exploratory kidnapping

[alicornucopia]

In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.

In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"Thank you very much," says Jensal.

[missnicegirl]

She waves and vanishes.



And is unusually pensive when she shows up to her next witchcraft lesson.

[alicornucopia]

"Hi, Matilda," says Terali. "Is something wrong?"

[missnicegirl]

"Well, I wish someone had told me about shrens much earlier," she says. "And I think it's not fair that boys don't get to school in Linnip. Everyone should get to go to school. School is wonderful."

[alicornucopia]

"What's a shren?" blinks Terali.

[missnicegirl]

"They're sort of like dragons except there's something wrong with their magic so they can't fly properly until they can shift, and they can't shift until they're twenty years old, and not flying hurts them," she says. "It was very bad. But then I fixed all the babies. I'm going to go back later for the rest of the grown-ups."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. Well, that was very nice of you," says Terali. "Do you need to reschedule anything to do that?"

[missnicegirl]

"No, I don't think so. And I learned a new thing about ialdae," she adds. "When dragons or shrens catch ialdae, they catch it a lot. More than any human except me."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh?"

[missnicegirl]

"Yeah! I'm not sure why. I think it might be something about dragon magic. Dragon magic is weird. But ialdae is a stuff, there are amounts of it, and different people with it make different amounts, and Annei and Sarsia and Lavender make smallish amounts and I make tons and tons and dragons are somewhere in between. Why can't boys in Linnip go to school?"

[alicornucopia]

"Well, the public schools don't let them in and nobody has started a private school for them, but I think somebody could if anyone wanted to."

[missnicegirl]

"I think someone should. It isn't fair that there are people who can't go to school."

[alicornucopia]

"They could go to school in other countries, that's allowed," says Terali. "I'm not sure who you'd have to convince to start a school; I don't think I'm a bit cut out for it myself."

[missnicegirl]

"I guess I'll have to find someone, then."

[alicornucopia]

"Anyway. Raha's where she usually is." Terali escorts Matilda down the hall. The anthropologist is there.

[missnicegirl]

"Why are there no schools for boys in Linnip?" she asks the anthropologist. Perhaps the anthropologist knows.

[alicornucopia]

"Principally religious factors, for public and parochial schools. There have been attempts to set up private institutions but they've collapsed for lack of funding or applicants, as far as I know, so people just teach their sons whatever they think they need to know at home," the anthropologist says.

[missnicegirl]

"I think there should be school for everyone everywhere," says Matilda. "Anyone who wants to go to school should get to go to school."

[alicornucopia]

"Lots of different cultures have various approaches to this sort of thing," says the anthropologist. "In some countries there are no public schools at all, just home education and specialist training if you want to be a wizard or a dancer or something like that."

[missnicegirl]

"...But they still have libraries, then, right? Do boys in Linnip get to go to the library by themselves?"

[alicornucopia]

"There's libraries most everywhere," says the anthropologist. "Certainly in Linnip. Boys are allowed to go to libraries and check things out, although most of the time they'd be going with somebody."

[missnicegirl]

"There's not always somebody to take you there, though," says Matilda. "Libraries are important. They can go to the library, right?"

[alicornucopia]

"It's not illegal or anything," puts in Raha. "Why this sudden concern about boys?"

[missnicegirl]

"Because I suddenly learned that there aren't boys' schools in Linnip. If I'd heard about it before I would've been concerned then," she says.

[alicornucopia]

"There are so many things more worth worrying about than boys in Linnip," says Terali. "It's much pleasanter to be a boy in Linnip than a girl in Ryganaav -"

"To be much of anything, in Ryganaav, I'm sure," says Raha.

"Or a dragon in Egeria or a, I don't know, a vampire in Imminthal," Terali concludes. "A Southern elf in Mekand, a Sand Dusk Chanter in Iraam."