…or, A Scene From Afar
Saturday, Astera 12th 222
On Saturday morning, the dorm was slow to wake up. At least, it seemed that way on the guys’ side. Once I was out of my room, I could hear activity, conversation, and music around the corner where the girls were.
My room was the second from the end, only one door away from girl territory. I headed away from the noise, towards the corner where the guys’ hallways joined. That was where the bathroom door was. The bathrooms took up a lot of the space in the center of the floor, because they had individual showers.
That was the reason I’d put my vote for Pelinor in the first place, despite the Freshmen area being a couple of floors up. Call it two parts shyness, one part self-preservation, but I didn’t really feature myself showering with a bunch of guys I barely knew every day.
The water was running in one of the twelve showers, and a well-tanned guy whose name I thought was Michael was shaving at one of the sinks. There were four of them on each side of a wall that stood in the middle of the room like an island.
Eight sinks for up to forty people to share. I was betting that worked out better on the weekends than during the school week. The rooms in Pelinor came with their own sinks, probably for that reason. I don’t know if I would have liked to share a room with a big hairy guy who shaved five feet away from the beds we slept in, but then, I wasn’t sharing a room with anybody. I could do my shaving and brushing in private and not worry about anyone’s feelings.
Of course, I’d never been able to grow a decent beard, but I still had to scrape the fuzz off of my face every couple of days or else I’d start to get funny looks.
The guy who might have been called Michael gave me a nod when he saw me in the mirror. I returned it, then headed into the shower area. I started without touching the hot water. I liked a cold, bracing shower to wake me up in the morning. I turned up the heat bit by bit until it was just tolerable, then treated myself to a little imagination session featuring the nicer of the two mermaids before I washed up. So, there was another reason I liked a private shower.
I finished the rest of my morning stuff back in my own room, then got dressed and headed over to look up Marlot. I looked for Iolana’s name on the doors I passed, but she must have been further down the far leg of the girls’ side. I did notice that Kira had a single room, right on the corner. We were almost next door neighbors.
Jennifer had gone to a little more effort decorating her half of the floor than Brad had. Garlands of fabric leaves hung over the doors, and there was a tree made of brown cardboard on the wall with the remaining dates in the month written on more construction paper leaves and acorns.
The acorns bugged me, since the leaves were clearly maple leaves.
Marlot’s door was open, and she and Missy were sitting on their beds tossing a pair of balled-up socks back and forth. I knocked on the open door.
“Hey, sugar lump,” Marlot said. Missy laughed, and then Marlot joined in. “Be with you in a minute.”
“What?” I said. Sugar lump?
“Missy asked me if we were dating,” she explained.
“Oh, okay,” I said. I smirked. “That is pretty funny, actually.”
“Hey!” Marlot pouted. She threw the sock ball at me overhand. I backhanded it into her open clothes hamper.
“Breakfast?” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “Just let me get the clean socks you just dumped in my dirty laundry. You want to come along, Missy?”
“Sure.”
I waited in the doorway while Marlot got her shoes and socks on, and then the three of us headed for the stairs. We almost bumped into an olive-skinned girl with brown hair dyed red and orange as she came out of her room.
“Oh!” she said. She smiled at me. It was a cute smile. She had a slight case of buck teeth, but it was cute. I smiled back. “Excuse me… Jamie, right? Jamie Bowman, not-an-archer?”
“Right,” I said.
“Jamie, this is Julia,” Marlot said.
“Juliana,” she corrected. She blinked, her long and obviously glammed-up eyelashes fluttering. From the way her eyes rolled briefly down, I had a pretty good idea what was coming next. “Are you really part elf?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She grinned like a manic beaver.
“Show me your dick,” she said.
“That isn’t the part,” I said, and started walking again before she could respond.
Okay, in all honesty, this was maybe eighty percent of the reason I didn’t make a big deal out of my elven heritage. Like the gay thing, it was a case of a stereotype that was more or less true. Elves were scrawny fuckers compared to humans. There just wasn’t that much substance to them. They were less meaty all over.
That included all under, as well.
That I hadn’t inherited this trait along with my fair skin had made me very interesting to—and somewhat popular with—my distant cousins among the trees.
