Fuzzy and Marco - Sunday, August 19th - Early Afternoon – Marco's Cabin, Blake Island

South and west from the school was the main dirt trail to the student cabins which sat near the center of Blake Island. One of four trails, each turning left with roughly a hundred feet between each of them, took one down the students cabins for their year: Freshmen, sophomore, junior and the senior cabins.

It was the last trail that took her to the senior cabins. Each of the classes had thirty students each and so there were thirty cabins, fifteen on each side of the path. Unlike the freshmen cabins, these looked more "established", which was the best word that Fuzzy could come up with. Despite the fact that she'd been told by Sasha that students moved cabins each year as they graduated and that she now also knew everyone left for the summer, the cabins from the freshman year where she lived were very different than the senior cabins.

A few had lawn chairs on their small yards for instance. Some looked new and shiny and some looked older. A few had raised beds that currently sported flowers, some had shrubs and some merely had weeds, though the raised beds didn't look new at all. A few had stones that led from the dirt path to the two steps that took them to the door. A few had climbing ivy. And one in particular even had what looked like colorful, twinkling lights that Fuzzy would later learn were called "Christmas lights" even though they were out of season. Someone just liked the look of them.

And at the very end of the dirt trail was the cabin of one Marco Ivanoff. This cabin felt the most established of them all. It had a garden bed in which red, pink and orange mums bloomed. There were Christmas style lights as well, though Fuzzy would later learn that these were only white. The two steps up to the door had scuff marks on them from shoes or perhaps boots, well worn into the wood, which she'd seen nowhere else.

The cabin was also much larger than everyone else's. Not because it had a porch like Julian's cabin or because it had a second story, because it was taller and wider than everyone else's cabin. It was because it was made to scale for someone who was nine feet tall. The door was broader, the windows wider and taller, the two steps up thicker and broader. It was just a big cabin for a big person.

What struck her more than anything else wasn't its size or the fact that it looked lived in. It was a particular type of window that she'd not only not seen on the island, but she'd never seen. Not even at the art museum, for it was art. The glass wasn't clear like the rest, but multicolored. In the window was a depiction of dark brown basket filled with lighter brown loaves of bread with two grey blue fish below on a light blue background. Fuzzy stared at this window for a full minute, admiring its beauty before she looked away and took the two, uncomfortably large steps and stared at the door.

It had two handles. One was at about her head level and fairly large because it was meant for a large hand. This was Marco's doorknob as he was nearly twice Fuzzy's height. Like the stairs, it looked scuffed. Well taken care of to be sure, but scuffed. When she looked at the doorknob below it, it was about the size she was used to. It also looked basically untouched. There was even a little spiderweb under the corner. And she'd been up and down each row of cabins over the month or so that she'd been here. Every other cabin on the island wasn't made for trolls. This cabin was singular in its largeness. So when she saw the doorknob it confirmed what she'd suspected and so she muttered a single word.

"Lonely," she whispered.

Trolls tended to be lonely people. The world was made for humans with their human sized rooms and their human sized businesses in human sized towns and cities. Meals from fast food or a regular restaurant were human sized, not that Fuzzy had a lot of experience with either yet. Even toilets were almost universally meant for humans or at least the metatypes like elves and orks who were roughly the same size. Dwarves were smaller than those three but as a point of pride they tended to want to be treated just the same.

But trolls were just too big for the world. The smallest adults were just under seven feet and could grow as tall as ten. They started at the high three hundred pounds in weight and fat trolls could probably reach about six-hundred or seven-hundred pounds. Maybe even more, though Fuzzy had never seen a fat troll. And that was because they usually ate four or five times as much as your average adult human male. So Fuzzy knew that her gift for a wealthy troll was meager but it was all she had, so she'd brought it because she had nothing else to bring.

She readjusted her grip on the ancient, red and white battered cooler that she held in one hand. it had been gifted to her by Julian who had several, or so he said and this was all that was keeping her kills cold after field dressing them. That and the ice, which had been an extreme luxury which she'd never, ever seen in Puyallup. Currently the red cooler contained the spoils of her hunting expedition this morning which was also her gift as she was visiting.

It was important to show up with a gift when visiting friends and especially would-be friends in Puyallup. If she were there right now, showing up with what she had would have been considered a princely gift worthy to cement a friendship or ask a large favor from someone important. But here, where such gifts were common and her poverty was now obvious, she merely brought what she could. Gifts were important and the only reason she hadn't brought one for Sasha when she went to her place for the first time was that she was going to teach her how to hunt. Teaching skills was considered a gift. As for Kenji, he'd obviously wanted something from her, so he hadn't rated a gift. At least not yet.

She knocked on the door and seconds later, she heard the heavy footfalls of someone moving inside. The door was quickly opened and the smiling face of Marco Ivanoff greeted her. He was dressed in a simple, light blue, button-up shirt, brown slacks and brown belt and brown shoes.

Meanwhile, Fuzzy's only other outfit that wasn't her Blake Island school uniform or her hunting leathers had been the outfit that Kenji had bought her. She'd been informed that students didn't wear school uniforms on the weekends if they stayed because it was seen as weird, so it was flannel for her today. In fact, it'd be flannel for her every day until she found another outfit.

