Dispelling Boredom (f/f)

[Gem]

The realization did not come quickly, in fact Eva thought she had come upon it uncharacteristically slowly, but still it came to her. Laying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, while nearby Anna typed away loudly on that stupidly clicky keyboard of hers. It was the worst thing, the most unimaginable condition to be in, an ailment she had not thought she would fall victim to. Evangeline Elise Eberhardt was bored.

The petite girl let out a groan as she looked around for something to do. Ever since she had arrived at the Sunspire College of Sorcery life at been so very exciting. There was always something new to study, something new to learn. For a young prodigy of only ten who was generally only happy when feeling mentally challenged the place was perfect. Sure there wasn’t exactly anyone her age around but she didn’t really get along with kids her age most of the time anyways. On the rare occasion when she did decide she wanted to try to socialize with other kids, or the less rare instance that someone else decided to take the choice out of her hands, there was a park only a couple blocks away that usually saw plenty of activity.

The pitter patter on the window reminded her why that wasn’t an option today. Also why she couldn’t just run out to the library for something new to read, which was the more likely activity she would use to relieve her boredom. Additionally her laptop battery was unfortunately dead which meant she would have to sit at her desk where the plug was to use it but her desk had the standard wards against slacking off which would make it so she couldn’t do anything but schoolwork there and she was more than caught up on all that. She could ask the Miss Fausta, the RA, to temporarily take that down for her considering the circumstance but doing so ran the risk of triggering an interrogation.

Technically Fausta was nominally in charge of her while she was in the dorms. Since all attempts by her parents to get a job transfer into the general vicinity of Sunspire had failed Eva found herself in the rather odd circumstance of living almost a full days drive, and well out of easy teleport range, of her parents. Obviously this had been a cause for some concern but neither of her parents wished to hold her back because of that and the college didn’t want to lose the potential prestige of having her attend so some accommodations had been made. Her room was right next to the RA’s, with some extra monitoring wards that most didn’t have to be safe, and monitoring her wellbeing overall was theoretically of high priority for the staff.

In practice what all this meant was that she checked in regularly with several members of the staff who didn’t always communicate well with each other and mostly just made sure she was still attending classes and eating. Fausta ended up being the one with the most day to day oversight but she had other things to do and tended to really only remember she had this responsibility when Eva or something related to her was right in front of her at which point she usually would pay a bit too much attention to make up for the times she hadn’t. Which just left one other person to begrudgingly take up the slack, her roommate Anna.

Anna was in a similar situation to Eva but to a much lesser degree. The raven haired young woman was a few months shy of sixteen and her own admittance had been a bit less complicated. As far as Eva had been able to get out of her, Anna had simply started her early schooling a bit sooner than most due to an oddity of her birthdate and academic calendars differences between districts. However she later had skipped a grade or two and by the time she reached high school she was something of an oddity in her small, rural town. She thus worked hard to graduate early and get scholarships to ‘anywhere but here.’

All things considered she probably would have had a mostly normal enrollment other than perhaps meeting her academic advisor from time to time if not for Eva. Someone, likely Fausta in Eva’s opinion, had decide to kill two birds with one stone by having the pair room together. This gave the young teen a bit more oversight than she might have normally had without being too harsh on her pride since it could all be blamed on the younger girl and it put someone a bit older and more mature in the room without making any of the actual adult residence fell like their social lives were suffering from being stuck with her.

Overall Eva didn’t have too many complaints in the last few weeks since term started. Sure the various older girls could occasionally be annoying and condescending but for the most part they were pretty cool. Anna was only occasionally annoying and mostly seemed to like having her around, even if she could be bossy sometimes. Plus Anna’s hometown had a few unicorn ranches where the older girl had spent some time and she had promised to take Eva riding sometime if the she could get permission from her parents to spend spring break there.

Shaking her head to dismiss the various thoughts Eva returned to her current predicament. Nothing to read, no schoolwork to do, raining too hard to go outside, and no computer to use. That didn’t really leave much. She supposed she could practice some spells but that wasn’t a good idea with Anna sitting only a few feet away. The dorms had a rule against experimenting with magic in them. If it wasn’t a spell you had down pat you weren't suppose to use it outside the various practice rooms around campus. Eva considered herself a good rule follower but that was one she was most often tempted to break, however with the older girl right there she doubted she could get away with it. The thought drew a loud sigh from the redhead that seemed to fill the otherwise mostly quiet room. What else could she do to pass the time?


~

Hearing her roommate make yet another loud sighing noise Annabelle closed her eyes and begged the powers beyond for patience. It was just her luck that she had gotten stuck with Professor Warrington for Foundations of Formulaic Casting, one of the harshest graders in the school according to the older students she had talked to and a subject that was already not her strong suit. So now she was looking at hours of reviewing her notes and text books to try and get her current assignment done and submitted before the weekend was over.

