More Tales of MU

…or, Life Blossoms Undergoing Reprogramming Naturally

Barley hung around until she finished sobering up, then went to take her place on west campus. Violet said at first that she planned on staying up because if she laid back down she’d sleep all day, but she was asleep on my couch ten minutes after Barley left.

With the floor so quiet, it was easy to hear Marlot coming, with her flip-flops shuffling and her cane thumping on the tile floor.

“I guess this is the party room now,” she said when she saw Violet passed out on the couch.

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“You mean she’s not a delicate blossom who must be allowed to bloom brightly?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s pretty much exactly what you think,” I said. “You know, you’re a bit of a delicate blossom, too, sometimes.”

“Sure, that’s how I knew,” she said. She pulled out my chair and sat down. “We can smell our own kind. She has some insanely large areolas, by the way.”

“I can put a sheet or something over her, if it bothers you,” I said.

“No, we don’t want to bruise any petals. Anyway, it’s nothing I don’t see every time I get undressed,” Marlot said. “Especially since I started keeping the naked picture of her in my bra. Seriously, though, her nipples aren’t very big, but those are huge areolas.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

“I’m serious,” Marlot said. “They’re bigger than mine.”

“I definitely hadn’t noticed that.”

“And I’m stacked like an gnome’s plate at a pancake feed,” Marlot said.

“How much will it cost for you to stop talking about breasts?” I asked.

“You’re so gay, Jamie,” Marlot said. “Ready for breakfast? I’m kind of in the mood for pancakes.”

“After that metaphor?”

“Simile,” she said. “What can I say? Boobs make me hungry. My mother breastfed me until I was twelve. That’s why I’m such a delicate blossom.”

“Your mom couldn’t breastfeed you,” I said. “You had that weird reflex thing. And a mom who likes to talk about inappropriate things to your friends.”

“Thank Khersis I didn’t inherit that,” Marlot said. “But that’s why boobs make me hungry. I’m acting out deep-seated childhood desires that were denied to me. Or maybe I just crave maple. Either way, I’m thinking breakfast.” She tipped her cane towards Violet. “Do we even bother asking the nymphet?”

“No, I’d be afraid she’d say yes,” I said.

We headed to breakfast, where Marlot followed me to the hot food bar. The guy who was working it gave her a look when she asked for him to put more pancakes on her plate.

“You just gave me extra bacon,” I pointed out.

“That’s a serving,” he said.

“Bullshit,” I said. I didn’t know what the official nutritional guidelines were, when it came to a healthy serving of bacon. Assuming such a thing existed, I didn’t think it was “eight pieces.”

“What, you want to put some back?” he said. “Give it to your girlfriend if you don’t want it. If she’s so hungry.”

“Hey, the meal deal is all you can eat,” Marlot said. “Today I woke up and said ‘I could eat a ton of pancakes’. Since the deal stipulates all I can eat, I feel obligated to do so.”

“We’re not supposed to give out more than a serving at a time,” he said.

“Why not?”

“So nothing gets wasted.”

“Well, now you’re just being ridiculous,” Marlot said. “You know fat girls eat everything that you put in front of them. What if I wanted a serving of something else?”

“That’s fine. You just can’t have two servings of anything.”

“I could go over to the cereal dispensers or the pastries and fill up a tray with one thing,” she said.

“That’s self-serve,” he said.

“But you really think the cold stuff is less likely to be wasted than the fresh cooked stuff,” Marlot said. “So, what if I wanted some of that Merovian toast?”

“You could have that.”

“But I can’t have more pancakes.”

“Not until you eat those,” he said.

“If I went and sat down somewhere you couldn’t see and I sat for ten minutes and I came back, would you give me more pancakes?”

“Probably.”

“But how would you know I’d eaten them?”

“Look, I don’t give a shit,” the guy said. “I’m just doing my job. I don’t make the rules. Don’t give me a hard time.”

“Okay, sorry,” Marlot said. “Just give me the toast.”

He put two pieces on her plate.

