Overview
The Rooting is the ground reading your magic.
Students stand in the central courtyard. Not on a stage. Not on a stool. Barefoot on the stone. The stone beneath the courtyard sits directly above the convergence point -- the place where multiple leak threads in the Loom run closest to the surface. When a new student stands barefoot on that stone, the ground reads them. Not their personality. Not their thoughts. Their suffusion -- the pattern of Wellspring energy they carry.
The Ceremony
The ivy moves first. It always moves first -- it is the most suffused organism on the grounds. A tendril reaches from the courtyard wall toward one of four archways, each leading to a different wing of the academy. Then the moss on the stone shifts color toward the hue of the Grove that's claiming the student. Then the trees in the nearest courtyard grove lean, almost imperceptibly, as if making room.
The student follows the ivy. That is it. No pronouncement. No ceremony. The ground speaks and you walk where it points.
Anne's Rooting
For most students, the ivy reaches toward one archway within a few seconds. Clean, clear, unremarkable.
For Anne: the ivy went everywhere. Every wall. Every archway. The moss cycled through all four colors. The trees in every courtyard grove leaned simultaneously. The ground couldn't decide -- or it was deciding too many things at once.
Then the ivy settled, slowly, decisively, on the gold-amber archway. Ashwood.
Anne walked through it like she'd always been going to, because she had.
An Environmental Match
You can't argue with geology. A student Rooted wrong would develop badly -- like a plant in wrong soil. The Rooting is an environmental match, a reading of how your magic resonates with the leak patterns beneath the stone.