She was very tempted to take a break and navigate one of her favorite social media sites but she could feel the wards around her desk push back against the very thought. She had thought the things ridiculous when she first arrived and had chaffed against their presence along with a few of the other more frustrating dorm restrictions. It wasn’t until she spoke with some of the older girls that she discovered finding a way to disable the anti-slacking wards was actually considered something of a right of passage amongst the student body.

Of course when she learned that Anna had gone straight back to her dorm and tried to brute force them and succeeded only in setting off some rather embarrassing countermeasures. She squirmed a bit and blushed at the memory, glad Eva had been in class at the time. After that she had begun to understand a lot of things weren’t as clear cut as they had seemed when she first arrived. The rule against magical experiments in the dorms for example tended to be what the kids she grew up with would call a ‘more trouble’ rule than one strictly enforced. Basically no one was going to go out of their way to check if you were following it but if there was an accident or other incident and it was found to be because you were experimenting with magic in the dorms there would be far more trouble than such an accident would normally have garnered.

Not that she had shared any of this information with Eva yet of course. The kid was mostly well behaved but in the month or so since school had started she had still managed to get herself up to a bit of mischief on occasion and didn’t need any encouragement to do so. She’d probably mention it when the give was a bit older if no one else did. Preferably once it was someone else’s butt on the line if she did something egregious.

Speaking of the little redheaded prodigy Anna heard yet another loud sigh fill the room. Deciding she wasn’t going to be able to focus on her assignment until she did something about that she turned and looked over at the younger girl. Evangeline was currently lying on her bed looking frustrated over something.

“What’s up brat,” she called out to get the young girl’s attention.

“I’m bored,” Eva answered immediately with a pout.

Anna felt her brow twitch a bit at that. “Really? That’s why you’re making all this noise,” she asked irritably.

“Well yeah. It’s raining and I’ve got nothing to read. I don’t suppose you know any spells to make the rain go away?”

“Even if I did wouldn’t be stupid enough to mess with them,” Anna responded with a roll of her eyes. “Trust me you don’t want to screw around with that kind of magic. It’s a quick way to find yourself dragged off to a cell by a lot of angry magistrates.” Well back home it was anyways but then again they had to enforce those kind of rules pretty strongly anywhere near farms and crops. Somewhere like Sunspire it probably just got you a fine and in Eva or Anna’s case likely not even that considering their age.

“Okay but I’m really bored,” Eva complained seeming to wave the information away.

“Well what am I suppose to do about it? Did you need some chores to do? That’s what saying the b-word would get you where I grew up you know,” she told the girl with a smirk.

“Ha ha,” Eva responded with an eye roll of her own. “Play a game or something with me.”

“I don’t have time for games,” Anna responded immediately. She made to turn back to her work with that but Eva decided to turn her most dangerously manipulative magic loose, the dreaded puppy dog eyes. Anna was willing to admit it was annoyingly effective. She had always been a bit of a pushover when she used to babysit or with the younger kids at the group home she grew up in. Add to that Eva was overall a cute kid with her long red curls, big green eyes, chubby dimpled cheeks, and abundant freckles.

Of course as much as she could already feel her resolve crumbing she did still have work do to. Work that admittedly would be harder with Eve making a ruckus. If only she could give the kid something to do and keep her quite at the same time.

Annabell’s eyes widened as an idea came to her. She couldn’t help but smirk as she leaned forward in her seat towards her younger roommate. “You want to play a game huh? Any game I want?”

“As long as it’s not something boring or lame,” Eva said giving her a suspicious look. “Or like saying we’ll play hide and seek and then never seeking.”

Anna laughed a little at that. It was amusing just how often that actually worked but she doubted she’d ever be able to pull that one on a kid as smart as Eva. “Nah this is a game we used to play all the time back home when I was a kid,” she said. “You’re gonna wanna go to the bathroom first though.”

Eva’s expression remained suspicious for a moment before an excited smile spread across her face and she hopped to her feet. “Alright! I’ll be right back,” she said before rushing off.

Anna shook her head as she rose to her feet and started softly singing a song, calling on her magic to reach out toward the things she needed. Some drawers opened as the items she thought of floated into the air and towards her outstretched hands. Most important of them was the soft, white rope that slipped out of the closet. Originally she had used it to tie down some of her during the ride when she first came to Sunspire but there was little reason to just throw the lot away after that when it might come in handy some other day. Like today for instance.

Setting everything down on her desk she carefully measured out the rope before humming up another spell to split it into smaller sections. She had just finished when Eva returned excitedly.

“Okay so what’s the game,” the younger girl said as she bounced over to stand before her.

Looking down at the girl Anna was not for the first time annoyed at just how close they were in height. As far as she knew she was only quarter elf or less, a small enough amount that her ears didn’t even noticeably point, however unfortunately it did cause her to be shorter and more petite than most girls her age. Her little bit of elven blood did give her slightly larger than normal magical reserves, which she usually found worth it, but it was harder to do so when being reminded that she was at best half a head taller than the younger girl.

“Well have you ever watched any magic duels or group battles?”

“Um not really but I’ve seen some clips,” Eva said with a shrug.

