Day 61: Greenhouse

[overlimit]

Now that one type of business had been more or less taken care of (for the moment), it was time for Rita to move on to her other business: magic research. She'd been so involved in her conversation with Taura that there hadn't been time to write down her latest discoveries. And besides that, she had an appointment.

Rita brought her notebook and a pen with her to the Greenhouse, where she quickly found a space to sit that was relatively near a few rows of flowers. The scent would at least make for some decent atmosphere, though she was a little concerned about how the humid air might affect her notebook pages.

The person she was meeting was apparently a blonde named Rapunzel. Since she hadn't arrived yet, Rita took the time to open her journal and start adding the information about Espers and related concepts she acquired the previous night. It was best to get that done while it was still fresh in her mind.

[Rapunzel!]

Comments

[lastlovesong]

The moment Chise had woken up, breakfast had come and gone without a word, leaving her mind in a state of confusion. How long had she'd been asleep? She remembered going to her room for dinner and the sudden drowsiness clouding her senses afterwords. The only answer she received from the nurses was that extreme exhaustion was a 'common' occurrence among patients, and that spending time with plants would 'cure' that exhaustion bug.

As if sleeping for more than two days straight was 'normal' for a person.

Aside from that, another thing that confused and bothered her was the Head Doctor announcement from the intercom. Was the institute back under his control? When and how did it happen? Maybe staring at some flowers would give her some sort of hint.

[Free clueless girl!]

[ninelivesonce]

The flowers in the greenhouse were beautiful. Shipboard gardens tended to be dictated by air-scrubbing ability first, edibility second, and aesthetics only a distant third. Taura didn't disagree with the first two -- breathing and eating were necessary prerequisites for appreciating beauty, but without it, the first two seemed less useful, somehow.

There was another girl there -- the one who liked history, though Taura wasn't sure she could remember her name. "Howdy." Taura cupped her hand around a rose, mindful of the thorns, and took a sniff. "These are my favorites. You?"

[lastlovesong]

"Ah...Taura, was it?" Chise vaguely remembered talking to the older woman; how long ago had it been? Five days? A week?

"It's been a while, hasn't it? I don't have a particular favorite flower, but I can't deny that they are beautiful and nice to look at."

She didn't bother picking one up, given her track-record of clumsiness.

[ninelivesonce]

"It has been," Taura murmured. None of the staff seemed to mind them just admiring the flowers rather than doing something arcane and complicated to them, so Taura just admired them. Miles would probably say something about beautiful and deadly, dropping the comparison like a pearl into her hands -- or, for that matter, like a rose. They protected themselves, these beautiful flowers, and she ran a fingertip over one thorn.

"Have you been well?"

[lastlovesong]

"So-so, I suppose. Apparently, from what the nurses have said, I've slept for a total of three days straight. It's unnerving knowing that whatever they've told me doesn't fully explain how one can sleep for a long, long time. Not to mention waking up and finding out that the military has disappeared from the institute."

It certainly was a surprise waking up and discovering that everyone wasn't wearing their military uniforms and that the cafeteria food was back to normal. She definitely missed the taste of regular food.

[ninelivesonce]

"Oh," Taura said, deflating a bit. She'd meant the question sincerely; the art of small talk and when to dissemble in the face of opening conversational gambits wasn't one she'd had much chance -- or inclination -- to practice. But being inclined to honest answers didn't make them always easy to reply to, and she did start to understand why someone would always say they were fine, even when they obviously weren't.

"I can think of a couple of ways they could do it, but I don't really know how to make someone sleep. Well, aside from knocking them over the head, but that's not as easy as it looks in holovids." Knocking them unconscious rather than just dazed took a good hit; doing it without cracking skulls took finesse. "I don't really know how they do it, just that doctors can do a lot of things." Most of them unpleasant.

"And Doctor Landel seems to be in a class of his own. Something happened, the night before last. People with, er, magical powers got them back, and there were monsters everywhere. Then, the next morning, Landel was back." She shrugged. One captor was a lot different than the other in terms of formulating a strategy, but not as much when it came down to the effect on their lives.

[lastlovesong]

"That is a funny way of putting someone to sleep. It is amazing what doctors can do, and frightening at the same time." Either it be creating a cure for a life-threatening illness, or cells that mutate ones own body functions.

"Wait, so everyone got their powers back for one night, fought monsters, and then behind the midst of confusion, Landel's regained control of the institute?" she reiterated, making sure that she heard Taura correctly. "Does that mean the military general is dead?"

[ninelivesonce]

Taura shook her head, hard enough that her braid swung a bit. "He said they'd be back. Not sure if they'll really try again, but he sounded pretty lively at the time."

"Oh, and they turned some kind of force field on. Maybe just so we didn't burn the place to the ground, yeah?" There must be a limit to how much damage they could repair, if that was the case. Or they hadn't wanted anyone to see too far by the light of a burning building, though that seemed a little too convoluted. Even for Landel and Aguilar.

"And believe me, I know. Doctors, well," her voice got soft, and rumbly, as she pitched it only for Chise's ears. "Sometimes I think they have too much power." Even when they saved lives. Even when they saved her life. At least she knew that, when it came to it, her wishes would be honored. She'd earned her rest.