Mission Season: Home Alone
With many of the professors and instructors gone, every substitute has been tasked with saddling you with the longest, most tedious busy work known to man. Your substitute Reason professor, however, is trying to be more entertaining by teaching you all small parlor tricks that can be done with a basic Fire spell. The dancing flames and glowing lights give you an idea: cancel class and put on a light show for the rest of the students!
“Professor...!” Hand darts to conceal any unseemly gape of the mouth in her surprise. Lana is quite familiar with the academy’s resident physician and songstress, but having the opportunity to actually attend one of her lectures is a rarity as Manuela makes most of her appearances in the Black Eagles classroom. With the faculty stretched thin due to the latest expedition mounted by the church, it is not unthinkable that those remaining behind were being shuffled around. Lana can only imagine the stress the administration must be under. Truly, her heart goes out to them and Manuela who almost certainly has a mountain of paperwork awaiting her back at the office once class adjourns.
Opportunity to speak more freely does not arise until the attendance has been taken and Manuela explains to the class that rather than the busywork that has occupied much of their classes as of late, she has a more entertaining exercise planned. Manuela directs the embers with just her fingertip like a conductor, without the use of tome, and although Lana has seen this demonstrated more than a handful of times since studying in Fodlan, the innovation of it never fails to impress.
She sits patiently as a good student does when awaiting being called on, raising a hand so as to not interrupt. “I have an idea, Professor” leaves her a tad more sheepishly than it would have in her office without an audience. “When I was assisting with the clean up of Floralia, I noticed there were a selection of miniature boats leftover. Do you think it— ” Here, Lana’s face tints. “I mean, is it possible to install it elsewhere? Perhaps, a lantern of sorts...”
There had been a similar tradition, she recalls, they had practiced as children. Boats carrying floating lights— as a young girl, the appeal had been more superficial than anything. It is only after doing some growing that she understands what Mother had meant about them carrying pieces of hope to loved ones. She thinks of her decision to stay behind and of Larcei’s own to participate in the away mission. Lana smiles then, fond. “That way the show could be as much for us as it is those that are away right now.”
