“Great job!”, she heard the man’s voice after she finally stopped crying like mad and kept sobbing. Oh, what irony! Why did he even have to say that?! What a &%¥!?¿€!
He walked towards her because she didn’t answer anything. “Hey.” – “I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY DREAM JUST BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU DAMN IDIOT! I LOST, AND I ALWAYS WILL!” She didn’t care if people heard her now or looked at her. It didn’t matter anymore.
He waited for a while and finally said “You silly. You couldn’t have won against me. Don’t take that personally, but it’s true. I’ve grown up with magic, it has always been a part of mine. I wanted to test if your will is strong and if you have enough passion for magic to be its master and not the other way around. There are people who let the magic control themselves and that really dangerous, so I had to make sure what you are like. ‘Great job’ was honestly meant that way.”
She looked up through her red eyes. “Really?” – “I am saying the truth.” He hesitated. It seemed to be a hard decision for him to say this, “If you agree, I will train you to be strong enough to fight other magicians.”

She liked the fact he had said ‘other’ and not ‘real’.

Now that was some great advice, taking her dream away. But she wouldn’t give up that easily just because of some idiot thinking he was smarter than her. Yet, she had already read about fights between magicians and how deadly some of them had ended. Maybe she should consider… But it was her dream! Always had been!!!
He noticed that she was fighting the thought in her head and was about to cry. Stella didn’t dare look this damn person in the eyes now.
“Hey, listen”, he said mildly. “Here’s the deal: I will test your skills in a fight right now and if you win you can keep on using magic.” Stella nodded, not knowing what else to do. Crumble looked rather worried as well.
They went outside, where some magicians were already training on a field next to the airport. The stranger gave her a few minutes to recover and find strength again. When it finally started, Crumble sat at the side and watched them.
Stella had to block his fire magic with water and his earth attacks with a magical shield, dodged some of the spears that suddenly came flying and had to keep jumping and running to not be hit by anything else. When it came to magic poison and similar, Stella didn’t stand a chance. She hadn’t even been able to attack for once, could only try to defend herself from what came.
She fell to the floor and started crying. So that was it? That was her dream, shattered? This easily she would have died against another magician… ? Crumble came running towards her and wanted to make her feel better.

Stella turned to the direction the voice had come from and looked into the eyes of a man about the same age she was, with blue eyes and a kind of arrogant look. “You better tell me what you are planning to do here because otherwise OWWW!”, he said, being jumped at and scratched from Crumble. “STOP THAT CREATURE!”, he screamed and Stella tried to calm the cat down because some people were watching them now. The man looked down at his pants and found them in stripes. “I will pay for the clothes of course”, Stella said and was about to walk off. She didn’t want a giant fight now. He held her back. “Wait. I don’t mean to talk you into something, but you have to be careful”, he now said in a normal voice. “I have spotted you several times over the last few months, practicing magic. And I know you’re not one of the students as I know who there are. It is dangerous for you to do that in public, even little spells. People will see that. Magicians will notice. And some are not friendly or are even looking for fights. Be careful or stop completely. Just my advice.”