Magic Under Construction: TOMU 2-15
May. 17th, 2011 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinStarted: 5/17/2011
Status: Paused for reflection.
Last Update: 4:00
Word Count: ~2200
Hours Writing: 2.5
[2.5 hours]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling, you know... or maybe you haven't had enough weekend flings to know that?"
"Well, you're just... not very obvious about it," I said. "Most of the stuff that you're interested in, you're kind of..."
"In-your-face about it?" Steff said. "Not that I'm not sincerely and passionately serious about each and every little thing that I do, Mack, but you really shouldn't try to judge the depths of people's beliefs by their willingness to wave them around in front of other people. Seeking After Truth isn't really about proclaiming, anyway. It's about asking questions."
"Well, I don't see you doing that in particular very often, either," I said.
"It isn't necessarily about asking other people questions," Steff said.
[]
"Anyway, that's what the whole Mechan thing was about, for me," Steff said. "It's not that I necessarily believed that 'science' has all the answers, but those guys aren't afraid to ask questions."
"So... just to be clear, you're not into that anymore?" I asked.
"That one you got right," Steff said. "I'm still friends with some of them, ish."
"What made you stop believing?" I asked.
"I never really believed in the first place," she said. "But I didn't disbelieve. Like I said, it was about the questions. The only problem is that Mechans seem to get too attached to their favored answers, and they cling to them even when it becomes pretty obvious that they're following the wrong track."
"Yeah, well, you have to be pretty good at ignoring the reality that we live in in order to think reviving scientific principles of inquiry is a good idea," I said.
"Careful," Steff said. "Don't forget that your Little Missus is still a Mechan."
"Yeah... I actually wasn't sure about that," I said. "We kind of fell into the habit of not talking about that quite a while back. When you said that you weren't one any more, I was actually kind of hoping that meant she wasn't, either."
"Sorry," Steff said. "Though if it makes you feel any better, she's one of the less woo-woo ones. She doesn't believe the sun is a big orb that the world floats around, or that the stars are other suns that are just really far away..."
"They believe that?"
"Some people do," Steff said. "It comes from the idea that if all the cosmological stuff just sort of happened, then it might have happened more than once. Anyway, Amy doesn't beileve all that. She doesn't even necessarily believe that our world follows 'scientific' laws, necessarily... I think she's sort of hedging her bets on that, though. I'm not sure she's ruled it out."
"How could she be a Mechan if she doesn't 'necessarily' believe in science?" I asked.
"Well, like I said: she doesn't believe this world necessarily follows scientific laws," Steff said. "But she's pretty convinced that other worlds might, and that it's possible to import science into this one. Like if someone brought a scientific gizmo to our world, it might still work... or even create a sort of pocket around itself where it's possible to do more science. Some of the otherworlder-type Mechans actually believe that it should be possible to somehow invoke the rules of other worlds in this one."
"What, like if they believe in science really hard and then our universe will just sort of sit up and beg at their command?" I said. "That's not how it works. I mean, yeah, I could see where they'd get the idea when there are so many bad pop thaumatology books out there basically telling them that reality is subjective, but they're misunderstanding some pretty basic notions. The Inconsistency Principle doesn't actually mean..."
"Simmer down, []... you don't have to convince me," Steff said. "I'm just telling you what Amy believes."
"I thought you said her beliefs weren't 'woo-woo'," I said.
"I said 'less woo-woo'," Steff said. "Compared to people who believe that the stars are distant suns."
"How would that even work?" I asked. "If they were farther away than 'our sun', they'd be outside the dome of the sky."
"Yeah, they have a theory for that, but it pretty much defines the phrase 'out there'," Steff said.
[]
"Thanks! I was actually just having a conversation about them with your, uh, friend," she said.
"You mean Amaranth?" I guessed.
"Oh, Amy's actually Mack's girlfriend," Steff said. "I'm her uhfriend. But don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make."
"She told me you'd be here... she asked me to tell you she's not going to make it to lunch, because she's... huh. I don't actually have a way to finish that sentence that doesn't sound like a euphemism anyway, so I'll just say that she's having some sex."
"Um, okay," I said.
"Sorry if I'm the bearer of bad news," she said.
"It's not bad news, exactly," I said. " I just... she might have waited. We did have plans."
"Just lunch," Steff said. "I'm pretty sure at least one more opportunity will come up this year."
"And doesn't she kind of have to...?" the woman said.
"Sometimes," I said. "But it's not like she's going to keel over "
"We have been kind of monopolizing her time since she got here," Steff said. "Maybe she was feeling a bit... peckerish? Or she saw someone in dire need. You know she feels duty-bound to moisten dry spells. Or maybe an opportunity just came up... and New Girl, you weren't kidding about how hard it is to not say things that sound like euphemisms."