A lot of people feel insecure around elves. The whole dick size obsession likely had a lot to do with that. I learned early on not to try to compete with elves as an elf, though, and so I never had any issues. I was the human cousin. I didn’t get in foot races or archery contests, but if somebody wanted a jar opened or something off a high shelf, I was there.
If you ever want to feel like the absolute pinnacle of rugged masculinity, a vacation with the elves is the way to go.
Just so long as you’re not picky or uptight about where the attention is coming from. As Marlot had said, things are different there.
“What are you taking this semester, Jamie?” Missy asked me on the way to the union.
“I’m not sure what I’m going for yet, so I tried to get some good general principle classes,” I said. “General thaumatology, lore survey, stuff like that.”
“Neat,” Missy said. “I’m in gen thaum, too. Maybe we’re in the same class? I’ve got Goldman on the Monday schedule.”
“Sorry, I’ve got it with Meinke on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” I said.
I wondered if it had been idle curiosity on Missy’s part when she asked Marlot if we were dating. I hadn’t come to college just to meet girls, but Marlot was right about the increased dating pool. There were possibilities here that I hadn’t had in high school.
I hadn’t been some kind of social outcast. I’d just never really gotten to know any of the girls the way I knew Marlot. I was behind the curve. By the time I started looking at them for dating potential, they’d already been looked at by others, and I was stuck in a box with a lot of nice, flattering labels on it: smart, funny, nice, cute.
Just not the right cute.
Or maybe it had been my imagination. Maybe if I’d been confident enough to press my luck a little more, I’d have memories of an awkward, fumbling night of embarrassment and shame with a huge argument afterwards to keep and treasure just like Marlot did.
Whatever.
The point was, there were a good three dozen girls on my floor alone who didn’t know the first thing about me, and a whole campus beyond them. Odds were pretty good that some of them were looking for smart.
“From what I hear,” Missy said, when we got to the union, “breakfast is the best meal to hit the dining hall. They’ve got real food in the mornings: bacon, ham, eggs, whatever. You can get more meat in a single sausage patty than you’ll find in the whole buffet the rest of the day.”
“How much do you want to bet it’s the meal the most people skip, too?” I asked.
“I’d like to check the other meal times out for myself, but if that’s how it is I’ll probably stick with the food court for lunch and dinner,” Marlot said.
“Yeah, or the convenience store,” Missy said.
“Convenient or not, I’m not using a punch up on a little egg salad sandwich when I could get a burger and fries,” Marlot said.
“Do they take the meal plan at the food court?” Missy asked.
“I think so,” I said.
A gaunt-looking guy with thinning hair wanded our cards at the entrance to the dining hall. One whiff of the air inside told me that Missy had been right about the quality of breakfast at least.
The dining room was a big open space with floor-to-ceiling windows all along the external wall, and a set of doors leading out to a patio with more tables and benches. The color scheme was institutional blue-gray. The floor tiles had little flecks of color to make them look vaguely like marble. Low walls topped with planters broke up the seating area and probably helped cut down on the noise.
The place was predictably deserted on the Saturday before classes started, but I reflected that it probably wouldn’t be hard to find seats on the busiest day.
I remembered in our high school cafeteria, the benches at the long tables had always been half empty because nobody wanted to sit next to anybody but their friends. Once they’d switched to smaller individual tables, it had actually gotten worse because two or three people would sit at a table meant for six people and nobody else would sit there. The tables nearest to where the least popular groups were sitting actually remained empty.
I’d always just shaken my head at the silliness of it, even while—if I’m going to be honest—I played along with it all. College students had better things to think about than who was sitting at the next table over, though.
“Ooh, is that guy making an omelet?” Marlot asked.
He was indeed. The first glass-covered section of the buffet line was full of raw ingredients for omelet filling. The next had tubs of hot selections: bacon, scrambled eggs, hashed browns, pancakes, and sausage patties. There were three other sections, but they were all empty. The dry cereal was in dispensers on a separate counter, and fresh fruit and baked goods were on what looked to be a salad bar.
“Well, I have to say, this is pretty good,” Marlot said when we sat down with our food.
