"Nice to meet you too," he says. "I'm a nymph. You're an asshole."

"Fuck's sake," snorts the alleged nymph. "You want that healed?"

"I know where the healing center is," she mutters, pulling herself to her feet. But it's a hike. And he's between her and her room, where her boots are.

"If you wanna walk there, I'm not stopping you," he says. "But if you're okay with divine healing, my way's quicker."

"You are kind of stopping me. You're between me and my boots of dexterity that I obviously need to get anywhere without getting myself killed, and you're either a dude who hangs around naked in semi-public for no obvious reason, or you're the world's only male nymph and you can therefore discern creepy things about me just by standing close enough and I do not think subtle arts shields will block that."

"Okay," he says, and he walks past the door of her room to stand between it and the next room down the hall, giving her a clear path. "Just so you know, I was going to read you off to make the point that I actually am a fucking nymph, but I'm not feeling anything specific enough that you'd even be able to tell I wasn't just making it up. So congratulations on your boring fantasy life."

Bella gets up and goes to her room for her boots. "I'm so proud," she seethes, jamming her foot into one and doing up the laces. "You know, I'm not the kind of subtle artist who inadvertently reads people, those are actually very rare, but the ones who do are generally expected to work on controlling it and not casually invading everyone's privacy. I knew there were nymphs sometimes in this building. I did not know it about the hall." She gets the other boot on.

"I know you're not a subtle artist, a subtle artist would be asking about my unfriendly brain by now whether they autoread or not. My point was about learning things about people's minds without permission. Not about the subtle arts as a specific way to do it." She shifts uncomfortably. "How close do you have to get to heal me?"

"Are you uncomfortable about me getting close because I'm naked or because I can read your sexuality? Not that I can do much about either. I'm still feeling you from here, I'd still be feeling you from the other end of the hall, I could feel you from inside my room with the door closed if you were having sex in yours but I'd bet my title deed you're not gonna be getting any this month, especially not after I said that. And I have to touch you to work a healing."

"If you're really a nymph, which I am gradually coming to believe, then I don't care if you're naked. And if - kheez, the other end of the hall, seriously? Am I the first person to even object or do you just not give a shit?"

"I would look into not needing to breathe if I inhaled other people's private business whenever I did it!" exclaims Bella, but she flings her hands into the air and drops one into his offered extremity.

"I have no idea. Have you bothered looking it up?"

"Look it up how? Mom and I don't talk much."

Bella runs a hand through her hair. "In the library? Ask a lore professor, maybe? I don't think I could do it, but depending on how it works maybe some subtle artist could set up a sensory valve?"

"I don't sense it, I am it," he says. "Anyway, whatever, I'm off to get yelled at for walking around naked some more."

"I'm off to get asked what my major is and watch people justifiably flinch," sighs Bella, stepping out of her room, closing the door behind her, and heading down the hallway.

"Faaaaaantastic."

"I'm not going to feel anything more from you than I've already got unless your desires change or you start getting horny around me," he sighs.

"I'll be on the lookout for those possibilities, then, I guess."

"I'm sorry," he says. He sounds it. Exasperated, yes, but also sorry.

"Well, I mean, look, I've got a boring fantasy life, right, it doesn't include nymph spying."

"Yeah," he says, "I don't actually have to embody sexuality to know you don't get off on my existence. You're making that obvious all by yourself."

Bella sighs and decides to stop talking. There's the lounge. She's going to hang out in the lounge and see if anyone less disturbing is around to befriend.

In the lounge, the nymph - he never gave her his name, if he even has one - drops onto a couch, sprawling all the way across it with his head on one armrest and his feet on the other.

Bella notes the name, but makes no outward sign, and compares course schedules with Joe until his pocket mirror goes off and he leaves to answer it. She sits at a bit of a loose end, waiting for another possible opportunity to get to know someone to open up.

If that turns into anything, then Bella's going to react either negatively - in which case she'd rather not be in the room - or positively - in which case she'd rather not be near Celo. She doesn't think she knows how to pull off indifference. She'll work on that. She gets up and heads out of the lounge.

No one remarks on her departure.

There are soft giggles coming from a room in her hall, three doors toward the stairs from hers.