“And some sausage.”

He put two sausage links on and started handing the plate to her.

“And some bacon. And hash browns. And scrambled eggs. And fried eggs.”

“Okay, if you want pancakes that badly, fine.”

“No, rules are rules,” Marlot said, and she stood there smiling at him while he loaded up her plate with a single serving of everything. He glared a death glare at her the whole time. I was glad I already had my food.

“Wouldn’t you rather have had the pancakes?” I asked her when we sat down.

“No, revenge tastes better,” she said.

“You didn’t actually do anything to him, though,” I said. “I mean, spooning shit up is his job. He only really did about twice as much work for you as he would for somebody else.”

“Yeah, but he’s never going to figure that out,” she said. “He’s going to spend the whole day thinking about the pushy bitch who ruined his morning. Anyway, you must have been up early.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Iason went to bed with you,” Marlot said. “I’m assuming Naked Passed-Out Gothippy came separately.”

“Repeatedly, from what I understand. Yeah, she wandered over a bit after he left,” I said. “Barley showed up, too. It’s been kind of a busy morning. Though, not ‘busy’. Barley just came by to talk. And change her shirt.”

“A nymph came by for a change of clothes. Most plausible story I’ve ever heard,” Marlot said.

“It’s true.”

“Didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“So, anyway, apparently the animal husbandry department does this livestock fair, out by the barns,” I said.

“Oh, Jamie, you don’t have to go all romantical like that,” Marlot said. “Of course I’ll go out with you.”

“Apparently, this month they have dragons.”

“Dragons as livestock?” Marlot asked.

“They’re tame,” I said. “Or trained, is probably the better word. I’m pretty sure it’s the troupe I saw with Iason. They do educational stuff, too, apparently.”

“And apparently you’re going, apparently, to see the dragons, apparently.”

“Yeah, we are,” I said. “And I don’t want to say something too definite, since I don’t have a lot of direct knowledge. I just found out about this from my herbalism professor the other day.”

“So who is ‘we’?” Marlot asked. “Is our dear Shrinking Violet coming along?”

“Yeah.”

“How about her clothes?”

“I would assume so,” I said. “Barley’s her get-out-of-pants free card, and she’s going to be working at this thing.”

“Dragons and nature hookers,” Marlot said. “How educational. Is ‘animal husbandry’ more literal than I thought?”

“That joke’s too obvious, even for you.”

“Silly boy. No joke is too obvious for me. Are you sure Violet wouldn’t go naked without a legal pass? Seems to me that defeats the purpose of being a delicate blossom.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m not,” I said.

“That would have a big effect on my decision,” Marlot said. “I don’t like being stared at for other people’s crazy.”

“Yeah, I think we’re going to end up going separately if that’s the case.”

“Then pencil me in for a tentative ‘yes’, apparently,” Marlot said. “Should be a good crowd. Dragons, big skirmish match tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m surprised they didn’t tell us anything about it, to be honest.”

“I can look back through the copious notes I took at all the floor meetings we totally went to,” Marlot said. “See if we missed anything.”

“Point,” I said.

“So, anyway, it’s not official, but Violet is leaning towards asking Barley to be her new roommate,” I said.

“Oh, Temperance had enough?”

“How do you know about that?” I asked.

“That Temperance doesn’t like her? Everybody knows that.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“All the girls know that,” she said. “Don’t boys talk about stuff?”

“No, we talk about things,” I said. “I don’t know. All of my friends are girls, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, that’s just how gay you are,” Marlot said. “A nymph comes over and you get her dressed. A naked girl comes over and you put her to sleep.”

“You know, both of those females could testify pretty well how not gay I am,” I said. “Anyway, Temperance hasn’t moved out, but Violet thinks she might after last night.”

“When she came repeatedly?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Violet doesn’t really have a sense of boundaries.”

“It’s cute that you think that.”

“What?”

