i can never leave the past behind PV Lin Inkwarden

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Ants everywhere, to Evgenia, sounded like a horror movie plot. She made a face at Lin's words, grimacing. "That sounds quite awful." She didn't hate ants, she just . . . preferred them to not be near her in such large quantities. She'd seen a huge nest once as a very young child and still remembered it as well as her reaction. Quite a few strangers nearby had thought little Evgenia was injured while Mama tried to calm her down. But nobody could really blame Evgenia for it, because that had looked absolutely disgusting. Scary, too, to her little self.
She raised a brow in skepticism as Lin said that this so-called magic fighting tree punched things. ". . . Do wizards not fight people by punching? Punching sounds very much like a person way of fighting to me." Great, a magic willow tree that apparently punched things, therefore likely being somewhat animate. Evgenia could not write any of this back to Mama, or she'd be scolded very tersely. Probably. Then again, Mama had actually let Evgenia come here and insisted on it after the odd wizards had spoken to her privately. That proved that anything weird could happen. "I mean . . . I guess we could do that! But do you think this magic punching tree would . . . punch us? Or is it not allowed to hit students or something?" Maybe it was a form of magic wizard security. "You would think the school would warn us about it . . . I guess maybe not if it's somewhere we won't normally be going . . ."

_{@Lin Inkwarden}