She has to pass it to get to her room. She glances at the door. It says Celosia. Probably his kind of plant. She goes back into her own room and gets her knife and heads back out; she wants to grab dinner at the food court. She's back again forty-five minutes later. (There's a line.)

Celosia's room is no longer giggling.

Celo is indeed at the hall meeting. This time, though, he sits on the floor.

"I'm Celo," says Celo, when it's his turn. "I'm a nymph. I have a double major in martial combat and domestic arts, so the next time somebody tells me to put some pants on, I can cut their head off and cook them for dinner."

"No," says Celo. "Which, in case you were wondering, is a complete sentence."

"O-o-kay then!" says Zack, and he signals the next person. Presently everyone has introduced themselves. The RAs talk about hall policies and how to get in touch with them, reiterate a few rules from the orientation packet like the weapon policy and the ins and outs of the meal plan. They advise everyone to leave their doors open during the day when they're not busy and get to know their hallmates, and to check out some clubs. And Thea points out a bulletin board on the far end of the lounge where everyone is welcome to post notices about things of general interest. The students are then dismissed with a reminder that "Oh, almost forgot, everybody, DRY CAMPUS!"

Celo is one of the first people out of the room.

...Celo laughs and shakes his head.

Bella sighs and turns to her lab checklist. "Have you," she reads aloud, "consulted with Professor Winters about signposting anything you'd like me to avoid interacting with?"

"Yep."

"Did you receive a psionics lab consent form and understand everything on it?"

"Yep!" he says brightly.

"Do you have any questions about what I specifically will be working on today before I start?"

"Yeah, what are you gonna be working on?"

Bella doesn't even have to look at her personalized assignment sheet. "My native affinities are defensively and introspectively oriented. I will be working on paying sustained attention to your surface thoughts and emotions; ideally I'll be able to do it for five minutes at a time by the end of the lab. If you happen to think about something that you've had signposted, I'll have plenty of warning to drop out of your head before I see it, but I'll find it most useful if you think about things you don't mind me watching."

"It's not really about what I mind you watching," he says, "it's about what I think will give you nightmares. I'll do my best."

"Yeah, well, I get marked way down if I look at something signposted," says Bella. "Are you ready? It won't feel like anything, but you're still entitled to know when I start."

"Yeah, fine," he says.

"Okay." Bella puts her first two fingers to her temple; this is only for show, but since he's not going to feel anything, the show is useful. And she reaches out for the mind sitting across from her and looks at it.

He laughs; something about her underlying expectation that he's serious about his mental privacy is funny. "Okay," he says agreeably.

"Most people who come through here are doing it for the money and aren't actually fully comfortable with being inspected for money. The consent forms and the signposting and the permission to look at our notes are for them," Bella murmurs.

He doesn't try to read her notes while he's writing them. He does watch her pen, but he's not interpreting its movement on the level of language.

Bella underlines her remark about the verbal loop.

Celo is now having vague - and nonverbal - thoughts about the connection between calligraphy and sex.

Bella tries to think of a genteel way to describe him as having a one-track mind. This, unlike timer-checking or reporting on lab consent arrangements, is too complicated for her to maintain concentration. She loses it, puts her hand at her temple down, and writes 2:03.

He laughs. "What threw you?"

"Trying to figure out how to phrase something for the lab notes. Professor Winters is going to read them even if you don't want a look first."

"Okay," he says, shrugging.

Bella notes the time, puts her hand back to her temple, and starts up again.

Now he's thinking about his combat classes. The primary identifying feature of the coach is that she has a serious thing for watching hot boys get fucked up. It makes class a little more interesting, especially since Celo has a serious thing for getting fucked up.

Bella grits her teeth and concentrates and writes single topical thread common to many thoughts (focus issue? individual/species trait? unknown)

He wonders whether the part that's getting under her skin is the violence, how much he likes it, or something else he hasn't thought of.

Bella writes subject curious about my visible reaction to thoughts - work on suppressing that? focus of healing sessions = subject, not me

"No, really, which is it?"

"I show up to skirmish games sometimes like everyone else. If you weren't a nymph I'd think it was sketchy to react like you do to something ostensibly for a non-sexual purpose, in public, and I'm reserving judgment given that you are a nymph." She almost, but doesn't quite, lose concentration.

