Arianwen Rosier (mighthurtabit) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2009-01-16 12:36:00 |
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Current mood: | worried |
Letter from Arianwen Rosier to Yvon Leffoy, dated 17 September 1942 and sent by gate...
Strongly warded and blood sealed. No-one but Yvon can read this; anyone else who tries will get their fingers burnt. In reply to his letter:
Dear Boss,
You have a lot of silly fantasies, don’t you? Don’t pout, it’s very endearing. I’d like to go to that club with you in black silk and pearls. It would be fun. But it’s also a bad idea, so I won’t spend much time sitting around and thinking about it. I love you very much, you know; I just couldn’t say that before, when you had the other set of silly fantasies—the ones about marrying me.
It isn’t me who needs the lecture about how defending yourself against stupid gossip just makes everything worse; it’s Liane. Of course the things they said about her weren’t the sort of things you could just ignore. But she said too much, and now there are a dozen purple stories about her making the rounds. Apparently people at Ker-Ys thought she was in love with her professor, Michel Rosenthal, and she denied that on top of the things that really were lies, so now, since Rosenthal came here just to get her and take her away, everyone believes all of it.
And they are so in love. She’s always right next to him; he always makes room for her. She reaches for his hand, his arm, so possessively—and he lets her have it. Every little thing a girl can do to mark a man as hers, she does, and Rosenthal lets her and smiles. They say nothing of course, because even though she’s an adult now, she can’t have been the last time he saw her. But I’ve seen them walking through the halls arm-in-arm—he says he came here to test students to be recruited for the Bureau, but she’s the only one he tested that he’s taking back with him!
Anyhow. Colette Saint-Germain, with whom I am normally friendly, is doing her best to make Liane’s life hell, but it won’t last long, because Michel and Liane are leaving either tonight after his lecture, which I hope for their sake is the case, or tomorrow morning. But that’s not why I’m writing, really it isn’t, and I’m also not writing to tell you my heartaches this time (I’ve exorcised most of those on Rajinder Ayyar’s fine arse, and let me tell you, it is very fine, and he takes orders very well—you would approve).
There’s going to be trouble tonight and I expect it’s the kind of trouble we’re going to need help with. And by help I mean you and Alessio. I’ve been hearing all these fantastically awful stories from the fifth-year girls—Colette, yes, but also Olivia Goulston, who is normally a flibbertigibbet even if I do like her, and Dimity, likewise, and then also Dylan Vieira, who is neither a girl nor the least bit frivolous. There were all these terrible visions in the fifth form Divination class today, and the professor (rather like Leah Lindsey) just dismissed them all, and some of them were about Liane. Colette of course interprets them to mean that Liane brought the trouble here, but while I must admit that a vision of Liane directing lightning strikes is damning, it becomes rather less so when the vision is of her directing them AWAY from us, which I did force her to admit.
So be ready. Because I don’t think for a minute that if we’re hit, Lindsey will have the first idea how to handle it. We’re not set up for large-scale triage. We’re barely trained in triage-evaluation, despite the fact that preliminary triage can be done by anyone with a functional brainstem if they pay attention to the lecture and try it a couple of times in a drill. Lindsey is a pathetic excuse for a wartime instructor and is perfectly fine for undoing hexes and soothing skinned knees but she’s not going to know how to handle it if we get crush injuries and you know that. I mean, she worked on your floor, like everyone does, but that was with you and Király in charge.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to take over from her and she’s bloody well not going to let me. She already resents me because Goyle tells me things that he won’t tell her. If you are here she will at least shut up and do as she’s told; Caerleon girls are mostly good at that, it’s true what you said about most of the people in Caerleon—they want to serve an ideal. And a leader.
Pack up a bag, just in case? For you and Alessio. I’m also enclosing our gate co-ordinate codes, just in case you need them right away. Of course they may not work if the leys are affected, and that is the sort of thing you would need a Liane for, not me.
Love in Christ, &c,
Arianwen
PS: Isn’t Michel Rosenthal one of your friends? I remember we had dinner with him once in Londinium. Armorican, Jewish, brushes his hair once a week whether he needs to or not, and I barely kept up with the conversation? No wonder he didn’t think it was the least bit odd for you to take your apprentice out to a dinner-party. I probably dealt with him better than Corinne would have done. He is cute, in an incredibly feckless way. I suppose it’s Liane’s business if she wants to spend the rest of her life taking time away from her own research to make sure he is properly dressed and doesn’t walk into any walls while he’s trying to calculate his way up Jacob’s Ladder. I shall assume, given the level of advanced harmonic energy work they probably do, since I know roughly what field her thesis is in, but have no idea why it’s classified, that it must have its rewards. (And he probably is another one that’s good at doing whatever he’s told without any stupid complaining. She looks like she might like that.)
I almost wish she’d stay. She would be someone that I could be friends with, if I could get her to just SHUT UP in public. (Not that I don’t do the same thing. We both make everyone angry by telling them how to improve things, or rather, assuming they WANT to improve things, and here I am using all capital letters again. Raj had better watch out!)
Valeria was all right and I am trying, but the first thing she did when she got here was throw herself at Tom Forrester (who is nice, except when he’s incredibly creepy, and whom I thought she knew Ximena liked) and she just announced to half the girls in the dorm that we don’t have to worry about Pettigrew any more because she altered the shape of his nose and he learnt his lesson. That might even work with Pettigrew, but it’s not what I’d call tactical. Although it has at least got Colette to shut up about our cousin Liane. I think Valeria is now her hero.