Witch in which place? | Glowfic Constellation

witchwatcher

"That sounded like Romangan. I never learned much of it, though. This place is very nicely laid out. The 42nd's base is a damp old castle that used to belong to the third princess of Suomus."

her_imperial_radiance

"Italian," says Elspeth. "Italy contains a city called Rome which was the capital of what was called the Roman Empire."

The cafeteria is starting to fill up. There's a bunch of buff, variously brownish adults with short-cropped hair. One of the men looks up when the door opens, and then jogs across the room, beaming at Elspeth, to pick her up and swing her around and put her down again and hug her. "Hi, Elsie! And this must be Grendyne?"

"Grendyne, this is Jake, my wolf and the Imperial Alpha - that means he runs the one of the three wolf packs that reports directly to Mama."

witchwatcher

"We have a Rome, too, it's even the capital of Romanga. Nice to meet you, Jake. Gren is probably an easier thing to call me, if you don't want to use my squad's nickname of 'copycat'. How many wolves are there, anyway? Are there more packs than just those three?"

her_imperial_radiance

"Just three packs," says Elspeth. "Because there's only three wolves who have the right ancestry to run one - as far as we can tell, anyway. It's not a well-explored area. So Jake has a pack and his sisters Rachel - she's over there - and Becky, who lives in La Push, each have one. There are currently sixty-four active wolves, eighteen imprints including me, and fifty-three puppies who haven't activated yet."

Her wolf is looking at her like she is the center of the universe.

witchwatcher

She doesn't actually notice right away. She's more attuned to be alert for hostile faces, and things like Neuroi.

"That's not nearly as much as I was expecting. There's something like one and a quarter million Strike Witches on my world. Are there more vampires?"

her_imperial_radiance

"Lots more. Wolves have to reproduce to make more; vampires can just turn humans in batches the size you saw as often as every three days - or twice that if we wanted to lock Addy into one job."

witchwatcher

"I was imagining both populations having been around for a while. Witches have happened as long as we can remember, more or less one every five hundred female babies. There's even books- Could you be a Witch? Here's how to tell!"

her_imperial_radiance

"Wolves aren't a very old population and the phenomenon was isolated to a particular small tribe until recently. The vampire population used to be more limited too, because the previous vampire government was concerned with secrecy more than we are and turning used to be very difficult for most vampires to accomplish without killing the person instead, but it's always been global."

witchwatcher

"Hm. What's dinner going to be? I'll be very glad if the answer is not 'salted fish and rice,' which is what we have the most of back home."

her_imperial_radiance

Jake speaks up: "It's taco night. I think there's fish, but you could just go for the ground beef or the beans. And there's other stuff too if you don't like tacos. Nobody goes hungry in a wolf cafeteria."

witchwatcher

"Never heard of 'tacos'. Beef is rare where I'm from, though. Is there coffee or tea? We get a little box of the stuff with every week's rations delivery, but it's never as much as I like."

her_imperial_radiance

"Yeah, there's both," says Jake. "No rationing. Tacos is you get a tortilla... that's... like a flat bread thing? And you put meat and whatever else in it."

(Elspeth sends mental images of tortillas and complete tacos.)

witchwatcher

"Ah, clever. Can't wait to try it."

her_imperial_radiance

And presently some people put out huge platters of stuff, the cafeteria finishes filling up very quickly,, and all the buff brown people take extremely large amounts of food and wolf it down.

(Elspeth makes herself a very small taco with little tastes of most of the things in it.)

witchwatcher

Gren has a cup of coffee and two new kinds of tea. Her tacos follow some popular examples. Meat, cheese, sour cream, salsa. She doesn't eat nearly as much as the wolves, but that's rather expected. "Good stuff. Just what I needed after a hard day."

her_imperial_radiance

After Jacob eats all three of his tacos he goes back for side dishes, of which there is an assortment. "Wolves eat a lot," he explains unnecessarily. "The houses have kitchens, but even people who like to cook can't keep up cooking for themselves all the time. So all the villages have cafeterias."

witchwatcher

"At least I won't have to worry about food here."

her_imperial_radiance

"Oh yeah. Eat as much as you want. Five mealtimes a day. Breakfast brunch lunch dinner supper," Jake says.

A lady wolf who is in progress eating a quarter of a pecan pie swings by their table. "Princess," she says, inclining her head to Elspeth. "This is Gren?"

"Yes. Gren, this is Kelly, she might wind up being your escort."

witchwatcher

"Hullo. I'm a stranger from a strange land. I can copy magic, so apparently I'm useful, but just about everything here is new to me."

her_imperial_radiance

"Yeah, that's what the Princess said. Apparently the idea is you need someone to take you to Ireland and back and figure out where you want to live if you don't want to move every few months when the Capitol picks up and moves?"

witchwatcher

"I'm visiting Ireland because the lie detector lives in Ireland, and trust is an easily overused currency. I'll probably want to live where Ostmark was in my world. One of the countries between Greece and Germany."

her_imperial_radiance

"Ech, I don't speak Romanian or whatever, might be an obstacle. Don't think any of us do," says Kelly.

witchwatcher

"I only know English because it's the standard language of the UDF." She's still wearing her uniform, and points to the patch. "I know Suomic, Ostkav, and some Karlslandish, but there's no reason to think those languages are consistent with something here. Perhaps I should stick to somewhere that knows English, then."

her_imperial_radiance

"It's very internationally popular, but if you want somewhere where it's the primary language your choices are the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand," says Elspeth. "We're in the United States right now. I know most languages and can check to see if your others are intelligible with something if you like."

witchwatcher