Role

Chapter 2

She tried to be a good student. She tried to be attentitive, to listen
carefully to each lecture, to dilligently work through every formal
excersize, but It didn't work. To her, magic was something alive,
something to be practiced out in the world, with all the attendant
unpredictabilities, right from the start. Nothing meaningful of it could
be understood in the abstract.

She'd tried to make her parents understand that she would learn better in
her own way, but they'd both studied at this same dreary boarding school.
They just couldn't imagine any other path. She loved them, even if they
were kind of stuffy, and didn't want to disobey, but she had to follow her
own heart. So she left a short letter for her mother, explaining, but not
apologizing, and ran away.