The Brunnhold infirmary was unusually quiet. With the break in full swing, most of the staff had taken time off. Were it a ship, it would have been said to be operating under a skeleton crew, the majority of which had recently jumped overboard in search of a late lunch. Content to subsist on tea, and ever-vigilant against imagined, impending doom, Healer Ixbridge remained behind. The door to her tiny office was open, as no nurses were on duty to alert her to the entrance of.. well, anything.

The scratching of a pen on paper was the only sound in the sterile white halls, and the smell of disinfectant hung in the air. Nearly overpowered by the stinging odor, the delicate scent of a flowery tea nevertheless insinuated its way to the main entry, though no one was there to detect it.

The path to the infirmary, for Campion, was a well trodden one. He'd fallen into a good many tables in his time at Brunnhold, and had managed to miss a good few tests and homework assignments by just being a generally skinny, sickly looking sort of chap.

The infirmary was, predictably empty, as there were no students or physical education lessons to avoid. He took in the familiar scent of disinfection and enjoyed a light spot of self medication in the form of a handful of peardrops, though the pain in his jaw made chewing and sucking nigh on unbearable.

"Hullo?" he said, announcing his presence to the empty beds. Perhaps all of the staff had left, it was break after all, and most of the staff presumably could be trusted enough to heal themselves. Still, he spotted a small opening in a door, perhaps a store cupboard or an office and heard the faint stirring of life within.

"Hem, hem," he coughed, hovering a little by the door, peering inside. There was something familiar about the head bent over the paper, in the intent way she wrote. Mentally, he placed the woman in a uniform, "Abby? Abby Ixbridge?"

Abe had taken the opportunity to brush up on a handful of difficult variations on Healing Force. She wanted, no, needed, to understand the spell thoroughly before trying it on any living creature. So many things could go wrong with such a powerful incantation, especially one that fiddled with people's insides.

Thus occupied, she hadn't heard her old classmate call out from down the hall. Her swift mind was engrossed in tracking intricate chains of monite, her hand forced to jot abbreviations to keep up. It was little wonder his footfalls and polite cough went unnoticed, too.


Startled, she looked up, thin shoulders still poised for the act of writing. As her pen automatically jittered to record the general direction of her dissipating thoughts, her eyes went nearly as round as her spectacles.

"Mister Luccullis! You're bleeding!" Having mastered the obvious, she sprang from her chair, quickly but gracelessly. Abby was never the swan of their year, being more akin to a hyper-intelligent squirrel. So it was with frantic, rather than fluid, speed that she replaced the pen in her hand with a handkerchief and hopped to the injured galdor.

Glancing at the lower half of his face with rapt, clinical attention, she asked, "What got you? Offend the wrong person again?" She was well aware of his rambunctious history, as she had grown up parallel to it. He was nothing short of notorious among the class of 2709. Strange that such a polite young man could get himself into so much trouble.

After dabbing her stiff, oft-bleached handkerchief with alcohol, the healer hesitantly lifted it toward his lip. "May I? This will sting, I'm afraid..."

Campion had not expected to be attacked by his former classmate with a handkerchief and blinked a little, startled for a few moments before he concluded that she worked at the school and was not simply lurking in cupboards waiting to jump out at members of her graduating class.



"Naturally. I got into a fight with a table, insulted it's mother or some other social discrepancy" he said with a smile. "I managed to hit my head in the library and I rather think my jaw might have taken the brunt of damage...so, like the terribly heroic, grown up gentleman that I am, I immediately rushed straight to the infirmary for a lollipop."



"Please, swab away," he said rather reluctantly, bracing himself slightly, and because he too was rather talented at observation Campion added, noting the formal way she addressed him and reciprocating, "You work at the school, Ms. Ixbridge, as a healer."

There was something faintly surprised in his voice, the smallest trace of incredulousness. When he thought about it, it was a fitting profession of course for such a studious young woman and made sense as he seemed to recall her interest had been in the medical field at school. Still, he couldn't quite understand why any galdor in their right mind after ten years at Brunnhold would want to stay on.

"Three years," he said almost to himself before deciding that he ought to bow, "Dear me, I can't quite decide whether the time has flown or crawled. You look well."

Though his humor was puerile at times, Abe had never ignored the cartoonist outright. Sometimes he was genuinely witty. Since she sat at the front of the class and he at the back, Campion probably never glimpsed the bemused smirks he earned, nor heard the quiet chortles he evoked. Yet there and then, they both manifested not two feet away from him.

She knew Campion was a hopeless klutz. His prolific growth spurts and subsequently gangly limbs seemed to conspire against him, but he had been hit in the face by more tables over the years than was strictly plausible, even accounting for his extreme clumsiness. She guessed it might be a Campion-specific euphemism, used when protecting his own bullies from authorities.