“Okay so do you know how they usually end,” Anna sked with a smirk.

“Isn’t it something like once the loser is trapped?”

“Yep that’s pretty much it. One side gets captured by the other and if they can’t escape within a time limit then they lose. So when I was a kid we used to play at those kinds of things but obviously most of the kids didn’t even have magic or if they did they couldn’t use it well enough yet, so we’d just kind of pretend. A lot of times we’d end up mostly just doing the last part though which I figured we could do now without making too much noise and upsetting Fausta or anyone. So I’m going to tie you up and all you have to do to win is escape. If you can’t then I win.”

Eva seemed a little surprised by that but her enthusiasm remained. “Okay sounds fun. What do I get if I win?”

“Well it depends. Most of the time when we’d play if someone got free then they got to tie the other person up but sometimes we’d change things up on that front. I’ve really got to work on some homework today for example so how about if you get free then you can tie me up some other day. If you can’t though…” Anna trailed off as she tried to think of a good penalty. The whole point was getting some peace and quiet so she could study so perhaps something in that direction? “Oh, how about if you can’t get free before lunch then instead of getting to stay up an hour later than usual tonight you go to bed an hour earlier.”

Eva of course looked scandalized at the thought. The redhead was not a fan of being the only girl in the dorm with a strictly enforced bedtime. Frankly she probably wouldn’t be but sadly she had some fairly early classes on most weekdays and could be rather grumpy during them if she didn’t get enough sleep. After she had gotten snippy with one of her professors and their TA in the first week Anna had been pulled aside and very firmly encouraged to help prevent a repeat performance, for everyone's sake. That extra hour Eva got to stay up on nights where she did not have class the next morning was thus a jealously guarded treasure for the kid and she did not like the thought of giving it up one bit.

Anna smirked as she watched her roommate consider the idea, glancing at the time to confirm she had a couple hours until lunch, before finally nodding. “Alright! I’ll get free anyways,” she insisted.

“Alright then. First things first hold out you hand and make a fist,” she said. When Eve did the teen picked up one of the long socks she had grabbed and pulled it over her hand, pushing her long sleeve up out of the way in order to tug it down her arm tightly before sliding the sleeve back down over it. “Okay now other hand.”

“What’s this for,” Eva asked as she offered her other hand while inspecting the covered one.

“Protecting your skin. Trust me you don’t want to rub your wrists raw when struggling and your sleeves can get pulled up when you’re moving around a lot trying to get free. This way you’re more protected,” Anna explained as she finished with the other hand before glancing down to confirm the kid had socks on her feet already.

“Alright now that’s done we can get to the actual tying. Put your wrists together,” the raven haired girl said while grabbing the first length of rope. Seeing Eva hold her hands out in front of her Eva chuckled and shook her head. “Yeah no. I’m gonna go a bit easy on you but not that easy. Turn around, hands behind you.”

Eva shrugged but did as instructed, turning around and moving her hands behind her before turning to try and watch what was happening over her shoulder. With a small, nostalgic smile Anna gently held her wrist together with one hand so they were parallel and began winding the rope around. Once she had made a few passes she cinched the rope in the middle and tied off a quick knot. She knew pretty much any of the kids she grew up with would have slipped free after a bit of work but they had all done these kinds of games a dozen times while this was Eva’s first so no need to go overboard.

“Alright now go ahead and sit down on the ground,” she said as she put her hands on the girls shoulders and helped her do so. “And wait till I’m done to try and get free.” Eva of course had already started tugging at the binding experimentally and stopped with a pout.

“Wait,” she said as Anna guided her legs together and started wrapping ropes around her ankles. “I can’t use my fingers at all like this. The socks are in the way.”

“So they are. A convenient coincidence,” Eva responded with a chuckle as she cinched the ankle bindings and tied a firm knot. “Alright this is pretty much a nice, easy challenge for a first timer. Just need one more thing.”

Eva moved back over to her desk to retrieve the last items that she had pulled out, giving the younger girl an amused look as she watched her examine the bands or rope pinning her ankles together. “What else is left,” the redhead asked distractedly.

“Oh the most important part. Say ahh.”

Eva started to turn and open her mouth to ask what Anna was talking about only to get a mouth full of balled up ankle sock for her troubles. Anna giggled at the younger girls puffed out cheeks as she poked the cloth in before wrapping a rolled up bandanna around Eva’s mouth to keep it in. She tied the gag off gently before patting the girl on the head.

“Well there you go. About an hour and a half until lunch, maybe two hours if you’re not too hungry. Let me know if you want to give up sooner,” she said before moving back to her desk and her schoolwork. Hearing the muffled complaints and shuffling behind her she smirked as she returned to her studies already feeling a great deal less distracted by her no longer bored roommate.

[New_Girl_McKenna]

I like the creative setting here! I should suggest this idea to my bestie next time we’re bored.

[hafnermg]

I really want to see this continued!! Great story!!.

[MisterB]

an excellent beginning- can't wait to read more!