[Memory, PM to Join] Waiting At The Window

[Marzena Idas]

10 Hamis 2702
Brunnhold // Detention

Marzena considered Nicco's question very carefully. There were a lot of things that needed considering, of course: like what you did when you sat together at lunch. Marzena had seen people do it, obviously. They seemed to talk, and laugh, and joke, and whisper, and all sorts of things that seemed like the sorts of somethings that would get in the way of actually eating, which was what lunch was supposed to be for. But Marzena's mother had things called parties, and sometimes they involved people sitting together and eating, and sometimes people were even standing and eating, which was very bad for their digestion most likely, but they only ever seemed to have little food instead of proper food, and so Marzena supposed that someone must have at some point figured out that small food was a viable work-around. It didn't stop the cook from yelling at her when she tried to sneak food from the kitchen or the pantry though, not even when she explained that it was a party and that she was only going to have little food. Experiences like that were a constant reminder of how very confusing and inconsistent adults seemed to spend the vast majority of their time being.

While Marzena had been sure to studiously practice the eating part of a party, though, she hadn't yet got around to the talking part. She could talk to her tutors, of course, but she'd learned at Brunnhold that people here didn't always like that kind of talking, likely because their opinions weren't good enough to hold up to scrutiny. For example, Marzena might have revisited the niceness conversation from earlier, as that definitely seemed like a topic where more talking was required, to help fix Nicco's broken understanding of things; but if Nicco thought that niceness was a waste of time, then she would probably think that a nice conversation was a waste of time too, and Marzena decided that friends probably didn't do things that each other thought was a waste of time. Perhaps Marzena could do what her mother did, which was to ask a very vague question, and then stand there nodding while the other person provided lots and lots of answers. People, especially the men that came to the house for her mother's work, seemed to like it quite a lot when she did that, especially at parties. Nicco wasn't a man though, so perhaps that strategy wouldn't work either.

Regardless, lunch was still several minutes of walking away though, and Nicco's question was far more pressing than her proclamation. It was a question that Marzena knew the answer to, obviously, but she thought about the way that Nicco had answered the question herself, earlier. She hadn't just given her name, she'd given an extra one, a shorter one for only friends to use, and had confirmed - in writing, even! - that she and Marzena were friends, which meant that Marzena was allowed. Was that how friendship worked, then? You had your normal name, and then your special friend name? Was Marzena supposed to offer Nicco a friend name, to show that Marzena thought they were friends too, like a special handshake of names? Would she be upset or offended if Marzena explained that she didn't have one?

In the space of half a second, Marzena considered her options. Her mother called her Zee, but maybe that was too short, and maybe that was a different kind of special name that was just for family, or for mothers. Eventually, she'd find a way to ask if Nicco had other short names too, or if her parents called her by her friend name. Marzena thought about the construction, of how Niccolette shortened to just the beginning part, but while Marzie had a certain ring to it, it didn't sound quite right. Besides, even though Niccolette only lost a syllable when it became Nicco, it lost a whole lot of letters in the process, and technically Marzie was only one letter shorter than Marzena. Just in case that was an unimportant part of friend names, Marzena decided against it, just to be safe. If not Marzie then, and if not Zee -

"My name is Marzena Idas," she answered proudly. All told, her internal deliberations barely took any time at all. "But my friend can call me Zena."

It seemed satisfactory, but Marzena could not be certain. The obvious solution was to watch Nicco's reaction, and see if she approved, but that thought was sideswiped from her mind by a different kind of realisation. "Oh crickets!" she said suddenly, something that her mother said whenever she was trying to stop herself from saying a bad word around her daughter. Marzena wasn't yet sure about Nicco's opinions on bad words: she suspected her new friend was fine, if not fond of them, but now did not seem like the sort of time to risk finding out. "With so many people gone for the Convention, we might actually get to lunch before all the nice stuff is gone!"

There was no time to waste, and Marzena had no intention of letting her first lunch with Nicco be anything but perfect. "Come on!" she urged, suddenly grasping Nicco by the hand, and setting off towards the corridor and the dining hall as fast as her little legs, and her new companion, would allow.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Lunchtime, 10th Hamis, 2702
The Cafeteria

Marzena grasped her hand, and Niccolette took off after her new friend, holding on tightly, shrieking with laughter as she began to run, racing after Marzena out of the classroom, down the hallway. The two first formers squeezed through the crowds of chattering students streaming towards the cafeteria. Fields churned around them, pressing here and there – ranging from unformed mancers like the little girls to older students with the weight of physical, the heat of static, the sharp brightness of living, the strange slippery feeling of quantitative or clairvoyant –

And mixed among it, bursts of emotion and feeling; sometimes, running through it all, Niccolette would feel a faint burst of joy or sadness, a field brimming bastly or sigiling or slanting in some sort of anticipation; occasionally, even, there would be a faint etheric edge to someone, a sensation that swirled in one’s stomach as the mona slid towards the caster.

Niccolette loved it; she loved it all, so much. Her eyes were bright and wide with joy as they reached the cafeteria, and her own field was faintly golden-shifted around her, bright and excited and joyful; the mona that clung to her mingled freely and happily into Marzena’s field, Niccolette effortlessly comfortable with them. The two girls were still holding hands as they made their way into line, and Niccolette was still giggling, just a little. After the tedium of detention, the stillness and the quiet misery of it – even with Marzena’s distraction – the joy of the halls was everything Niccolette could have asked for, the bright liveliness of it all than she had ever known she wanted and more.

Niccolette did not mind so much about food; it did not interest her terribly. She grabbed a tray and made her way along the line, not minding much what was put on the plate: stuffed tomatoes and cooked carrots, the default if one did not care to press for roasted meat or celery soup, and a glass of milk. She paused, wide-eyed, at the dessert, and glanced back at Marzena with a grin, reaching enthusiastically for the last little white baking tray of what was known about the students as ‘volcano chocolate cake’ – a delicious chocolate baked cake with chocolate inside too, which got all soft and melty.

Another student was reaching for it as well, and Niccolette wriggled her hand beneath his, clasped the ramekin firmly, and held, staring up at what had to be a fourth or fifth former without the faintest hint of yielding on her face, her chin lifted. She held, firmly, and waited, eyes narrowing at the older student, until he grumbled something, grabbed two plates of pudding, and stalked away.

Niccolette beamed, and set the precious dessert on her tray. “We shall share it,” she told Marzena, generously, and carefully carried her tray away from the line, out into the cafeteria.

Niccolette waved Marzena over to a table, let the other girl sit, and then wriggled in beside her, sitting close on the bench. Carefully, Niccolette picked up the volcano chocolate cake, and set it down between their two trays. Important business concluded, she poked at her carrots with a fork, made a little face, and set the fork down, turning to Marzena with a bright smile.

“Do you always like to do science?” Niccolette asked. Her field was still vibrant in the air around her; she was not quite capable of caprising yet, but there was a sense of mingling, of reaching; for a young galdor, she had an unusually strong field, sharp at the edges, even if it was still the undefined mass of a mancer. “I suppose you shall study physical conversation? Or static?” Niccolette grinned at the other galdor, food already forgotten.

[Marzena Idas]

10 Hamis 2702
Lunchtime - Brunnhold // Cafeteria

While Niccolette had accepted her food with disinterest, Marzena was not nearly so cavelier. As each item was scooped and served and slopped, Marzena maneuvered her tray carefully, ensuring that things fell where she wanted them to, and most importantly in the correct order. The stuffed tomatoes needed to be to the left of the carrots, of course; a crust of bread, when buttered, would serve as yellow; and then an uncomfortable green paste that might have once been peas or beans glooped its way to the right. There was nothing blue of course, nor indigo, nor violet; such colours were rare, and were seldom good to eat, though one could perhaps make a case for the slightly purple hue of beets, or certain kinds of onion. There were various berries that would have fit the bill, of course, but those weren't here, and they weren't the sorts of things you were supposed to put on the same plate as tomatoes and carrots, either. Marzena did not know much about food, but at least she knew that.

With abject wonder, Marzena watched as Nicco bravely fought over custody of dessert like a mighty warrior facing off against a hatcher. In truth, Marzena was indifferent to the outcome - she'd watched other students covet that particular dessert before, but she'd never sampled it for herself, and did not have the benefit of someone who could have explained the situation - but clearly it was something that Nicco wanted, and that made it extremely important. As the hatcher retreated, Marzena didn't know what she was supposed to do. Should she cheer? Applaud? There were things that ladies did to heroes who won the day in the stories that Marzena read, but those things were gross, and Nicco was a lady too, and she didn't seem like the reading type so it would probably be very confusing for her. Instead, Marzena simply fell into formation behind her, like a pair of birds preparing to migrate, and cast a defiant look of her own in the direction of the defeated hatcher. It felt good, somehow. Not good that she was - what did mama call it? - riding on Nicco's boat-tails, because that meant she hadn't done any work for herself, and doubly bad because boats weren't even supposed to have tails. But good that she had the opportunity. Good that she was part of something. Good that Nicco wanted to share. Good that she'd won a victory for them. If the dessert was shared, that meant the victory was shared too, right? Marzena decided to assume that was correct, because that made things easier to figure, something that you did a lot in science, and that Marzena thought was very sensible indeed.

