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

[pythbox]

"Huh? Oh," he says, letting his hands fall away.

[subtly_artistic]

"Thanks," Bella adds, rearranging her hair to fall over her neck again.

[pythbox]

"Anytime," he says, grinning.

[subtly_artistic]

Bella smiles at him, and goes back to her essay.

[pythbox]

Celo decides to eat some pie.

[subtly_artistic]

The next day, Bella goes to lunch after Intro Perception - accompanied by a small group of classmates, who disperse when they get to the dining hall - and collects her food and sits at an empty table.

[pythbox]

After a few minutes, Jala sits down next to her.

"Octopuses!" she says triumphantly. "Octopuses are people."

[subtly_artistic]

Bella pulls out her notebook and writes this down. "All of them or just some species?"

[pythbox]

"All of them that I've heard of. I haven't personally met every single octopus in the oceans," she laughs.

[subtly_artistic]

"Okay." Write write write. "I'm probably going to have to get in touch with some sort of marine explorer type about this."

[pythbox]

Jala shrugs.

[subtly_artistic]

"And it might make the most sense to save the entire thing until I've done enough subtle arts classes to be able to mindtalk without having to share a language, so I can have actual conversations with the people I'm 'discovering' instead of just noting that they exist."

[pythbox]

"That might help!" she agrees, giggling.

[subtly_artistic]

Bella puts her notebook away. "So what're you majoring in?"

[pythbox]

"Elementalism! With a minor in thaumatology," she says cheerily.

[subtly_artistic]

"Cool, do you know what you want to do with it?"

[pythbox]

"...Magic?" she suggests.

[subtly_artistic]

Bella laughs. "Yeah. That's what you do with a degree in a magic discipline. I mean that a lot of people get their degrees planning to make careers out of them - like, I'm majoring in subtle arts because I'd like to be a mental healer."

[pythbox]

"Oh. I don't think there's a career for what I want to do with it," she says. "We do magic in the depths, but it's not like what you get up here. So I'm going to go down and... see if I've learned anything useful, you know?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Just be on the lookout for applications for what you pick up?" Bella hazards.

[pythbox]

"Yeah!"

[subtly_artistic]

"Cool."

[pythbox]

Nom nom lunch.

"...So I have another question about humans," she says. "It's about human boys, actually, but I'd feel weird asking one, like they might take it the wrong way, you know?"

[subtly_artistic]

"Uh, I'm not unusually well-informed about things specific to human boys, but you can try me, I guess," says Bella.

[pythbox]

"Well, okay," she says. "I met this nymph over the summer, and he said it's all pretty much the same, but I'm not sure what's covered by 'pretty much'. I mean, their - whatever you call it - is it really just out there flopping around all the time?"