"Oh, sorry," she said. "I'm Eloise. Eloise Desrosiers... I think you're in one of my classes, Mack."
"Oh?" I said. "I'm sorry, I don't really... notice... people."
"Not above the neck, anyway," Steff said.
[2 hours in.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling, you know... or maybe you haven't had enough weekend flings to know that?"
"Well, you're just... not very obvious about it," I said. "Most of the stuff that you're interested in, you're kind of..."
"In-your-face about it?" Steff said. "Not that I'm not sincerely and passionately serious about each and every little thing that I do, Mack, but you really shouldn't try to judge the depths of people's beliefs by their willingness to wave them around in front of other people. Seeking After Truth isn't really about proclaiming, anyway. It's about asking questions."
"Well, I don't see you doing that in particular very often, either," I said.
"It isn't necessarily about asking other people questions," Steff said.
[]
"Anyway, that's what the whole Mechan thing was about, for me," Steff said. "It's not that I necessarily believed that 'science' has all the answers, but those guys aren't afraid to ask questions."
"So... just to be clear, you're not into that anymore?" I asked.
"That one you got right," Steff said. "I'm still friends with some of them, ish."
"What made you stop believing?" I asked.
"I never really believed in the first place," she said. "But I didn't disbelieve. Like I said, it was about the questions. The only problem is that Mechans seem to get too attached to their favored answers, and they cling to them even when it becomes pretty obvious that they're following the wrong track."
"Yeah, well, you have to be pretty good at ignoring the reality that we live in in order to think reviving scientific principles of inquiry is a good idea," I said.
[1.5 hours. There was a request in one of the lecture chapters for more info on Steff's Arkhanism, so I'm working it in here.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling."
[1 hour. Jumping around. This is going to be a piece of many patches.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am."
[1/2 hour. Slow beginning, transitioning away from the class.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
Status: Paused for reflection.
Last Update: 4:00
Word Count: ~2200
Hours Writing: 2.5
[2.5 hours]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling, you know... or maybe you haven't had enough weekend flings to know that?"
"Well, you're just... not very obvious about it," I said. "Most of the stuff that you're interested in, you're kind of..."
"In-your-face about it?" Steff said. "Not that I'm not sincerely and passionately serious about each and every little thing that I do, Mack, but you really shouldn't try to judge the depths of people's beliefs by their willingness to wave them around in front of other people. Seeking After Truth isn't really about proclaiming, anyway. It's about asking questions."
"Well, I don't see you doing that in particular very often, either," I said.
"It isn't necessarily about asking other people questions," Steff said.
[]
"Anyway, that's what the whole Mechan thing was about, for me," Steff said. "It's not that I necessarily believed that 'science' has all the answers, but those guys aren't afraid to ask questions."
"So... just to be clear, you're not into that anymore?" I asked.
"That one you got right," Steff said. "I'm still friends with some of them, ish."
"What made you stop believing?" I asked.
"I never really believed in the first place," she said. "But I didn't disbelieve. Like I said, it was about the questions. The only problem is that Mechans seem to get too attached to their favored answers, and they cling to them even when it becomes pretty obvious that they're following the wrong track."
"Yeah, well, you have to be pretty good at ignoring the reality that we live in in order to think reviving scientific principles of inquiry is a good idea," I said.
"Careful," Steff said. "Don't forget that your Little Missus is still a Mechan."
"Yeah... I actually wasn't sure about that," I said. "We kind of fell into the habit of not talking about that quite a while back. When you said that you weren't one any more, I was actually kind of hoping that meant she wasn't, either."
"Sorry," Steff said. "Though if it makes you feel any better, she's one of the less woo-woo ones. She doesn't believe the sun is a big orb that the world floats around, or that the stars are other suns that are just really far away..."
"They believe that?"
"Some people do," Steff said. "It comes from the idea that if all the cosmological stuff just sort of happened, then it might have happened more than once. Anyway, Amy doesn't beileve all that. She doesn't even necessarily believe that our world follows 'scientific' laws, necessarily... I think she's sort of hedging her bets on that, though. I'm not sure she's ruled it out."
"How could she be a Mechan if she doesn't 'necessarily' believe in science?" I asked.
"Well, like I said: she doesn't believe this world necessarily follows scientific laws," Steff said. "But she's pretty convinced that other worlds might, and that it's possible to import science into this one. Like if someone brought a scientific gizmo to our world, it might still work... or even create a sort of pocket around itself where it's possible to do more science. Some of the otherworlder-type Mechans actually believe that it should be possible to somehow invoke the rules of other worlds in this one."