The sense of victory faded a little, replaced instead by a strange feeling as Marzena settled down at the table. Nicco wasn't just sat at the same table as her: she was she was sat beside her, close and cosy, like the way the other girls and their friends sat. It felt strange, having someone sat so close, not being squeezed up as close to the edge as she could get, as far from anyone who might be unhappy about her Gioran field brushing up against theirs, or all the other reasons that people said they preferred her being far away. With Nicco, it was the opposite. She could feel their fields bumping against each other, and Nicco didn't shy away when they did, either. It was a good kind of strange. A friendly kind of strange. Marzena decided that she liked this new feeling. It made the idea of eating the green mush less gross and unpleasant than it usually seemed, and so Marzena bravely scooped up a lump of it and catapulted it into her mouth, past her tongue and down her throat before she had the misfortune of needing to taste it.

She also liked the way that Nicco asked questions. She was very confident about things, very sure about her answers. Marzena didn't know what that confidence was based on, and suspected that it might have all been built on just guesses, but it was something that seemed to work for Nicco. For a moment, Marzena wondered if Nicco's certainty - right or wrong - had been what landed her in detention, just as Marzena's certainty had. She allowed herself to believe that theory for a moment, to let it become one of those simplification assumptions, and let herself feel the warm glow of solidarity and similarity that it kindled.

Marzena, on the other hand, was not nearly so sure, not when it came to her future prospects, at least. "I do not know very much about magic," she admitted, though there was no shame attached to the statement. They were, after all, both first formers, and so knowing a lot about magic already would have been quite silly. "But I had a lot of tutors back at home. I did not like the things where there was guesswork, or opinions -" She said it as if the very word left a gross taste in her mouth; or perhaps that was the green goop? She smuggled a few carrots into her mouth just in case, before continuing. "- because that stuff is all squishy. I like things with facts. Things like science, and maths, and the parts of history that are dates and events, but not the parts that are all guesswork and people's motivations and things."

Her brow furrowed slightly, another fork of food hesitating a few inches from her mouth as she thought. "A lot of learning seems to be about pretending you know what people were thinking and why they did things. I don't like that. It is all messy, and it is easy to be wrong. Things like science have right answers, and they have specific ways to work those answers out. There aren't any rules or equations for people's feelings and thinkings. That's just -"

She waved a hand vaguely, dismissively. "- gumbo jumbo."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Lunchtime, 10th Hamis, 2702
The Cafeteria

Niccolette listened attentively, her elbows propped up on the table, looking curiously at the other galdor. She nodded in agreement when Marzena said she had had many tutors. She giggled a little at the phrase gumbo jumbo. “I agree,” Niccolette said, solemnly. “It is very hard to know why people do things – sometimes they break promises, or they do not make any sense at all, and it is not fair.”

“I had tutors too,” Niccolette said, cheerfully. The benches were a little high for her, and her toes only just touched the ground when she concentrated and squirmed downwards; now, sitting upright, she forgot, and let her feet swing a little off the ground. “And I had to study all these things also, science and math and history and all.” Niccolette bit her lip, dramatically glancing around the cafeteria as if to check that no one was listening.

“But…” Niccolette leaned in, just a little, beckoning Marzena forward too. “I discovered a secret,” she grinned at the other girl. “If you have tutors! It does not work so well on teachers, or I have not yet figured it out. I am not sure. But sometimes, if you are a little naughty and someone wants to make you do something, they will offer you something.”

Niccolette’s eyes sparkled. “It is called a bribe,” she explained, her voice low, hushed, and glittering with excitement. “It is very nice.”

