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

[raisedbybooklice]

"I...don't suppose you know where the bedding is stored?" Elisabeth asked. "I've looked around for blankets and pillows, but there were none here in the room."

The idea that she was expected to bring her own hadn't occurred to her at all.

[unusual_sith]

"Oh! We supply our own," Lana said apologetically. "I've got spare sheets, if you like, though I'm afraid not another pillow. I'm guessing you didn't get a list of things to bring, then."

[raisedbybooklice]

"Ah, inksplotches," Elisabeth said, shaking her head. "No, I don't think we did. The Director must have assumed that everything would be supplied..."

She had her cloak, she supposed, and her carpet bag stuffed with her clothing could do for a pillow?

[unusual_sith]

Lana winced. "Come on, I live just down the hall. I'll get you my spare sheets. Do you have your own toiletries - soap, shampoo, and such? Towels?"

She was running through the list of things she'd needed starting out.

[raisedbybooklice]

"Toiletries, yes," Elisabeth said. "Brush, comb, sliver of soap, that kind of thing. Err, no washing linens or the like."

[unusual_sith]

"A towel then, too," Lana said. "The washrooms are there, by the way." She pointed. She led the way down the hall to her room and rummaged in the closet to bring out her extra set of sheets and towel.

"I keep two sets of everything, for when the other's in the wash. Oh - there are washing machines downstairs. They're a little weird, but they have instructions on them. Do you read the local language?" She looked around for something in High Galactic, then picked up a library book she'd borrowed. "This alphabet?"

[raisedbybooklice]

"Oh yes!" Elisabeth said. "That's Modern Austermeerish. I can read that and Old Austermeerish and a bit of Enochian, the language of sorcerers."

...More information than she needed, Elisabeth.

[unusual_sith]

"Oh?"

Never too much information; Lana was a nerd.

"What do those look like? I'm used to using Aurebesh; we call this one High Galactic back home. I can read those and Sith." She picked up a piece of paper and wrote her name on it in Aurebesh. "That's Aurebesh. Is that one of yours?"

[raisedbybooklice]

Elisabeth shook her head. "Not any of the ones I know," she said. "Enochian is the language of demons. Sorcerers have to learn it to write spells. I only only a few glyphs because they appear on a lot of grimoires." She drew a symbol on the same paper. "That one means magic."

[unusual_sith]

"Grimoires?" Lana asked.

[raisedbybooklice]

"Books of magic," Elisabeth said. "Where sorcerers used to write down their spells. They can't really do that anymore, after the Reforms, but we still have the old ones that we keep safe."

[unusual_sith]

"I have no idea what any of that means, I'm afraid," Lana confessed. "Or, well, I've seen stories of people writing spells in books, but I have no idea how much of them is accurate, and I don't know what the Reforms are."

She handed the sheets and towels to Elisabeth. "Have you met your big sibling yet?"

[raisedbybooklice]

"The Reforms were laws passed to keep sorcerers from feeding people to demons and using their parts to make grimoires and stuff," Elisabeth said, which had a surprising amount of truth compared to most of what she parroted back about sorcerers. "And yes. Keyleth? She's really nice."

And almost as tall as Elisabeth! With antlers that made her even taller! It was great.

[unusual_sith]

Lana was definitely not that tall. But hey, some people were from lower-grav planets or were body type 3 larger variations of human; it happened.

"She is," she agreed. "She's also good in a fight, though hopefully that won't be relevant for a while."

Wait.

"You can make books out of people?" Except for maybe the skin, she couldn't see how.

[raisedbybooklice]

Yeah, eventually Elisabeth was going to have to handle a grimoire called The Book of Eyes and...yeah, you could use all sorts of parts.

"Well, sorcerers and demons can, err, could," Elisabeth said. "Blood in ink, skin to leather or vellum, awful stuff like that. That's why you can't trust sorcerers. They're all just waiting to go back to when they were allowed to do stuff like that."

[unusual_sith]

"Ah, that makes sense." Lana nodded. "There are supposed to be ancient Sith books like that, too, but I haven't gotten to see any yet." They were a bit above her pay grade.