People react sexually to things in public all the time, and given the wide range of people's sexuality, those things are only usually things that are commonly acknowledged as sexual in purpose or nature. Celo sure isn't bothered.

Bella supposes he would know. She keeps her arts fixed on his thoughts carefully.

Bella doesn't mean to visibly relax - she does mean to be a healer; this will require being calmly able to hear thoughts and if she couldn't avoid tensing she can at least avoid slumping gratefully in her chair. She writes vivid sense-memory.

Sewing is also among the domestic arts. Celo is fond of handcrafts. (Despite her efforts, he notices her relief.) He thinks he'd like to be a clothing designer when he graduates. A nymph in fashion should get people's attention nicely, and he bets it'll be fun, not to mention the wicked little thrill he gets when he imagines wearing his own creations.

Odd. She wonders but doesn't ask why he takes such exception to people who don't identify his species opting to ask that he put pants on.

Bella steers clear of the signposts, but in so doing drops out of his mind altogether. She drops her hand, writes down 3:17, and starts up again.

Chocolate-chip banana muffins with coconut flakes and ground almond. Carrot muffins with cinnamon. He remembers eating those with significantly more loving detail than he gave to his memories of classes.

Bella watches him think about muffins. She thinks about lunch. She peers at her timer occasionally.

"There are other students in psionics lab, it's not just me," says Bella.

"Yeah, but you're here and I'm also here," he points out.

"You probably wouldn't be assigned to me again. The point of hiring people is variety or we'd just work with each other all the time. There's also another section that meets Tuesdays, I think."

"Okay," he shrugs. That works out nicely, then.

Mindreading mindreading mindreading.

Intense mouth-watering sense memory of delicious food!

Bella's stomach growls, she winces, and she loses the read. 2:59, she writes.

Celo laughs. "Maybe I'll bake cookies for the hall tonight."

"I'm sure they'd be delicious." She underlines her remark about contagion and starts up again.

"If they're for the whole hall I'd try some."

"Course they are. I'm a nymph. I always bring enough for everybody," he jokes, grinning.

Celo cracks up.

Bella resolutely continues to read him. But humor is nearly as contagious as sense-memory, and she cracks a smile.

The joke wasn't that hilarious, but the face she made at it totally was. Celo giggles.

Read, read, read.

She has a cute smile, too. It gives him nice feelings to look at.

Heh.

Well, now he's not sure if he just weirded her out or not.

"I'm all right. Don't worry about me," says Bella.

And Bella will go on reading them. They're easy to pay attention to.

Bella sustains five minutes, and is so surprised by having managed to do so that she loses her concentration right then. She writes 5:01 and positive attention easy to focus on; part of the importance of telepath/client rapport? and then picks up again to see if she can repeat the feat.

Celo is distracted; now he wonders if it would help or hinder her purpose if he was talking more.

"I cleared five minutes, which was my assignment. I'm getting an A for the day," says Bella. "At this point learning to multitask will help me in general and trying for it won't hurt my grade."

"Awesome," he says. "What do you wanna talk about? I guess the topics that get the best result so far are muffins and how cute you are, but it's probably different talking about it."

"Not overwhelmingly different. In my Utility Psionics class we're learning to have relatively ordinary conversations in perfect silence. By the time I'm a sophomore all my psionics classes will be conducted silently."

"Not the direction I meant," he says, and illustratively renders a sense memory of drinking rich creamy bittersweet hot chocolate at a not-quite-scalding temperature. (It's impressive how he almost manages not to consciously entertain any sexual associations to the act of swallowing.) "Put that in words, I dare you."

"I'm actually memorizing an impressive glossary of subtle artist jargon for Intro Perception, but I don't have it yet, and it would lose something in translation, I give you that."

"The Pax rendering, I got. I haven't observed the original."

"Basically, yeah," he says. "You could get closer if you wanted, but people'll know who you're talking about."

"If I ever need to refer to you to someone else who knows you by that instead of Celo, then I will."

"And you've had at least three chances to learn mine, which is less interesting."

"Yes."

He observes that if he had to translate how he refers to her in his head into words, he'd probably go with 'Boring Hallmate', even though she isn't actually boring at all.

Bella sputters with amusement briefly, loses her read, writes 4:21, and picks up again.

"The contrast between thinking I'm boring on your primary people-identifying axis but not thinking I'm boring in general, yet being so attached to that axis that it's how you'd label me."

"You can think about whatever you want. I already have my five minutes handled, though, so if that's what you want to think about, I can turn in my notes and send you to work with one of the students who's working with another subtle artist today instead."

"It's not something I want to dwell on for the next half hour," he says. "But I'm a nymph. I'm not going to act like sex is unthinkable. I can't act like sex is unthinkable; without sex I would die."

"Yes," says Bella. "I am aware of that."

"Thanks. I'm not planning to become a sex therapist," she snorts, and she reads again.

"Sex therapy," says Bella, deadpan.

And there's signposts. She falls out of his head again and writes her time. She gives him fifteen seconds and then starts again.

Fifteen seconds is long enough for him to start thinking about muffins again. Mmm, muffins.

Mmm.

"I did at home. I didn't love it for its own sake so I don't think I'll do it that often here, unless I get royally sick of what's available on the meal plan."

"I think you mentioned something about cookies for the hall," says Bella noncommittally.

"Yeah, I'll probably do that," he says.

"Cool."

Aww, there's her cute smile again. Celo smiles back.

Bella laughs a little.

Her laugh is cute too!

That just makes her laugh again.

Awwwww. Celo grins and hugs himself.

She keeps up this read for six minutes, twenty seconds, before her attention flags. She marks her time, starts again.

Well, that's mildly interesting.

Bella snickers.

"Yeah, um, I mentioned my arts are very defensive. I don't casually volunteer what I'm thinking to people I'm not close to."

...Celo finds this a bewildering assertion.

"I can't even pair off and do this kind of work with the other students, not if they want to take turns. I have an unfriendly mind."

"What kind of unfriendly?" he asks, distracted from the original point.

"Psionically unfriendly. I can send deliberately, like I did your name -" She does it again. "But apart from that I can't be detected by any but the most sensitive, reception-oriented, well-trained subtle artists. Most of them can't even tell I'm there, except by looking. My tutor in high school thinks that it's related to the fact that I really wouldn't want anyone reading my mind."

"You can talk about nymphs and love, if you like."

"One person talking is not a conversation," he says, and refrains from making the obvious analogy out loud.

"I may choose to say things, I'm just not going to tell you everything I'm thinking. Even if I were capable, you couldn't drag me into doing what you're doing for your pocket money without involving a straitjacket."

"Okay," says Celo, "I am officially confused. Do you have anything to say about the thing I was thinking, or don't you, or do you not know?"

"I do not care to volunteer any comments on the thing you were thinking."

"Okay," he says. "Then it's kind of pointless me talking about it more, because - that was it, really."

"Okay."

But he is still confused. Bella is confusing. He's not even sure exactly what confuses him, he just feels like there's something he's not getting here.

"I don't go around intending to stymie people, but the point of this exercise isn't actually to give you a better understanding of me."

"Yeah?" he says. That is also confusing, in the sense where he's not sure why she felt the need to point it out.

Bella puts her chin on her hand and reads silently.

Celo continues to be confused. It's a state of mind that doesn't directly involve sex or anything signposted, so she can probably keep looking for a while.

"I don't really have anywhere to be," he says. "Want me to get lost anyway?"

"Okay," he says. He wonders idly if Coach Sadist is going to need him to heal a fellow student again this afternoon. Odds are she won't, but in one of her courses, you never know.

"Is healing instinctive, or just easy for nymphs to learn?" Bella wonders idly.

Bella snorts softly.

Celo grins.

"Where'd you look up the thing about suppressing the involuntary spying thing?"

"Asked a lore professor. Nothing. Had a look in the library. More nothing."

"Hmm." She nibbles her lip. "If you actually care you could mention it to Professor Winters on your way out when she offers to remove your signposts."

"Yeah," he says with a grin, "I actually came around wondering about that, but then somebody offered me money and I got distracted."

Bella laughs. "Is that how you started doing this."

