in which the lesser of two evils may still be pretty evil

[subtly_artistic]

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.

Comments

[subtly_artistic]

"I don't think feeding people is traditionally entangled with love."

[pythbox]

"But that pie is clearly a good experience."

[subtly_artistic]

"Yes. Yes it is."

[pythbox]

"See?" he says, grinning.

[subtly_artistic]

"Sure. I didn't think you were about arbitrary good experiences, though."

[pythbox]

"I think it's all part of the same thing," he says. "Not that pie is sex - well, I mean, not usually - but that pie and sex are both nice things to do with your body, and people can give them to each other."

[subtly_artistic]

"I've also never heard of nymphs giving massages."

[pythbox]

"That, I bet some of us do," he laughs. "But maybe mostly in a sex way. Why, did you want one?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Not in a sex way," says Bella distinctly.

[pythbox]

"Well, yeah," he shrugs.

[subtly_artistic]

"I'm not clear on the extent to which you can separate anything plausibly sexlike from sex."

[pythbox]

"...I dunno," he says. "If I give you a massage, and nobody gets off on it, then that's not sex. Does it need to be more separate than that?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Mmm - I think motives come into it, too, but maybe that's just me."

[pythbox]

"Motives like what? If I give you a massage and you decide my hands are pretty great and you'd like to try them out in another context, the massage still wasn't sex, at least to start out with."

[subtly_artistic]

"I was thinking more about your motives. I know what mine are."

[pythbox]

"Okay... what about my motives do you want to know? They're the same motives if I'm giving you pie or cookies or thinking about your smile at you. I like doing nice things for you. It'd be just about the same if it was sex, but - a little different."

[subtly_artistic]

"That's remarkably undifferentiated."

[pythbox]

Celo shrugs expansively.

[subtly_artistic]

"But, I suppose I have already taken pie," says Bella, lifting her plate with one bite left on it, "so I may as well take a neckrub offered for the same reasons, presuming you're offering." She consumes her last bite of pie.

[pythbox]

"I am definitely offering!" says Celo. "And I mean, if you care about consistency and really don't want to take stuff I give you for nice-things reasons, you could also stop taking the pie. But that would be sad."

[subtly_artistic]

"It would be sad, I do like consistency, and I do not object to you wanting to do nice things for me."

[pythbox]

"Then I can give you a neckrub!" he says happily.

[subtly_artistic]

"Yes," says Bella. "Indeed your arithmetic is correct."

[pythbox]

Celo approaches.

"...Do you mind if I read you while I'm at it? It's still not a sex thing, but it's got enough in common that I can probably pick up useful stuff if I'm looking."

[subtly_artistic]

"...Stuff like what?"