Ocean of Flare and Frost: Booknerd

A/N:It goes from silly to dark REALLY fast later

Adara seamlessly slid off her armor and settled down with a book by her all-time favourite author, Vira Yaneson.

Right now, she was reading Neverland in Nautalis.

The lights flickered.

Adara paused, slid a bookmark between the pages, and closed the book with an irritated sigh.

"Seriously? Now?"

She got up and made her way towards the light breaker, mumbling under her breath.

She rounded the corner and opened the breaker panel.

"...What am I looking at?"

Someone had ripped the handle off one of the switches. Scribbled across the panel was a messy doodle. All Adara could make out was a star and the words:

Cam wuz here.

This meant that whoever Cam was had also rerouted the wires.

Adara stared at the wires for a second before attempting to fix them.

"Maybe if I move this here… and shift this over here—OW!"

Adara yanked her hand back from the breaker, feeling personally betrayed.

She inspected her hand for approximately half a second before noticing the Cam wuz here doodle.

Whoever this Cam was, Adara was going to assault them.

She had also decided, alongside that death vow, that she was officially done trying to fix the breaker and getting hurt. Again.

She glanced back at the breaker, examining the wires more closely, completely unaware of Kyrinel approaching behind her.

"Hmm, well... maybe if I move the blue one here, the yellow one there, and shift this one over—"

Adara hissed through her teeth as a wave of pain shot up her arm.

"Right. That's it. We're going to the medbay."

Adara barely had time to react before Kyrinel grabbed her arm and started dragging her towards the infirmary.

"I'm fine!" Adara objected, attempting to squirm out of his grip, to no avail.

"You burned yourself TWICE."

"And I'm fine!" she insisted, still trying to pull her arm free.

It was quiet for a moment before Adara spoke again.

"I can walk, you know."

She attempted to stop, but her small stature proved no match for the Scaleling.

"Cool. Then walk towards the medbay," Kyrinel retorted smoothly.

He glanced ahead.

"Oh, look at that. We're here."

Adara let out an exasperated sigh before following him inside.

The infirmary was relatively quiet, with only the occasional clinking of medical equipment breaking the silence.

Ember stood behind one of the counters, sorting through a collection of supplies. A faint orange glow flickered around her fingertips as she worked.

The door opened.

She glanced up, only to find Kyrinel practically dragging a rather displeased Adara inside.

Ember raised an eyebrow.

"...What happened?"

"She burned herself."

"I'm fine," Adara immediately interjected.

"Twice," Kyrinel added.

Ember slowly looked between the two of them.

"...Twice?"

"Twice," Kyrinel confirmed.

"Shut up!" Adara hissed.

"No, no, please continue," Ember said, pausing what she was doing before striding over to the two of them. "Please tell me how she managed that."

"It's no big—" Adara began.

"Hey, shush for a second. The adults are talking."

Adara glared at Ember as the two continued their conversation.

"—and she immediately tried again without thinking—"

"HEY! That is not true!" Adara shot back at Kyrinel, furious.

"Aww, don't throw a temper tantrum. You'll get to speak in a moment," Ember said with mock sweetness.

Finally, it was Adara's turn.

"A'ight, give me your account of what happened."

"I was minding my own business when the lights went out, so naturally, I went to investigate. The wires were messed up, someone had ripped off a handle, and I decided I was gonna fix it."

Adara spoke with a slight edge to her tone.

"And you did this because...?" Ember questioned, writing something down in her notepad.

"I wanted to fix it," Adara replied with a slight shrug. "Anyways, I stopped and then tried again because I'd noticed—"

"AHA! So you DO admit it!" Kyrinel shouted.

"Well, I—uh... yeah?" Adara replied, making a rather poor attempt at defending herself.

"Okay! So, we have two burns, both probably minor, and I'm going to assume there are injuries you don’t even know you have," Ember said, setting her notepad down.

"Why would you think that...?"

"I've had experience, kid. Okay?"

Ember reached for Adara's hand, but Adara instinctively pulled away.

Rather than admit she hadn't meant to do that, she quickly tried to play it off.

"Don't touch me."

Ember paused.

"Why, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Because I don't like people touching me?"

Ember looked up at Adara.

"Fine, but I'm going to need you to lower your hand so I can at least look at it."

Adara swallowed nervously and reluctantly complied.

She watched Ember, who examined the burns while occasionally reaching over to jot down little notes in her notepad. It was too far away for Adara to see what she was writing.

“"What are you writing?" Adara asked, attempting to glance at the notepad.

"Notes," Ember replied, standing up and walking over to her desk.

"I can see that, but what—"

"Oh, awesome. Your eyes work," Ember said, rolling her eyes.

She picked up a small bag of soot and rubbed some onto her fingertips.

"What's that?" Adara asked, her voice sounding more frightened than she'd intended.

It was a rhetorical question, of course. She'd seen it plenty of times and had even done it herself. It was what someone did when preparing to use fire magic for a small charge.

As Ember approached, Adara braced herself for searing pain to shoot up her arms. But it never came. Instead, a warm, tingling sensation spread across her skin.

Adara blinked and looked at Ember's fingertips. It wasn't the usual ball of fire. Instead, orangey-yellow leaves danced through the air, drifting toward her arms and settling against them as though guided by an invisible hand.

Ember stepped away and headed over to the sink to wash the soot from her fingertips.

Adara turned her arm over, searching for a scar, a mark, or even some residue left behind by Ember's magic. But there was nothing.

Adara turned her arm over again, looking as though she might have missed something.

"That's freaky," she mumbled under her breath, giving a slight shudder.

Ember turned away from the sink and glanced at Kyrinel, who simply shrugged.

"Are you seriously inspecting your arm right now?" Ember questioned, resting a hand on her hip.

"Yeah! I'm checking if you left anything behind!" Adara replied, still turning her arm around.

"Well, I didn't. You're welcome, by the way," Ember said smugly as she began putting away her supplies.

"Thanks, I guess... I mean—uh..."

"Just don't mess with any more breakers, okay?" Ember said, seemingly missing the sudden change in Adara's tone.

"Please, I don't want to drag you here again," Kyrinel added dryly.

“Whatever.” Adara mumbled letting her arm fall to her side and she vaulted over the infirmary bed 

“Wait I haven't administered the painkillers-” Ember had started, but it was too late; Adara had bolted out the door with Kyrinel trailing behind her