“Told you,” Missy said.
“I believed you,” Marlot said.
“What surprises me,” I said, looking around at the few people in the room, “is how few non-humans there seem to be around.”
“Well, how many people does Harlowe hold?” Marlot asked. “Two hundred? Maybe less? Hardly anybody’s out and about yet, period.”
“Even yesterday, though,” I said. “When I was people-watching in the nexus, I didn’t see anybody showing up for Harlowe. Wait,” I amended. “One girl. But she looked more human than me, to tell the truth.”
“We saw non-humans at the welcome festival,” Marlot pointed out.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You were looking forward to having some company?” Missy asked.
“I was looking forward to not being the token any more,” I said. “Honestly, I just think of myself as a human with an interesting family. The fact that Marlot thinks it’s a big deal just tells you a lot about the town we came from. Ask any elf what I am and they’ll say I’m human. Of course, you’d have to find one first. If there’s a whole hall full of elves attached to the campus, I’d expect to see more of them around.”
“I thought I saw a gnome of some kind at the apple stand, yesterday,” Missy said. “And there was a nymph.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a mermaid?” I asked.
“No, this was here, on land,” Missy said. “She was having a couple of lesbians lick those prism tattoos onto her body at the gay pride table. Actually, since you mentioned elves, there was one there, too. She was a half-elf, at least.”
“That was a guy, actually,” I said.
“Um, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t,” Missy said.
“There’s no talking to him,” Marlot said, grinning and rolling her eyes dramatically. “He thinks just because he’s got some tiny percentage of elven blood, it makes him some kind of expert.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, though I didn’t really mind.
“He also doesn’t believe there’s nymphs here,” she added.
“She looked like a nymph,” Missy said. “Naked, kind of straw-colored hair? She looked, um, smarter than I expected for a nymph. I mean, she was enjoying the attention she was getting, but she was kind of focused, otherwise. It’s hard to explain what I mean.”
“Probably wasn’t a nymph,” I said.
The debate continued after we went back to the dorm and then died out unresolved, only to be settled at lunch time. There was a commotion up the path from us right as we we were heading out the back door of the nexus. Marlot punched me in the arm.
“Ow!” I said.
“Look!” she said, grabbing my arm with one hand and pointing with the other. “Nymphs!”
She was pointing at a group of students that had just rounded the corner at the end of Pelinor and were now on the same path as us, heading away from us. It included a pair of very healthy looking young women with amber waves of hair and not a stitch of clothing between them. I was seeing them from behind, but they were turning and looking around enough to give me some idea of their chest size.
“See, that’s the one I was talking about,” Missy said, pointing at the better looking of the two, who had a rainbow on her pert ass and color changing ribbons on her back, arms, and legs. Nobody could have called her unfeminine, but she had a nice, athletic look about her.
The other one was a bit on the softer side. Maybe I was a victim of the elven aesthetic, but an ass that round and jiggly didn’t do anything for me, either.
Bizarrely enough, she seemed to be wearing glasses. They were becoming rare enough on humans, with all the less obvious options for corrective enchantments, but they seemed really out of place for a nymph. Maybe she was a half-nymph? I didn’t honestly know if that was possible, but it could explain physical defects, and why she was here instead of in the middle of a corn field.
The commotion I’d mentioned was from a very loud dwarfblood who was whistling and hollering at the lunch time traffic, drawing even more attention than the nymphs did.
The group also included a skinny bald boy and a pretty blonde human girl, and in the middle of it all was a dark-haired girl who looked like she was about to implode from embarrassment. I was just thinking that she looked familiar when she turned her head towards the bigger of the two nymphs and I realized it was the girl I’d seen in the nexus the day before.
She didn’t look like she’d changed or even showered since the night before. It was a nice, warm day, but she was bundled up in an old jacket like it was armor.
Marlot was still pointing.
“Look, Jamie,” she said, seeking affirmation. “Nymphs. We told you.”
“Yeah okay, put your arm down and pick your jaw up,” I told Marlot. “You aren’t some hick.”
