Two weeks later, Sabrina eagerly carried a small wooden box into her bedroom, setting it down on the wooden desk across from her bed and untying the string before pulling away the brown wrapping paper. She'd been headed to her apartment after finishing work in the smithy when she'd been stopped by a Helferin bearing a present from her father, and she had a good idea of what was waiting for her inside.

Lifting the wooden cover, Sabrina grinned. In the last letter she'd written her father, she'd asked him to send her any slides he or his colleagues might have featuring plants. Flipping through the slides, careful not to let the glass plates bump against one another, she was pleased to see preserved specimens from all sorts of different flowers, weeds, vines, and even trees.

This was perfect! Not only was she going to read through every botany book in the library, now she would be able to look inside the plants and truly understand them from the inside out, knowledge she would need in order to eventually join them with metal.

Sabrina sat down at her desk and began making a list of the plants featured in the slides; there was no point studying plants or flowers she didn't have access to, and this would help her narrow future library searches.

As the cuckoo clock called out from the living room, Sabrina decided she had just enough time before dinner for a quick book-gathering trip, so she grabbed her list and hurried off, pleased the corridors were empty, allowing her to walk as fast as she liked. She didn't see anyone else in the library, but she was often the only patron there, so she focused on gathering the books she needed with the assistance of the Leiten Stone.

A junior librarian was sitting in Tante Winola's usual place at the borrowing desk, which was disappointing, but Sabrina nodded her thanks anyway after the girl passed the books over the onyx recording stone. With the girl's assistance, she then piled the volumes high in her arms, resting her chin on the uppermost one to help steady the unstable tower.

Sabrina's steps were light as she returned home, and as she rounded the last corner, she was surprised to Maedra and Gerta standing outside the door to her apartment. Normally they waited for her in the Essen Hall, the three of them sitting together when they weren't spending the meal with their family members.

Sabrina didn't think she'd been in the library that long, but perhaps she had, and her friends had wondered why she'd missed dinner, leading them to come and look for her.

Her footsteps on the stone floor caused Maedra and Gerta to turn around, and the frustration on their faces was quickly replaced by relief.

"There you are!" exclaimed Gerta. "We've been knocking forever! Where were you?"

Sabrina thought that was obvious from the books in her arms, but she nevertheless replied, "In the library."

Coming to a stop beside the other girls, Sabrina blinked at them, trying to place what seemed different.

And then she realized—they were wearing costumes.

Maedra had artfully applied black and white paint to her face...a wide white stripe down her nose, combined with the black felt ears she'd clipped into her hair, made her easily identifiable as a badger. She was wearing a black and grey dress and black gloves to give the impression of paws.

Gerta was dressed as a deer. Her braids had been fitted with wire and shaped into an impressive pair of antlers; she'd strategically applied silver paint to her nose and cheeks, and it perfectly matched the pink and silver dress she wore.

"Let's go inside," suggested Sabrina. Clearly whatever was happening was going to require her full attention. "Can one of you get the door for me?"

Maedra opened the door, and the three girls stepped inside. After gently placing the armload of reading material on her bed, Sabrina returned to the foyer and looked at her friends more closely.

"You both look wonderful," she said. "What's the occasion?"

Maedra and Gerta glanced at one another before turning back to Sabrina.

"It's Samhain," said Maedra slowly. "The entire castle has been preparing for tonight for over a week. Don't you remember?"

Sabrina shook her head. "I wasn't paying attention," she said, which was the truth...although that did explain why the hallways and library had been so empty.

Everyone else must be off preparing for the festival, which involved honoring departed spirits and celebrating loved ones who had passed on. The witches lit bonfires, enjoyed an enormous feast, and dressed up in costumes, traditionally as animals. While this was normally a festival Sabrina enjoyed, this evening it held no interest for her.

"Well, it's a good thing we came and found you!" said Gerta with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "We can help you get ready."

"Thank you, but I'm not going," replied Sabrina. "My father just sent me some new slides."