The trick, Niccolette had learned, was to be only a little naughty. If she was too naughty, then she might really get in trouble, and that was not fair, and there was never any magic involved. So it wouldn’t do to make a mess or to ruin something. It was best, she had found, to say that she was very tired or her tummy hurt, and so she did not wish to read her book or to do maths. Then sometimes she would be offered dessert or something boring. Once an offer had been made, Niccolette knew, it was only a matter of waiting until the right thing was offered. And once a tutor had offered magic once, then they would offer it again! It had worked very many times.

“So,” The little Bastian sat upright again, straight-backed on the bench. “In this way I learned very much about magic from my tutors, even if they said that we had to do only math or science or read books. I got to see all five types of conversation!”

“For you, I think, physical or static. Physical is very nice,” Niccolette said, generously. “My tutor Miss Ferralioli, she showed me physical conversation. She used a spell to lift a very large rock! And another which makes your voice very soft even when you scream,” Niccolette’s eyes glowed. “And some static also – you can use it to make water boil, or to light a fire! She was not very nice, but she gave me very many bribes,” Niccolette grinned, a little viciously. “To learn these you must do very much of math and science, so you shall like it.”

“There is clairvoyant, also! This is how seer stones work,” Niccolette explained, “so of course I have seen this also. And quantitative conversation! It is very nice, you ask a question to the mona, and they give you the answer! It is not so easy really because to ask the question correctly can be hard,” Nicolette nodded again.

“There is also living conversation,” The Bastian leaned forward again, her face bright. “It is – it is amazing,” Niccolette whispered. She thought of Miss Andresano then, and it hurt and Niccolette did not want to think of it anymore. “It can do many things, but mostly it is used on people, to change the body like a science! I shall study it when I am bigger,” Niccolette said, solemnly.

“I can show a spell if you like,” Niccolette offered, bright-eyed. She had not so much as touched her carrots or tomato, much too focused on her enthusiastic explanation.“It is quantitative! It is a very nice one. I promise.”

[Marzena Idas]

10 Hamis 2702
Lunchtime - Brunnhold // Cafeteria

Bribes sounded like brides, and Marzena was certain she did not like the sound of them. Brides were part of weddings, and nothing good-sounding came out of weddings. Grooms were even worse, because they sounded like brooms, but also, grooms were supposed to brush things and clean up after things - using brooms, which reinforced Marzena's theory - and yet when people got married, it always seemed to be the brides that did those things, unless you were rich enough to hire maids to do those things. It was never, ever the groom, which is the sort of thing that her mother would have scoffed at and called typical, and based on the boys that Marzena had met so far at Brunnhold, she was inclined to agree.

She squirmed a little as Nicco explained her strategy, struggling most of all with the underlying premise. If someone wanted you to do something, there was usually a reason for it, especially if they were a tutor. After all, tutors were paid to ask you to do things, and if they didn't do it, they weren't doing their job, and they weren't earning their money. That did not seem particularly nice to Marzena: doing your job was supposed to be a good thing, and if you did something that stopped someone else from doing a good thing, that meant you were doing a bad thing, by default. It was just simple mathematics. But Marzena had already learned that Nicco had complicated opinions about niceness, and so there seemed to be little to gain from pointing out this simple fact to her new friend. There was a phrase that Marzena had heard, which stuck in her mind like a song you could only half remember: pick your battles. It had been in one of the war stories that one of her tutors let her read when they were studying history, something that was supposed to help her put the events in the proper historical contest. It was part of strategy, and it meant that it was silly to start a fight if you know you were going to lose. You were supposed to pick your battles cleverly, and trying to convince Nicco that niceness was a good idea did not seem like a battle to be having on their first day of friendship. She would probably have to wait a long time to bring up that topic again, until their friendship was really strong and less likely to break. Maybe even as long as two weeks.

It wasn't just the premise of willful disobedience that Marzena struggled with, though: it was the notion of needing to manipulate her tutors into teaching her things. That was, after all, their job, and Marzena had never found herself needing to trick a teacher into such things: she simply asked, and the tutors provided. But then, Marzena's tutors had, for the most part, been nice people. They liked when Marzena wanted extra things, especially when Marzena managed to finish the normal things quickly, more quickly than they expected. It was funny, Marzena thought, because it kept happening, and yet the tutors kept being surprised. No matter how quickly she finished her fifty questions, her maths tutor never thought to prepare a hundred questions instead. It was naive, Marzena thought, but in a good way, like how people in stories thought it was cute or adorable when people were confused and did naive things. There was one story, about a girl who travelled to Mugroba, and who did all of the things wrong, and the Mugrobi thought her mistakes were sweet and funny, because at least she was trying. That was how Marzena felt about her tutors.