"Mmhm." The reedy noise summed up her skepticism. "A table with suspiciously knuckle-shaped molding." Abe looked him in the eye, but let the issue slide. He was an adult. Who he chose to beat him was his business.


The dreaded cloth ascended further (for he was significantly taller than her), but paused short of its mark. Patients had many means of stalling the inevitable, and conversation was one of the more tedious. "I'd be happy to, if you would be so kind as to quit talking for a moment." When he bowed, the handkerchief pursued him, like a cross-eyed beagle after a fox. "A-and quit moving. There. Not so bad, right? Moons forfend you getting an infection."

She leaned back, examining her handiwork critically. It was a job half-done. "Mind if I get to the mandatory vivimancing? Infirmary policy, sadly. We have to heal every little cut and scrape or hordes of pompous progenitors will come barging in and demand to know why the fruit of their loins were refused magical coddling." Her eyes rolled skyward, accompanied by an exasperated snort.

"Personally, I'd prefer to let the mona be in this case." She smirked teasingly, her tone affectionately sardonic. "I'm sure whatever you did to deserve that was anything but noble."

He looked her in the eyes and raised his eyebrows in an amused fashion. She was an intelligent woman, of course. She had been at school, far better than himself but still not as naturally talented as some- he remembered and appreciated that- she had worked hard and it had shown. Naturally, working in an infirmary would have sharpened her instincts, particularly when it came to medical excuses. He didn't flatter himself that Abby would particularly care how he received his injury or press the matter further but remained tight lipped all the same, for Triston's sake.

As she pressed the cloth to his cut, he hissed inwardly and a sharp tingle passed across his lips , "Ow," he muttered in a small, not altogether genuinely grumpy voice. "Do you reserve the strongest disinfectant for all of your old school fellows?"



"I can assure you that no pompous progenitor of mine is going to particularly care whether I have a scrape or two," he asserted, not exactly in a hurry to have his wounds fixed by magic, being hit by a girl had also given his masculinity a few well aimed blows which, contrary to popular opinion, did exist and did not like being threatened. "I take it that you aren't the sort of healer to administer lollipops to the molly-coddled masses. That's a shame."



"That, you probably ought to take up with the table."

He smiled wryly, though he was thinking of the passives in the library, he was utterly blind as to Triston's motives for giving him that rather deserved punch in the face and felt as though he were totally out of his depth, despite Aurelie's unexpected change of heart.

Her lips pursed in mock offense. "Tocks, Mr. Luccullis." She dipped her head, allowing her glasses to slip so she could peer over them imperiously. A strange gleam entered her dark eyes, and whether she was secretly enjoying his pain or simply reciprocating the banter remained.. ambiguous. "Only for my favorites, my dear fellow."


Abe had known of parents who cared little for their own flesh and blood. Oddly, these same people could fight boisterously for what they saw was their child-pawn's entitlement, as if their reputation was at stake rather than their offspring's contentment.

"No sweets, I'm sorry. Well, except for that cleverly-hidden stash of chocolate. Unfortunately, it's so cleverly-hidden that I have yet to discover where I put it." The office was miserably small and well-organized; how she had lost her delectables was something of a mystery to her.

"I can offer you tea, if you like. It's got orchids in it." Abeline may have been one of the least feminine women on Vita, but she still had a weakness for chocolate and floral teas.

Not waiting for an affirmative, she plucked a teacup from one of the shelves.. which looked like it was built into the wall. Further inspection would reveal that all the shelves were firmly attached to the architecture, and probably as old as the building itself. The only light in the room was from a blue-green phosphor desk lamp and the open door -- there were no windows to liven up the sorry state of affairs. Finally, a long, horizontal rod on the back wall was stationed at just the right height for a cadre of off-duty lab coats. It was imminently clear that this was, indeed, a storage cupboard.

The accommodating healer rolled the cup between her palms absently. Her lack of social ambition had left her consistently overlooked at promotion time; this 'office' was only a symptom of a more systemic malady, either of her, of Brunnhold, or of both. "Of course, you're well within your rights to decline. Er, that goes for the tea as well as the magic."

He wondered if students were still stealing things- not for any malicious intent, the items were always returned, but there had been a strange thrill from the sight of a poor, dear, put upon dorm pater trudging up the hall with the unmistakable gait of a man who'd had his shoes filled with jam.

He perked up at the offer of orchid tea and assumed that it would not be improper to move a little further into the office, which if one was of a mind to, could be described either as cozy or if one was ignoring euphemisms as a cupboard, "Umm, You like it, working at the school? Tending to bumped knees and casting relating mishaps and the like." Whether this was the case or not, Campion could not entirely be sure- there was a slightly derisive tone, or at least he took it as such, to the way she described the average Brunnhold student and he did not know if the office was indicative of a settled woman, or one who was simply waiting to climb some sort of career ladder.



