You place the order for the pre-made patterns. That frees you and Gabriel up to focus on other aspects of your research. It's a boost to your progress, one you welcome.
With holiday shopping done, you turn your attention to the end of the semester. The department's pre-tenure committee schedules a meeting with you to discuss your progress towards tenure. You'd stress about that, but you've got a final to stress over first.
For the end of semester, you assigned your students a summoning demonstration of their choosing. Some, like Inez, did extremely well. She summoned a coin engraved in an alien script. It's a remarkable demonstration for a first-year student. Inez's breezy manner hides a driven practitioner.
Others struggle more. Erick's demonstration is lackluster at best. It's better than you expected, though. He's never warmed to summoning or to you, and you had wondered if he'd blow off the final demo and take the zero.
Then there's Jayden. He summons pattern-sensitive moss that sucks the light from a sphere around it and glows green in its darkness. The demonstration is all right as far as it goes, but it's the exact one you performed for the class early in the semester. One of the assignment's goals was to push students to be creative. All Jayden could muster was a copy of your demo.
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