“Everybody’s pointing and staring,” she said. She had a point. Aside from the pretty blonde and the dark-haired girl, the group didn’t seem to mind the attention. “Anyway, there’s your non-human students. I told you that you just needed to wait for the campus to wake up.”
“I guess,” I said.
By mutual unspoken agreement, we let the other group go a little way ahead of us before we headed off. The little reddish-blonde-haired dwarfblood was really being obnoxious, harassing any girl who caught her eye. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see a campus guardsman approaching them. We took a little detour off the path at that point.
Missy insisted we were wasting our time and meal punches going to the dining hall during lunch, but Marlot wanted to at least try it once for each meal and I agreed that was a good plan.
It turned out that Missy’s secondhand estimation wasn’t completely on target. There was a chicken and rice dish without any chicken and a tuna casserole with no discernible tuna, but they also had burgers and ham sandwiches. We figured that we’d probably stick with the food court, but eating in the cafeteria every now and again wouldn’t condemn us to anemia.
The nymphs, the bald guy, the dwarfblood, and the dark-haired girl arrived after we’d gotten our food. There were some murmurs at their appearance, but that could have been for a few different reasons, some fairly benign. Now that I had a better look at him, the bald guy seemed to be some kind of snake person, at least if his eyes were any indication.
The blonde human girl caught up with them a bit later. For some reason, she just stood there until they told her to sit down. She sat on the bench facing outward, and I realized when I got a better look at her face that she was actually a very artfully made flesh golem. Again, maybe my tastes were more elven than I was willing to credit, but she looked really good to me; young, skinny, and blonde.
She also looked like somebody’d driven a wagon over her puppy.
“Now who’s pointing and staring?” Marlot asked me.
“I’m not pointing,” I said.
“So you admit to staring.”
“I admit to nothing,” I said.
“What’s that on the emo girl’s forehead?” Missy asked. “More temporary tattoos?”
“Runes,” I said. “She’s a golem.”
“I didn’t know you could bring a golem here,” Missy said.
“I don’t think you can,” I said. “She must be a free one.”
“I’ve never met a free golem,” Marlot said.
“Neither have I,” I said. “I wonder how free they are?”
“Ooh, are we thinking of asking her out?” Marlot asked.
“Oh, look at her,” Missy said. “There’s no one to ask. There’s nobody home there.”
Was that jealousy? Maybe she was interested in me. Anyway, I hated to admit it, but it looked like she was right. The golem girl was responding to the others, but it looked like rote.
Anyway, Marlot had been right, too. I was staring. I tore my eyes off the group of Harlowe students and we chatted about our classes for a bit. I looked for any more signs of Missy’s interest, but there was nothing I could pick up on.
“Oh, wow, I wonder what’s eating her?” Marlot said suddenly, her head whipping around. I followed her movement to see the black-haired Harlowite darting for the patio doors.
“Dunno,” Missy said. “I wonder what her deal is, in general. I mean, is she even in their dorm?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I saw her going in there yesterday.”
“Maybe they do let humans in?” Marlot said.
“Don’t know,” I said, and that was the end of that conversation.
“Hey, Jamie,” Missy said a bit later. “Jen was putting up a poster for some stupid dance next Saturday. I don’t really know anybody else, so, if you wanted to…?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Why not? It wasn’t high school anymore, she seemed nice, and she wasn’t bad looking.
“‘Why not?’, he says,” Marlot said. “And they say romance is dead…”
“No, that’s chivalry,” I said. “So she can pay.”
I hate to do it, but…
Arf?
Arf is the new Ook then, i’m assuming?
I am not a refresh-…..dog?
I was simply passing by chance!
@ Alethioandy: Someone made the comment “Are we going to be arfing instead of ooking here, then?” or something like that in response to the barking cat in the first chapter, but the cry of the MoToMU refresh addicts has yet to be completely determined.
Anywhoo, it was interesting to see Jamie’s perspective on the events at the dining hall.
BTW, typo: “Their was some murmurs at their appearance,” should be “there were”.
Also, I’m sure some others are treading the same path that I am mentally here, but after this chapter, I’m slightly worried that our new protagonist may be the naughty individual who takes advantage of poor Two.
