A Guide to Interception

As Hans halted to a stop, bringing his broom gently down to the ground, he took a drink from the flask at his side. Grinning from the exhilaration of the ride, he glanced up at the sky with satisfaction as he closed hi eyes against the soft September breeze. When he opened them again, he dismounted, and trailed his gaze across the open field, giving nods and smiles to the other assembled racers. It was then when he caught sight of a shadow in the distance, barely a smudge of a person.

Hans regarded the boy with practiced curiosity, from his pale skin and jet black hair to dark rimmed glasses — he looked as if he belonged more in the high shelves of the library than the training pitches. Appearing to have never seen the light of day, he seemed eternally stuck in the Lapland’s forever polar night. Whereas Hans was midnight sun through the cold, warmth barely flickering yet too stubborn to leave, Ivan, as he may learn his name to be, was the winter moonlight, a bare reflection. There was some sincerity in the way his eyes flicked up and down, the way he scribbled away notes in his journal. He genuinely wanted to learn something, Hans noted.

He was a reserved child it seemed, perhaps a year or two younger than Hans, no figure he had come across in his prior endeavours. He loitered in the shadows, near the forests, and away from the light. He was the sort to sit and observe without true action, the sort to watch those whom he idolised without following in their footsteps. It was a vicious nature, a cycle of repetition of acts wrongly perceived as productive. In truth, simply watching may have been an act of learning but was far from an act of achieving, leading to no concrete results bar for a disappointed mind. That much Hans had learnt from the own sweat, time, and effort he had poured into his training.

And so, in good nature only, Hans decided to make his approach. Taking a few swift steps towards the boy, broom causally held between his fingers, Hans soon neared where the youngster stood, journal in hand, face shadowed by his dark hair. Guesswork was unrequited for notes might have been in the book: they were likely technique, behaviour, perception. The sort of work a child might present to a teacher, with the pride only seen in schoolboys.

Trailing a finger lazily over the polished ridges of his broom Hans glanced down at Ivan and his humble height. Still so much of a child, so eager to learn yet sent down such the wrong path. Was this the product of generations of incorrect ideology, or a meekness individual to the Baskakova himself? Smiling slightly with gregarious approachability, Hans deterred any intimidation or mockery before he spoke, voice smooth with the calmness of a dragon flying through flame, “You do know that just standing about watching would not do any you any good, right?”

@Ivan Baskakova

Banner by Oonagh Brown