I thought it was so very well written... my eyes ran well over the words and my understanding of the characters was full...

*smiles largely at the creature so few would understand.

V.

That's a nice compliment, coming from a poet. Thanks!

I like it. Blends the deadly fear of looking at a basilisk with the sort of fear of professors that may hold your future in their grade books that I remember so well from college . . . not only a nice character sketch but a nice image/emotion sketch as well

Thanks! And thank you for the watch, too.

Hehe, at least she knew to take proper precautions, even if she did keep looking up... *grins* You'd have had a statue for a student without that mask. ^_~

I really need to write up a petrification sometime.

Nice descriptions in this one, especially. :)

Rereading it, I guess I left the gryphonesses as "blanks"...

Very neat little story!

Glad you thought so!

Great characterisations too. The reason for the fear escaped me completely until the last paragraph and I haven't stopped grinning since!

Oh how I hated those kinds of questions. That was a nice tweak at the end of such a serious story too.

Math is serious stuff! :> It's my bread and butter...or my chickenfeed, I suppose.

Something about highly magical mythical creatures in very mundane modern situations is very appealing to me. :D

Reading it and mulling it over, I have to agree with you...

"I'm your math professor. Please don't look directly at me unless you're wearing your glasses!"

You just don't see that many basilisks!

...By which I mean cockatrices.

You don't see many basilisks either. c.c

I answer to both.

That's just excellent comprehension of what a bask's office should be like. 'Correspondence courses' indeed.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

The alternative to a cellar office was an old ramshackle chicken coop next to the main building...the cellar is slightly more dignified.

Very interesting. Most of the story seemed like horror to me, but the last line sort of surprised me. Good little piece, the story is very riveting and the ending twist is quite funny.

Well, what's more horrible than an oral math exam?

I'm a student in a university of technology and I have mathematics as major. So, everything is more horrible than an oral math exam. Math is my friend, although your mind gets quirky when you have to deal with all the absrtactions of math. The real mathematics begin, when you throw away all the numbers.

Still, your story is great.

Oh, really!? That's an interesting coincidence. I'm a mathematics professor at a community college; it's why I gave that job to the character. I guess I'm used to everyone saying "Yuck, I hate math" when I tell them what I do.

A mathematics professor. We could get a good fight up with this. Reply with some mathematical dilemma and we can start the flame war. Naw, only joking, I hate to bring my homeworks online. A bit odd to see a professor in FA though. Well, it's our own business what we do off duty.
A college. You have to define that a bit, the Finnish school system is so different from the other coutries that I can't really say what a college is. University is a universal term, but a college has different meanings in different countries.

May I ask what field of mathematics is your speciality?