You know, the one who refers to her as “a dead fish” after she’s gone down on him.
Hmmm, we shall see, I’m sure at some point!
While reading, there were so many comments popping into my head. Now that I’ve finished, they all seem to have flown away. Ah well.
I like having the new perspective on events. I look forward to reading his impression of the dance and Mackenzie’s outburst. If he is there when it happens. If it was actually loud anough to be noticed by anyone else.
Hokay, cue the incessant cross-reading. I do like Jamie Bowman — non-judgemental observers are cool.
Thank you muchly for this new perspective!
Cheers,
Esteis
No, I think Jamie is too principled to be that guy. Doesn’t seem like his style.
I like how Celia was mistaken for a guy though. I guess lack of breasts can suggest that to the uninformed…
Who’s Marlowe?
Daemion got it first…. Shouldn’t t be “Marlot” instead of “Marlow”?
Really enjoying the different style here….
Thanks,
Tim
@4, Alethioandy: I think if he were that guy, he wouldn’t have been disappointed when she appeared to be more golem-like than human. He seemed to lose interest when he realized she was acting… well, like a golem. So to me, it wouldn’t make sense. “Hey, you were hot when I thought you were a person, but now that you’re not… open your mouth.”
(This is not claiming that Two is not a person, just that the main character might possibly see it that way… much like how he sees Celia as a guy.)
“Marlowe”, that is….
Oook oook
“Who’s Marlowe?
”
That depends. Are you reading Raymond Chandler or Joseph Conrad?
No Marlowe in this story, though…
Kudoes. I’m enjoying the new story and cross checking events from my memory to see how well I grasped them the first time. Eventually I will need to reread Tales of MU, but that will be a daunting task… it took six days the first time.
Arf arf!
Someone much earlier made the tentative connection between Missy and the “Misty” that the delvers mentioned… possible drama there?
I agree with 7 and 10 that Jamie probably isn’t the one who took advantage of Two.
“but I didn’t really feature myself showering with a bunch of guys I barely knew every day”
That sentance reads really oddly. I’m not even sure what ‘feature’ means there. ‘look forward to’? ‘gladly anticipate’?
@Fnord: It’s a synonym for “picture.”
Fantastic work Ms Erin. I’m a devoted reader of ToMU, and with the first chapter of this (specifically the lines: “…I mean, can you imagine one of them wanting to breed with one of us?”
“With you?” I asked. “No.”…” Just absolutely brilliant!) you have me hooked all over again!
~~“‘Why not?’, he says,” Marlot said. “And they say romance is dead…”
“No, that’s chivalry,” I said. “So she can pay.”~~
*gigglesnort*
Thankyou. That made my day.
Huh. I’ve seen it used as a synonym for a motion picture, but it would never occur to me to describe a photo or painting or image as a ‘feature’ unless I was describing it as a focal point or significant plus to some thing involving it.
That aside very interesting seeing James perspective. Mistaking Celia for a man, and instantly spotting Puddys dwarfblood to the exclusion of her other attributes.
Also I stand corrected. Marlots disasterous junior prom experience was not with James. ^^
@Fnord: Yeah, it’s not a synonym for “picture” as in the noun, but as in the transitive verb. I believe the etymology there is related to “feature” as in “feature presentation”, as in “Put this up on the main screen, why don’t you?”
It’s not exactly a common bit of slang in modern times, at least not in most parts of the U.S.
So I have to ask…What’s going to happen when this passes ToMU? The pace here is a lot faster…so are we going to get glimpses of what’s coming down the road for Mack and the gang?
“Feature” is actually more a synonym for “imagine”—to “feature” something is to picture or portray it in the mind, as if projecting it onto a movie screen.
Unsurprisingly, it originated in Hollywood in the late 50s and became a staple of Hippie slang in the 60s. “Feature this, man!” or “I just can’t feature myself in the Army, ya dig?”
Public showering
With the Skirmish team would be
A “creature feature”
Private showering
With Feejee the Mermaid might
En-tail muff diving
The morning shower
Is always a good place to
Take oneself in hand
Aef!
