A siren pulled Sebastian's gaze away from his notes in a moment of distraction. The whining call of a speeder disappearing into the streets below surrounded the stone exterior of the polytechnic. Feeling the brush of velvet drapes against his cheek, Sebastian arched his wrist backwards and traced the lines between the shapes of the stained glass window with his finger. Beams of light traveled from the city below and collided with the surface of window.
Glossy shapes reflected in the panes, casting a small kaleidoscope of hues blurred with the deep colors stained in the glass. Parting his lips in contemplation, Sebastian looked for the patterns holding the shapes together and pieced them with the colours they emanated. On his lap, a hardcover notebook lay sprawled. The remnants of an axiom he had been trying to prove throughout the group theory lecture littered the page. A fellow colleague named Peter sat slumped against the edge of a bookshelf.
Feeling a nudge, he turned his head away from the window to see Peter poking his shoulder, most likely trying to wake him up. The heater inside of the university seemed to be sending the few remaining students in the library to sleep. Outside, layers of rainwater on the windows froze. Sebastian arched his neck backwards and stretched his wrist, then set his pen to the paper. Listing a series of variables, he defined their values and organized them into groups dependent on the patterns between each.
"Hey Bas, do you think this makes sense?" A voice called from beside him. Looking over to see Peter handing him his own notes, he adjusted his glasses retrieved the book silently.
With a contemplative sigh, Sebastian tilted his head over to one side and read the symbols. The two mathematicians had taken on the axiom in their unit on abstract algebra, with both attempting prove the statement with opposing methods. Holding his pen between his teeth, Sebastian set the notebook on the ground and selected a ruler at his feet. Beneath the sets which Peter had drawn, he made notations beside several of the values Peter had found which disrupted the properties of the group.
"Try revising these values, they're not associative of the rest of properties." Sliding the pen from his mouth, he traced lines leading from the elements in Peter's previous set to the values which he had advised him to look over. He handed the notebook back to Peter, who squinted upon looking at the group he was trying to assemble.
"Okay, thanks for that." The other bespectacled young man said as he scored out the numbers which Sebastian had deduced. "I'm going to go back to the dorm and work on this, are you staying over?" He closed the notebook and began to shuffle his notes. Picking up his own notebook, Sebastian watched Peter file everything into a brown, leather satchel and stand up. As he stood, Sebastian noticed him recoil as he looked at darkly clad young woman seated on the far end of a table.
"No, I'm going to the store to grab some dinner, then I'm going home." Sebastian answered, remaining seated and continuing to work on forming his group. He had been sitting for hours and his backside was getting sore. Gripping the drapes, he tried not to tear them from their latches as he stood up. He grabbed all of his papers, along with his own satchel and followed Peter as he walked across the length of the table in the center of the library.
"Well I'm heading to the dorm." Peter said and shrugged. He slung his satchel over his shoulder and leaned in towards Sebastian's ear. "Besides, that girl is creeping me out." As he whispered, Peter gestured towards the woman, who seemed to be about their age. She did indeed posses an esoteric appearance, which caused Sebastian to part his lips slightly. He tried not stare as both Peter and himself walked past her.
"See you soon then." He said to Peter, who waved as he exited the library. He watched him fling his coat over his shoulders and leave, before glancing slightly downwards, unable to take his eyes of the horns protruding from the woman's forehead.
Soft, brown eyes stared into those of he young woman and Sebastian sat down in the chair opposite to her. He pulled out the sheet with his findings and placed everything else on the chair next to him. Returning to his own sets, he opened up a new series of brackets and tried to inverse the properties of the set. Isolating the elements which he had found as a result of the inverse, he listed them in the form of variables and tried to find their corresponding value. As he wrote a few sums, he found that the values were not associative of the elements they represented.
Cursing beneath his breath, Sebastian opened up a new page and prepared an equation to try and find the value of the elements he had failed to group. After a few attempts, he deduced a few solutions and found the answer. The elements he had found continued to misbehave and did not correspond with the remaining values in the group. With another look at the clock, he sighed and tore the pages containing both the group and his workings out. He gathered his things and left the equation on the table, abandoned and discarded for a more sublime idea.
[member="Bastet Sarang"], [member="Darth Maliphant"]
