"žGibbson! What are you doing here?!"
A hand squeezing his shoulder brought Jon out of his reverie, and he spent several seconds blinking owlishly at his rather irate math teacher Mr. Edwards, before the question registered.
What had he been doing? Oh right! He had noticed a pattern to the placement of the crystals in the geode. A pattern that that led the eye to smaller more subtle patterns hiding even more mysteries in an endles fractal spiral of symbols and hidden messages.
He remembered the despair he felt when his wandering eye reached the edge of the shard and he found that the pattern was broken and crumbling from the edges as he watched. In a panic he had tried to find a path to the grand Whole the patterns hinted at. And he had come closer and closer to something he had chirstend the Root of Akasha , after the legendary source of all Knowledge and natural Laws in one of his favorite novels. But time and time again he had found stumbled as patterns were marred by scratches where stone had scraped against stone inside the bag or the sudden exposure to air and light had changed something important.
"žMr. Gibbson, are you coming down with something? " now there was a hint of worry in Mr. Edwards voice "žYou are looking a bit feverish."
Jon shook his head to clear it, as much as he longed to, he wouldn't be able to find the Root with Mr. Edwards standing there. He managed a "žNo. No I'm fine." but it was pretty obvious his head was still in the clouds.
"žAre you sure? I know you are a good kid, but you did a very convincing impression of an drug-addict."
Mr Edwards wasn't a bad teacher, in fact he regularly went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure his charges were well prepared for 'life outside the sheltering school-walls' as he called it.
Unfortunatly he gave the distinct impression that life outside the wall had broken him long ago, and this perpetual aura of resignation turned even his most impassioned speech into a droning, rambling affair.
For what it was worth, the prospect of enduring one of Mr. Edwards dreaded lectures, did wonders for Jons acting talent at least. "žMy uncle died." he lifted his hands containing the stone shards as if they were somehow proof of his uncles demise. Jon did realize how pointless the gesture was, but at least it served as inspiration for the next part of his excuse "žHe was an archeologist and this was the only thing he left me. I wanted to show it to Karyn but .." he didn't have to fake the wetgleam in his eye when he came to the next part "ž... there was an accidnet and now.... now it is broken. I just wanted to be alone for a bit to clear my head so I went in here and then..." he shrugged helplessly "ž... I must have lost track of the time. I'll go to class now. I am sorry, sir."
The way the irritation melted of the teachers face during Jons little speech, left no doubt it had been effective. "žJeeze Gibbson. I had half a mind to give you detention for a week, forcing me to leave a whole classroom of teenagers unsupervised like that because nobody knew where you were." he gave a longsuffering sigh "žBut I guess it is ok in that case. Just come along now and I'll just try to salvage what is left of the lesson. " he had already turned and walked towrads the door before the last sentencee was even finished. "žJust send a note or something next time. Ok?" he added after a few steps.
Back at the classroom Mr Edwards deflected all questions about Jons absence with a short explanation that the matter was dealt with and frankly not as important as the upcoming test.
After that he launched straight into a repetition of the topics featured on said test, and Jon tuned him and any whispered questions out. He could still see it in his minds eye, the path towards the Root, but it was getting hazier by the minute. If he wanted to have any chance at preserving at least a part of it, he had to commit the fading images to memory now, before they crumbled just like the original inside the stone.
Jon wasn't entirely sure when he had gone from absently copying the equations on the blackboard to doodling in his notebook. But now twisting black lines covered the bottom half of the page, spiraling closer and closer towards a blank patch in the middle. Contrary to the usual clichés the lines didn't seem to move, or bend in impossible angles.
By following one of the lines with his eyes Jon could however, see another version of the same doodle lying beneath, with lines taking a slightly different path or occasionally drawn with blue ink instead of his favorite black pen.
The first of these shifts in perception happened by accident, when he conciously noticed what he was doing and tried to find out why this black spiral looked so incredibly right to him.
The next few tries showed that following the same line always led to the same version of the drawing, and following the lines of these alternate spirals led to new variants in turn. Even more interresting was the fact that Jon remembered drawing it whenever he looked at a different incarnation of the spiral for a bit.
Another quote from one of his books suddenly rose to the forefront of Jons mind
"žThe shape doesn't matter. The color doesn't matter. The thing that matters is that you know that this is the perfect shape, the rightest color for your magic. That there is nothing else in the world that could represent your Craft."
And Jon the meaning behind patterns inside the stone and how they changed reality.
The black spiral was imperfect and meaningless on it's own. But it served as a lens to see the font of magic bubbling beneath reality. At least that's how Jon saw it, and so it became his truth.
The black spiral led to the Root of Akasha, and since the Root was everything the spiral led everywhere. So if your minds eye followed it, looking for the answers to an upcoming math-quiz instead of another drawing of a spiral......
The first lesson Jon learned was, that he was surrounded by a veritable shitstorm. A bit further down the line the branching paths were a snarled and shifting mess of despair, sadistic glee, a wobbly chest and guilty pleasure, all somehow connected to the stone. There was an occasional impression of fullfillment or being loved too, but Jon was so rattled by the less pleasant feelings that he heedlessly pressed on to escape the chaotic mess as soon as possible. Beyond this veil of madness the twisting paths of the spiral felt more like the streets of an unknown city, still unfamiliar and intimidating but manageable with enough practice.
The second thing Jon learned was, that his theory was correct. He could see the test lying before him and remembered despairing at the second question and wishing he'd gone over the example on page 127 again. What he didn't know was if his answers were actually correct. But knowing what to prepare for was a small victory at least.
The fist lesson had been truly uncomfortable, the second slightly disappointing but the third lesson was the hardest.
Jon was dumped back into reality, when Mr. Edwards picked up Jons' notebook to inspect it, inadvertendly breaking Jons line of sight to the Black Spiral. When he looked up guiltily, the first thing Jon noticed, was that Mr Edwards was wearing a different collar-shirt and tie than before.
Then he noticed the changes to the rest of the classroom, it had been raining but now it was sunny outside, and the girl sitting by the window now had a yellow ribbon in her open hair instead of a red one around a ponytail. At least the guy in front of her had the same bored expression he always had.
Actually never mind the hair-accessoirs. Everyone was wearing different clothes than before.
In a daze Jon supplied the expected apologies and promises to work harder as he got to experience on of Mr Edwards lectures after all.
Once he got over his initial shock, it dawned on Jon that the classroom didn't really change. The version he remembered most clearly was the one from the day of the test, since he had been trying to memorize that scene. Trying to disentangle two similar but seperate sets of memories, hammered home the third lesson: Because the Spiral led to the memories of everyone, those it also allowed you to become anyone.
