Atennesi Cohen has had to be many things to survive his peers' scrutiny for over a century and a half. Wary is one of them.
But a snake with a mirror for a head suddenly appearing in his office and sweeping its mirror-face at him? That, he wasn't prepared for.
"Probably. There are a lot of desperate people out there, though."
"And you're capping immigration anyway so I suppose it's no terrible loss that some people are filtering out."
"Right. We'd like to take more, but Atennesi says the other Great Mages barely tolerated the loophole that let him found Genosha in the first place, and growing it too fast would almost certainly result in unwanted kinds of scrutiny."
"I grew up in Iberia, I still have family there. I visit, with friends, sometimes--mage friends--so they're okay, it's not like no one who isn't here is, but..." she trails off. "Well." She chuckles. "If all goes well there'll be a new Great Mage soon; that should probably improve things."
"Odette Zavier. Lovely girl, lots of Sympathy resistance, magicked her own brain for masochism and if it made her any more agreeable I can't tell it."
"Wow! I'm not an outright masochist, I just don't mind. Her way sounds like it might be distracting."
"One imagines. I haven't heard anything about her reacting inappropriately in classes, though, so I'm not sure."
"You'll probably run into her if you stay long, or I could see if we could find her."
"Okay!" she says cheerfully, then locates the nearest group of students and makes a beeline for them.
"Excuse me, do you know where Odette Zavier is?"
"...Is she in trouble?"
"No, I just have someone I'm showing around who'd like to meet her."
"Oh, uh, I think she's calling patter-dancing for her sister and some people."
"Ah. Belfoi dance building?"
"I think so."
She returns to Belamaveth. "This way!"
"No, but there aren't that many reasons why an adult in administration clothes would be looking for a student."
She leads Belamaveth into a building with a lot of padding in most of the rooms.
From one of them comes an odd sound that, if Belamaveth adjusts her hearing, she can discern to be extremely accelerated music.
"Mhm," she says, smiling a little smugly, and pushes the door open.
A girl in a purple off-the-shoulder ribbon-hem dress is standing in the center of the room, hands twitching as though to conduct the buzzing music. Around her a handful of teenagers and twentysomethings dance, limbs flashing almost too fast to see, keeping up with the pace of the music. Sitting at the edges of the room, a greater number of students slump against the walls, drinking water and pointing at dancers and gossiping about who's going to fall out next.
Regrettably, Belamaveth cannot honestly participate in this activity. She watches.
Eventually, all the students but one fall out of the dance, at which point the music ends and the last one steps out of her accelerated dance with a final twirl and laughs.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