"What, like if they believe in science really hard and then our universe will just sort of sit up and beg at their command?" I said. "That's not how it works. I mean, yeah, I could see where they'd get the idea when there are so many bad pop thaumatology books out there basically telling them that reality is subjective, but they're misunderstanding some pretty basic notions. The Inconsistency Principle doesn't actually mean..."
"Simmer down, []... you don't have to convince me," Steff said. "I'm just telling you what Amy believes."
"I thought you said her beliefs weren't 'woo-woo'," I said.
"I said 'less woo-woo'," Steff said. "Compared to people who believe that the stars are distant suns."
"How would that even work?" I asked. "If they were farther away than 'our sun', they'd be outside the dome of the sky."
"Yeah, they have a theory for that, but it pretty much defines the phrase 'out there'," Steff said.
[]
"Thanks! I was actually just having a conversation about them with your, uh, friend," she said.
"You mean Amaranth?" I guessed.
"Oh, Amy's actually Mack's girlfriend," Steff said. "I'm her uhfriend. But don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make."
"She told me you'd be here... she asked me to tell you she's not going to make it to lunch, because she's... huh. I don't actually have a way to finish that sentence that doesn't sound like a euphemism anyway, so I'll just say that she's having some sex."
"Um, okay," I said.
"Sorry if I'm the bearer of bad news," she said.
"It's not bad news, exactly," I said. " I just... she might have waited. We did have plans."
"Just lunch," Steff said. "I'm pretty sure at least one more opportunity will come up this year."
"And doesn't she kind of have to...?" the woman said.
"Sometimes," I said. "But it's not like she's going to keel over "
"We have been kind of monopolizing her time since she got here," Steff said. "Maybe she was feeling a bit... peckerish? Or she saw someone in dire need. You know she feels duty-bound to moisten dry spells. Or maybe an opportunity just came up... and New Girl, you weren't kidding about how hard it is to not say things that sound like euphemisms."
"Oh, sorry," she said. "I'm Eloise. Eloise Desrosiers... I think you're in one of my classes, Mack."
"Oh?" I said. "I'm sorry, I don't really... notice... people."
"Not above the neck, anyway," Steff said.
[2 hours in.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling, you know... or maybe you haven't had enough weekend flings to know that?"
"Well, you're just... not very obvious about it," I said. "Most of the stuff that you're interested in, you're kind of..."
"In-your-face about it?" Steff said. "Not that I'm not sincerely and passionately serious about each and every little thing that I do, Mack, but you really shouldn't try to judge the depths of people's beliefs by their willingness to wave them around in front of other people. Seeking After Truth isn't really about proclaiming, anyway. It's about asking questions."
"Well, I don't see you doing that in particular very often, either," I said.
"It isn't necessarily about asking other people questions," Steff said.
[]
"Anyway, that's what the whole Mechan thing was about, for me," Steff said. "It's not that I necessarily believed that 'science' has all the answers, but those guys aren't afraid to ask questions."
"So... just to be clear, you're not into that anymore?" I asked.
"That one you got right," Steff said. "I'm still friends with some of them, ish."
"What made you stop believing?" I asked.
"I never really believed in the first place," she said. "But I didn't disbelieve. Like I said, it was about the questions. The only problem is that Mechans seem to get too attached to their favored answers, and they cling to them even when it becomes pretty obvious that they're following the wrong track."
"Yeah, well, you have to be pretty good at ignoring the reality that we live in in order to think reviving scientific principles of inquiry is a good idea," I said.
[1.5 hours. There was a request in one of the lecture chapters for more info on Steff's Arkhanism, so I'm working it in here.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am. See, that's funny because 'fundament' also means 'ass'... the things you learn from the ethernet."
"Yeah, I actually knew that. That was basically my grandmother's one joke," I said. "Playing on 'fundament'... she didn't have a lot of patience for what gets identified as Khersian fundamentalism. She used to say this thing about not knowing the firmament from their fundament... she never explained it to me, but it made me curious enough to look it up. When I found out, I couldn't believe she could bring herself to say it."
"I can't believe it, either," Steff said. "Did 'joke' mean something different in the mid-hundreds, or whenever she was born? Or was this some special []religious[] meaning?"
[]
"I'm kind of surprised you're still into that," I said.
"What, you thought I would have seen the error of my ways and come to Khersis by now?" Steff said, with a touch of gentle mocking that I probably deserved.
As a child, I'd seen little reason to doubt my grandmother on matters of religion... she spoke authoritatively enough that I had taken her for an authority. Even when I'd disliked what she was saying, I'd seen no grounds for disagreeing... and when she told me that the Arkhanites were a wicked and dangerous cult, I'd seen no reason not to accept that as the truth. Arkhanites were practically invisible in Magisterian society, especially in the conservative small towns of the Middle-Westering lands.
