…or, Little Big Girl
When I got near the campus grounds, I veered off towards the visitor center. I’d had enough of elven women for the day. Marlot had left her window seat, though. I waited a few minutes in case she’d gone to the bathroom, went out and smoked a couple of cigarettes that I barely tasted, and then went to look for her out among the crowd.
Attendance had increased over the afternoon. There were a lot more children. More elves, too. Some dwarves had even turned out to admire the big beasts.
I headed for Barley’s station first. If Marlot had just gone back to the dorms, she might have left a message. Barley told me that Marlot had stopped by, but hadn’t said anything about leaving.
Violet was still hanging with Barley, but I didn’t have to worry about her picking anything up. At some point, she’d managed to get stoned entirely out of her mind. Whatever she normally smoked, it didn’t mess her up like this. She repeated Barley’s “Hi, James” in a vapid, drawn out voice. She was smiling blankly. After Barley confirmed that Marlot hadn’t said anything, I gave her a closer look and realized she was drooling.
“So,” I said to Barley, jerking my head at Violet. “What’s she been up to?”
“I don’t know what she did,” Barley said. I got the feeling she was irritated at being asked. “She was fine, we were hanging out. Then that Paula girl came over to play with Argus.” She nodded towards the silver mockdragon that was sleeping in its cage. “By the time I finally got her to leave, Violet was—like that. I don’t know if she went off to smoke or quaff something, or what.”
“Paula?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. You must have seen her,” Barley said. “Big girl? Blonde?” She put her hand up over head and stood on her toes. “Really big?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “So, what’s she like?”
“She’s so fucking small,” Violet said.
“No, Violet, she’s huge,” I said.
“She’s tiny,” Violet insisted. She held up her hand, her finger and thumb an inch apart. “Itty-bitty.”
“Sure,” I said. What the fuck? I had bigger things—no pun intended—to worry about than a doped up telepath’s inverted sense of proportions.
“It’s so sad,” Violet said, and then she bust out laughing again.
Barley gave Violet a look of sad disdain. Maybe Violet was right. Maybe all she needed was a little familiarity-bred contempt for her to get over her puppy love.
“So, Paula?” I prompted her.
“Oh, yeah,” Barley said. “She’s, uh, nice.”
“Uh, nice?”
“Yeah, I mean, she’s sweet and all.”
“But?” I said.
“Well, I don’t want to say that she’s stupid,” Barley said.
“A little airheaded, maybe?” I suggested.
“That’s right,” Violet said, nodding idiotically. “That’s so right.” She started giggling again. “Little. Airheaded. Airheaded and little. Her little head is full of air.”
“She listened to my whole spiel about what mockdragons are and where they come from, and then she asked me if they were like ‘dragon midgets’,” Barley said. “And when I explained again, she got all pouty-faced and asked me if I thought there might be midget dragons somewhere. So I told her that the term ‘midget’ is outdated and offensive, and she just stared at me and asked me again. I think maybe there’s a small language barrier, but she kept asking until finally I said there probably were somewhere, just so she’d leave.”
“I can’t imagine something like that would last very long in the wild,” I said.
“Yeah, I agree,” Barley said. “And I made the mistake of telling her that. You would have thought she’d just watched me snap a baby dragon’s neck in front of her. She hugged Argus so tightly I was afraid she was going to kill him. She broke one of his forelegs, and when I yelled at her to let him go she started howling like she was hurt.”
“Probably doesn’t know her own strength,” I said.
“How?” Barley asked. She was really getting her rant on now. “She’s an adult. Unless somebody spiked her orange juice with a growth potion, she’s had her whole life to get used to being the size of a freaking minotaur. She ought to know that she’s going to be stronger and tougher than anything else she comes across.”
It was a little clichéd, but she was beautiful when she was angry. I found it a tad unnerving though, after watching Alli lose it over her vendetta with Iason.
“Sorry,” Barley said. “I don’t mean to vent like that. It’s just—animals aren’t objects.” She reached a finger through the bars and stroked Argus’s muzzle. “Especially not these ones. I didn’t stop it when he went to land on her arm because he just went to her and I figured it would be alright. I figured it had to be a natural affinity, like I have. It shocked me when she turned around and squished him like a teddy bear. Where were you when this all went down, anyway? I’m surprised you missed the commotion.”
“Walk in the woods,” I said. Barley raised an eyebrow but I didn’t elaborate. “So, which way did Marlot go?”
“She headed off with some elves who saw her doing cantrips,” Barley said. “But that was a while ago.”
“Some elves?” I repeated.
