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For the majority of other Usari, the bond between Tutor and Apprentice began pretty much the same way. There was a fair, the annual festival, where Urasi teachers and tutors with no one to educate scavenged a gathered assembly of lively children, ripe with dreams and aspirations. Empty nooks underneath wings needed to be filled and young minds needed to be trained. Before the warm sun layered the woods in the amber sheets of dusk, many of the teachers had found their pupils and pupils now had wise ones to look up to. Beds were crawled into and their occupants lay awake with wild thoughts of the enticing future.

That was for the majority.

For the minority, they went through a catalog of very unorthodox methods and unconventional terms, a maze of hassles or a hedge of near-impossibilities, before tutor and apprentice joined together.

Such was the case for young Cristophorus.

By the time the festival had hummed, crescendo-ed, and sunk back into a satisfied evening, Cristophorus had found no teaching wing to crawl under. For others it seemed easy. Magnetized, almost, to their perfect pairing, other young Usari had no trouble at all finding something that satisfied their interests. There was a little part of Cristophorus that envied those lucky ones whose stars seemed to align in the sky, but he was rooted to the idea that he had fate on his side (fate, which was a whole lot easier to trust than luck). The others' faces were pulled back with such excited smiles that Cristophorus could almost swear that they were going to stretch their grins all the way back to their pointed ears! Cristophorus had no such luck.

Then again, perhaps his pursuit for a tutor would've been fruitful had he actually tried to look for one.

Trusting to the unseen hands of fate, Cristophorus had spent most of his day hugging a tree's girth, dangling his legs from a lofty branch. Not only did he have an above ground advantage to scanning the buzz of the festival, but he somehow believed that, if he sat up this high, a tutor would spy him and suddenly be overcome with joy and fall upon his knees with grateful arms shaking at the sky, for there, sitting on a branch, was JUST the student he was looking for!

But the sun was setting and Cristophorus was still perched on the branch, hugging the tree and sighing softly in disappointment. No such tutor fell to his knees and shook his arms at the sky, so no teacher for the little Pivito. Cristophorus would crawl into bed once he reached his family's caravan, nuzzle his face into the cold sheets and mournfully drift asleep.

Fate did not work its hand this day.

When the last of the tutors and teaching folk began trundling away to their caravans, the young Pivito, firmly convinced that this wasn't his time, began detaching himself from the tree. Carefully twisting himself around so that he could slip down to the branch directly below, Cristophorus bent his knees and leapt back down to the earth. His little hooves couldn't take the impact from the jump, though. When he landed, he gave an awkward buckle and wobbled precariously until he stumbled back, desperately trying to find his balance and wind-milling his arms.

He gave a sharp yelp and he fell back into someone's plush tail, startling a cry out of the other, who threw up a box load of jewels and small chains into the air. The weight of Cristophorus's little body was just enough to send the two Usari crashing to the ground in a tangled heap amidst a short shower of glimmering stones. The little Pivito just had enough time to roll onto his side and twist his head around to discover the other Usari he had run into.

"Oh no," Cristophorus gasped. It was a tutor! The person he had run into was a tutor! And a jeweler from what the startled youth could deduce from the rain of precious stones. Scrambling onto her knees, the jeweler, with thick glasses that magnified her eyes, frantically started searching through the grass and moss with digging fingers like an early bird trying to find the morning worm. It was like trying to find...well, an emerald in grass!

"Sparks and singes!" the jeweler swore sharply.

Flipping onto his hands and knees, Cristophorus began picking through the grass as well, his stomach twisting itself into a Gordian knot of worry, "My apologies, miss," he spoke meekly as his eyes darted to the ground and back, "I'll help."

"It'll take forever to find all the gems," the jeweler groaned, helplessly shaking her head as she plucked a copper bracelet from the grass and deposited in her box. "The chains are no problem, but the gems...Oh, the gems!"

Pursing his lips, Cristophorus searched harder. This was his fault, so he had to find the gems to atone for his mistake. Squinting his eyes, he began plucking stone after stone from the depths of the spongy green, placing them in the box. In fact, within mere moments, Cristophorus had found a handful of rubies, a few precious sapphires and garnets, and a fistful of emeralds. The jeweler had found all the chains by that time and she watched the Pivito with wonder as he plucked gem after gem from the verdure trap.

"Your fingers..." she mused aloud, eying the Usari's phalanges, "How slender...How deft...I haven't seen hands like that on a Pivito in years."

"Sorry?" Cristophorus glanced up from his intense inspection of the grass.

"And your eyes, so sharp..."

Cristophorus stared, suspicious.

"Say..." the jeweler said slowly, lifting her brows at him, "You wouldn't...happen to have a tutor already, would you?"

It was then that Cristophorus knew that he should have trusted fate all along.

Fate had brought him to his tutor.

"No," answered back, a soft smile stretching onto his face, almost to his ears, "No, I haven't."


998 words.