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Chapter 14 by Zingiber Zingiber

What does Lupa mean by pushing hoops?

Pushing hoops on the Beavertail lawn

You follow Lupa down to the grassy yard along one side of House Beavertail's part of the Academy. Mostly you know it from the day that Fluvia Locksley felt compelled to lecture at you about the wonderfully well-planned drainageways keeping things green but not swampy. "They barely had to use any magic at all!" she exclaimed with wonder."It's all carefully balanced percolation and overflow paths. Quite amazing!"

Quite amazing if you were Fluvia Locksley, robbed by her magical talent of following her passion for hydraulic and gyrational mechanics into an actual calling.

Instead of a sexual fetish. Really, Fluvia, sex dreams about grain milling?

And the result of all this amazingness was a smooth lawn as flat and green as a billiards table which you had seen once in the offices of the Red-Headed League, your sponsors.

"Hoops!" Lupa says, pointing.

Down at one end of the field, a little table was set up for scholars to bend fresh hoops from long, springy twigs of willow or hazel. Along the grassy length, scholars were running back and forth conducting the hoops with gestures from their wands, starting out with physical pushing to get the hoops started, then working up to complex dances back and forth, in mesmerizing patterns of crossing and recrossing paths.

Adjusting your glasses makes the scene more remarkable, because you can trace how all the pieces are fitting together, without a single guiding plan. "It's a magical chorus?"

Lupa laughs at you. "It's hoops, silly."

Maybe you can learn something useful for Buzz. This very kinetic approach to raising magical energy and maintaining a pattern is far different from anything you know from your witch stepmother, your studies before Boarbristle, or your time in Minerval.

Or maybe you could help out by making hoops. The simplest of Transformations magic.

Lupa leads you down to the table where the hoops are being put together. Your tongue tingles at the little transformation spells being used to turn the supple branches into rolling hoops to join the others rolling back and forth. You recognize the person already helping at the table.


Describe who it is and roll +DILIGENCE(+3) to ENCOUNTER them, taking +1 because of TALENTED TRANSFORMER as you help with the hoop making.

Who do you join to help with making the hoops?

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