"Come on, Sabrina, it's just for a few hours," implored Gerta. "It's not like those slides will go anywhere."

Sabrina frowned. Gerta was missing the entire point.

"We talked about this just a few days ago," reminded Maedra. "We always go to the festivals together."

"Which is why it ought to be alright if I miss this one," countered Sabrina. "We do go to all of them, usually, and I'll come to the next one, I promise. There are just other things I want to do tonight, especially since everyone will be too busy to interrupt me."

Maedra's eyebrows rose, and Sabrina dropped her gaze to the floor, suspecting her words might have sounded harsher than she'd intended.

"It's just so rare to have a night where everyone is off doing something else," she added, hoping that would be better received.

"Are you really saying you'd rather be up here, alone, than come to a party with your best friends?" asked Gerta incredulously, the truth of Sabrina's intentions for the evening finally settling in.

"Yes," nodded Sabrina. "It's not that I don't want to be with you...I'd just really love to focus on my work tonight."

"What if you only came for a little while?" suggested Maedra. "You don't even have to wear a costume. We could get something to eat or dance or just enjoy the decorations. It'll be fun."

Whether or not it would be fun wasn't the point, nor would that be the deciding factor in how Sabrina spent her evening. No party would ever compare to the thrill of a new discovery or a breakthrough with a particularly challenging problem, but Maedra and Gerta seemed incapable of understanding that. It wasn't that she didn't want to spend time with them...she just wanted to work on her research more.

Why was that so wrong? Why couldn't she just say as much, have them wish her a pleasant night, and get on with her evening?

As always, Sabrina felt like she'd been born into a world with a system for doing things that made absolutely no sense to her and even worse, she'd arrived without the required parts necessary to function, making her feel like she was always saying or doing the wrong thing.

As Sabrina's silence stretched on, Maedra eventually shook her head and placed a hand on Gerta's shoulder, careful not to squash a puff of silver tulle.

"Come on," she said flatly. "Sabrina's made her choice. Let's go."

Gerta scowled, dropping her eyes and glaring at the floor. Two streaks of red spread across her rounded cheeks, which meant she was more upset than she was saying.

"Fine," she said curtly, keeping her gaze fixed on the floor. "Enjoy your work."

With that, she spun around and strode out the door, the set of her shoulders the only sign she wasn't truly as collected as she was pretending to be.

"I understand you're excited about your research," said Maedra quietly. "And I know, probably even better than Gerta does, just how important your work is to you. But it doesn't have to be all or nothing, you know...you can have meaningful work and meaningful relationships with your friends. We're not the enemy of your research."

She offered Sabrina a tight-lipped smile before she, too, exited the apartment, the closing door quickly eclipsing her from sight.

Letting out a long sigh and doing her best to put her friends' behavior from her mind, Sabrina gathered her slides and carried the box close to her chest, casting a spell so her pile of books would float behind her as she left the apartment and headed to her workspace.

Once inside, she cast a silencing spell. She didn't expect her friends to come back, but there was a chance her mother might come looking for her when she didn't see her at the festival. Most likely, though, she'd see Maedra and Gerta on their own and intuit Sabrina had chosen to do something else.

It really wasn't fair. Why did loving your work have to be such a bad thing? Perhaps if her friends were as passionate about their affinities as she was about hers, they'd understand where she was coming from, what it felt like to be pushed forward by an inescapable drive from somewhere inside, making it impossible to rest contentedly on past achievements.

Progress didn't come through sitting still and it certainly didn't come from spending time dancing and laughing and eating fancy sweets...it came from discipline, dedication, and hard work. One day her friends would see. One day, they'd understand.

Shaking her head to clear her mind, Sabrina made her way to her work bench, picked up her pencil, and focused on her studies, shutting her mind to everything else. Her eighteenth birthday was less than two months away. If she was going to make a breakthrough and show her mother why she ought to be allowed to pursue her research, there wasn't a minute to waste.

Picture by freestocks from Unsplash