Cheerfully: "Yep!"

"And Professor Winters told us it usually took a few weeks to filter in volunteers from the ad in the school newspaper and we shouldn't expect anyone but us to work with for the early sessions, and then there was you."

"I like money and I don't have a lot of privacy issues," he shrugs.

"Are you paying your own tuition or something?"

"Nope, I've got landowners for that," he snorts, and all kinds of signposted thoughts pop up around that word.

Bella drops out of the read again. She writes her time. 4:36. "End of lab," she announces.

Bella turns in her notes to Professor Winters and heads to Basic Knife.

The next time she sees him, he is giving a blowjob to a tall brawny human boy outside the dining hall.

Of course he is. She goes around, and has lunch, and goes out again to attend history.

That evening, the kitchen on their floor is emanating delicious smells.

Bella meanders in that direction, her history homework under her arm.

"This nymph is baking," says Celo. "If my cookies burn because I'm too busy experiencing your glorious cock to check on 'em, I'm gonna be sad. You don't wanna make me sad, right?" He bats his eyelashes outrageously.

"Nymphs have hobbies, too, hon," he says. "Don't worry about missing out on the cookies, I'll save you some." He winks. "Save you something else, too."

"I'm busy," says Celo. The tone of his voice is distinctly flatter, the flirtatious note disappearing from both it and his body language. He steps back, out of the hallmate's reach, leaning his hands casually on the counter behind him.

"I'd call you an asshole but you're not even doing that right," snarls the operator of the glorious cock, and he shoves past Celo to exit the kitchen.

"Does that happen a lot?" Bella asks.

"What, people whining when I've got something better to do than bend over for 'em? Yeah," he shrugs.

"...Okay, well, if you ever need an RA gotten, I'll be able to hear you if you think about me really hard and I'm not more than a hallway away at the time."

"Thanks," he says, with a surprised smile.

She shrugs. "I don't know how much help they'll be. I think it might be considered legally impossible to sexually assault a nymph?" She's not sure, but this sounds right; she scratches her head.

"Yep," says Celo. "Turns out keeping one chained in your basement is blasphemy, though."

...Bella blinks.

He checks on the cookies again and pulls them out of the oven with his bare hands, then heals himself as soon as he's set the baking sheet on top of the stove.

"...Why did you not use oven mitts?" Bella asks. "Or at least a dishtowel, there's one right over there."

"No point," he says. "Didn't hurt that much, barely had time to blister."

"If I tried to do that I'd drop the cookies," Bella says. "Even though you can heal yourself whenever it's a weird thing to do."

"I can heal myself whenever," says Celo. "Which makes me more casual about injury, which makes me more casual about pain because I'm more used to it, which makes me more casual about injury... get the idea?"

"I guess you could build up a decent pain tolerance that way," says Bella dubiously. "But the dishtowel is right there."

"I don't care about the dishtowel," says Celo. "The dishtowel is a solution to a problem I don't have."

"Okay then. Can I have a cookie?"

"Cooler, sure, but cookies are best still warm, I think."

Bella stares intently at a cookie for a moment, then gives up and picks it up. "I have," she sighs, "no talent to speak of at telekinesis. Professor Winters thinks I might be able to get a little bit, but I sure don't have any now." She bites her untelekinetically retrieved cookie.

Celo laughs.

Bella eats her cookie. This is good, she comments with her mouth full.

"Damn skippy," he says with evident satisfaction.

She giggles and takes another one.

"I love it when people eat my cookies," says Celo, leaning against the counter again. "Makes the whole thing feel that much more worthwhile."

"That's why recipes make so many."

He laughs again.

"Can I take a couple for later? I get munchy around an hour before bedtime and the vending cabinets are highway robbery."

"Sure!" he says. "Take as many as you want, nobody else seems to be showing up for the cookies anyway."

"Did you advertise that they're for sharing?" Bella asks, forming a stack of six of them.

"Sure, but I guess everybody figures 'cookies' is a euphemism," he says with a roll of his eyes. "I'm a nymph, for fuck's sake, I don't need to eupheme, if I wanted to advertise that I was hanging out in the kitchen waiting for someone to fuck me I could just say so."