"Yes please, tea would be lovely. Frankly, Ms. Ixbridge, I've been positively gasping for a good cup of tea since I set foot in Brunnhold again. I'd hazard a guess that it has that affect on most graduates. And as for the magic," he wrinkled his nose, the pain in his mouth, which had been a dull sensation permeating the conversation suddenly seemed to get a little sharper when called upon.

"A small jaw injury shouldn't be too debilitating, I was simply worried if I'd become concussed, but in my totally unprofessional opinion it doesn't feel like it," by now Campion was all too familiar with the symptoms of concussion, having experienced them precisely last week. "But I am torn. It is rather tempting to experience Healer Ixbridge's work first hand," he gave a teasing grin "After all, people are trusting children with you."

She exhaled audibly. "It's.. well, it's alright, but..." Abe stepped behind her desk to allow Campion room to exist in her lair. The blue-green light of the lamp reflected off her palm as she let fly a sweeping gesture. "Well, just look around you." Her gesture was cut off by a sudden filing cabinet. She glared at it suspiciously, as though it had purposefully scooted itself in to her way when she wasn't looking.

Abe rubbed her wrist sourly, continuing, "The competitive environment here at Brunnhold is not my native habitat. I like the work, but my brown-nosing peers have, ah, left me in the dust. Literally. I'd be much more at home in Vienda, with my own practice, where I can set the rules. I've just been..." Hunting ghosts? Witnessing scientific breakthroughs? Irrationally convinced the place will blow up if I leave? And strangest of all, making friends for once? "... putting it off."


"Disturbing thought, isn't it?" She smirked, but only for the sake of pretense. His comment actually stung, but she knew he didn't mean it to. Rather, recent errors and their consequences still weighed on her mind.

"I do believe healing you would make our having tea somewhat less unpleasant on your end. And any other tea you have over the week or so it would take you to heal naturally." The healer smiled blithely, speaking softly, "Might as well have a go at it."

Slowing her breathing, she closed her eyes, envisioning a metronome. Its steady rhythm helped calm her, and its gears and mechanisms put her in a scientific frame of mind. Machines were like living things, and vice versa; they both had parts which, when all were in the right place, acted on and with each other to become something more, something grater. And these higher-level somethings acted on other higher-level somethings to generate whole new patterns.

Though logic was integral to this state of mind, her mood was far from cold. Instead, awe and wonderment reigned. This was why she healed, why she learned, why she lived.

Timing the cadence to her internal metronome, Abe spoke the monite for a localized variation of Anestetic, requesting that the mona confine their efforts to Campion's jaw and lip. Then, she cast a very minor Heal Tissue on his jaw to rebuild damaged capillaries and prevent bruising, followed by Stitch Wound for his lip.

Her hand subconsciously closed in a gesture of supplication. Please, be gentle with him.

Abeline normally didn't ask quite so much of the mona in such a short period of time. Her field seemed to hum quietly for a moment, like a sleepy child awakening from a nap. It curled in on her, then spread out, enveloping Campion. She could smell medicinal alcohol and her skin felt dry as the Anesthetic spell began to work on Campion. He felt tired, sluggish and numb. He began to wobble a little, as he fought to keep his eyes open. He was going to feel tired for at least an hour, though it did save him from the pain of his skin knitting back together as the Stitch Wound and Heal Tissue spells took effect. This was slightly overkill as his split lip would have lost it's bruising with Heal Tissue alone. Abeline could feel this over-exertion of her will in the way her field tightened. It wasn't a true rebuke, more a reminder for the next time, so she would remember to practice her restraint. By the time Abe was done, it looked as though Campion hadn't been hit at all but had merely stayed up too late the night before.

As she pulled a face at the cabinet he laughed quietly through his nose, subtly so as not alert her "Come now, a small office isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is probably far easier to keep it tidy and to win if you happen to be catching in a game of catch the kenser."

"Good lady deliver us from the boot-lickers and the sycophants," he nodded in sympathy. "Though there must be some of your colleagues who aren't like that," he smirked a little, imagining how he would feel if he had to work in the same vicinity as his old professors,

" I happened to end up in Vienda myself. It is," Campion thought for a moment, wondering how on earth to phrase what he thought of the capitol, "It is certainly a place that people can chose to live in."



"A go?" he grinned, "Ms. Ixbridge, if you could try awfully not to mess up my face I would appreciate it. I've grown somewhat used to the way it is organised."