“Yes, James, elves,” Barley said, perplexed. “What’s wrong? You don’t think they’re going to carry her off into the woods, do you?”
“That’s not funny,” I said.
“Well, she’s beautiful in her own way, but she’s hardly the elven ideal, even if those boys were interested in women at their age,” Barley said.
“Oh, it was boys?” I said. I was relieved. Not that there weren’t plenty of bastards among them, but not even Nikolaos seemed dumb and cruel enough to kick a faerie. Even Alli had lured me deep into the woods before springing her cunning and multi-layered trap on me. Humans were slow and weak individually, but it took a special kind of stupid to think you could get away with attacking a human student on a human campus in the middle of the most powerful human empire the world had ever seen.
I wouldn’t put it past Ursula, who was brash enough to have human slaves as showpieces, and who’d ordered her serving girl to attack Iason when all her other followers had fled.
“Well, I’m going to go see if I can catch up to her,” I said. “And then I’m probably going to head back to the dorm until it’s time to get ready for the match.”
“Okay,” Barley said. She smiled. Her irritation disappeared. “I guess I might see you back there. Back at our dorm.”
“Yeah,” I said, throwing a smile back at her. Joy came from such little things, like tiny dragons or having a door with your name on it. I didn’t feel joyful, but why ruin it for her? “I guess you might.”
I gave a little wave to Violet, but I’m not sure she even knew I was there. It didn’t take long to find Marlot. When I did, it was by accident. I caught sight of the not-at-all tiny Paula, who was lying down in the leaves and grass with a bunch of dwarves sitting around her, some of them leaning against her like a couch. Some of them were throwing dice in a cup.
Guess who else was there, getting in on the action.
“Hey, loser,” she said as I came up.
“Hey, yourself,” I said. “I see you found a game.”
“Yep,” she said. She looked at the big girl. “This is Jamie, the one I was telling you about. Jamie, this is—”
“Paula, right?” I said.
“Pala,” she said, not bothering to lift her head. She smiled sideways at me. “But you could call me Paula if you like. I don’t know what it means.”
“Uh, right,” I said.
“Marlot tells me your girlfriend is in the skirmish,” she said.
“Um, boyfriend, actually,” I said. I glanced at the gruff-looking dwarves for a reaction. Some of them looked at each other but nobody said anything.
“Oh, I am so sorry!” Pala said. She looked more embarrassed than most people will be in their entire lives. “I thought you were a boy.”
Marlot’s new friends started snickering behind their beards.
“What is funny?” she asked, and some of them burst out laughing.
“Jamie’s a special kind of boy, Pala,” Marlot said. “He partakes of the love which dare not speak its name.”
“What kind of love is that?” Pala asked, scowling. “Love is good and beautiful. It should not be afraid.”
“Means he likes to excavate the back tunnels,” one of the dwarves said.
“He sticks a candle where no light reaches,” another one said.
“Yeah, cute, guys,” I said.
“Where else would you stick a candle?” Pala asked.
“Sometimes, when a man and another man love each other very much—” Marlot began.
“Now I know you are making fun of me,” Pala said, scowling.
“It’s fine,” I said to Marlot. “Leave it. She doesn’t understand the Pax, okay?”
“I understand enough Pax to know when I am being teased,” Pala said.
“Do you have the ethernet in your dorm, Pala?” Marlot asked.
“I do not live in a dorm,” Pala said.
“Do you know where the ball rooms are?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Mar,” I said, warningly.
“Do you know how to use them?” Marlot asked, ignoring me.
“A-a little,” Pala said.
“Next time you’re over there, look up a site called templeofelementalanal.orb,” Marlot said. “It’ll explain everything.”
“Marlot!” I said.
“If she doesn’t learn this stuff on the streets, where is she going to learn it?” Marlot asked. “Her parents?”
“Pala, forget that site,” I said.
“Don’t listen to him,” Marlot said. “He doesn’t want you to understand the joke.”
“I won’t listen, then,” Pala said, crossing her arms in front of her.
Fine. I guessed she’d learn the hard way. Everybody who trusted Marlot did sooner or later.
That thought came a little too close to my recent experiences for comfort.
“Everything alright?” Marlot asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I just wanted to tell you I’m heading back.”
“Seen enough dragons?”
“Enough to know there’s no such thing,” I said. “But there’s not anything new to see, either. Might as well get some rest before the match. If Iason is half as good as he says he is, he’ll be, uh, excited when it’s done.”
“If Iason’s half as good as he says he is, he’s probably twice as good as he thinks he is,” Marlot said. “Talk to you later?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Marlot asked.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I said, and she let me leave it at that.
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