Room 308, Sunday, Early Evening

[the_merriest]

It was Newbie Day! Okay, Newbie Day was yesterday, but that made it Newbie Weekend. All the fun of Newbie Day, but it lasted all weekend! Really!

And that meant Rikku was kinda hyper and still bouncing from the picnic when she realized she'd missed a call. Oops? She checked her voicemail and --

And then dialed like a woman on a mission.

(the

Comments

[ella_obeys]

Ella wanted to do some reading before her classes the next week. She really tried not to spy on Rikku or listen in.

It was just hard not to, sometimes.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, once her roommate had hung up the phone.

[the_merriest]

"Boys are stupid," Rikku seethed. "Not mine. Someone else's. Except they all are. All boys are stupid. It's like a rule. It's like when they mass-produce them, the last step is to remove some big part of the brain. UGH."

She flopped down on her bed with a huff.

"How are you?"

[ella_obeys]

"Probably better than you are," Ella told her. "I'm still not a squirrel again, things with Dick are good -- I think he has a whole brain -- and I got a little brother. Who ... I hope does not turn out to be so stupid I have to hit him."

[the_merriest]

"You were a squirrel?" Rikku asked, propping herself up on her elbows. "He might have a whole brain. Some of them do. More likely he's just faking and one day he'll say something and you'll stare at him and go, oh my gosh. That's the piece he's missing. But I'm totally okay with being proved wrong, here."

She raised an eyebrow. "Does he seem like he might be stupid like that? I can help hit him, if you need extra punches."

[ella_obeys]

"I thought I left a note," Ella facepalmed. "Sorry. Squirrels aren't much for attention spans, I found. But yes, for most of a week, and hopefully never again."

She shrugged. "He seemed fine. He already knew about magic, so he wasn't completely lost."

[the_merriest]

"Oh," Rikku said, looking over at her ... sorry excuse for a messy desk. "I kinda ... lose things? You might have, and I tooootally lost it. Sometimes Petey eats bits of paper. And then throws them up again. I think something's Very Wrong with Petey."

Petey mrowled happily from under her desk. He was fine, just sloooow.

"I meant to sign up for a little sib and forgot. I still have mine from last time, too, and I never know if it's too soon and they're gonna feel neglected? That's pretty weird, huh? What's his name?"

[ella_obeys]

"Pento might have decided it was a snack too," Ella said, giving her blanket-covered birdcage a hairy eyeball. "And I don't think that's weird at all. That's why I didn't do it last time, it seemed too soon after I got here to presume to be any kind of authority. He's called Tony something." Ella never remembered to pay attention to last names.

[the_merriest]

"Awwwwww, hey, Pento," Rikku called, waving her fingers. "Cilr y kuut pento. Has he learned any new words?"

She shook her head. "People here have so many names."

Really. Three or four of them.

[ella_obeys]

"He almost said apple yesterday," Ella reported. "But then he got more interested in pecking at the design on my blouse. I never knew it was so hard to train them to talk."

She sighed. "And I know. Everyone at home gets by just fine on one."

[the_merriest]

"What's so hard with just having one?" Rikku huffed. "Your name, and then if you're outside your tribe, you say, I'm This Name of Whatever Tribe. Or like you guys do it, I'm So-and-So from Thisplace. And here, some people share their second names because they're related to each other, but others have it, too, and they're not related, and it's way more confusing than it needs to be."

[ella_obeys]

"I don't know," Ella said. "My mother was Eleanor, too, I think I told you? So she's Lady Eleanor of Frell, I'm just Ella of Frell. I don't see where making us Eleanor and Ella Random-Word-That-Means-Nothing would help at all. This world is just weird."

[the_merriest]

"Rikku of the Al Bhed Tribe," she returned cheerfully. "And I'm probably related to most of the Al Bhed, if you go back far enough, and I'm not related to anybody that isn't, except Yunie, so that's already clear enough, isn't it? And some people here have other names tucked in the middle that don't mean anything."

[ella_obeys]

She shook her head at the foolishness of it all.

"So what part of his brain was the boy you were talking about on the phone missing?" she asked, rather suddenly.

[the_merriest]

"Oh," she huffed. "He broke up with his girlfriend just 'cause they were gonna be separated and he couldn't protect her and blah blah blah, boys get stupid when you have to be away from them. Who knows what they're thinking. Ever."

[ella_obeys]

Ella huffed at that. "That's really silly," she decided. "Are you going to go hit him?"

[the_merriest]

"She said I shouldn't," Rikku groused. "So I haven't decided yet. Maybe I can trip him, make it look like an accident."