A) It wasn’t Jamie. Since he mentions his lack of sexual experience (well, he hasn’t conclusively stated he’s a virgin, but the I-got-put-in-the-good-friends-section indicates it pretty strongly) and he’s been nothing but a kind guy so far, it’d seem *really* strange to have him complain she was like a dead fish. Could be a friend/foe of his, with whom he has a big fight, etcetera, possibly.
B) If Arf is the new Ook, yay
C) AE has stated that she intents to eventually get ToMU and MOARMU to run at the same time, with this being faster to catch up. So, presumably, this one wouldn’t get too far ahead of ToMU for it to be an issue. Otherwise, well, yes, we would get to se e glimpses of Mackenzie’s future…Just like we’ve seen glimpses of James’ future in ToMU. *cough*
“‘Why not?’, he says,” Marlot said. “And they say romance is dead…”
“No, that’s chivalry,” I said. “So she can pay.”
Awesome. Just awesome. Also, been meaning to ask; standard HTML formatting for the comments, right?
@Zathras: Well, yeah. But my mind groups it together with “picture” as “synonyms for imagine”. I didn’t do a great job of explaining it, but as a writer, I feel the comparison to “picture this” gives a better taste of the word’s nuance than “imagine this” this would.
I almost like this story more than the original – almost…
One teensy thing:
“Their was some murmurs at their appearance, but that could have been for a few different reasons, some fairly benign.”
should probably be “There were some rumors…”
I know everyone’s a critic, but when there are obvious grammar mistakes, it slows down my reading.
Otherwise, keep up the great work!
OOK!
WOW. I still like Jamie, but man, some people are just plain ignorant. He should get him some edumacation – learn him a book (at least on non-humans).
@ FaireFaerie
No I’m pretty sure it’s murmur, because as it read it’s something that happens when Mackenzie and her friends step inside. People start talking about them, but because they’re talking quietly and probably alot of people at the same it’s un-clear and it’s only heard as murmurs.
The rumors will show up later in the story
Jamie saw the nymphs
He didn’t believe before
Now he knows they’re real.
@Alethioandy (4)
Somehow I don’t think that Jamie did that to Two; however, he may have witnessed it.
@Fnord (20)
Yeah, I didn’t think it had been with James, but thought I might have read something wrong. I’m glad AE clarified.
@Heph (24)
If he is a virgin maybe he can help out Mackenzie in the other story.
@telrashar I don’t think it was the fact she was a Golem that turned him off, he seemed to still be admiring her look even after he realised that fact but the fact… that Two wasn’t really home at the time.
Remember how Two was right at the start, I think Jamie would be more interested in Two as she is becoming, far more, well there, and able to make her own choices. Which A.) Speaks well for him, he wants a woman who is actually able to speak for herself, as well as looks good.. and B.) Makes it even more unlikely he was one of the people who abused Two. Which is good.
Meinke? I have a chem class with a professor meinke next semester!
Good to see a character who DOESN’T think Mack is cute, for once. Hopefully this stays this way
Heh. I like Jamie. I wish he didn’t smoke, but maybe lung cancer doesn’t exist in the MUniverse?
Heph said…
“A) It wasn’t Jamie. Since he mentions his lack of sexual experience (well, he hasn’t conclusively stated he’s a virgin, but the I-got-put-in-the-good-friends-section indicates it pretty strongly)”
He also mentions
“That I hadn’t inherited this trait along with my fair skin had made me very interesting to—and somewhat popular with—my distant cousins among the trees.”
Possibly he is a virgin as far as contact with human females is concerned, but it would seem that any lack of contact with elven females, or males, would be from lack of interest on his part. He may not have gotten his share, but it seems unlikely he got none.
“and he’s been nothing but a kind guy so far, it’d seem *really* strange to have him complain she was like a dead fish.”
Kind rapists are far from unknown, a quite painful surprise to a number of women who assumed a kind man would not do that sort of thing. The odds presumably are better, but…
But it does seem he loses some interest when it is pointed out she is just a bod. So it seems unlikely he will be involved with Two for the near term.
Arf Arf….
I liked this chapter, its kinda nice to see differing opinions of characters… Particualrly Amaranth without Mackenzie’s rose colored glasses.
