Serene still got lessons with Captain Woodsinger occasionally, when the dark, serious captain felt they were required. Every time Serene went to see Captain Woodsinger, she came back a little steadier and more certain of her course. Elliot could not grudge Serene that, and could not be anything but grateful to the captain, even if he missed Serene’s company.
Luke was still oddly around at those times, when he didn’t have Trigon practise. Elliot wanted to question why Luke was hanging around, but he remembered Rachel Sunborn calling Luke her shy boy and thought it was true that Luke did not like his familiar routines changing or spending time with anyone but familiar people. Elliot supposed it was habit, even though Luke had a dozen other places he could be. He refrained from pointing this out to Luke and instead kindly spent their time together educating Luke about history. Luke was learning very little about it in his warrior training.
“The Border guard were initially a far less military operation,” Elliot explained. “Records indicate that long ago the relationship between the military and their councilors was mostly equitable, with diplomats and soldiers working together to find solutions for their people.”
“So that didn’t last?” said Luke. “Because it didn’t work?”
Elliot’s eyes narrowed. “It was only as time passed, and the other species militarized in response to the humans, that councilors became the largely useless and disrespected body they are now. Basically, the military crushed their spirits.”
He stopped declaiming from his position on his bunk to give Luke an accusatory glare.
“Yeah,” said Luke. “I can see the spirit of every future councilor I know is really crushed.”
Elliot hit Luke in the head with a pillow. Elliot was not used to administering violence, and he slightly misjudged the force he needed to use. Feathers exploded everywhere: all over the floor, the beds, themselves. Everywhere. It was like a feather-based apocalypse.
“This would not have happened if I were in my own world,” said Elliot sadly. “In my world we have pillows and mattresses made of foam.”
“I like feathers,” said Luke calmly.
Elliot scowled at him. “That’s a weird thing to like, loser.” He sighed, thinking of the lost luxuries of civilization. “The best kind of foam is called memory foam.”
Luke frowned. “How does foam remember things?”
“Don’t make me talk about it,” said Elliot. “I will only get upset. I am upset enough that I am going to be finding feathers in my hair for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe years. You don’t understand what it’s like. It’s not just that it’s bizarre and pumpkin colored. It has the texture of a tangle of fried worms.”
Luke suppressed a smile. Elliot thought smiling when other people were suffering was a terrible sign of sadism and Luke should be ashamed. Though Luke did win some points back for mercy, since he helped Elliot with the emergency feather removal.
“It’s okay that it’s—bright,” said Luke. “It means I can find you, when you’re in trouble.”
“I don’t know why you would suggest the possibility of me being in trouble,” said Elliot. “Because I am a retiring and bookish individual, and I don’t like being in trouble, in danger, or in proximity to weapons. You will never find me in trouble. You will find me in the library. If you can remember where that is.”
Luke looked prepared to argue this, though Elliot was so clearly in the right, but just then Elliot’s roommates came back. They all greeted Luke with smiles and welcome, and when Luke was gone they all said very firmly that he was not allowed to come back.
“No more weird scenes with your friends,” said Richard Plantgrown. “No more weird stunts with knives. We are all very tired. None of us slept well last year. This year we need to be sharper in battle, and we need to be able to focus on important things, like impressing the ladies.”
“I don’t know why you think it’s my fault you can’t impress the ladies,” said Elliot. “Much more likely to be your personalities, or possibly the way this world has no way to disguise persistent body odor. Have you considered that?”
His roommates clearly did not feel Elliot was being helpful.
Being fourteen meant that if Elliot wanted to spend more time with Serene—which obviously he did, since she was the rose in the flower crown of the world—or Luke—which, all right, he did, though it was an embarrassing admission to make even in the privacy of his own mind—he had to do it outside his cabin. Elliot gave up on making friends with anyone in his cabin, and spent even more time in the library.
Their advanced age meant they were accorded certain privileges, like access to the lake that had been out of bounds for thirteen-year-olds. Elliot wanted to ask if fourteen-year-olds were really much less likely to drown than thirteen-year-olds, but Luke and Serene had urged him not to do so.
Apparently they liked the lake.
Elliot did not like the lake.
He would have liked a different lake, full of shadows and with leaves hanging above the water and whispering secrets to each other. This lake was crowded with people, and they were barely wearing any clothes and celebrating their discovery of hormones.
The first Saturday they were allowed to go down to the lake, Serene was immediately separated from them and surrounded by a crowd of boys clamoring to get to be the one who taught her how to swim. Apparently the elven way was more about floating and communing with the spirits.
Serene laughed and held court to indulge the forward human boys. Elliot sniffed and skulked off to secure himself a sunbed (sunbeds in this backward land were basically old wooden bedframes, but beggars could not be choosers) in the shade. He had cleverly chosen a large and fascinating-looking book about mermaid customs, and planned to be wrapped up in it all day. He had been saving it for just such an occasion.
The way girls did their flirting was different.
There were far fewer girls than boys in the Border camp, and they seemed to want to gather in groups, not around a lone boy like the boys crowded around Serene (like lions around an antelope that had been cut off from the rest of the herd, Elliot thought bitterly). The herd of girls looked at the boys, selected one, looked at him and discussed him. And the boys didn’t quite dare approach the whole group of girls, so they formed their own group and then the two groups were in a stand-off that involved a lot of casual hair-tossing and muscle-flexing.
Presumably rebels from both sides would break away and unite at some stage. Elliot’s plan was to do his reading.
None of the girls were whispering or staring at him: stupid war training had given most of the other guys a lot more to flex, and even the few other guys in council training did not have the short issue, or the ginger issue, or the prickly-like-the-unholy-offspring-of-a-hedgehog-and-a-cactus issue to contend with. And Elliot’s heart was pledged to Serene forever, anyway, so he didn’t care. But he still wasn’t taking his shirt off so the girls could actually make flexing comparisons.