After finishing their book shopping, without incident, they decided on lunch. Lunch at the Gooble Gobble Gourmet Grub kiosk. Shalise in particular seemed more than excited to try the food. She bounced heel to heel as they waited for the toque blanche wearing chef to hand them their meals.
How the man could see out from under his overly bushy eyebrows, Juliana couldn’t understand. Not unless he had some alternate means of seeing.
Luckily, it didn’t affect the quality of their food. The grub came out on three plates and smelled delicious. After they took a seat at one of the plaza tables, Shalise dug right in and Juliana was quick to follow.
It had a slight acidic-sweet goo for insides; easily slurped down with a straw. Of course, the straw missed all the crunchy exterior. That was fine to eat plain, but not as good as eating it together.
Eva didn’t touch her plate. She backed off, mumbling something about “not eating oversized maggots.”
“Oh well,” Juliana said as she pulled the black-haired girl’s plate in front of her. “More for me.”
“So, what is next?” Shalise asked as Juliana finished her lunch.
“I need new potion supplies,” Eva said.
“You don’t even go to that class.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t need to maintain my personal stock of potions.”
“Are you going to be going to skip all this year too?”
“Probably,” Eva said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m not going to be allowed to touch the chemicals again, no point in going to watch.”
Shalise pouted, though it didn’t look too serious. “What if we make something useful that you don’t know about?”
“I’ve had Arachne read the book. Unless you’re making things not in the book?”
“Not so far,” Juliana said. “But alchemy is required. How are you graduating?”
“Only two years of alchemy is required. Further classes are all elective. I’ve claimed that I’m getting special tutoring due to my,” she tapped a gloved hand against her blindfold, “issues. After Zoe Baxter discussed it with the dean, they agreed that was acceptable. Alchemy shouldn’t even be on my class schedule this year.”
“Who is tutoring you?”
Eva put on a small grin and merely shrugged.
Juliana wasn’t sure the girl actually carried it on her anymore. Maybe she could ask Eva if she could have it.
It would make a great addition to her multiple foci and armor. Maybe add in a few more hostile potions as well. Throwing a potion of air thickening would, at the very least, slow down a pursuer. They’d have to almost literally swim through the affected area until it wore off.
She would need a separate satchel for the more caustic potions. Accidentally throwing a titan potion or drinking a poison potion would not end well for Juliana.
“I could also use some new clothes,” Eva said. “My, ah, growth spurt has turned perfectly fine clothes into scrap cloth.” She gave a slight knock against her leg as if to emphasize her meaning.
Not that either of the girls would fail to understand. Shalise had been disturbed, to say the least, when Eva first stripped down in their dorm. The poor girl might have fainted if Eva hadn’t warned her beforehand.
It went against everything she knew about biology, as small as that might be, but she couldn’t deny Eva’s new legs were cool. Awesome, in fact. Still, Juliana had no plans nor the slightest desire to chop off her own limbs.
She wasn’t stupid.
Yet, if the unthinkable did happen, Juliana knew where she wanted to get new limbs from. Even if she had to hide them from regular people for the rest of her life, they appeared far better than any prosthetic she knew about.
“New clothes would be nice. My old uniform won’t last me the whole year,” Shalise said with a pat at her chest. “It was getting tight at the end of last semester.”
“Yeah,” Juliana said with a pat at her own chest. “I think I could use a new uniform too,” she lied.
Juliana let out a small sigh. She hadn’t grown at all in the last year. Both of her roommates were bigger than her in every way that mattered. She had to look up to face both of them, Eva especially with her new legs.
It just wasn’t fair. Her mother was tall, though not very busty. Her father had some height to him, though not too much. Yet Juliana was still the smallest and shortest in her class. It had been that way ever since she was young.
Just once, she wanted to be taller than someone her own age. Or even someone a few years younger than herself. All of the first year students she’d seen wandering around Brakket were at least her height.
Juliana sighed once more as she followed her friends past the dancing uniforms and into the clothing store.
Theory: Order, Chaos, Blink
A gloved hand shot up in front of Irene.