“If you saw an archer send ten arrows through the air, streaking up over a hill towards an apple tree on the other side, and every single one of them struck an apple from the tree when they came down, would your reaction be, ‘I guess the archer didn’t know those apples were in the way’ or ‘Wow, that archer has an unerring sense of where apples are and how to hit them’?”

“Will you be accepting the award for most contrived metaphor ever in person, or are you going to send your assistant?”

“I wouldn’t count yourself out of the running for that one,” Marlot said. “But seriously. Do you really think somebody could push boundaries all the time on accident?”

“Like you never do anything to get attention.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” Marlot said. “I told you, we can smell our own kind. I’m going to get attention anyway.” She shrugged. “Might as well pick the type, as much as I can.”

“Well, I think Violet’s in the same boat,” I said. “I think a lot of what she does is involuntary.”

“So’s peeing,” Marlot said. “But most of us figure out how to control it.”

“Violet’s Violet,” I said.

“Quite a leap,” Marlot said. “Do you really think you know her well enough to be framing tautologies? Anyway, other than not wanting to get them all over me, her shenanigans don’t bother me. I’m just aware that’s what they are, and I think you should be, too.”

“Shenanigans,” I repeated.

“That’s the word.”

“But you are down for dragons, then?”

“Tentatively,” she said. “Apparently.”

“Awesome,” I said. I yawned. “Can you make sure and wake me up for it, then? I’ve had about zero hours of sleep, and I think I’m going to crash when we get back to Pelinor.”

“Sure,” Marlot said. “Are you going to wear your usual pajamas?”

“You mean, am I going to be naked in the same room as Violet?” I asked. “I don’t know if it’d make a difference. I already kind of had sex with her in the room already today.”

“Oh, I thought Barley was just changing her shirt.”

“I think a blowjob’s included in that, for nymphs,” I said.

“Possibly. It probably doesn’t come up very often,” Marlot said. “I thought I read somewhere that they can’t wear clothes, but that could just be a myth.”

“Seems like it,” I said.

“I think I’m going to make that a euphemism,” she said. “Like, while you’re napping I might go over to Bobby’s and change my shirt.”

I put my fork down.

“I don’t need to hear that,” I said.

“Did we not just have a whole conversation about your blowjobs?” Marlot asked.

“No!” I said. “We had a passing reference to the fact that I had a sexual encounter today of some sort, which I elaborated on because you asked.”

“Right,” Marlot said. “And that didn’t gross you out any. Why does this?”

“I’m not grossed out,” I said. “I don’t find blowjobs gross.”

“Okay, so the problem’s jealousy?”

“I just don’t need to know,” I said. “You’re my friend. I’ve known you since you were a baby not suckling at your mother’s teat. I don’t want to know that you’re having sex.”

“Okay,” she said. “If you can live with being a hypocrite, I guess I’m okay with that.”

“I’m not a hypocrite,” I said. “Okay, you know what? I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Right, so, the thing about Bobby is he’s huge.”

“Marlot!”

“I mean, he’s like six foot eight or something,” she said.

“Oh,” I said.

“So it’s really hard for me to find a good angle when he’s standing up, especially with my fucked up knee,” she said. “So we did it laying down, and he acted like it was a revelation. ‘I didn’t know you could give a blowjob laying down’. Those were his words. It had never occurred to him. Can you imagine?”

“I’m trying very hard not to,” I said.

“I’d get him to try sex standing up, but I’m afraid it might shatter his whole world.”

“Okay, I lied,” I said. “It does bother me.”

“Fine, I won’t talk about my sex life,” Marlot said. She reached across the table and poked a finger at the rings strung on the chain around my neck. Every subsequent ring of protection Iason and I went through got added to it. “Maybe I’ll just get one of these.”

“No.”

“You don’t want to be a trendsetter?” she asked.

“I don’t want to be conscious,” I said. I picked up my tray. “I’ve got to get some sleep if I’m not gonna pass out during Iason’s match. Wake me up at eleven? Actually, make it noon. We don’t have to be there right when it starts.”

“Sure,” Marlot said. “Another hour will mean I’ll have a longer story to tell you.”

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