"I meant Mona."
"Oh. Right. It's short for Monica, but no one calls me that." I shrug. I'm not sure why my parents bothered to give me a longer name, they've always used Mona too.
"It's pretty though."
I shrug again. "It's just my name." I pause for a moment, trying to work out if it's rude to just come right out and ask him his. "What do I call you? Or would you prefer me to use Mr Smith?"
He squirms in his seat a little, not unlike the kitten was doing when it was still on my lap. I wonder what it is about my question making him uncomfortable, but I don't ask."
"Thomas," he replies.
"Do you shorten it?" Even as I ask, I know the answer will be no. He looks like a Thomas, not a Tom, or worse, a Tommy.
"My sister does it to annoy me. But no, I don't normally shorten it."
"It suits you."
"Thanks." He takes a sip from his tea, reminding me that I have mine.
I lean forward to grab it, only to be interrupted by the kitten pushing his head under my hand. "You and I aren't going to get along if you get between me and tea," I warn him.
"Meow." It's so high and squeaky that I find my heart melting a little.
Great. I came all this way to study, and instead, I'm just going to become a crazy cat lady. I suppose there are worse things, though right now I can't think of any.
"He really is cute," Thomas says, admiring the fluffy grey thing that's taken a liking to the tassels of a bookmark and is batting them with his paws.
"He is," I admit. "Am I even allowed to keep pets in the dorms?" I muse, realising another implication of magically conjuring a kitten.
"Didn't you look into that before you made him?"
I shake my head. "Like I said, it was an accident. I was actually trying to make a feather." Just like with Caspian, it doesn't actually feel bad to tell Thomas about my magic. More like I'm telling someone I can actually trust and who won't use the information against me. I hope I'm right. If I'm not, then this could have some dire consequences for me.
"That's some powerful magic there," he observed.
I snort. "Or the opposite. My magic has pretty much stopped working since I arrived here."
His eyebrows knit together. "Stopped working?"
"I wouldn't say I was ever the most talented person in the room, but I could certainly do straight forward spells. Then I came here..." I sigh. Talking about this isn't fun, even if Thomas is putting me at ease. "I don't know what happened, but within a day of being here, I could barely do anything with magic. This is the first time I've accidentally made a kitten though." I should feel guilty. I've brought something into this world that I shouldn't have and now I need to look after him. Not that it's the poor kitten's fault.
On his part, he doesn't seem bothered at all as he potters around Thomas' desk. I hope he doesn't break anything.
"Did you do anything that first day that you think led to this?"
"Not that I can think of. I left my parents, found my room and unpacked. I didn't try to do any magic until later in the day, and then it already failed."
"Hmm." He strokes his chin in a way I only thought TV villains did. It seems like twenty-something-year-old men do the same. Unless he is a villain, but I very much doubt that. Everyone knows those kind of people don’t really exist.
What does that mean? I wish people would say what they were thinking out loud instead of doing it all privately. Maybe it's a weird thing for me to want, but it'll solve a few issues, that's for sure.
"Penny for your thoughts?" I stand up even as I'm speaking and lean across the desk to pick the errant kitten out of a ball of wool he's found.
Thomas coughs, and it takes a moment for me to realise why.
"Sorry." I brush down my skirt with my free hand, the other one being full of kitten is a bit of a problem.
"You don't need to be sorry, I just...it's hard not to look."