Perhaps there was some merit to what Nicco was saying, though. None of her tutors had ever offered to teach her magic. Perhaps they would have, though, if Marzena had ever thought to ask. It was something that she allowed herself a moment to regret, but only a moment: because while Nicco was a friend and not a tutor, she was offering to teach her magic. Was that part of being friends too? Or was this just something special just because she was Nicco? Marzena had hung off her every word as she had explained the different forms of conversation: she wasn't quite sure how maths and science could relate to something as different as magic, but physical sounded like physics, so perhaps Nicco was on to something there. Then again, Nicco had described living conversation as being like science, but it sounded more like biology or medicine to Marzena, and everyone good at science knew that those weren't really proper sciences, so Marzena held onto her scepticism for a little longer. But it didn't matter, because quantitative was neither of those things, and Marzena very much liked the sound of a kind of magic that gave you answers, even if it was difficult to ask the write questions: she was sure that she would definitely be smart enough to make something like that look easy.

Marzena was very careful about her reaction to Nicco's offer, though. There were many pieces of advice that her mother had given her, over the years and even more so in the lead up to her leaving for Brunnhold. One of them was do not be too keen. It was part of a longer piece of advice that had made Zena feel a little bit squirmy and uncomfortable, but most of it seemed to be about not getting too excited. Marzena had imagined it as being like puppies at dinner time. Puppies could get excited, and bounce around, and get in the way; but if the puppy was calm, and patient, it actually made things easier. The food was coming to you anyway, so best to conserve energy and be patient. Only this time, it was magic lessons, and not puppy food.

Carefully, Marzena placed one hand on top of the other, the way her mother did when she was talking to men in the sitting room about work things, only Marzena did it on the edge of the table instead of on her knee, because the cafeteria's bench seats made it hard to sit the way that her mother sat. She nodded along to Nicco's offer, but forced herself to take a small breath before she spoke. A tiny tug of a smile pulled at the side of her mouth, as she realised the opportunity that had presented itself before her. "Yes please," she said, with what she hoped was the right amount of enthusiasm. "That would be very nice of you."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Lunchtime, 10th Hamis, 2702
The Cafeteria

Waiting for Zena to answer her question was absolutely the hardest thing Niccolette had ever done, but she did wait, wide-eyed, wnd sat very, very still. Of course they were already friends now, but this was the most important moment of their friendship so far, because it was about magic. Naturally, Niccolette could not be too close to anyone who was scared of magic or who was a crybaby or who asked about backlash or who said that she was too nervous or who did not think they should do it before they had learned it in class. Niccolette could be friends with such people, if they were interesting in other ways, she supposed, but she very much hoped that Zena would not prove to be one of them.

Niccolette was so relieved at the other girl’s answer that to understand took her an entire blink - and then the Bastian began to giggle, delighted by both Zena’s response and by her teasing. “Oh!” Niccolette said, happily. “Well,” the Bastian giggled again. “I can be nice! Only polite is dull.”

“Now!” Niccolette said happily, turning to more important things. “It is only a little spell, but it is okay for now.” Niccolette made a face. “I shall need your help,” she told Marzena. “Here is what we shall do. You may take some of my carrots, and put them in your napkin. Do not tell me how many! I shall not look! I swear it by Her fearful symmetry,” it was the strongest oath the Bastian knew. “Then I shall ask the mona how many carrots are in the napkin. For knowledge! It is quite noble.”

Niccolette raised both hands to her face. She did not cover one eye with each hand - no, Zena might think she had peeked. Instead, she put her left hand sideways across her eyes, and then her right on top of it. Then, just to safe she, she turned dramatically away, her hair bouncing against the back of her green jacket.

“Tell me when you are ready!” Niccolette said, not remotely able to suppress the excitement in her voice.

When Zena told her that the carrots were hidden, Niccolette turned back. She took a deep breath, and began to cast, opening the quantitative spell with an invocation to the mona. It was a general counting spell, and she tempered it carefully with the precise words for this situation, even though she did not quite know how to say carrot. She hoped the mona would understand all the same.

Miss Andresano had taught her this spell. She had never needed to bribe Miss Andresano, even before her test when really Niccolette was not meant to be shown any magic. Her parents had forbidden the magic and once - when she had hidden outside the door while her father dismissed Miss Ferralioli, Niccolette had heard him say it was because they couldn’t be sure if she was a passive yet.