As Abeline began her spell, he watched her carefully, feeling the stirrings of a latent but not altogether unforgotten twinge of jealously. It was an emotion that peeked over it's confines from time to time, particularly when watching members of his own race convene with the mona in a way that seemed almost beyond his comprehension. To him, the mona was something that by chance shared the same patch of vita as him, like a neighbour living in another part of a house separated by a partition or a locked entrance, there but strangely out of reach. In times of extreme need, he found the the door ajar, but there was never the kind of oneness that others seemed to have.

He didn't enjoy the loss of control over his own body as the mona worked to repair the slight damage caused by Triston but the numbing, almost calming sensation allowed this feeling to be accepted, relaxed into. In fact, this state of relaxation was so intense that his eyelids began to droop. He leaned against the cabinet slightly and touched his jaw, exercising it left to right before gurning.

"Thank you," he said, noticeably less alert than he had been previously as though talking with his head dunked in a vat of thick treacle He was also faintly glad to be feeling slightly drowsy, it would have been impossible to sleep in the rather run down accommodation he'd chosen in the stacks without some kind of chemical intervention. "How very clever of you, I don't feel anything at all."

She hummed through her nose, "Mmyes, there are a few. One is an old lech, and the other is a drunk. It's the nurses who seem to be the ones who get any work done around here. Oh, and Professor Melles, but he doesn't drop by often, what with the pesky necessity of teaching students." Her gaze dropped to the open grimoire on her desk, and she smiled self-deprecatingly, the implication being that she hadn't stayed at Brunnhold for the hillside views.


She chuckled quietly, understanding his difficulty in describing the city. "It has its problems, no doubt about that, but it's familiar to me. After all, I did grow up there. I miss the," Abe paused, like Campion, choosing her words carefully, "the variety. The spice of life, you know."

Abe enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere of the university, especially now that she had a few friends to share it with. However, it lacked a resident fine arts scene, and she liked to play at being a connoisseur of these things. Although, more and more socialites have been visiting these red walls; eventually, they'll start demanding the place get some so-called 'Real Culture'...


"You're quite welcome," she mumbled, clearly distracted. What was I thinking? I should know I didn't need that last one -- what an elemental mistake to make! Her mind cycled through possible causes of the oversight, but there were so many problems lately that she had to chalk it up to general stress. In fact, this most recent slip could be a portent of forthcoming unraveling. Was she stressed enough to be teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown? She hoped not. This would be a horrible time for such an indulgence. People depended on her.

To busy herself, she tucked her notes in the grim and unceremoniously crammed it into an over-full shelf. Some paperwork remained on her desk, among them a research credit requisition form. Campion might have noticed the name of the project lead -- Harper Moore.

She plopped into her chair, then flicked through the papers and deposited them in a drawer, not to hide them, but to clear the way for tea. The cup meant for Campion was placed across from her, and the teapot in the center. It was no longer hot, but still warm.

Abe nodded to a folding chair next to him and smiled, no longer the healer, but an old schoolmate. "Take a seat, Campion." Genuinely curious, she inquired, "So, how have you been? What brings you to Brunnhold?"

As she cleared away, Campion did in fact spot the name but was careful not to react too strongly, it seemed as though doing so landed you a swift punch in the face.



He drooped carefully into the chair, feeling ever more lethargic and waited for Abe to pour the tea, setting his hat on to her desk and ruffling his hair slightly.

"I've been well," he said with a small smile, well practiced in the art of omitting certain truths to other galdori in order to make one's situation seem far better than it actually was thanks to his mother, "I've not been doing anything quite so worthwhile to society as healing, but I'm comfortable, managed to escape the grip of living with mother and father, and you know us landed galdori- we simple potter about and exist for a few hundred years past our welcome flitting from fancy to fancy like moths around a flame," he finished, sounding slightly apologetic, even euphemised his life sounded dreadful, selfish and dull and frivolous.

This would probably be the point where his entire intended cover unraveled, and he debated whether to tell her a lie, or a slightly toned down version of the truth. It wasn't that he didn't trust Abeline. Well, it may have been a partial reason, he couldn't claim to know her all that well, girls had been alien to Campion up til the age of sixteen when his rather unfortunate and aggressive case acne had had the grace and mercy to clear up, and even then people who actually tried hard in class had been a different species altogether.

He wasn't sure how she would react, he had met many perfectly agreeable- some even funny and interesting and generous galdori who had reacted badly to the passive issue (it was not a failing of the person, more of a failure of the society) and whilst he had promised himself that he wouldn't hide his views, she also had the ability to inform somebody of his pursuits and see that he couldn't go near any passives.

Instead, he decided to smooth right over the question, by posing one of his own, in relation to the name he kept hearing today.

