“Do you have a more elaborate explanation of why I should follow that arbitrary restriction.”

"It's not arbitrary, I just explained it," says Khadija.

“Good for you.”

"That's racist," says Ludmilla. "She's not just being black because it's fashion, you know."

“Three of my grandparents were born in Mexico, and I don’t know what you’re implying.”

"I'm not implying anything, I'm saying you're being racist. Being part Mexican doesn't mean you can't be racist," says Ludmilla. "Neither does reading books about countries in Africa and then getting snippy about it when somebody says very politely not to call them obscure."

“I mostly worded it as ‘an obscure African state’ because I’ve previously talked about Mauritania and had it confused with Narnia. Can you phrase that in terms of a concrete harm that I’m perpetuating and should avoid.”

"You're racist and demanding and bitchy," concludes Ludmilla.

”Meh. I’ve heard worse. Three out of five stars, would be bad mouthed again.”

"Go away," says Serena.

“Sure.”

She goes away, and she finds an isolated little spot, and she reads.

The magical girl contingent mutters to each other and shoots her dirty looks.

Everyone needs a hobby.

Her lunch period hopefully ends without further incident.

No further incidents transpire.

Then she can doodle her way through the rest of her day in peace! Hallelujah.

She stops by, briefly, at her house - her uncle receives a perfunctory greeting - and then she can go and busk in yet another location. Her tip vase is now googly eyed and attention drawing, she has a little sign, darkness is streaming from both her left hand and her right wingtip, she’s getting better at dealing with interference from her wings; she dances for two hours.

She makes $11.

This is more money than she makes when she practices dance at home, and that one toddler being coached by his mother into giving her a dollar bill was exceptionally cute. She’ll count it as a victory.

She goes home. She reads about a proposed city ordinance prohibiting the feeding of wild birds.

... she buys a bag of bird seed at a local pet store, with some of her newly acquired cash, and spends a while in the most heavily bird-populated park she can find, throwing bird seed with one hand and reading a newspaper with the other.

Birds appreciate her!

She appreciates the birds, and the newspaper.

She goes home, saves the rest of her bird seed, makes dinner, and checks whether anyone of interest has contacted her by email or phone.

(Her parents have messaged her through both mediums. Their messages are summarily deleted.)

No messages of import.

She wasn’t really expecting the modeling company to get back to her within a day, but it was worth a shot.

The rest of her evening is spent unremarkably. 

She goes to school - and, in due time, lunch - the next day. 

No magical girls sit with her. A girl who was absent yesterday is with them now.

Praise be.

She flies over to a nearby magical-girl-equivalent-of-a-skate-park, after school. 

It has various flight obstacles and an elevator to a jumping-off platform and a catapult you have to sign a waiver to use.

She declines to use the catapult, spends a while dodging various obstacles, and leaves.

She goes and busks, again - she isn’t hopeful that this will result in her earning a significant amount of money, but she might as well. Birds receive their appropriate tithes of bird seed, afterwards.

She doesn’t attend the magical girl club on Wednesday. Given that, she can probably pass the time until her stylist appointment on Friday in about the same fashion, with some deviation - education, flying, busking, bird-feeding, cooking, reading, and bed - if nothing remarkable happens in the meanwhile.