"So what happened?" Inta asked when he walked her out the double doors. The doors slammed shut at their backs and the hallways were quickly rendered nearly empty, she glanced up at him and folded her hands together in the drooping robes of her outfit.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I spent some of the time munching on birds in a tree and wrote a great deal, I'm very ready for my first batch of students." The spring in her step made up for the lack of an ability to smile, and when he stepped a little closer to her side, she didn't make additional space. Instead Entoma added, "I got some good advice from some friends and… how should I put this?"
Entoma looked away and touched the surface of her mask, her mimicked hand traced over the shell of the insect she wore over her face, "Perhaps my Master said it best. Willing obedience is better than forced obedience. I guess… I guess you could say that the word 'obedience' can be replaced with other words too." She laughed when she looked up and saw Inta scratching his head.
"I'll just take your word on that, I suppose I had to be there." He replied and asked, "What are you doing now?"
"Walking with you." Entoma answered, and Inta had to laugh at that.
"Should we keep doing that, then?" He asked hopefully.
"I'm as ready as I can be to start teaching, and there's nothing else I have to do until I beat you to a pulp tomorrow… so why not?" She asked and gestured down the long hall. "There must be things I haven't seen. Show them to me."
"It would be a pleasure." Inta remarked, though he skipped saying just 'where' he was taking her, she didn't mind, he kept it entertaining with little quips and stories, so the destination didn't matter at all.
Not at the library. "If you go to some little visited sections of the library, you'll occasionally catch students in various stages of fornication. I blame the influence of the Pope. After the noodle incident, all bets were off."
"They never actually proved that the details happened as the story said they did." Entoma pointed out.
"Nobody cared, it was a good excuse… honestly I don't blame her if it was true, I mean you've got to go a little stir crazy locked up in any one place all year long. Who can blame her if she went a little wild?" Inta pointed out, and Entoma found no basis for argument, so they browsed the many books on great, high shelves that towered up to the ceiling. Great rolling ladders were bound into place on little tracks, and here and there, students climbed up and pulled books from shelves while a black robed lich with a pair of armbands worked behind a counter. Nobody paid the least bit of mind to the undead worker, and occasionally a student would approach to speak to it without fear.
"You know, I'm over a hundred years old, that makes me older than most vampires, and I never in my wildest dreams imagined this." He said with breathless bemusement mixed with awe while a young elf student stood asking questions of the lich.
"Aren't vampires immortal, how is it that you're one of the older ones?" Entoma asked. "Were you… hunted down?" She instantly regretted the question, 'I shouldn't ask that…'
But to her surprise, he denied it. "No, well… yes, we were sometimes hunted, but that isn't why there aren't that many of us. It's that we usually end our own lives. When you live long enough, you run out of reasons to keep going. Most of the time a combination of isolation, frustration, and simple boredom will do someone in before they are ever found and killed."
"Killing yourself over boredom?" Entoma took a step back and cocked her head at him. "You can't be serious."
"Oh yes, life on the fringe with nothing to do but continue onward? Immortality seems great at first but then eventually it's just an endless stretch of the same. So they ask, 'why bother'? When they run out of answers?" He drew one sharp clawed hand up to his throat and drew it slowly across the front, miming the act of suicide.
"Oh." Entoma said with quiet reflection.
"But seeing this? How the undead exist with the living, being able to teach a class, make friends, be part of the whole the way I am? I think old vampires will become more common. Something new to see and do is always coming up. Time will tell, it usually does." Inta gave a fangy smile and led her out of the expansive library. Their feet tapping lightly over the stone as they made their way out, passing by a young half elven couple walking arm in arm.
"I'm no gambler, but I'd wager it isn't books they're going to study." Inta suggested with a wry little grin lightly spread over his face.
"I wouldn't know, affection is so… strange to me." Entoma remarked, "I do have some emotions, I feel love for my sisters, for our Master who is like a father to us. Some years ago, I became close friends with Bertra, an elf woman in Crescent Lake. I have a… what she would call a 'kind' of love for her. I think I am capable of the romantic elements, but then…" She paused and tapped her mask. The shell clicked lightly at the touch.
"I have none of my own kind, so I don't really know what to do and…" She glanced around briefly as they exited the building before admitting, "until not that long ago, I didn't get out much."
"No?" He asked and for a little while they walked in amiable silence, the clouds were starting to roll over the sky, a dark gray blanket that cast a shadow over the world.
Entoma, for her part, found that she felt a little flutter at the unpredictability. 'Lord Cocytus was right… even if he didn't know about what. Harold was just a doll, a puppet, he would always say what I wanted to hear, there was no risk and no value. This is more interesting. What will he say next? What will he do next?' The sense of anticipation was a mix of worrying about what Bertra would say when Entoma removed her mask for the first time in her friend's presence, and the excitement of receiving a present.
So she said nothing, leaving it for Inta to speak for himself and decide, like the direction they walked, where the conversation should go.
Their walk carried them to a stand that was just getting ready to pack up. The busy outdoor area was already being emptied, students were rushing past them, but Entoma only half heard what they were saying.
Thunder rolled with the force of a thousand chariots.
"Two teas, with milk." Inta said, holding up two fingers to the cart worker. The worker wore a simple tunic of bright, attention-grabbing green like the leaves of the tea he sold, and had a bright fire red beard and tranquil brown eyes.
"Sure sure, coming right up." He said while his hands flew over the little tea setup he had in place, a little metal pot on a constant burn, he dropped fresh leaves out of a tin and into the boiling water which he immediately allowed to stir.
"And sugar, lots and lots of sugar in mine." Entoma added.
"Of course, of course!" He said with haste as he poured milk into the empty cups out of a small pitcher with one hand, while still stirring a long metal stirrer with the other. The noise of the stirrer scraped along the sides of the pot and his eyes kept going up to the sky.
He reached and set the pitcher down so fast that some of the milk sloshed out and stained his brown boots, but he didn't care. 'If I don't move soon it'll get drenched.' He thought, 'The things I put up with for extra silvers…' He rolled his eyes at himself and began to scoop five large heaping spoonfuls of white sugar granules into one high wooden cup.
"Alright, here you go." He said and poured the tea into each cup, using the flat end of the stirrer with its tiny holes as a strainer. The little pouring sound was all there was around them for a few moments as he finished it off and then capped the top off with a flat bit of snuggly fitting wood which had a little mouth shaped hole at one end. "Twenty-five silvers."
"Is it just me, or is that a bit high?" Inta asked.
"Wait till we start selling coffee, you won't believe what that'll go for, sir." The server said as Inta dropped thirty silvers into the pale human merchant's hands.
With that done, the merchant secured everything with small latches, folded over the top of his wheeled cart, rushed to the long wheelbarrow handles, lifted it up, and began to scurry for cover.
It was only then that Inta and Entoma looked around and noticed that they were completely alone except for the retreating back of the tea seller. They collectively looked up at the darkening sky just as another roll of thunder made its way across the deepening darkness, and then the rain began to fall.
"I wasn't expecting this…" Inta admitted when the first drops hit him, "How do arachnoid heteromorphs view rain?"
"I know only myself, and I don't like it. Let's go to my place and get out of it." She said as the rain became a downpour.
"I'll race you." Inta said with a cocky grin.
"You'll lose." Entoma quipped as they each put one leg back.
"We'll see." Inta said, then added, "Go!"
And the pair sprinted off as the rain came down and lightning split the sky.