Mathematics

    "How would you alter this world to accommodate humans?"

    Why would you even ask that question? It may not be totally true that humans never sleep, but it is true that you don't need to design a Dreamworld around them. When it comes to humans, they either change around your rules or you change around theirs. You don't need to keep them in mind. 

   It's the last question on this test though, and it's an essay question too. I guess that's what you get when you sign up for a first year mathematics course at college. So few people want to take it that the entry exams focus on weeding out the hopelessly stupid instead of isolating the truly great. At least, that's what I've been told.

   Hedging my bets, I write down "Humans rarely enter shadow cities, and I suspect the Avatar of the Shadow god will have put in a request for there to be as few humans as possible, so I'll be building my city to keep humans from being able to enter, and if they do enter they won't want to stay."

   That's what I'll tell my aunt. I make it last a few paragraphs, just to be safe. 

   I'm not even sure why I agreed to try math. I'm good at it, but that's because I'm smarter than almost everyone else. I'm not exaggerating, that's what the IQ test I took when I was five said. My aunt spent my entire life pushing me not to waste my intelligence doing the things all my friends wanted to do. I was meant to study, to aim high, to do more than everybody else just because I could do more than everybody else. I confess, I think she's being stupid. Most of my teachers don't put any stock into IQ tests, and the only reason I keep making it to the top of my class is because I know she'll be angry if I don't manage it. It sounds ridiculous, but I wish I were genuinely stupid sometimes.

    My father also studied math. He was, I'm told, considered incredibly intelligent when he was my age. But then he fell in love with my mother, got her pregnant, didn't marry her, and they both got banished to live with monsters. I don't know what happened to either of them, my Aunt won't tell me. Since I turn sixteen next week, I'm going to find out, especially if she tells me I shouldn't. She's been wrong about everything else in my life, after all. 

   I'm almost home. I should tell her I don't want to do Mathematics. It's important, since it's the foundation of every Dreamworld, but it just isn't what I want to do. I don't have a backup plan, though. All I do, when she isn't watching, is draw and paint things. She doesn't see a future in that, especially not for the daughter of the man who was once the most powerful Sorcerer in Estellia. 

   So my future is being plotted out on a line. I can see where it's going, and it isn't where I want to end up. How do people live like this, knowing they can't have something they want just because someone else told them no?

   Humans live like this, and they do all right. I'm a sorcerer, I'll be fine.