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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.
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subtly_artistic
"Elementalism! With a minor in thaumatology," she says cheerily.
"...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."
"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.
"Yeah!"
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?"
"...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.
"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?"
subtly_artistic
"...On humans there are clothes involved, so not so much out there, but human beings do not have any outright retractable parts."
"Weird," says Jala, blinking at her. "And when they do their thing, does it always come out like honey?"
subtly_artistic
"...Like honey in what way? I've never heard the comparison made."
"I mean, you know, honey. The goopy sweet see-through stuff. Honey is nice! I just wasn't expecting it right then," giggles Jala.
subtly_artistic
"I don't know the typical opacity, I'm not personally familiar with the taste but I don't think it's supposed to be sweet, and 'goopy' is probably a fair description," says Bella.
"Oh. I guess I always thought it would be more... misty?" she says. "Because you breathe air up here, and all."
subtly_artistic
"...Nope. It is a liquid. It would be a bad idea for a human to inhale it."
Jala giggles again.
"Okay! Thanks," she says.
"Okay! Thanks," she says.
subtly_artistic
"You're welcome. You know, you could just talk to Celo himself about this kind of thing, he knows human anatomy, better than I do. He lives on my hall."
"Oh! Wow," says Jala. "Have you—? I guess not. I'll look for him! He was... very sweet," she says with a smile.
"Why not?" she wonders.
subtly_artistic
"Some people behave differently around nymphs than they do other people, but I don't see a good reason to do that, so I'd only want to have sex with him if we were dating, since that's also when I'd have sex with a member of any other species."