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[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is having a slow-motion argument with the Bar over breakfast. She wants water and a little bread, and the Bar does not agree that this is a breakfast.


She has rejected an omelet, a breakfast sandwich, and biscuits and gravy. The Bar is trying a bowl of porridge on her and she's considering it. (She hasn't noticed it has raisins in it yet.)

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[whenthewindblows]

Alyce sits a few seats down, shuffling her deck of Tarot cards and randomly pulling one or two out at a time and pausing to read them. She's not really asking anything important, just requesting the cards to tell her anything she needs to know.

Apparently, she really needs to get a tutor in College Algebra or things are not going to be okay. Like, really not okay.

It's not breakfast for her. She's on a lunch break between classes at Bethlem College, a magical university on Bainbridge Island to the west of Seattle. She notices the exchange of foods from the corner of her eye, and looks over to see the gothiest girl ever.

"Um. Hi? Do you need any help?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I do not," she says heavily; her tone of voice is more than half directed to the Bar. "All I require is water and some bread."

The Bar concedes, although the bread does have jam on it.

[whenthewindblows]

"Oh, okay."

That's not a big meal. Alyce had struggles with bulimia when she was in high school, though, and she knows it's hard to make yourself eat, sometimes.

"It looks like you have it now. So that's good."

And before her courage completely fails her and she goes silent, she says, "My name is Alyce."

[we_bring_hell]

No one monitors ascetics for disordered eating, and no one talks back to the Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, and Harrow has been living on about 600 calories a day since she was ten.

She nibbles on the edge of the bread. "I am Harrowhark Nonagesimus. My peers call me the Ninth."

[whenthewindblows]

"Oh. Um."

She shuffles her deck nervously.

"So what would you prefer I call you?"

Because she's not sure whether she's a peer or not?

[we_bring_hell]

"That was an invitation," she says calmly. "Titles are not the fashion here."

[whenthewindblows]

Alyce flushes pink because she's still not sure what to call the other girl. The Ninth? Harrowhawk? Which is a totally cool name and rhymes with Carrow. Crap, she wishes she knew how to do the making friends talking thing better.

"Oh, okay. No, they aren't, are they?"

And now she's babbling. Great!

[we_bring_hell]

"Are you a person of rank in your own world?" Harrow asks.

[whenthewindblows]

Alyce barks out a laugh. Because that was funny!

Oh. She wasn't joking was she?

"Oh. No, no I'm just plain. I mean, I'm a witch? But no title, just a name."

[we_bring_hell]

She inclines her head. "Still. An adept deserves respect, with or without a title."

"I myself am a necromancer. What many would call a bone witch, since I am a member of the Ninth House." She is indeed wearing bone bangles around her wrist, and chunky bone earrings in the multiple piercings of her ears. Her robe makes it unclear if she's wearing any other bone decorations.

[whenthewindblows]

"Oh, cool, I know a few people minoring in necromancy. It's not, um, a subject you can major in."

Any more.

"So are your bones real or replicas?"

[we_bring_hell]

She gives Alyce a dubious look. "In the Empire, necromancy is the only subject."

She touches the bones in her ear. "They are the heirlooms of the Ninth House. From parishioners of distinguished service who were exempted from construct labor."

[whenthewindblows]

She has no idea how to respond to this. Not about them being bones! Real bones are fine, who is she to judge?

Ninth - Harrowhawk? - must come from one of the fancy worlds where there are, like, special schools where everyone learns all the complex magical things from, like, infancy. Not like kids from Sunnydale where you figure things out the hard way as you go along while avoiding vampire and demon attacks on the regular.

"That's great. They're pretty. I'm majoring in Healing Arts. Or I'm trying. I'm failing a class right now."

[acrookedpath]

So.

He talked to Lan Zhan.

He did not, in the course of any of that, actually talk-talk to Lan Zhan.

In fact, the more he has thought it over, critically examining every too-loud laugh from himself and every tiny shift in facial expression from his friend, the more he is convinced that Lan Zhan is the most polite man in the world and Wei Wuxian is the biggest fool ever born. How could he possibly say anything to him? Look at how his eyebrows lowered a fraction of a centimeter when Wei Wuxian stared at him too long! Look at how Lan Zhan was the first to let go of his hand! And he cannot believe he thought getting drunk would help, how has Lan Zhan not lost all patience with him by now, truly --

All of which is to say that he does not have breakfast -- does not even have lunch, yet -- but he does have his head in his arms at a spot far down the bar, groaning softly to himself in an agony typically reserved for heartsick juniors meeting the female cultivators for the first time.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow comes down the Bar, leaving behind her dubious breakfast. "I presume congratulations are not in order?" she asks tonelessly.

[acrookedpath]

"I am a fool," he says, muffled almost to incomprehension by his arms.

Realizing a beat later that Harrow may misinterpret this, he lifts his head enough to hook his chin over his folded arms, staring straight ahead. "I didn't say anything," he clarifies. "But I cannot. I behaved terribly and I am surprised he wants anything to do with me."

He's well aware of how melodramatic he's being -- he can only imagine the eye-rolling he would endure from Wen Qing, or even shijie, if they were here. (Though his sister would probably be far kinder about it.) But he can't bring himself to care.

[we_bring_hell]

"What did you do?" she asks, ready for anything.

[acrookedpath]

"I could hardly look at him," he mutters. "He knew something was wrong and I fear he thought it was his fault. I drank two entire bottles of wine in a fraction of a shichen to calm my nerves, and all it did was worry him further. He spent half the night awake trying to comfort me! He had enough burdens to carry without me deliberately making myself into one as well."

He puts his head back into his arms.

"And he pulled away from me when I took his hand, and I am certain he disapproved of how much I stared when I was drunk, and..."

[we_bring_hell]

"I see," she said. "Is such drunkenness unusual?"

To be fair, he emptied a bottle in front of her once.

[acrookedpath]

"Not particularly?" he admits. "But not to that extent. I enjoy my wine; I just do not tend to enjoy quite that much of it that quickly."

[we_bring_hell]

"Hm," she says.

"I doubt you have terminally damaged your prospects, although I admit you have taken a vital strike to your ego."

[acrookedpath]

He raises his head again to pull a truly impressive face, well known to anyone who has ever dealt with a sulking teenager. And while Wei Wuxian was just old enough to no longer be a teenager when he died -- and endured far more serious blows than this in his short life -- he can still sulk with the best of them.

"I suppose it will not kill me a second time," he mutters. "But what can I say? I cannot carry on like this every night for the rest of my afterlife. Do you think the rats will deliver to the forest if I decide to live there forever? Or the bottom of the lake?"

[we_bring_hell]

"You know it will hurt him tremendously if you disappear," she says, not afraid to go for the low blows.

The Bar transfers the bowl of porridge to in front of her; she side-eyes it.

"I have examined the path of duty and I find that it is incumbent on me to be your ally in this. So let us set aside self-pity and consider this matter seriously."

[acrookedpath]

A low blow well deserved, he admits, and tries not to wince.

"All right," he says with a tired sigh, pushing himself upright -- or mostly upright; his elbows stay firmly planted on the bar. Briefly, he follows her glance to the porridge. "...Is Madam Bar's food objectionable?"

Let no distraction go un-seized around Wei Wuxian.

[we_bring_hell]

"It is not what I desire," she says calmly. The porridge... lurks.

"First, let us consider the topic of competition. Do you have any noteworthy rivals in the lists of his affections?"