Austermeer to Room 207, Sunday Afternoon

[raisedbybooklice]

The carriage ride from Summershall had been...long. Very long. Well over a day and through the night, though they had stopped at an inn for a few hours around luncheon, so she could wash up, change, and have a meal in a chair that didn't move. After the first few hours, she hadn't paid much attention to the landscape out the window, preferring to lose herself in one of her favorite books instead, but the rumble of the carriage wheels over an unfamiliar surface had her glancing up.

And that was how she'd gotten her first glimpse of the sea, through the small square of window. It was more gray than blue and vast and the salt smell reached her even up over this bridge they were crossing (which felt longer than even the fabled Bridge of Saints in Bassbridge, Austermeer's capital city). Her face was pressed into the small gap for the entirety of the crossing, amazed that something could be so big and all-encompassing. She was so taken up with the sea that she nearly toppled out when the carriage door opened.

The driver blinked down at her as she scrambled for balance. "We're here, Apprentice," he said, offering her a hand to help her step out of the carriage. Her chest was being loaded onto a funny vehicle by a woman in clothing unlike she'd ever seen. "This conveyance will bring you the rest of the way," the driver explained. She looked at him in mute dismay; although they'd barely exchanged ten words on the trip, he was from the village of Summershall and at least familiar. Nothing else that she could spot from her vantage point was. "It's too steep and narrow for the horses to get up," he explained gruffly. "Gots t'turn around here unless I plan to get stuck."

Elisabeth nodded and offered her hand. The new driver finished securing her coach and gestured to her. "Into the rickshaw," she said, "And we'll get you up to the dorms quick as you like."

"Oh!" Elisabeth said, eyes wide. "This is a rickshaw then?" She'd run across the word in books, but had no idea what they'd looked like. Already she was learning so many new things!

Unlike the coach, Elisabeth spent the entirely of the rickshaw trip gaping at everything she could see. The town looked like any village in Austermeer, right down to the cobblestones, but nobody she spotted did. And then the town was left behind and they were on a long road going ever upwards, and suddenly there was a castle. "Is that where the king lives?" she called.

The rickshaw driver laughed. "Naw, that's the school!"

Elisabeth pointed at the next huge building. "Is that a palace?"

"Nope!" She was still laughing. "That's where you're gonna live. That's the dorms!"

Elisabeth was still calculating how many grimoires a Great Library the size of the dorms could hold when she was dropped off in front of the doors. There was someone waiting there with a key and her room assignment, sent by the moose, they said, which Elisabeth assumed was some kind of slang because how could a moose send anybody anywhere?

And then she was carrying her carpet bag and her trunk up to her floor - thank goodness only the second because her trunk was heavy, thunking up each step - and into room 207, her home however long until the Director could be convinced to let her return.

[Door and post both open!]

Comments

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina paused, studied Elisabeth for a moment, then said, "Let's try them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She cleared a space on one of the desks and dug out her own handkerchief.

"Like, I'm Nina by the way???????????????" she said cheerfully, busy with opening up cookie packages and not worried about them going stale since if she and Elisabeth didn't make a dent in them, Vette would make sure they were gone before they weren't good anymore. "I live just down the hall from you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[raisedbybooklice]

Elisabeth had been raised in a library her whole life; for the most part, the exclamation points she was used to came after the word 'science' and usually involved explosions.

These ones apparently came with cookies, which meant that Elisabeth was rapidly becoming a fan. "Are you sure?" she asked. "All those cookies must have been very dear..."

Was that stopping her from reaching for one, though. Look, she had six feet, two inches of girl to keep going.

[bookbeltof_love]

"Don't worry about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she insisted, beaming up and up, though not quite so high as she'd have to beam up at, like, Sidon. "Like, seriously, I know they should be costly--cookies back home aren't anywhere near as common as they are here?????????????? But here, it's like, they're super affordable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina was not as short as Vette was--Vette was tiny--but Nina was also not all that tall.

"Actually, like, most food is pretty affordable here???????????" she mused, snagging a few cookies herself and getting out of the way so Elisabeth could take her pick without feeling, hopefully, awkward. "Unless you want to go with really fancy ingredients, and what counts as fancy here is totally not the same as it is back home either???????????????"

[raisedbybooklice]

And Elisabeth was very, very tall. Even back home, the few men taller than she was could only claim an inch or so on her.

Meeting Sidon and Grog was going to be an experience. And not just because neither of them were human.

