Mina de Malfois Volume Two Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. No resemblance is intended to any person or persons living, dead, or online. No BNFs were harmed in the making of this fic. Permissions: These stories and characters are the sole property of the author, but she lends them out for fanfic and fanart. A partial list of Mina de Malfois/Sanguinity things by other people can be found at the back of this volume. For further Minaverseness, try tracking down the Clives and Harkers responsible. The author can be contacted at [email protected]. 1 2 Mina de Malfois Volume Two Memoirs by Mina de Malfois. Dedicated to the Clives and Harkers, and to all of Mina’s friends and supporters at livejournal and journalfen. Special thanks are due to Mutecornett for her artwork, to Temaris for her podcast, to Scifantasy for being generally brilliant, and to Notmonica for appearing as Mina at Phoenix Rising. Mina can be contacted at [email protected]. 3 4 2.1. Mina de Malfois and the Exclusive Society That first week at St. Scholastica’s I found myself really needing some Sanguinity time to unwind in. Some things about the school were disconcertingly new to me. I’d graciously acquiesced to their demand that I complete two full years there to get a St. Schol’s degree, even though I’d only been a year shy of a degree at my old uni, but some of the particular courses they insisted on were bizarre in the extreme. I say if a language is dead you ought to let it quietly moulder in peace. It’s indecent, unearthing it and making us decline bits of it. And the rarefied atmosphere was a little difficult to adjust to, even though I’d always thought I rather craved a bit of rarefied atmos. When I first arrived a flock of girls descended on my taxi and made off with my luggage. I climbed out to find myself face to face with Hilda of the S.S.--I mean, sorry to go all Godwin’s Law here, but when she said, ‘I am Ms. Gna, your housemother,’ one couldn’t help thinking the only usage of ‘mother’ one really expected to hear from her was ‘motherland.’1 ‘The freshmen always carry luggage in for the upperclassmen,’ she continued, sounding as if she disapproved of both freshmen and their seniors. ‘You will of course have missed the chance to do that,’ she went on, sounding even more disapproving of me. ‘Come with me now to pick up your keys.’ I followed her inside Tia2 House, my dormitory, to a small office on the ground floor. ‘First you must sign this,’ she said, and produced 1 Mina seems to be conflating Russia with Germany here. Not that I’d even have noticed without Moselle Green’s help (you see why I need the Clives). 2 Tia is, of course, one of the siblings in the novel ‘Escape to Witch Mountain,’ which was later made into a Disney movie. Key’s novel may possibly have been inspired by Zenna Henderson’s ‘People’ stories. St. Scholastica’s buildings, in keeping with the university’s patron saint, reference a number of brother and sister pairs. Key, Alexander. Escape to Witch Mountain. 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Witch_Mountain] [http://www.ldsfilm.com/movies/EscapeToWitchMountain.html] (accessed 20 October 2007). 5 a document that proved to be an agreement to abide by the school’s rules. I signed it, and she whisked it away, photocopied it, chomped the photocopy with a three-holed punch, and thrust the photocopy and a binder at me. ‘What’s this?’ I asked, accepting the binder. ‘Your copy of the rules,’ she said, and forced the photocopy into my free hand. I stuck it in the binder, and she nodded approval and handed over a set of variously sized keys. The St. Schol’s rules had to be seen to be believed. I skimmed some of them during the excruciatingly slow lift ride, and became temporarily so engrossed that I accidentally forgot to get out, rode back to the ground floor, and had to go up all over again. The required courses alone boggled credulity, and the section on outside activities was an anachronism of preserved-in-amber calibre. Incoming students, including both ‘freshers’ and transfers, were all but forbidden to work during the autumn and spring terms; even ‘uppers’ were strongly discouraged from holding jobs except during summer term. It was archaic. Luckily I’d held onto my summer earnings, which ought to be enough to cover spending money, but still. I suppose they wanted us available for other things, like the ‘voluntary guest lectures’ in the evenings. ‘Attendance at voluntary events is mandatory for new students,’ the rulebook proclaimed, without so much as a blush or a footnote referencing Orwell.3 Uniforms weren’t required, which came as rather a shock, really, after the mandatory volunteerism--and at any rate they seemed to be worn; almost every student I’d seen had been wearing a St. Schol’s shirt or sweater or something, but this was, the rulebook assured me, ‘entirely at the student’s own discretion.’ I decided to err on the side of caution and treat myself to a few wardrobe additions when I visited ye olde school bookshop. I hadn’t any textbooks to buy, since a neat stack of texts had already, courtesy of my scholarship, been delivered to my room, but I did have a long list of supplies and additional readings, mostly novels, which I was ‘strongly advised to purchase before the first class sessions.’ Okay then. I was also, the rulebook ordered me, required to check my mailbox regularly and keep it cleared out ‘for the convenience of the housemother, who will otherwise have to hold your 3 Orwell’s Doublethink was the inspiration for ‘mandatory volunteerism.’ Orwell, George. 1984. New American Library; Reissue edition (January 1, 1961). 6 mail in her office.’ The housemother looked capable of eating my mail, so I vowed to stay on top of that. And some things at St. Schol’s were disconcertingly familiar. That first day, I’d found room 3034 without difficulty--it helped that my luggage was piled outside the door. Inside were two each of beds, desks, chairs, computers, closets, and semi-loaded bookcases. Having dragged my stuff inside, I sat down to have a look at the computer, then had a mild attack of nerves and rechecked the rulebook. Yes, it confirmed, the computer was mine to use, but there was a full page on what I couldn’t do with it: infringe on my roommate’s privacy, use speakers instead of headphones, point the webcam at my roommate’s half of the room, etc. Fine by me: I value privacy considerably. I suppose that was a form of foreshadowing, because at this point there was a knock at the door. ‘Who is it?’ I called, not looking up. ‘One of your fans,’ said a sarcastic and awfully familiar voice. It was Jen. So as I said, what with one thing and another I was really looking forward to the Hockeysticksers’ planned sea voyage to the Patricic Rim. I might have to share a room with Ami Jenever, but at least I could avoid Josh Amos in-game--it was to be, after all, an all-girls’ trip. Not that I mean to suggest that Jen was horrible to room with, because she wasn’t. As at camp, she seemed to come and go at odd hours, but she was pleasant enough when she was around. She was disconcertingly tidy; she never left clothes out, and kept her bathroom supplies to a bare minimum. She didn’t seem to own any trinkets, just essentials like clothes and electronics and books. Anything else she owned was either locked into her desk or, in the case of a few cards and pictures, thumbtacked to her bulletin board. I found myself being much tidier than usual just to keep up. ‘Tsk, tsk, Mina,’ Jen said one evening that first week, ‘don’t tell me you’re one of those cruel people who sully themselves by reading Fandom_Gossip?’ ‘I read Fandom_Gossip5 religiously,’ I admitted. Really, who 4 Mina and Jen share Room 303, but no, Mina will not be shot or resurrected. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix] 5 Fandom_Gossip doesn’t exist, but Fandom Wank has oft been accused of cruelty--so imagine FW if Hedda Hopper was a mod. 7 doesn’t? It’s like a 1940s Hollywood gossip sheet, all coy innuendo and campy hints, but with linkage. ‘You chant it in a dull monotone and wait for all your wishes to come true?’ Jen asked. I gritted my teeth and issued a revised statement. ‘I read Fandom_Gossip regularly,’ I said calmly. ‘You feature in Fandom_Gossip regularly,’ Jen said, throwing herself down on her bed and folding her arms behind her head. ‘So what’s the latest?’ ‘Rumour has it a bitter bunny is leaving Otakukin Awakening over linguistic disagreements,’ I read. ‘No links yet,’ I added. ‘It’s just in the ‘In Brief’ column.’ Jen snorted. ‘She’s still leaving? What, is she stuck in the door or something?’6 I skimmed the unlinked hints in the rest of the column and moved on quickly to the heavily attributed gossip of the main section. ‘Doctor’s peace disturbed by generational warfare,’ it began, and the several embedded links led to a handful of private journals (one now flocked with annoying thoroughness, I noticed) where a ginormous argument over chan was raging.