Magical Examination

Hey, y’all! A quick announcement before getting to this week’s prompt. Fantastic Schools Sports is hot off the digital press, with paperback coming soon. I’ve been dancing as I waited to announce this one, because it was so much fun to write. Check out magical freeze tag here – but be careful! When the game goes wrong, you might just freeze with your face like that…permanently.

And now, on with the prompt! That’s why you stopped by, one assumes.

Let’s keep Cedar’s inspiration – Bang through all of it at the last minute – in the same setting.

***

Mikhail pulled on a tuft of hair and let out a curse as his glowworm faded. “Third one tonight.”

“We’ll be fine,” Liza said airily, and popped her gum, as if she were a teenaged human rather than djinn. “I plan to set my exams on fire. What’s your excuse going to be?”

“This was your idea.” He tried to muster exasperated scorn in his voice, but was too exhausted to care. “Bang through all of it at the last minute, you said. I’ll get impaled by an okapatapi tomorrow because I accidentally offend his third aunt by pointing my shoe in the wrong direction.”

“That was your first step wrong,” she said gravely, and tweaked his hair. “Listening to me. Hey, you know your hair like this makes you look like an okapatapi? Cool, huh?”

He hid a grin as he returned to the illustrated guide for magical zoology. Liza was the worst study partner he’d ever had, but she made the onerous more amusing…

***

My prompt went to Parrish Baker – check out what she did with a squid, over at MOTE!