““‘Why not?’, he says,” Marlot said. “And they say romance is dead…”
“No, that’s chivalry,” I said. “So she can pay.””
QFW
Interesting to note for me – Jamie is developing a bit of a sexual repression theme, so he’s not the amazingly well-rounded, completely together character he first appears.
He seems too rational and respectful to me, there’s NO WAY he’s the rapist. AE couldn’t do that, feh.
@ 37 (David Argall): I’m aware kind rapists exist…my sentiments got lost in translation somewhere between my mind and my sleepdeprived body. Or something. What I meant was that, since we see the world from his point of view, we learn certain things about him. He doesn’t exactly describe the world around him as a predatorial type would. Again, not to be misunderstood, I know predatorial and evil aren’t connected by a longshot (plenty of nice hunters and plenty of evvvvviiiiillll prey out there) but, I don’t know, a would-be rapist would observe other things. Compare Mackenzie’s descriptions of their surroundings to those of James. He seems much more open and interested and so forth.
Also, you’re right about the interest from elves. Still, I maintain he isn’t the jock type who’d complain about a woman being like a dead fish.
Thirdly, while he is somewhat ignorant of non-humans, he displays an amazing amount of knowledge for someone from Back-of-the-woodsville, Nowhere County. I mean, he considers other races at least somewhat akin to people, not just animals-who-happen-to-be-able-to-talk or lesser creatures to be destroyed or enslaved. I mean, it’s not becaue he doesn’t recognize a nymph that he’s stupid…I wouldn’t recognize one either if she walked up to me and said “hey, my name’s Amaranth, care for some play?”. And mermaids having legs would throw me off, too. So far, he’s been, you know, a nice guy with an open mind and not too many misconceptions or negative prejudices. Less than Mackenzie, to be sure.
@33, AGM: I agree with you; perhaps I didn’t make my original point clear enough. He realized she was a golem and found her attractive, thinking her free. When it started to appear, to him, that she was not free, and seemed to be just following everyone’s orders, it seems like his interest wanes considerably. When she was free to make her own choices in his mind, he found her interesting; when she wasn’t, he didn’t.
I originally had the thought that Jamie could have been the nefarious one. I soon fixed that thought when I realized that AE wouldn’t throw us on a loop by writing the companion story about a character that we would absolutely loathe in the near future…
@telrashar (42) On rereading I must have had a attack of the stupid because I realised that you where talking about acting GOlem like not being a Golem, I’m blaming reviewing in a bit of a rush because I am at a shared compy and someone else wanted it;)
Honest thats my excuse and I’m sticking to it, can’t make me change my mind.
So as not to make this a completly wasted Comment, hee yes we see the First of the big incidents through the eyes of another, and yet at the same time, it just is, not a huge plot point in the story just something that happens in the background, which is even better, we have someone elses tale here, but we still get to see snippets from the original.
it took me a second to figure it out….but then i realized that the “dwarfblood” must be PUDDY XD. And poor Mack…..
Also, i think Jamie got Celia’s gednder wrong
Love the witty banter. More banter please.
Oh dear, Jamie got Celia’s sex wrong. And Missy’s in Goldman’s class too? Interesting. *facepalm* with Juliana too. XP
“The acorns bugged me, since the leaves were clearly maple leaves.”
Fruit/Leave discrepancy also bothers me
It’s a common problem with illustrated plants.
AE,
Nice save attempt on my previous comment about the amount of space in the building core, but unless the bathrooms are exaggeratedly sybaritic, I think there is still a good deal of unaccounted for space. Let the showers take up 5 foot squares (including access and one thick wall for hidden piping), then 12 shower stalls take up 300 square feet. There are probably less toilets than showers, and we are told 8 sinks, so maybe double the shower space to get the entire bathroom. Even if the womens bathroom is somewhat larger, these two rooms would only seem to account for about 1500 square feet – out of 10,000. If the floor lounge truly cannot handle 70 students, space must be being used for something else that Jamie hasn’t noted.
I find myself hoping Jamie is in Mack’s “Elvin Hist” class. I would love to see that play out from someoen elses perspective.