Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ "Aether"

Amariah recites the entire conversation she and Callahan had to the assembled Bells and Jokers that evening, after Aether has gotten back from the dining hall.

There are more elves now. They're impatient. They ran off Bella's escort with private whispers Bella didn't hear, Bella's subtle arts are jammed again, and they're faster than she is.

Where is she -

Celo's there, there are more elves now but maybe there's someone with him or he can put Bella where he puts his stuff or something -

And this is how Bella runs headlong into the outdoor session of Mixed Melee with seventeen armed elves chasing her, and spots Callahan, and has an even better idea.

"MY WARRANTY," she screams at the top of her overtaxed lungs, "IS AT RISK!"

Bella is gazing on the school weavesite when she notices the inconsistent references to Vice Chancellor Embries's secretary. A second look shows that they're all from different years. A look at the public record of the school staff directory confirms: yes. Every secretary of the Vice Chancellor is from a different year. She'd expect he was just dreadful to work for, if it weren't for the way they do virtually always last out the full year -

and for the way none of them have any continued ethernet footprint after the termination of their employment.

Bella compiles this data. She a-mails it to the current secretary with a "probably nothing, just worried" note attached to it.

---

It is the following week when she is summoned to Embries's office.

This does not bode well. But she can't exactly refuse.

She finds one of the Walking Buddies looking for credit from "escort missions" to take her. The walking buddy thinks she's humoring her until Bella disabuses her of the notion that she's generously distributing an easy five-point assignment.

They arrive without incident. The walking buddy leaves; Bella is going to be on her own for the trip back.

But first she has to deal with Embries.

She goes inside, shaking in her boots.

Embries is a silver-haired, urbane man, with a long desk at which he sits in perfect stillness, and Bella feels an odd, intense pressure in her mind when she approaches - there is something out of the ordinary, with his mind or his person or just with him.

"Hello, Ms. Swan," he says. "Do sit down."

Bella sits.

"Do you know," he says, "no one has ever had the temerity to contact one of my secretaries on her own behalf, in a professional capacity, before. They sort my correspondence for me, but by and large, their own communiques are personal in nature. Until they are not in a position to receive anything at all, that is."

This doesn't seem to demand an answer. Bella sits silently, watching his eyes, shifting occasionally under psychic pressure.

"I do wonder why something has changed about this... setup."

Bella swallows.

"Something about the particular secretary, warier or more skittish? Unlikely; she had no traits of any relevance. Something about this age in which we find ourselves, breeding caution and far-off sudden opportunities to prompt career changes? No; the eras differ only superficially. Something about the communique's origin, though..."

Bella makes a small, involuntary noise.

"I think that could easily prompt an irregularity in a comfortable pattern. Don't you agree, Ms. Swan?"

Bella doesn't think she could answer him now if she wanted to.

"Ms. Swan. I find myself very disappointed. Given that you are very nearly a volunteer, venturing towards my attention as you did - surely there is something you have to say for yourself."

She opens her mouth. No sound comes out.

She's long figured out what she's talking to, at this point.

Bella didn't mean to take so long about eating her dinner. It's just that this book is really interesting. Supplemental history reading, recommended by the professor, by a different author than did their textbook, one who can really write, she'll have to find the rest of his work - and now she's one of six students left in the dining hall and it's closing. Four of them are a group of dwarves who she can only assume live in the dwarf housing; individual dwarves sometimes find their way into Harlowe and there is even one in Thatcher, but not a bunch of them. The other one's a mermaid.

Bella doesn't think the mermaid lives in Thatcher, which makes it Harlowe, but Thatcher's on the way to Harlowe from here.

She knows not to go swimming with her and this will have to do.

She goes up to the mermaid.

"Excuse me. I try not to walk around outside by myself. Are you heading towards Thatcher? Harlowe's right past it," she adds.

At least four people conclude that Bella and Celo have had sex and mention this to Bella. The fact that the door was open the entire time he spent hanging out in her room is apparently immaterial (since she wouldn't have been breaking any rules if she'd had sex with him that way, and no one was loitering in the hall supervising them the whole time). She contradicts them on this. Three people don't believe her. Miki does, and is immediately promoted to Bella's favorite out-of-class friend.

In Intro Psych for Subtle Artists, there's a discussion of what subtle artists do with their own minds, and how this differs from everyone else. Bella has already talked to all her subtle arts professors about her own peculiarities, and Professor Murray has her talk a bit about how she's used lucid dreams for introspection, self-modification, and memory boosting. Professor Murray then explains that people who aren't subtle artists can only rarely lucid dream, and even those who can don't find it an effective jumping-off point for any heavy-duty self-searching.

One of the elves in the class looks at Bella oddly through her little talk.

But she doesn't say anything, so Bella ignores her.