Of course, she hadn't called them "Arkhanites". Martha Blaise only grudgingly gave the recognition that came with the divine letter Kh to Khersis and the most active of the other major gods. Any doubt as to the full divinity of a power, any ambiguity as to the nature of a being, was enough for her to withhold even the tacit respect of a sacred name.
As Arkhanos was pretty much the god of ambiguity to begin with, she'd had no hesitation in outright declaring the Veiled One to be a false god.
"That's not what I meant," I said. "I just... I wasn't sure how, you know, into Arkhanos you really were."
"I had the Veiled Eye tattooed on my tummy," Steff said. "That's not usually the signifier of a weekend fling."
[1 hour. Jumping around. This is going to be a piece of many patches.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.
[][][][][][]
"Notice something?" Steff asked.
"The elves and dwarves are pretty much in groups by themselves," I said. "Or at least, not groups with each other."
"The great melting pot," Steff said. "It's less like fondue and more like really lumpy gravy."
"Well, it's still kind of a new thing," I said. "The center's got elves and dwarves hanging out in campus instead of under or outside it. That's a start, right? I mean, it's progress."
"Progress towards something," Steff said.
"Maybe some elves will end up joining a game of stone soldiers," I said.
"Not likely," Steff said. "Elves prefer physical contests. They'd get competitive about carving figurines before they'd care who can move them around the most cunningly
"No race is a monolith," I said, recalling the lecture.
"Except gargoyles," Steff said.
"Okay, except gargoyles."
"And stone giants," she said. "And petroans. And some golems."
"I meant metaphorically, smartass," I said. "Just because there's an overall preference in elven culture for physical achievements doesn't mean there won't be some elven students who are intrigued by the game enough to pick it up, and that'll lead to elves and dwarves hanging out..."
"Just like a fellowship in a storybook," Steff said. "You sound really weirdly invested in this, Mack."
I came very close to blurting out a denial, but then I stopped and realized that I was. I really did care about whether or not the two supposed "rival" races came together, or at least got along. More than that, I cared about the Arch's overall mission... whether it was a token gesture from the university or not, I didn't want to see it fizzle out like a miscast fireball and just become the Other Student Union with the Other Dining Hall and a bunch of exhibits doomed to become increasingly outdated and ignored with each passing year until finally one day they're removed to make room for something else and nobody says anything because nobody even noticed they were there in the first place.
"I guess maybe I am," I said.
"What, do you think that if elves can cuddle up to dwarves then maybe humanity will get all snuggly with you?" Steff said.
"Hey... first of all, at least one human is already pretty darn snuggly with me," I said. "And second of all it's not like I magically discovered the idea of racial tolerance the first time my skin caught on fire. If anything, being a half-demon... and the fact that I ended up in my grandmother's care and teaching for nine years... kind of discouraged my interest in the subject. I spent almost a decade hearing almost nothing good about anyone that wasn't human, and having my own fundamental wickedness rubbed in my face every day..."
"If I could rub my fundamental wickedness in my face, I'd never leave home," Steff said. "Just kidding, of course... I totally can, and yet here I am."
[1/2 hour. Slow beginning, transitioning away from the class.]
Given how close the initial vote had been... and how eager Hart seemed to be to share on the subject... it was really no surprise that the class voted for Thyleans next time, especially with Fenwick Hall endorsing it in the name of fairness.
I still wasn't a fan of Fenwick's... well, I couldn't really put my finger on what I didn't like about him, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of him. Even when he didn't sound smug and wasn't saying anything condescending, there was just something about him that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a case of a bad first impression, or maybe we were just the sort of people who would be destined to not get along with each other no matter what.
Still, that didn't mean that I wouldn't give him a chance. It wasn't like I'd never been the victim of a bad first impression myself.
The class had definitely had a rocky beginning, but it had really come together by the end. A lot of students seemed in no hurry to leave at the official end of the period, and neither of the instructors was rushing off, either. I considered staying for a few minutes, but then the lore teacher started sharing a story about attending an Imperial Symposium on dragon conservation.Wwhile his story about being invited to dine at the same table as Vera and Magisterion might have been interesting in another context, the juxtaposition of dragons and dinner was... off-putting.
I definitely wouldn't have picked dragons as a topic for the class but I had to admit that it had given me some other things to think about than their dietary habits.
What struck me in retrospect was that for all that Fenwick seemed utterly in love with dragons as a subject, he seemed to have a much less romanticized view of them than most people. The way he described their world view made them sound petty... petty on a grand and majestic scale, maybe, but petty nonetheless.