Arcanist

Mirai waited, attempting to be patient but afraid that his tepidness was shining through in his face. He had never had any interest in becoming an arcanist - but Mr. Temran had insisted that he had the blood for it and was suited to it. So Mirai sat and watched as Temran silently wrote at his desk, his walking cane resting against the wood, and his bird dozing quietly in an open cage in the corner. Books were piled around the room, a few open - though Mirai had been strictly instructed not to read any of their contents - and a few bits of odds and ends scattered all over the floor in what appeared to be the result of a careless and anger-prone owner, though Temran insisted that they were arranged with the utmost of care and were not to be tampered with.

The only noises in the small, cramped room were the constant tick-tocking of the grandfather clock in the corner, and the scritching of Temran's feather pen on paper, pausing only long enough to permit the shuffling of papers before continuing on. Mirai didn't even know what he was writing about. He only knew that it had kept Temran occupied for well over an hour, and that Mirai had been instructed to wait silently and motionlessly until the task was completed. He was growing fidgety. If he wasn't allowed to move or make a noise much longer, he was going to lose his mind.

The soft setting down of Temran's pen was like a crashing iron in contrast to the constant sound of before. The scooting back of his chair nails on a chalkboard, just allowing for Mirai's ears to adjust in time for the two pounds of Temran's walking stick on the floor, summoning his raven from its cage and onto his shoulder. Mirai stared at the man, wide-eyed, as though he were seeing a ghost. He had almost forgot that he could do anything other than write.

Temran's bright blue eyes were piercing under his long locks of silver hair, his lips flat as he stared through Mirai. It made the apprentice incredibly uncomfortable, and it took everything he had not to bolt from the room, much less not squirm under the hot gaze of his master. It felt like an eternity that he was under the microscope, being analyzed and mentally torn apart, though it was only under a minute.

"It seems like you are much more capable than you think you are," Temran said, an unexpected smile breaking out onto his face. "Most apprentices have to practice that for at least a month before they can sit so still and so quiet for that long. And even then they are losing their minds by the end of it, as I'm sure you are now. I told you you were born for this. You will learn much faster than you expect."