quiet, this is a library

[lifes_sake]

Cam's in the library, waiting for Renée. "Waiting" here means "browsing until a quarter hour after ostensible meeting time". Renée is supposed to meet him here - on the way home for both of them, him from high school and her from elementary where she teaches kindergarten - but she is rarely punctual. Her co-workers or stray parents or the principal keep her after and Cam does notebooking, does homework, looks at the contents of shelves. It's a fine arrangement.

Today the contents of shelves don't seem so pleased with the setup, and one attacks him when he stumbles into a stack. Specifically, it tumbles onto his head. That's gonna hurt for a while. He picks it up to tuck it away again.

It says, So You Want To Be A Wizard.

Heh. Mis-shelved. This is a nonfiction row. Or maybe it's about stage magic or something? Cam's not going to find any use in that either, he can just about eat dinner without impaling himself on a fork and certainly shouldn't be handling delicate props, but it could be diverting while he waits for Renée and he wasn't finding anything else. He flips it open.

It's more interesting still than that; it's presenting itself like an actual guide to wizardry. This'll kill a whole afternoon with pleasant escapism. Cam checks it out, then turns around and spots Renée coming down the sidewalk. He bags the book and goes out to meet her.

At home, he takes it out of his backpack. The plastic film on it - it did have some, right? Just like every other library book? - is gone. Maybe it didn't have any. He didn't write it down; he's not sure. It doesn't look like a library book now. But it still says So You Want To Be A Wizard and he still wants to pretend to be a wizard for a bit, kill some time, put off U.S. History homework. He flips it open. He reads.

Comments

[pythbox]

"Hi!" "Hi!" "Hi!" "Hi!" "Hi!"

Apparently grass is not very good at telling whether or not it is being pointed at. The number of plants answering him is at least smaller.

[lifes_sake]

"Do you have any feelings either way about being mowed or eaten or whatever?"

Suspects "no".

[pythbox]

A short silence.

Then three tufts say "Hi!" and two say "We're grass!", not quite in unison.

[lifes_sake]

Yeah, grass is apparently more like muffin than like tree. "Thanks," Cam says anyway, and he finishes fiddling with his shoelaces and goes to sit under Leafy and write in Grace about what he thinks he can and can't probably eat pending further chats with plants and animals.

[pythbox]

"Hi again!" says Leafy. "That was fast. What's grass like?"

[lifes_sake]

"It's about as smart as a muffin. I don't think I have to worry about grass, which is good, because wheat's a grass and avoiding wheat would be hard, especially for a vegetarian."

[pythbox]

"That's good," says Leafy. "What's a vegetarian?"

[lifes_sake]

"Somebody who doesn't eat animals. The goat I talked to was capable of expressing a preference on the subject. I'm going to extend the courtesy to all animals until I actually get a chance to talk to somebody's goldfish or something and see what the spectrum is."

[pythbox]

"I don't eat animals!" says Leafy. "Am I a vegetarian?"

[lifes_sake]

"You're way better, you have so much moral high ground, you're an autotroph," says Cam. "Which I guess is a kind of vegetarian, technically. I wonder if I can just be an autotroph." Does the manual know? It was iffy on permanent superpowers, but maybe he can just declare himself not in need of nourishment and his body will believe him well enough to be getting on with, three times a day unless he wants a glass of milk or an apple.

[pythbox]

"I don't want high ground," says Leafy, "water drains away from it!"

...It's possible that at this point Leafy is teasing a little.

[lifes_sake]

"But it's closer to the sun," says Cam innocently. "Hey, manual, can I just not eat, one way or another, and be okay?"

[pythbox]

"No," says the manual. "You can convince your body to put off its needs, but not indefinitely."

[lifes_sake]

"Can I cover for an unbalanced diet?"

[pythbox]

"Yes, but not indefinitely."

[lifes_sake]

"Ooookay."

He'll look up some information on nutrition.

"Let's see the spells for that so I can mark 'em."

For while he does that and sets up interviews with various members of the plant and animal kingdoms.

[pythbox]

The underlying principle seems to be that you can convince your body its needs have been met, but if you keep on doing that, it will catch on and stop believing you. The more of its needs you are actually meeting, the easier it is to fool it about the gap.

[lifes_sake]

Fair enough. Maybe he can find suitably ethical multivitamins.

Bleah, this isn't going to be fun.

Can he talk tofu into actually tasting like chicken, maybe?

[pythbox]

Yes he can!

[lifes_sake]

Oh cool! Well then, that makes this much simpler. He puts a new color of post-it on the spells that he will be using for compensating for his newly expanded ethical sphere.

On his way home, he spots a woodpecker. "Hey woodpecker," he says, not getting too close.

[pythbox]

"Hi!" says the woodpecker.

[lifes_sake]

"How smart are you?"

[pythbox]

"What kind of a question is that?" says the woodpecker aggrievedly.

[lifes_sake]

"I'm having an ethical crisis sorta thing. I'm asking everything. So far, trees, smart, grass, stupid, muffins, stupid, goats, not too bright."

[pythbox]

"What's a muffin?"