Bella rolls her eyes. She tucks her homework under her arm and holds her stack of half a dozen cookies. "Well, more for us, then. Thanks. I'll tell anyone who asks me where I got these."

"Thanks," he says, casually blowing her a kiss. "I'm making more kinds if you wanna come back in an hour, and leftovers are going in the fridge if you don't."

"I might come back for more kinds and I wish you'd warned me before I ate three of these," she says. "No blowing me kisses, please, that's weird."

"Okay," laughs Celo.

Bella goes off with her cookies and does homework in her room with the door open. She goes back into the kitchen an hour later.

There are platefuls of three more kinds of cookies lined up on the counter, and Celo is watching over a fourth as they bake.

"Hullo again," says Bella, taking one of each sort.

"Hi!" beams Celo. "That nice girl from the other end of the hall came by and ate a bunch."

"Uh, Miki or Corrine?" asks Bella, trying to remember girls from the end of the hall who she'd describe as nice.

"Don't remember her name," he shrugs, "probably shouldn't tell you how I think of her."

"What color is her hair?" suggests Bella.

"Um... kinda dark brown I guess?"

"Corrine," identifies Bella. She has taken discreet notes on her hallmates. "These are all really good, I'm having trouble imagining you actually need any of your domestic studies classes right now."

"I totally learn things in my classes!" he says. "I don't need them, but I want them."

"Fair enough." Om nom nom.

Celo nabs a few cookies, too, but mostly he leaves them on the plates.

"These cookies," Bella determines curiously, after going back for a second lemon one, "are not vegan, either that or you loaded them up with some serious magic. I thought nymphs were vegans? Is that a myth?"

"It's a choice," he says. "A lot of nymphs choose it. I don't." He grins. "I'll spare you the jokes about whether or not I eat meat."

"Much appreciated."

Celo giggles.

"You're in Basic Knife?" comes a familiar voice from just down the hall.

Just-down-the-hall laughs good-naturedly.

"I'm not kidding about needing the boots," Bella says. "I was exempted from high school melee because I was a lawsuit liability. My knife is enchanted not to cut me, but that won't stop me from getting a serious bruise when I fall on it or accidentally fling it into my forehead. Basic Knife is a joke, but I'm not equipped to do anything with a sharp object other than standup comedy, you know?"

"I really hope you don't mean that literally."

"The first thing she ever said to me was - well, no," he amends, "the first thing she said to me was 'Fucktoy! Catch!' The second thing was 'And here I thought you'd be a solution to all those regulations against killing students for effect.' She's been doing her damnedest to send me back to my garden ever since."

"Okay, that would be inconvenient, I imagine, but it wouldn't be killing you in the ways that most matter. Isn't it a rule that teachers have to use formal address? I've been called Ms. Swan so many times in the last couple of days that I keep expecting to sprout wings and fly."

"Yeah," says Celo, "the question is, does Coach Sadist care? The answer is no. The answer is always no."

"Then why does she still have her job?"

"Because she is insanely fucking good at it." He grins. "And I think her bosses are a little bit afraid she'll kill them if they fire her."

"She's good at her job and her way of being good at her job involves verbal abuse and the next step down from death threats?"

"Yep," says Celo. "I like her."

"I like not ever having to interact with her, I think."

He shrugs. "If that's what floats your boat."

"I can live without finding out what repulsive nickname she'd give me and worrying if my parents are going to spend the rest of their lives in debt to the friendly neighborhood clerics trying to get me rezzed," Bella says.

"I'm not totally sure she'd kill you," he says. "But I bet she'd try at least once."

"Yeah, I don't want people to try to kill me. I want to live."

"If you expect somebody to try to kill you, taking Jillian's classes is a great way to make sure they won't succeed," he says. "Kind of why I'm in 'em."

"Except," says Bella, "that I am an embarrassment with weaponry. I'd be much better off taking Arcane Self Defense, which I might actually do. Or learning to teek or pyro, like, at all."

He grins. "Well, it's not for everybody, I guess."

"I also don't expect anyone to try to kill me. I don't go dangerous places, look locally atypical, or piss off anyone with a short temper who could get away with it."

"Good plan," he says. "Keep it up."

"That's the plan."