"You have a document with Harper Moore's name on it" he said gently, "sorry, it's not my intention to go snooping through your personal papers but I just glanced down and could not avoid it," thankfully the after effects of Abeline's spell meant that his voice was calm and his mind not quite so worked up as it had been the library, he was simply too tired to rile himself up again, "I've heard of his work, though he never taught me- as you can imagine advanced magical theory I think it was, was not the subject for me. But I have had...I think pleasure might not be the right word, of meeting one of his subjects. You are familiar with him?"

She smirked at his candid description of the landed class. There were indeed two kinds of galdori, the landed ones, and the professionals. An onlooker would never see the subtle contempt that existed between the two, as it was always glossed over by politeness and good breeding. To hear him disparage his own class was nothing short of remarkable.

What she felt for him was certainly not liking or respect -- he was a useless, juvenile idiot, after all -- but it was a vaguely related sentiment. Sometimes, he used tawdry buffoonery to camouflage ill-favored political messages, and strangely only got reprimanded for the outlandishly unsavory nature of the delivery. It was like the teachers were blinded by drawings of anatomically inaccurate breasts.

Their censorship also ensured his cartoons would get passed around quickly, thereby spreading the message like a salacious disease. She remembered the one of Professor Figg and his figs was particularly virulent.

Noticing that Campion was too polite to pour his own tea, Abe lifted the teapot to begin the process.


Only to be so taken aback by Campion's abrupt subject change that she nearly let the cup run over. "I, erm, yes?"


"Oh," she mumbled, setting the teapot back down with more care than was necessary. An eyebrow twitched and her cheeks colored slightly as she recalled just how 'familiar' she had been with the professor the other day. She still hadn't forgiven herself for the incident.

"You could say that. He's..." Abe bit her lower lip, seemingly at a loss for words. In truth, there were too many she could think of, all of them a bit excessive for the present company. "... Interesting."

To prevent herself from going on, she asked, "You've met a volunteer? Which one? I've only had the pleasure of knowing one of them." This was an overstatement; though Abe wasn't adverse to Triston's company, the girl had barely said anything. She was still something of a mystery.

Campion raised an eyebrow, watching her carefully. In such a repressed society where people rarely meant what they said, one learned to control their body language almost as carefully as they did their speech, though there were occasions when the tiniest of cues could indicate the true meaning behind galdori actions. Campion was by no means the expert but he liked to think himself competent in understanding this second social language.

To Campion, the bite of her lip signified a loss of control on the part of a seemingly eccentric but rather carefully put together young woman- had it not been for the topic of conversation which brought about the change in expression, he would have found it slightly endearing- having never seen it before. But as it was, it filled him with a curious suspicion as he wondered how best to interpret it.

"I suppose that's one way of putting it," not wanting to lower the mood, he took another sip of his drink- it had been an unpleasant day all round and the most he had to look forward to in the evening was a rather dank inn, a questionable meat pastry which he wouldn't eat and a tepid glass of water before bed time- which was to be conducted in a bed that smelt strongly of something old and which would make a lady blush, or at least had done. "Rumours..." he started vaguely before he shook his head and put a hand to his temple as though in pain, taking another much needed sip of tea.

It was not his intention to sour a meeting with a schoolmate, goodness knows it was pleasant to meet a galdor from his class who hadn't gleefully pointed out something stupid he had done. All the same he felt he was losing his grip slightly, it really was quite exhausting being...was self righteous the word? He hoped not. Caring about things and people that nobody thought he had any business caring about seemed more appropriate despite not being quite as snappy.

"That's lovely, thank-you," he said indicating the cup, stifling a slight yawn as he realized that Anesthetic mixed with a soothing tea was hardly the best combination if one wanted to show off blinding conversational skills. "The healing business can't be quite so bad if you can afford such exotic teas." It was a faux pas, of course to refer so explicitly to one's earnings and he regretted it immediately- but he could simply blame it on the anesthetic.



"Triston, I believe her name was- I didn't catch her last name, we got talking in the library she...seemed like," be careful, she works at the school, you moron, they only say they don't beat passives anymore "a nice enough sort," with a mean right hook he thought, hastily trying to mentally excuse the fact that he had essentially been beaten up by a little girl. "Well, as nice as you can expect, given the circumstances," he added, still smiling but referring to what he believed about Moore's experiments and also about life for a passive at Brunnhold in general. Yet another slip he could blame on the Anesthetic.

She stared into her tea, making a short, glum sigh. Why did everyone bring that up? Was it so hard to believe that a man might want to help passives? Even sympathizers were quick to assume any galdori-passive interaction had to involve abuse.

What annoyed her most was that she had fallen into that very same trap.

"The rumors are just that. Rumors." Clearly, she would have to dispel them, and soon. She would correct anyone, of course, but she felt a particular urgency then. Campion had a very dangerous imagination, and an equally dangerous pen. He could spread falsehoods like nobody's business.


