Nergal woke to a furious banging on his door.
Without any haste in his movements he yawned, opening his eyes. Rolling his stiff shoulders, he stretched and stood, being careful not to disturb his transport array. The painstakingly drawn ritual array that let him and everyone else travel to the Other Side. The medium it was drawn in was nearly as important as the shape, as over two hundred years of experience had shown. Powdered dyes, rare herbs, bone dust, crushed and powdered minerals. The rarer the better. His array though... was drawn in salt. Just regular old table salt that he'd carefully poured onto the floor. Not the nice stuff. Not the stuff he was used to.
Was he a little bitter? Maybe. Definitely.
Sighing, he tiptoed out of the seven-sided array, careful not to touch a line in his sleepiness. It may have been plain salt but he couldn't afford to waste it by scratching it up. Plus redrawing it would be a pain in the ass. Waste not, want not.
'Bang, bang, bang!' went his door, as it did nearly every morning he chose to leave the Other Side. It was a very familiar sound to him. "Wake up! Nergal!"
And so was that annoyed, screeching voice. The voice of his classroom monitor. It was actually a rather soothing voice, even though he usually heard it when she was yelling at him. He'd only seen the face attached to it a handful of times, despite her doing this for the last three months.
He usually waited until she gave in and stormed off in a huff before sneaking out. It was safer that way. She was... rather upset with him.
"You're not skipping class again!" screamed the girl, banging on his door. "Hey! I know you're awake! I can hear you stumbling about!!"
Stifling a yawn, Nergal grabbed a protein bar from yesterday's grocery haul. Why was it that girls always tried getting it his attention? Could it be... because he was incredibly handsome?
He nodded his head sagely, stroking an invisible beard. Yes... that was definitely right. Contemplating his beauty, Nergal took another bite of his protein bar... That tasted disgusting and chalky. Much chalkier than usual. Looking at the package it seemed the same as usual. Lemon Cheesecake Flavor. Same brand. Same bold letters declaring it the winner of some award from a year ago. Same ingredient list on the back.
Maybe it was a bad batch? Or, more likely, those greedy supplement company bastards had retooled the blend to make it cheaper to produce. The pricks. Was he going to have to find a new protein bar of choice now?
Couldn't a talentless-at-cooking young bachelor find a reliable, tasty and hassle-free snack option?!
Grimacing, he paced the room looking for a set of school clothes clean enough to pass for the day. Things seemed... different, though. It wasn't just the odd tasting protein bar. And the door banging and shouts of retribution from his classmate. That was par for the course.
He looked around. His room was in it's usual messy form. A pile of dirty clothes sat beside the lone mattress with its spread blankets. A few grocery-filled plastic bags from the supermarket stood beside the door of his dorm. His bathroom door was flung open and the regular moldy smell wafted out. It shouldn't have struck him as unusual at all.
Except the moldy smell was far stronger to his nose. The colors of his room popped, seeming far brighter. Shapes were more distinct. And most noticeable of all was the blue haze he could barely make out all over the place, wafting from every item in his room. The haze was weakest from the set of plastic chairs that had seated no-one but him, barely visible at all. It came off the strongest from the patterned array beside the windowsill. There the blue stuff was so strong that it was hard to make out the salt beneath. It was so thick that he felt sure he could reach out and grab it.
The protein bar dropped to the floor, falling from a slack grip.
"… No way."
This wasn't possible. It couldn't be real. That's what everyone had told him, what he'd been hearing nearly all his life. What he'd given up all hope of ever happening.
"I can't— I can't be seeing this."
His classmate banged on the door louder. "What are you muttering in there!! Open up already, Mr Nergal!!"
Nergal barely heard her. So wrapped up in this unexpected, unbelievable, unforgettable moment. His mouth was wide open and he dared not blink, glancing at every corner of the room with new eyes. Still the blue haze existed. If anything, now that he was trying to see it the ether was clearer. And if that was the case, then…
He, the black sheep of the family, the cripple, the useless cast off for the first time in 17 years… Could cultivate!