Bluuuuuuuuush. 

"Ummm, I think so." Or at least his sense from reading the bullies' minds is that they'll think so, but Ma'ar still isn't sure if mindreading is allowed or not so he isn't going to say that in front of Elwa, who is obviously a person who's never broken a rule in her entire life. 

"Cool. You can say that. You can tell someone that your sister learned cocksucking from him because everyone knows he's the best in the school, and that he's jealous because his boyfriend would rather be seen with her, and that once his voice drops the boys will get bored and the girls will go for someone whose face doesn't look like a goat's puckered asshole, and..."

Carissa was in the army for five years and adventurers get very creative.

This is useful if only because Elwa is entirely recalibrating her blushing threshold! 

Honestly, people are so weird and baffling and care an inexplicable amount about the strangest things. 

Ma'ar says this to Carissa, later, after Elwa has thanked them and hugged him - which according to her surface thoughts she thought was a Big Deal - and then left to go back to her dorm. 

"You might care about sex when puberty hits. You also might not. Even if you do I think probably you will not care about what things children yell at each other, because no one cares about that but other children. But it - feels very real in the moment, right, it feels like everything is at stake even if nothing is. I think it's good that you wanted to help her. I hope it works."

"- Why do you think it's good that I wanted to help her." He knows why. It seems incredibly self-evident. But - it feels informative, what words Carissa will put on it. 

(He's finding it harder and harder to maintain the separation between the part of him that finds hugging Carissa comforting and the part that knows he shouldn't entirely trust her yet.) 

" - well, other things equal, it's better if kids aren't bullied, right, because it'll make them miserable and small, and it'll teach bullies to get away with it. And - it's not a bad thing to have a reputation for, either, protecting other kids, standing up to bullies. If you want to lead people you want practice trying to help them and - following through, actually making things better. And from the cooperativeness angle there's, like, if you'd want someone to do it for you, then that's an argument for doing it. Not an overriding one, if it's going to cost you too much, but I don't think this is going to cost you too much."

He listens, thoughtfully. Nods along. 

"...I didn't like that it made her feel small," he says. "It - doesn't seem right. For her to feel weak, when she's so clever and trying hard and that's why she wants to follow the rules here..." Shrug. "I guess it's hard. If you're Urtho. To - actually make it true that being smart and working hard means you succeed. Even if he wants that. It - I - it's - not evidence that he doesn't want that. Right?" 

"Well, if there were no bullies at all in his whole enormous free school that'd be - a very strong sign that he wanted that, because it's nearly impossible to pull off so it'd be a sign someone pointed a lot of ingenuity at that. So - you know now that you're not in that world. But - that still leaves lots of worlds where he wants that but hasn't pointed a lot of ingenuity at it, because he's mostly a magic researcher and doesn't pay it enough attention, which looks...pretty likely, to me. It is also possible that he doesn't care very much about it. How would you tell those two theories apart?"

"...If he says bullies are bad or not? ...But words are very easy to say. I - could check if he's tried things at all to make there be less bullying, even if they're not very clever or creative things?" 

Nod. "You could check whether he knows about the bullies, he gives off an air of not being very attentive to most things and I'm sure no one does any bullying in front of him."

Ma'ar nods. "That - seems like a stupid thing to not be attentive to, but I guess they're not a threat to him. Since he's so powerful and rich." 

Nod. "Or he might think that bullying is good for children? Some people think that. Probably fewer outside Cheliax, but still."

Ma'ar considers that for a while. "I feel like whether it's good or not depends on other things? If we were allowed to fight with magic but got punished for stupid insults I think that'd be good..." He frowns. "...I don't know. I guess it's complicated, what's good. I don't think it's good for people who could do things to end up thinking that they're small and - shouldn't do things..." 

Nod. "And it's not good for any girls who want to be great mages if everyone is always telling them they're for sex instead, lots of them will listen and then you don't have many girl mages and men are worse when no women are their equals. But - it's very complicated what good is.

You could try to get a meeting with Urtho and ask him what things he has tried about bullying."

" - Do you think I should try to do that?" It sounds terrifying. Somehow on several different dimensions at once, both that it's important and high-stakes and he could do it wrong, and also that it's - maybe not allowed, for students to have their own opinions...

"I don't know. It would be a lot of information. Not - just about bullies."

"...I'll think about it." 

Hug. 

She hands him a thin envelope. "Unrelated to that - this is for you. It's locked with magic, but once you're good with magic you could figure out how to undo the lock without destroying it. If anything happens to me, I want you to read it. Otherwise, I do not want you to read it. I think this is very unlikely to come up, but - it might be important, so I want you to have it, if it does."

He listens to all of the parts of that. Nods. 

"I - understand." 

(He's not sure that he does. Not really. He heard the instructions but the why should make sense, if he understood all the pieces, and it doesn't.)

(Maybe that's fine. Probably it's expected, in any of the circumstances that involve receiving a secret letter.)  

He holds the envelope, like it's something precious. "I won't forget." 

"I know. I trust you. Let's get dinner."

They can get dinner. 

Ma'ar is very quiet. 

She doesn't try to bother him. She asks after dinner if he has any workbooks for his classes.

"Not for magic class, the practice is all just magic. I have one for for arithmetic? For reading I just need to read books and answer questions about them."