Niccolette knew that to be true; she understood that there were passives and that they were bad, and that one should be frightened of them but also sorry for them. That was a bit confusing, but Niccolette felt she could manage both at once. She did not like to think about that moment very much, not because her father had said she might be a passive, but because he had said it - he said it like Niccolette had accepted her carrots. As if he did not care.

Miss Andresano had cared. Niccolette had cried only once before her test, and she had not been able to explain why when Miss Andresano asked her, even though normally she was quite good at answering questions. But Miss Andresano had hugged her, and then she had shown Niccolette a spell of living magic, and Niccolette had thought it the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

After her test, but before she had abandoned Niccolette, Miss Andresano had taught her this spell. She had made Niccolette promise to keep it a secret, but Niccolette thought that that was surely only at home, and not here at Brunnhold. And, anyway, she was not just showing anyone; she was showing Zena, her friend, and she thought Miss Andresano would not have minded. And if she did, Niccolette reminded herself against the little ache in her heart, it was her fault for leaving.

The monite that Niccolette recited was clear and perfectly enunciated, each syllable delivered with flawless precision. Her mancer’s field shifted etheric in the air around them, and Marzena would feel the cast echoing through her field as well, like a gentle tug of the mona. Niccolette curled the spell with the last of her neatly memorized phrases, and waited.

The mona answered, but it was not so good as Niccolette had hoped. She lifted her chin, undaunted by her lack of clear success, and confessed it all. “I did not know the word for carrots, so I did not do the tempering properly.” Niccolette said, calmly. “But they have told me it is more than three, and less than seven.”

Rolls

(She got a 2)

[Marzena Idas]

10 Hamis 2702
Lunchtime - Brunnhold // Cafeteria

Nicco seemed very pleased about her answer. That seemed very important, and Zena was careful to keep it in mind as she thought about what had happened. There had been a rush of excitement as Nicco had uttered the magic word - help - and Zena had eagerly scrambled to obey, scooping carrots into the indicated napkin and then, as slowly and carefully as she could, removing a few of them just in case Nicco was somehow using a special trick instead of actual magic. You see, there were people called wicks, and they were like galdori who weren't quite as good at things. Zena's mother had explained to it once, by taking Zena's half-finished glass of milk at bedtime, and adding the same amount of water to it. When Zena had tasted it, it had tasted gross - that, her mother had said, was the problem with wicks. A galdor was a nice tasty glass of milk, and a human was a nice useful glass of water, but a wick was less than both, and worse than both, and not something that anyone should have wanted around at all.

Something else about wicks, that Zena had learned a different time from one of her tutors, was that they had a kind of magic that wasn't actually magic. They used it to steal people's money, her tutor had said, by doing things like counting cards, and sleight of hand, and having things up their sleeves. It did not sound very nice at all, and Zena did not think that Nicco would have done something as not nice as that to a person she said was a friend, but this was science, and in science your feelings did not matter, and so after Zena had removed some of the carrots that she'd initially added to the napkin, she had transferred a few from her own plate onto Nicco's, just in case Nicco had counted how many were there in the first place, and was going to cheat things by doing maths.

Marzena had announced that her task was complete; and if she had been excited at the mention of the magic word help it transformed into wonder as she heard Nicco begin to utter real proper magic words in monite. Wicks didn't do that with their tricks, she was quite sure of that, and she felt her little heart begin to believe completely in Nicco and her special spell. But then her answer had come, and the excuses with it. More than three. Less than seven. Something about tempering. Something about words. That did sound like the kind of trick that a wick might do, because her tutor told them they used distractions, and vagueness, and other kinds of little lies to trick you - which was why they were called tricks. Marzena hated vagueness most of all, because it was confusing, and difficult. She did not like it when she was told that dinner would be ready around a particular time, because that did not really mean anything. It meant doubly not anything when it was her mother talking about when she would be home, too, because around a particular time in those instances seemed to mean definitely after then, possibly by quite a long time.