Abe shrugged indecisively, not sure what to say to that. "Er, well, I'm the resident healer at one of the dorms. My room and board is free, so I have a little extra for bits and sundries. Admittedly, I spend most of that on scientific journals."


In the library. Right where the furniture supposedly attacked him... Try as she might, she couldn't envision Triston hitting anyone. The girl was such a quiet, mousy little thing. Campion would have to insult her beyond all reason to provoke retaliation from the pipsqueak. He may have been prone to faux pas, yes, but Abe had skosh more faith in his tact than that.

"I'm surprised how any of them retain even a modicum of niceness. Dealing with spoiled, bratty students all day is bad enough, but to be trapped here.. I don't know how they can stand it."

Oh no, Abby, not you too, he groaned inwardly. The step up to his soapbox seemed a little higher and he wasn't sure if it was a place he wanted to be right now. If a lot of people had the society hadn't been so insistent that Harper was a bad sort of chap, Campion might have started to rethink things, but as it was, a punch in the face from Triston had reinforced these enforced suspicions and whilst it was not ocular proof in any sense of the word- he just couldn't shake off a bad feeling.

"Mmm," he said quietly, mussing up the back of his hair. "I'm not one to believe gossip usually- I don't doubt there's a lot about me flying around amongst my familiy's social circles right now," of course there would be, disinheritance did not slip past lightly- not when there was property involved, there would be the usual speculation of whether he had run off with a wick, whether it had transpired that he was actually a wick or whether he'd lost his mind, started to think he was a squirrel and had gone off to live in the woods.

"but when the gossip is attached to a brick and aimed at your ear , umm so to speak," and to a lesser extent held in a fist flying towards your jaw, "one can't help but recall the phrase, 'there is no smoke without fire' and there is an awful lot of smoke Ms. Ixbridge. I do worry."


"Nor I, it is somewhat difficult not to grow frustrated at the treatment of passives. I rather think I fail at it," he said with a slight smile, "but one does what one can. You're a sympathizer, I take it? From your tone...I think," he paused and tipped his head to the side, "I'm not sure if I like that word, sympathizing it seems to indicate privately feeling a bit sorry for the massive social injustice, as opposed to actually wanting to do anything about it."

"Exactly." After taking a sip of tea, she nodded deliberately, and said in a confidential tone, "It's one of the reasons I would never use the word to refer to myself." Not only would she ruin herself socially (not that that was hard), the inexactness of the term would irk her.

She set down her cup and drummed her fingers on the ceramic. "You needn't worry, but, believe me, I can understand why you do. I worried, too. That's why I signed up with the project." Her eyes met his, searching nervously for a hint of trust. "I wanted to see what was really going on."

Then a wry smirk touched her lips. "The rumors are all bunk. As it turns out, the truth is duller than fiction." She tilted her head, correcting herself, "No, I tell a lie. The science is fascinating. The human element, on the other hand, is not the glamorously lurid drama some would have you believe. The volunteers participate of their own free will, the experiments are painless, and the professor is, well..." Abe hesitated to emasculate her favorite person in the world, but it was basically true, "..he's completely harmless."

"Actually, I'm fairly sure he genuinely cares about them." She paused, a shade of uncertainty passing over her brow. Should she continue? The information was public; Campion could find it with only light inquiry.

"One of his volunteers died in premature childbirth. It had nothing to do with the experiments; I don't think she had been in the MAT after..." Abe couldn't complete that sentence. Everyone knew it was illegal for passives to have children. It was also not uncommon for lecherous galdori males to take advantage of that fact to keep their victims quiet.

The healer shifted uncomfortably in the momentary silence. "The family didn't want her child." She motioned down the hall, shaking her head contemptuously. "The infirmary didn't either. It was only because of Professor Moore's intervention that the baby has the attention he needs. The professor's even been caring for the infant in his own office. He got a crib. And toys!"

Abe smiled widely, stifling a chuckle. "Not exactly the behavior of a villain, is it?"

How did Harper manage to be so damn good? While being a genius? And cute? Gods, it was infuriating!

The fiery light of her admiration may have shown in her eyes, for she did indeed respect him to a ridiculous degree, but it was not the mindless loyalty of brainwashing. She knew the man had his flaws. For one, he couldn't brainwash his way out of a paper bag. He'd probably ask it politely to remove itself from his head and wind up generating nasty rumors about the bag and his mother.

As Campion listened to Abe speak, his face turned a death-like shade of grey, his brown eyes widened and to roughly the same size and shape as the bottom of two glass tumblers. A part of him wanted to cling to something like pride and simply dismiss Abeline of being brainwashed too. But he found he could not. Which each sentance she spoke he found his resolve growing weaker and weaker.



