However, ever since you stopped feeling like the ground was quaking beneath you, silence has reigned. A very, very, very strange silence. Empty classrooms past lesson times weren't exactly noisemakers, but there was the occasional sound. Someone rushing in a hurry to retrieve something they'd left behind, the rustle of papers as someone gets the same idea as you to use an empty classroom for themselves, and distant footsteps in the halls to go to and fro.

But there is nothing. It is like the world has been struck by a great calamity, all life gone except for you and your papers. Even breathing is unnerving, starkly loud in the sheer absence of sound. Yet, still, there truly isn't anything wrong at all. It is late, many people have already left to retire to their rooms or eat, and you're just the last one of the bunch. You should not be this disturbed, shouldn't even be batting an eye at how quiet everything is.

Your nervousness can only be explained by one other thing, then. You suppose that you've developed a sixth sense of sorts, ever since your life started to veer off course. Since you turned from the study of creatures to the study of transmuting and ascension. It was something you developed to handle the brunt of what you've been made to face---what is preparing to lunge toward you.

Your answer comes with footsteps against polished marble. Measured, assured, underlying razor sharp intent forged in fiery passion. You'd know those steps from anywhere. Suddenly, you regret the absent-minded choice of choosing a small, reserved room, rather than one of many lecture halls. Then, when the door creaks open, you'd have some sense of escape.

Anaxa's mere presence takes up space itself, curling up snug around you, rendering you still in your claustrophobia.

"Professor," you swallow, "what can I help you with?"

"Anaxagoras," he corrects you; a simple reflex of his that you have no interest in accommodating. He does not say anything more as he stalks over toward you. It occurs to you that he approaches you with an eerie serenity. Mania is what you've learned to expect from him. You feel that you've been shoved into a blizzard with little more than the clothes on your back.

He doesn't even glance at the papers you've been diligently working on. He simply stops in front of you, across from the desk where you sit. Aptly, he is looking down on you. Your heart beats in the horrid anticipation that builds with each passing second of silence. Desperate, you break it.

"Professor, I thought you liked ge---"

"Anaxagoras," he repeats.

"Prof---"

The desk rattles against the force of his hands slamming into it when he downright lunges at you, face inches away from yours. Now that you're granted a better view of his eye, you were wrong. Mania dances in those eyes, but accompanied by something terrifying in the hands of a scholar such as he: certainty. The satisfaction felt with intellectual triumph.

"Anaxagoras," he repeats once more.

But you're not one to succumb to simple shows of intimidation. You may not be as decorated a scholar as him, but you are still a scholar of the Grove. And as a scholar, when faced with a challenging unknown, you pursue it to accomplish your goals. You scowl, "Like hell you're getting that one out of me, Professor Anaxa."

A pause.

He smiles, chuckling. His chest shakes in the transition to laughter, an arm snaking up into his hair to let him throw his head back. "So you do," he laughs, "As you always have."

In a swift motion, he drags his body across the desk and allows his feet to dangle over the edge. He pays no heed to the papers he's warping and the implements knocked over. Like this, he'd only need to barely lean down for you to feel his breath fan across your face. Scholar though you are, you are human first---and instinct seizes your nerve and muscle. Lately, Anaxa made no secrets on his motivations behind your predicament. He'd hinted before, in retrospect, but he'd left no room for doubt in the matter. You don't know if it's more absurd that he'd done all of this in some attempt to make you his lover, or if, from the nature of those 'hints' you surmised, he really thought that odd amalgamation of gestures and actions were what he really thought love boiled down to. However, he's never been so close to you. In all your encounters, there was always a faithful desk to mediate things between you. To keep him from pushing anything more, and to keep you from trying to choke the life out of him. But importantly, it means that all your clashes remain solely within the recesses of your minds, and the dynamic shaped by the environment around you. What Anaxa has done isn't merely strange, it is alien.

In this uncharted territory, you are left playing catch up as he begins his spiel.

"You've been in my employ for quite some time now," Anaxa says, "In all this time, your feelings toward me have not changed." He states it as if it is fact---and though true, you bristle at the audacity he has to assume what you're feeling (or, worse; that he really has come to understand you that well, while you cannot put together two pieces in the vast puzzle that is his mind). He lets his neck crane, "Neither have mine. But this has created a gridlock, no? I certainly doubt anything will give. Not by itself."

You take in a breath, just barely steadied. "You speak like this is some simple mechanism to engineer. To talk like you'll be able to change my mind is arrogant even for you, Professor."

"Hm," he hums, almost childishly. Dread pools in your stomach. Anaxa does not hum like that.

He leans down. His breath fans on your face like sheets of rough linen. "You have a bad habit of drawing conclusions too hastily." Cold meets your cheek. "Rather than changing your mind, I simply need you to understand a single point you're failing to grasp."

"Professor." You pale. You don't want to look at what cold pushes itself against your cheek. "You don---"

Cold harshly shoves its way into your cheek, to where it lodges the skin between your teeth. "An-a-xa-go-ras," he hisses underneath his breath. The cold light draws back, letting the skin retreat from your teeth. "Anaxagoras. Or would you like a harsher lesson to commit that to memory?"

"Anaxa--goras." You gasp.

The cold pulls away. The heat of his breath quickly comes to soothe it, though it quickly becomes far, far too much. But the cold is but a hair's width away. He's not yet done with his lesson. Anaxa has never dispensed them; he only ever dispenses knowledge, acting as a guide to let his student reach conclusions for themselves. You would be a fool to expect him to cut you some slack in this department.

"Good. You've reached the baseline you need for the foundation," he bluntly cuts. "Don't you think so?"

"I," you swallow, "Professor, Anaxagoras, I can't see how your name would---"

He sighs, "You fool. You don't need my help for this, do you?"

"Your obsession with semantics is shallow," you hiss.

His one eye slowly blinks. His mouth curls into a grin. He leans down.

"A name is an object to be venerated," your foreheads touch. "[Name]."

"So? Wh---"

"[Name]." He whispers. His mouth barely moves, lips softly pressed, as if to covet the words he says. "[Name]." His forehead presses closer. Your face feels like its doused in fire. "[Name]."

Your body, somewhat adapted to this uncharted territory, lashes out at this proximity. "An-a-xa." You growl, carefully sounding out each vowel; carefully ensuring he might barely hope you say his name in whole. But you don't. "Anaxa." You sneer, "An---"

You cry out as something hard and cold is harshly shoved against your chest, right into your heart. It'll make a dent against your skin for sure. Cold, unyielding. You wonder if the skin of your face will start to peel.

But the words he speaks are still so dearly coveted. You feel something in your mind break. "[Name]."