing; I was still fuming.  So I walked up, had to take the long way up the stairs because the classroom floor was off limits that day.  And I ended up on the entire other side of the school when I got there.  Back then we hadn't familiarized ourselves with the academy enough to know all the shortcuts up, and I took the opening to the roof that was almost the farthest from where I needed to be.

I was up above the dormitory and the ball was supposed to be over back towards the upper-class practice rooms.  Must have been a mile to go around the whole thing.  And it wasn't like the roof was just flat or anything.  It dipped and peaked and had skylights and statues and who knows what else.  I never explored the whole place in my years there, mostly because it kept changing.  And that day it was just a tad snowy too.  Just warm enough to make it go slushy, but cloudy enough that it was still actually there and not dried up.  So I was taking it slow, at that point I was on all fours trying to get up a particularly slippery and steep part when I see Finch walking along, tossing the ball up and down and humming.

I didn't know it was Finch at that point, though, obviously.  I just saw some person wrapped up in cloaks with a mask on, mostly all of it was black, with my ball.  So like any eight year old I asked him to give it back.  Not the most politely though, I was still a bit mad despite the walk.  He just stopped cocked his head to the side and stared out at me, glass filled eye-slits giving away nothing of his face.  Next thing I said, because I still wasn't that smart, was what was he doing up here, this was free period.  He was the same height as me, so it was obvious he was someone from the lower grades.  He didn't respond to that one either though, just cocked his head in the other direction.  Anyway, at that point I got to what should have been my first question, namely, who are you and why are you dressed funny like that.

So he says back in his pretty high voice for a boy "My name is Tavius Lucile, but you may call me Finch."  And then he paused.  Took a second before I realized I was supposed to answer with my own.  I was and am prone to rudeness, though at that time it was mostly out of ignorance.  Anyway, he sits down, still tossing the ball up and down and motions me to sit as well.  "As to the second question, why are you dressed so normally?  This is a place for the top possibly gifted students in the whole kingdom, plus some of the outer islands, and you just casually wander around in that?"

There I am a kid confronted with such an enigma and all I could say was "but this is normal," like it made sense that way.  "Yes, that's what I said."  Then he tossed me the ball.  I only mostly tripped entirely when catching it, looking up in time to see him strolling off into the distance, waving without looking back.  "Next time don't try using magic to throw things when you're angry."  None of the rest of them believed me at dinner.