worth an oat

[alicornucopia]

In this soup kitchen sits a nun in partial habit, sipping water and frowning at a desk. It is very irregular for adults who aren't volunteering to be at the soup kitchen. It is very irregular for expensive electronics to be in the soup kitchen. The volunteers do seem to know her; they call her "Carlotta".

Comments

[alicornucopia]

Eventually their exercise period is over and they are shown to the game room for a look around before their next mealtime.

[pythbox]

Games! Nifty! Sindri is a big fan. Oat follows him around and watches him be delighted at things.

[alicornucopia]

That's cute, Sindri has a pet.

Bella likes games where her reflexes give her a massively unfair advantage! Like this one. Wheeeeee~

[pythbox]

It may be for the best that their time in the game room runs out before Sindri gets a chance to challenge Bella at one of those games.

[alicornucopia]

And now they are introduced to the main event: the battle room! They are not having a battle. They are learning to operate in zero-G.

Bella is learning to fly like a gymnastic comet.

[pythbox]

The handholds on the walls are spread out such that most children can grab two at once without a lot of trouble, although the littler kids have to stretch. Sindri can manage it with some pairs of handholds but not others; Oat has no hope. Oat, therefore, spends his time on learning how to accurately propel himself from one handhold to the next, and Sindri copies his tricks, finding them more useful to him than the official maneuvers designed for people less tiny.

[alicornucopia]

Bella spies on them and copies these tricks too in case it is ever useful to be able to do. Lookit her go. "Hiiiii," she says, sailing past in a spin.

[pythbox]

"Hello," says Oat.

"You sure are having fun," laughs Sindri.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm flying!" crows Bella. She lands on her toes and pushes off again with a twist. Somebody bats at her as she goes by and she starts working on how to correct midair; she bounces past that launchie again to provoke more opportunities.

[pythbox]

With only the air to push against, midair course corrections are a severely limited art. Bella is the least severely limited of all of them, of course.

Sindri and Oat don't even bother trying to cross the room. They're content to slide along this wall from handhold to handhold, occasionally rescuing each other from bare spots.

[alicornucopia]

"Don't you want to fly?" Bella asks, clinging near them with windblown hair and a grin. "You probably can't fly like me but you could do a little."

[pythbox]

"I'm too small to maneuver effectively in this room," says Oat.

"I don't have it quite that bad, but the way Oat flies is good enough for me," says Sindri.

[alicornucopia]

"Bah," says Bella, and she tumbles away again. Someone holds out an arm to her and she catches his hand and they go spinning interestingly.

[pythbox]

Oat and Sindri continue to help each other navigate a system that wasn't really designed with them in mind.

[alicornucopia]

"You'll grow," she points out next time she's in their corner of the room, "and you won't have any practice. I'll fetch you if you get stuck floating?"

[pythbox]

"At projected rates, by the time I'm tall enough to reliably reach two handholds at once, I will have graduated," says Oat. Sindri snorts.

[alicornucopia]

"So learn to fly with one at a time," says Bella. She demonstrates.

[pythbox]

"Why do you want me to?" says Oat.

[alicornucopia]

"It's fun!"

[pythbox]

"It looks it!" says Sindri.

"I don't want to," says Oat.

[alicornucopia]

"Also we're supposed to and the grownups might think you're not taking school seriously if you don't," Bella tells Oat.

[pythbox]

"If the grownups wanted me to take their school seriously they should have built it better," says Oat.

[alicornucopia]

"Do you want to go back to Earth?"

[pythbox]

"No."

"They probably won't fail us literally today, and we can catch up later," says Sindri. "Do you think they'll let us come here to practice in our free time?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah."