Etymology
Story: [Etymology] (original work) Prompt: #FFF [347] [prompt] @flashfictionfridayofficial Word count: 790
Etymology
Sammy stands before the crucible, watching the fine glittering sand trickle through the glass, the wards lighting at the graze of each particle. She feels Ossa's hand on her shoulder and looks up to see her mentor's usually-serious face alight with passion.
"Your first rumour, Sammy," she squeezes her shoulder in support. "Anything you like, just to get a feel for the machine."
"And I just…"
"Just as you've seen me do. Tell the crystal - but it must have substance, memory. You can't simply say, oh, I don't know. I've heard that King Julian is unfit to rule, for what would you base it on? Opinion and speculation at best. You know neither Julian, nor the workings of parliament or the secrets of his household. No, rumour is built from the words you use, from the spirit you utter them and from the substance you draw it from."
Sammy nods, already drifting in her past. She knows how the Mills work, she has been here a year.
Since the moment Rosetta had been done with them, spitting them out with the words…
"Catherine Harris, Hayley Mills, Abigail West. Distinction."
Three girls peeling out of the line and moving to one side. They are too genteel, too well bred to jump up and down and cheer, but they do exchange smirks before folding their faces back into demure propriety.
"Natasha Addams, Devi Chatterjee, Joe Lincoln, Himari Suzuki and Rosaline West. Merit."
The next group, containing the only boy in the cohort fracture off to the side, forming their own small cluster, away from the distinction trio.
"Precious Adebayo, Ashalata Ghosh. Pass."
And that was it. Sammy had been left on her own, on the left side of the stage.
The audience had muttered. Rumours beginning even without need of the Mills.
She had seen her mother half stand and then sit back in her seat, and Sammy had curled her hands tight, heart twisting with panic. She had worked so hard, it was just difficult to see language like her classmates did.
She knew the theory. She'd had that drummed into her alongside Latin and Urdu and Elvish, but it didn't change the fact that she simply couldn't view language as the cold, mathmatical grammar needed for spell weaving.
Language was rainbows.
Her heart had screwed itself tighter, becoming not fear but rage. Rage like rabere, like rave, like rabies.
It wasn't fair. She did twice the work of Marianna and four times that of Hayley.
The moment hung in the air, silent but for the rustling of the curious audience. They had never before seen a fail. They didn't know the form.
One of the Distinction trio had muffled either a giggle or a gasp behind her hand.
Sammy had expected some form of linguistic weaving, something to change her into the crawling worm all those at Rosetta treat those who lack their gift.
"And Samantha Sage."
Here, Professor Liphthera had stopped, looked at her through the thick rimmed spectacles that so magnified her eyes.
"Samantha Sage has demonstrated not just theoretical knowledge and uncommon aptitude, but that most rare of gifts - creativity. And for that, we have chosen not to award her with a Rosetta Diploma. No, Samantha's skills will doutless lie elsewhere, and instead she is being granted a two year scholarship for further study at the Mills."
The cliche: you could hear a pin drop had done no justice to the thick treacle of the silence filling the hall now.
The Mills, where words and stories could be ground and refitted to take on lives of their own, to become something new.
Sammy had met the wide eyes of her classmates and again, almost more than when she thought she was to be dismissed and transmogrified, her heart had twisted in her chest. All of them - even Ashalata, her own dearest friend, with whom she has shared every secret since the age of thirteen - had looked back at her with fear.
They had known what the Mills could do: any name or misdeed, any speculation or reputation could become grist for those hungry black stones. Secrets could be powdered letter by letter until translation and rewriting made them something completely new.
Then it had made her falter, made her cheeks flare red.
But now. Here, amongst those stones and the inscribed glass and the grinding of words and the whispers of what they are becoming…
Sammy knows this is what she deserves. She had worked. She had striven. And oh, if they had known she was destined for the Mills perhaps even Abigail would have been kind to her. Let this be an abject lesson to them all.
She leans forward and gives it her first rumour.