He couldn't have sounded less villainous than if he cuddled osta kittens and frolicked in meadows making daisy chains and giving out lollipops.

Campion found it difficult to believe her totally, the words of society members had been too deeply ingrained, but he felt far more curious about the entire thing than he done previously. He thought of his father, and how similar he had been behaving, fixating on one opinion- exaggerating the truth and failing totally to make concessions. It was this behaviour, possibly on the side of both parties, that had seen him cast out of his family's home and left with no money.

It was a horrifying, embarrassing notion to acknowldge he was more like his father than he'd thought. At least however, through years at Brunnhold, an ability to admit when he was wrong had been beaten into him, that and ability to run like someone had casted magma under his britches.

"Ms. Ixbridge, is it all possible to undo a healing spell?" he said quietly, staring into the teacup. "It is rather possible that I have made a grave error in judgement and throughly deserved that injury."

She gave Campion a skeptical look. Violence was her hated foe; it disordered beautifully complex biological systems, and she happened to prefer order over chaos. Their culture and their courts may sanction a certain level of violence as a means of punishment, but she doubted any of it was right. How could damaging one body's order create order in society?

But her musings went unfinished when she realized what Campion was implying. "Wait, so it was Triston who hit you?" Her hand flew to her mouth and she slowly sunk in her chair. "Good lady."

Apparently the girl had more spunk than Abe had given her credit for -- but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. Passives did not hit galdori. It was one of the cardinal rules of Brunnhold. She couldn't imagine what kind of punishment Triston was in for.. and if word got around that a volunteer had turned on a golly, Moore's project could be sunk for good.

"You haven't told anyone, have you?" Her expression gradually shifted from shock to puzzlement. "And what, pray tell, were you doing to her to provoke such a strong reaction?"

"I..no, she...I fell into a table," he stressed before fiddling with the cuffs on his blazer. It was obvious however that Abeline had come to the right conclusions as he muttered breathily, eyes on the teacup, a small frown on his face, "You don't miss a trick do you Abby?" he allowed himself a small chuckle, "I was beaten up by a girl- it seems as though words scrawled upon bathroom walls in Brunnhold are prophetic."


"I haven't, I couldn't...why would I?" he almost cried incredulously, did he seem so petty and callous that he would do such a thing, and simply some cheap, feeble notion of revenge revenge on Triston, "Nothing good would come of it at all." He looked her very carefully in the eye, "You...you won't tell will you?" He felt about twelve years old again and he straightened up, jutting his chin out defiantly, "I shall of course deny everything."

"And I was not doing anything to her," Campion added shortly, "We had a conversation, I behaved with my usual tact and aplomb and," at this point Campion raised the teacup to his lips and spoke in a muffled voice into the teacup, "mayhaveinsultedharpermooreandessentiallycalledhimanevilbabyeaterwhopunchesgrandmothers inthefaceandstepsonpuppy'spawswithouteverhavingactuallymettheman." he took a breath and sipped, "She did not take it well, and once again I have behaved like a monumental idiot. There's something in the waters at Brunnhold, I am sure of it."

Judging by the way her expression had shifted when describing the Moore fellow Campion guessed that there was going to be a repeat of the library incident and braced himself, beaten up by a healer was a new one- he'd add it to the list.

"I know what I have to do, I have to go and find Triston and apologize. But if, I eh..." he blinked, still unable to shake his feelings of unease, "what does Harper want to do with the passives?" he wasn't a member, that was for darn certain, not with the way the other SPE members talked about him.

She grinned behind her hand, chuckling, "In that case, I'm in trouble." For the most part, Abby had kept out of the way well enough to escape lavatory graffiti fame. However, some miscreant once took it into their head to use the phrase 'teacher's pet' entirely too literally...


The seriousness of the subject matter juxtaposed so absurdly with his boyish rebellion that she couldn't help but be tickled, even charmed. "Oh, Campion. I shall not breathe a word of it."

His following account was too typical of him to be dismissed. It was just the sort of thing her old classmate was known for. Time and time again.

Instead of the swift kick he was expecting, Campion received only a muted chortle and a pitying smile. For all his wit and charm, he is woefully obtuse. Admittedly, so am I in these matters -- I just know how to keep quiet. Her mind suddenly remembered two very irritated dinner companions. Most of the time.


Placing her elbows on the desk, the healer raised both eyebrows. "Well, he..."

The question on her mind was not how much to tell Campion. The secret of the nexus would never pass her lips -- and not simply to keep a promise to Harper. Rather, the havoc that information would cause were it released to the public was too great to risk. It was not a matter of trusting Campion (not that she trusted anyone unconditionally), but more that any risk of that information leaking out, regardless of how small, was too much. This was bigger than her, and she knew it.

