Sarah and the Foggy Albion (LPA2)

The slow song of rain on the roof and window has been going on for a couple of hours now, breaking the silence of the dorm room. Dreary weather was a constant around here, and usually witches just had to sit quiet and deal with it.
Sarah just couldn't do it, though.

Sarah and the Foggy Albion

After her fruitless attempts to get used to it for an hour and even trying to tap her foot to the rhythm to calm herself down, she snapped. Letting out a frustrated groan, she got up from her chair to shake off the weariness.
"This is unbearable! How do you people live like this?!" She yelled out in her funny accent, angrily looking at the grey sky out the window in front of her desk.
Isabelle snickered. "Haven't you gotten used to it by this point? You Bretonnians can handle a bit of rain, right?"
Sarah's pout now faced her roommate, who was resting on her bed, absorbed in a Magic Linguistics book. "Easy for you to say! And this," Sarah proclaimed, pointing at the window, "this isn't just 'a little'! It's been going on since I came here two years ago!"
Isabelle would be annoyed by this point, if her friend's reactions weren't so amusing. "What are you going to do about it, stop the rain?" She said, putting on a smug smirk.
Sarah stopped moving, like something's just clicked in her head. Five seconds later, she turned on one heel and marched off. "Exactly!" She announced, before stepping out and closing the door behind her, just in time to muffle Isabelle's laughter.
The Library! That was it! Some of the best works in the art of Hedge Wizardry were kept there, and at least one of them would definitely have a weather alteration spell! And even if she couldn't find anything of the sort in the main campus, there was always the old underground library outside!
Before she could finish the thought, her legs already got her to the ground floor. Looking around, she noticed a crowd of people around the entrance to the Library, and heard the not-so-quiet whispers in the air.
"They're gonna do it! For real! Can you believe it?" The whispers flew around from girl to girl, all amazed in unison, with only three witches in the centre.
Bridgid, Medeia and Alcina.
"What are those three up to now," Sarah thought.
She'd already figured out it was about the year-end competition with Diana's and Benoîte's teams, but what exactly had happened?...
"Oh, Sarah! Have you heard? Bridgid's team has to get a root from the Ink Tree!" Said Ester, noticing a really tall girl behind her that was trying to get closer to the centre.
Now this was interesting. The Ink Tree, lost to witches for hundreds of years, now coming up in the usually pretty easy annual competition? Maybe this spike in difficulty had something to do with three of the best teams in decades graduating their with their Adept level degrees this year.
Sarah couldn't forget why she was here, though. She pushed through the rest of the students, making her way inside. A quick glance and a quick dash later, she was already next to the dangerous ancient evil incantations shelf.
"Curse Self, Curse Animal, Curse Person, Mass Curse…" She began mumbling the spell tomes' titles out loud to help her concentrate and not miss the right book.
...
"...Insanity, Mutation, Mass Mutation, Mutate Building…"
...
Even after getting to the second to last row, this was going nowhe--
"Change Weather!" Exclaimed Sarah, instantly snatching the dusty book from its place, and opened it up.
The language was understandable enough for her to try translating it on the fly. "The power to change the weather had always been a dream of witches since the ancient times. Through countless years of research and studying the natural flow of magic through rain clouds, a powerful Hedge Wizard of Eastshire in Albion had discovered a way to make rain disappear. Though the Wizard was long gone, some of her studies were found by Styam and brought to Luna Nova for archival purposes."
The prologue, consisting of the same boring stuff every other old spell tome had (plus some usual safety precautions), went on like this for a good twenty pages. With some digging, though, she managed to find the spell.
"To conjure the magicks, you shall combine two roots of a fir tree, a drop of fresh rain water (standing under rainfall is suggested), a flock of hair of a blonde witch, and read an incantation upon a classical F-type ritual circle."
None of it seemed to be that bad, and if it meant that by getting these ingredients Sarah could at least study in peace for a day it'd be worth all the effort, so she rushed past the crowd, through the hallway of the ground floor, and knocked on the door of the alchemy laboratory, the spellbook in her arms.
"Professor Babscock!" She called out, trying to be heard through the thick doors. Not a second later, the door opened.
"Profe--" Babscock cleared her throat. Sarah looked down.
"Oh! I wanted to try out one of these spells I got from the library, could you help me get the ingredients?" She said, making her best Akko smile and showing the book to her teacher.
What she got in return was a knowing smile and two dried roots of a fir flying right over towards her with a single flick of a wand. Sarah, of course, paid no attention as to how her professor knew exactly which spell she was talking about.
She yelped a "Thanks!" before dashing off up the stairs to the second floor.
She couldn't wait anymore for the sweet release of not having this horrible noise all around her while studying, resting outside, or doing anything else. Even right now about twenty percent of her mind was focused on the rain hitting the windows and walls all around her.
"Now I just need a blonde witch," she reminded herself as she was pacing through the hall. "Now where could I find one?..."
Then, she saw Heather walk out of the Western dorms as she was passing near them.
"Howdy!" Mouthed the tiny blonde witch.

[THE FOLLOWING SCENE WAS REDACTED BY OUR EDITORS]

The Lookout tower. Midday. 100 metres from ground level. The smell, feel, and the sight of rain, hitting all of Sarah's senses was unbearable by this point. She was ready to get rid of it, once and for all, or at least try. The incantation memorized, the ingredients ready, and the ritual circle written in very expensive special ink on the smooth brick of the tower, she was pumped, to say the least. Fixing her problems with magic and no sense of self control, that's what a real witch should do!
She carefully placed the roots and a flock of Heather's hair down in the centre of the circle.
Her voice repeated the learned incantation in the most monotone way she could muster up.
And just like that, everything started changing.
With a faint glow, the droplets had disappeared right from the air, as if a wave of magic had just vaporized them in an instant. The sky, radiating a purple fog, removed all the clouds from itself with a circular wave going outwards from right above Sarah's position. The smell of rain and dreariness was replaced by a pleasant aroma of spring, and as Sarah's light red eyes looked up into the sky, she was greeted by the Sun gazing back for the first time in what seemed like forever.
Sarah fell to her knees and took a deep breath. Finally, she was free. This long-awaited change of pace hit her in the back of the head like a migraine. The sudden switch of the air around her made her dizzy. But, it was no time to sit around! She's changed the weather itself! Her legs, driven by her rushing heartbeat, carried her all the way back into her room, half an hour after she'd left.
She barged in, slamming the door open, beaming with happiness.
Isabelle, still resting in the same place, looked at the window.
Then Sarah.
"Are you in the acceptance stage now?" Her roommate inquired quizzaciously.
"Whatever do you mean? Can you not see the beautiful, clear skies outside?" Sarah said in the most fancy dialect she could conjure, walking up to her desk and putting the spellbook on it.
She was met with another glance back and forth. "Are you…" Isabelle couldn't finish her thought. She wasn't really sure of what Sarah'd done to herself, after all. She got up, picked the book up, stealing another glance up at her friend, and opened it up at a random page. It all became clear, then.
Isabelle cleared her throat. She started reading a passage out loud, as Sarah's expression went from a smug grin to an uncomfortable glare. "...I went through years and years and years, decades, maybe dozens of decades as I lost the track of time trying to research every single strand of the flow of magic through the clouds and the air around me, fixating on every little step I could take further to get to my ultimate goal -- controlling the climate of all of Albion, I realised only one thing: no witch is capable of it. If I couldn't do it, then nobody could."
Sarah's suspicions grew. They grew, stronger and stronger, as she realised what was going on. Her stream of consciousness almost reached a boiling point, right at the same time as Isabelle continued. "...Actually, there's one more thing. I've had this idea: why change the witch's surroundings if you can just change the perception of her surroundings? It's not like I'll ever meet anyone else in this damned forest. I can just make myself see what I want to see!..."
The book was slam shut with a flip of dust coming off of the rest of the pages that weren't the Clear Sky spell.
Silence. For a minute, they both just stood around. Doing nothing. Well, Isabelle was trying to hold off her laughter, but she looked like she was doing nothing.
"So what you're saying is," mumbled the elf girl, staring at a wall with hazy, unblinking eyes, "I just hypnotized myself, right?"
"Yep."
There was another period of silence, as Sarah pondered the situation she'd gotten herself in, as her roommate slowly put the book back on the desk and returned to her bed with a quick bounce.
A pair of red eyes locked onto her. "And there's nothing wrong with that, right?"
"I don't see anything wrong if you don't. It was a 'you' problem from the beginning, wasn't it?"
It was, and Sarah knew it. She sat down at her desk, now with her sight able to see through the clouds, and her mind rendering the rain inaudible, but she knew it all was there.
"It's only for a week, though. After a week of this I'll see if I want to use the spell again," she thought.
Sarah moved in closer to the desk and got back to studying.
…
…
It didn't help.