But not all vagueness was bad. There was vagueness in science and mathematics too. There was a thing called approximately, which was when you made some small guesses or assumptions and got an answer that was mostly right, but not quite definitely. But with approximately, you still did sums, and you usually ended up with one number that was almost right, not three numbers - four, five, and six - like Nicco had presented. There was a thing called errors as well, which was a special bonus part of approximately, where you sat down and thought really hard about why your approximately might not be quite right. When they had measured the wall in Niccos, for example, Marzena had guessed her height approximately, so there was a chance the measurement was not exactly correct. But later, if she asked Nicco how tall she was - or better yet, measured for herself - there was still a bit of wiggle room, because you measured height in feet and inches, and if something was only a little bit of an inch, or a little bit less than an inch, those things could add up and stack up when you had more and more of them, and that was where your errors came from. On the ruler too, there was wiggle room between the lines, and when you were using triangles that could translate into bigger and bigger differences too. Marzena found it frustrating, because science and mathematics were supposed to be precise, but at least when they were vague, they were very specific about why they were vague.

Quietly, Marzena considered whether Nicco had been specific enough about her vagueness for it to count as being science. She had, after all, identified where her vagueness was coming from, so she knew that there were errors. But she did not have numbers, and there were not really measurements, just the mona, so that made things tricky. There was also the question of whether or not Nicco's spell was better than if she had just guessed. More than three was quite likely, because there were only a few numbers smaller than it, and a whole lot of numbers that were bigger, so that was something Nicco might have been able to guess. But what about the seven? Marzena found herself counting, and doing sums, trying to figure out what fraction of the carrots seven was, and if that was a big fraction or a small fraction, and -

She stopped herself, realising what she was doing. Nicco had tried to show her a thing, and here she was trying to decide whether it was a real thing or a trick. That was not very nice, because if there was one thing that Marzena knew about friends - and she did not know much, which meant that the things she did know were a very important big fraction of that knowledge - it was that friends trusted each other. So if Nicco was her friend, and Nicco said that she had done magic and not a trick, that was what Marzena would believe, because that's what friends did.

Marzena's mouth split into a broad, beaming grin. "There were five!" she answered, as encouragingly as she could manage. "You pronounced the monite very well, too," she added, with a nod of confident certainty. "And it is not surprising that the mona might not have known exactly the right number, because they are very small, and the napkin was very in the way, and I do not think that the mona have fingers or toes to help them with counting things."

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Lunchtime, 10th Hamis, 2702
The Cafeteria

Niccolette’s face lit up at Zena’s answer. Five was certainly more than three and less than seven! Niccolette wished she could have done the spell properly, but she had done the best she could, and she supposed -

The Bastian’s eyes went wide at Zena’s next words and she gasped. “No! They can do it! I made the mistake,” Niccolette said, fiercely, owning it with her chin raised. She refused, absolutely, to let the mona take the blame for her mistake; she refused it with everything she had.

“If you have the will and the words,” Niccolette said, “they can do anything.” The pledge contained all the intensity her small body could muster and more beside; she was almost shaking with the force of it.

She reached out and took Zena’s hands in hers, squeezing them a little bit. “Most people do not have the will,” Niccolette said, and her tone left no doubt that she did not consider herself one of these people. “And there are many words even all the galdori do not yet know. But someday we will.”

The Bastian let go and beamed at her new friend. “I shall try again,” she said, grandly, her blood rushing hot through her veins. She had but to think a little more and she knew what she had done wrong; she knew what she ought to have said. “I have another idea for how to temper the spell. You may choose the carrots again.”

Carefully, Niccolette covered her eyes again with her hands, very thoroughly, and turned back away. She held there on the bench, waiting patiently, and when Marzena told her it was time, Niccolette turned back. She took a deep breath, and focused on the spell, chanting the words with the same deliberate precision, her field flexing etheric once more. There was another a soft shifting of quantitative mona swirling in the air around her. She substituted a few phrases this time, careful and deliberate, and curled the spell at the end, bright-eyed and expectant.

“Six,” Niccolette said, and she did not need Marzena to confirm that she had it right. She knew it all through her; she knew it in her heart and her bones. She knew it as if she herself could see through the napkin. Carefully, Niccolette closed her eyes, and reached out to each carrot, one by one, her small finger hovering confidently over each of them. “One, two, three, four, five and six.”

The Bastian was breathing a little hard now, and she opened her eyes again and grinned at Marzena, her heart pounding in her chest. She wiped her nose on her hand, feeling a funny dry ache in it, but the joy of casting was too great for it to bother her.

“There! You see?” Niccolette said, happily. “This is what happens when it is done properly. It is as I said! To find the words can be hard. But it does not matter how many napkins there are, or how in the way you put them.”