"Oh, I wouldn't know what to do with fancy ingredients!" Even if she had been able to afford them, which...no. She had no spending money and hadn't even thought to ask. "Back home I can help Mrs. Bellwether around the kitchen all right, but that's mostly small tasks, like chopping and peeling." She nibbled on a cookie, one of the ones with the chocolate chips in them. "That's all I ever really - oh that's good."

[bookbeltof_love]

"Aren't they, though????????????" She folded herself into what she assumed was Elisabeth's roommate's chair, posture picture perfect, with the air of someone who sat that way because there was literally no other way to sit. "And, like, I totally get you!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I learned how to cook back home, but it was mostly because, like, if they didn't teach me how to cook then what would they do with me when school wasn't in session and most of the cooks were off on holidays?????????????"

Not that Nina's version of cooking aligned well with this world's version but, back home, Nina was a pretty okay cook.

[raisedbybooklice]

"I just had to help in the kitchens as part of my chores," Elisabeth said. "The Great Library never really closed."

And while sometimes the cooks would get holidays, there were enough undercooks and kitchenmaids that someone who knew what they were doing would still step up to make sure meals were served.

"Wait, were you alone at school?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina shrugged a little, nibbling on one of the jam-filled cookies.

"Not at this school," she said, after a moment. "Though, like, it does get a bit quieter during the summer???????????? But at New Leaf Academy............ there were a few people around, but no one really had time to look after an orphan, you know??????????????"

She shrugged again.

"The Great Library?????????????????????"

[raisedbybooklice]

"I do," Elisabeth said, nodding. "I was a foundling left on Summershall's doorstep. The librarians took me in, but they all had lots of other tasks. So by the time I was old enough to look after myself-" which had been around the time she'd been able to toddle, really, "-that's what I did."

Oh, she still had to answer to people, like Master Hargrove and Warden Finch, and go to her lessons, but everyone had been supposed to look after her, which often meant that no one did.

"...You don't have Great Libraries where you're from?" she asked, surprised. "Where do your people store all the grimoires so sorcerers can't get up to things?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina was, frequently, incredibly silly and ridiculous and over-the-top in that way that she'd insist only teenage girls could be, but she was also a spy and so she took that surprise and that question in without so much as a blink of her own disquiet.

"I was left on the doorstep of the school," she shared, "so I totally get being left alone to your own devices, like, basically all the time??????????????????"

Until she'd found ways to be useful. To make herself needed...

"But like, no, there's no Great Libraries where I come from???????????????? Magic users aren't really known as sorcerers either??????????? Those who use magic at home are, like, just like normal people????????????????? Some are good, some are bad????????????? Is it, like, different in your world??????????????"

[raisedbybooklice]

"Oh yes," Elisabeth said with no little apprehension. "They're wicked and make pacts with demons for their powers."

Half-right, anyway.

"The one I met right before I showed up here threatened to turn me into a salamander and said he drank a glass of orphan's blood for dinner every Wednesday."

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina did blink at that one.

"I can't even imagine what drinking a glass of orphan's blood would do for him," she said, which was super not the point and yet... "But, oh no, magic is super different in a lot of places!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A lot of worlds don't even have demons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[raisedbybooklice]

Elisabeth's brow furrowed. "How can you have magic and not have demons?"

[bookbeltof_love]

"Some magic systems come from within instead," Nina said, since she was a nerd about this sort of thing. "Like, if they want to light a candle, then they have to use their own energy to do it?????????? So, like, after that candle is lit, they might feel a smidge more tired than they were before????????????? Because the same sort of energy you physically use to light a candle was the energy that they used to light it with magic???????????????"

She reached over for another cookie.

"Then, like, there's systems of magic where it's based on drawing energy from the world around us?????????????? Like, every living thing has energy, right?????????? So some places learn how to make use of that energy to accomplish magical things??????????????"

[raisedbybooklice]

"That's...that's..." That was something Elisabeth had never heard of in her life. Something within her almost rebelled against it, just because it was so entirely different than everything she'd ever known. If she hadn't actually seen Keyleth do just that, she might have refused to believe it.

"I...I suppose none of that sounds wicked?" she said. "I mean. If there's no sacrificing children or turning people inside out or harvesting parts for books..."

[bookbeltof_love]

........................

"I mean, like, if you really go looking you can find magic like that," she said, not wanting to lie. "But, like, if you're going to do that on the island you're going to be in big, big trouble????????????????????"

[raisedbybooklice]

"What? Me? No, never!" Elisabeth squawked, appalled. "I'm going to be a warden! We keep that from happening!"

Or, well, the Reforms did. Wardens kept the unfettered grimoires out of sorcerer hands though, and that was basically the same thing.