Presently, the question was whether she should include herself as a partner in the project. Considering she was one of three people who knew the results, she had to conclude she was inexorably linked.

"We are trying to determine why the mona treat them as they do." She pushed up her glasses unconsciously, adding, "Primarily, we're charting ley lines at this point. It's a bit of a process, but doesn't actually take very long.. Despite that, the project has been progressing at a snail's pace. Professor Moore's been having a bit of trouble finding volunteers, you see." She took a resigned sip of tea. It had gone cold. "I think that has to do with all the rumors."

"Thank you," he smiled, "I do have a reputation to uphold. If it ever got out that I had been punched in the face by a young woman- well, there goes my boxing career."



"Oh so Moore is simply using the passives for clever research, university type things," he said- unable to draw any conclusion from her words than that. Science and logic had never been his forte and anything to do with the mona and magical theory more often than not left him glazed over, a hangover from his time at Brunnhold, "though I can't understand why so many people bother with studying the blasted mona in such depth. It is a law unto itself," he grimaced, "I much prefer the social side of the passive debate."

He chuckled a little to himself "You know, I had visions of some kind of dungeon...there isn't a dungeon is there?"

He tipped his head to the side, still slightly troubled by the society for passive equality's views on the topic of Moore, if there was no reason to fear the safety of passives, why had he been so demonized? "All the same, I have a few acquaintances who seem to dislike Moore intensely. But I can't think why, if the research is as harmless as you say it is. What do they have to be afraid of?"

Contrary to Campion, Abe enjoyed learning monic theory. The particles that made up the world were endlessly fascinating, their will at once alluringly mysterious and terrifyingly pervasive. She knew the current Anaxi model, and had read snippets of the competing theory out of Frecks. The two were so different, while both producing useful results, that Abe could only assume they were both only partially right. The truth had to be something between, or something stranger yet.


"Well.. I suppose Laboratory Beta does, at first blush, look a little like a dungeon. It's in the basement, you see, and it's not as well-lit as it ought to be. And the Monic Axial Tomography machine looks like it came right out of a second-rate tally novel. The technology is so new..." She grinned whimsically, momentarily enchanted dreams of a polished brass tomorrow. Who needs the troublesome relationships of men or mona? Machines are the future!

A light flickered in her eyes, strikingly similar to the one Moore had inspired; it faded almost instantaneously. "Sadly, I think that's part of why people are afraid. It's an unrecognizable mess of wires and needles. What else is there to do but assume it's a threat?" Her shoulders slumped, as though she were let down by all of galdori-kind. "So instead of checking, they run off to spread panic."

Abe frowned darkly, a deeply cynical thought occurring to her. "Perhaps.. Some within the SPE may think it advantageous to spread tales of passives being tortured. Surely, that would garner more feelings of sympathy and righteous anger than the tame, bloodless truth. There may have been an increase in membership due to the misconception, whether it was intentionally created or not."

"

Campion fought not to make a comment about the two scientists alone together in a dungeon, he was not seventeen anymore- a sharp voice in his head chided him-he was an adult and a gentleman.

"At this stage I probably ought to smile and nod as though I know what on Vita a Monic Axial Tomography is," Campion smiled and nodded. "And at this stage you will have already figured out that I don't...which is a shame, it does sound slightly fascinating," he scratched his head feigning nonchalance, "you mentioned it was trying to figure out the relationship between passives and the mona, I wonder if it would be able to deduce why some galdori-" Campion shook his head and stopped abruptly. "No, no...that's completley different. Excuse my digression."

Out of curiosity, he was about to ask why some galdori had more natural connections with the mona and why some- like him- only managed to score two. But that was an incredibly selfish question and like asking why he was better at cartoons than most as opposed to something so serious as Passives and their diableries. It couldn't compare.



Campion coughed nervously, there were parallels between the behavior Abe described and his intentions for visiting Brunnhold in the first place, to generate more feelings of sympathy and increase membership. But at least he was actually at the school as opposed to simply lying through his teeth.

Still, he rather felt Abeline's description of the SPE was slightly unfair, "I'm sure the SPE had the best of intentions, after all they do their best to get members- which is no easy feet, some galdori have to put an awful lot on the line," Like reputation and inheritance and family. "nobody who joins the SPE does so for personal gain, I am sure of it," he paused and rubbed his temple.

"Do you know where I would be able to find Triston? I really do need to apologize to her...though it might be best if I waited a day or so, allowed her to cool off, do you think? I'll be here all week at anyroad," he pulled a face indicating that he really would rather not be. His home in Vienda may not have been luxury and there was the difficult issue of Daisy, but it was far better than the room in the Stacks and the horrible, embarrassing, memories of Brunnhold.