Etana sticks her head in the door.
"Discus-Boy, I have to go to a private parent-teacher consultation. I may be gone a while."
"Oh, is this one of your students from further afield? Who is it? The Indian boy?"
"No. The son of the Shi'ar emperor. When I said a while, I meant a few days. Can you last without me?"
"Why can't Logan or the others go?"
"Well… Tora's under planetary arrest and isn't allowed to leave Earth until pain of death, Xixy would just start a war, Logan's got far too much on, Beast's in the middle of a sensitive experiment, Bobby hasn't got the 'clout' according to Logan because apparently the Shi'ar see ice as an inferior element, Kitty's busy, Rogue can't leave and Gambit isn't exactly popular with the Shi'ar right now for reasons I can't go in. So I offered to go. Anyway, Majestor Kallark is a solider first and foremost. He respects me for my strength in battle. And I'm not exactly capable of being on active duty right now."
"Etana, you're a lot more…verbose…recently…"
She shrugs.
"I'm bored. Bored bored bored bored bored…"
"Etana…"
"Bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored bored! There's nothing interesting going on! Where are the alien invasions, the end of the world as we know its and the genocidal megalomaniac leaders!? I'm going to take up BASE jumping if something interesting doesn't happen soon!"
"Etana!"
She sighs.
"I'm sorry. I'm just not exactly cut out for the peaceful life. I used to hate being a shepherd. I didn't have enough patience."
"So… What exactly are you planning to do?"
"Oh, a Shi'ar ship is coming to pick me up, I'll reread the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for the eighty-ninth time each and then I'll have a nice parent-teacher consultation and then come home reading the Le Carré's again."
"You read Tolkien much too often…"
"Well? It's not my fault he decided to write down what I told him…"
"Etana, that's not funny. Etana?! Did you actually mean that!? ETANA!"
But she's already vanished off, probably to pack three hundred books into one handbag. For a Bronze Ager, give or take a few years –she can't remember if she's Iron Age or Bronze age, given that the Iron Age was believed to have begun around ten years after the date she gives as her birth year, which means it could have begun twenty years before she was born- well, for a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age woman, she sure loves reading. As in, her castle in Scotland has a library filled with rare manuscripts and ancient tomes.
Oh, and apparently she helped Shakespeare write his plays…