"Hey there, Fuzzy," he said, "Come on in, come on in. Oh, you brought a cooler? Drinks?"

Fuzzy lifted the battered cooler once in acknowledgement and walked inside. What greeted her was the den of a troll and it was cozy and homey and well-appointed. There was a white crescent sofa that curved against two walls, a glass coffee table, one of those trideo tanks for 3D TV, a murphy bed like all of the student beds, the kind that folded into the wall and currently was, a desk with assorted knickknacks on it, an open book made from real paper and a wooden cross above it, a chair before it and a bookcase that had a mini-fridge at the bottom that acted as an impromptu bookend. And finally, very conspicuously, a big, black bag that laid slumped against the corner with a chain on top of it. This last object in the room put her a bit on edge.

"I brought dinner," said Fuzzy, "For when we're done."

It was a room that was bizarrely compact and enormous. It gave Fuzzy the feeling of being a doll in a normal sized house while Marco, who closed the door behind her, looked perfectly normal. It was like some sort of optical illusion where suddenly, he looked like he was normal human sized, but also not at the same time.

"Oh?" he asked, "What is it?"

Marco motioned towards the coffee table, which was devoid of any mess. In fact, it seemed like Marco had cleaned because the entire cabin was devoid of the mess that a normal teenager created simply by existing in a place. Fuzzy sat the red and white cooler down, unlatched the cooler and showed off her gift as Marco leaned over.

"Meat?" asked Marco.

Fuzzy showed off her four kills of the day. Two and a half pounds of bird meat.

"Two ruffed grouse and two spruce grouse," said Fuzzy.

She was proud of the fact that she had learned the difference on her few walks with Julian. Though Julian had been very specific in saying that she was only allowed to hunt certain types of birds if she wanted to keep hunting at all. Apparently a few "endangered" birds nested here, which as she came to understand were really, really rare kinds of birds. Also it was important to know which birds were which not just for rarity, but for taste. The spruce grouse was fine to eat now but in winter they only ate pine needles and if you ate them then, they'd taste like turpentine, which Fuzzy figured meant they tasted like ass.

"Grouse?" asked Marco, a bit confused.

"Julian also called them pheasants," said Fuzzy.

Marco's made a pleased little "ahhh" sound as his eyes showed recognition, interest and appreciation. In her mind, Fuzzy did a happy little dance that her gift had hit the mark. Then she closed the cooler so the meat wouldn't go bad. Though it was still extremely fancy to her, easy access to ice made hunting so much simpler.

"It's been a while since I've had pheasant," said Marco, "They don't serve it at the school or uh...Where I normally hang out."

"I shot them this morning," said Fuzzy.

She felt pretty great about this part. Her new flu-flu arrows had done the trick as they were meant for hunting small game like grouse. Her normal arrows were a bit too big and would've damaged the meat and the arrows meant for deer would've obliterated the birds. It'd taken her about two hours to shoot the birds, though the first three came easy and the fourth had taken a full hour. That was just how it was sometimes. It'd taken another thirty minutes to clean the birds, remove the heads and the offal at Sasha's insistence and then she'd cleaned and saved the few regular feathers and the soft down for filling with pillows someday.

"You did a very good job it seems," said Marco, warmly, "Thank you. I can ah...I can have these sent off the island by drone to be cooked by my personal chef if you'd like. He's very good."

Fuzzy didn't know what a chef was so she only shrugged her shoulders.

"I thought we could cook them ourselves," said Fuzzy, "I'm good with meat."

Marco's eyebrows climbed up his broad face.

"Are you?" he asked.

Fuzzy puffed up her chest.

"I've been feeding myself all my life," she said, "I worked with meat every day. I didn't usually eat it, but I know my way around a bird."

She knew her way around a lot of animals. In Puyallup, meat was meat and one could never be choosy. Again, Sasha had told her not to tell anyone about what she ate out there beyond the birds. Even the types of birds would be suspect. Apparently people usually didn't eat crow. Nor did they eat innards or pick meat off the head. That mess was currently in a plastic bag full of ice until she could figure out what to do with it. Rat Man had a refrigerator for meat and so did Marco, though his was smaller. Maybe she could get her own.

Such luxury.

Marco clapped his hands together in delight.

"That sounds wonderful," he said, "But I don't have a stove or an oven. I do have a maglock keycard for the cafeteria. Do you need any ingredients?"

Fuzzy tried not to squirm at the idea of taking anything that didn't belong to her, especially ingredients for food, but Marco seemed okay with it so she was okay with it.

"Salt, pepper and...Butter?" she asked.

Salt and pepper were actually fairly common and Rat Man had kept a number of herbs, spices and sauces to make otherwise bland food tolerable. He usually served soy and mycoprotein based foods when she'd lived with him, the latter of which was a kind of snotty, mushroom gruel for those in extreme poverty. Fuzzy hunted for meat, but generally she swapped for it and only ate it if she thought it'd go bad before she could offload it. A single pound of bush meat would buy enough mycoprotein for her for a week. These pheasants which were high quality meat probably would have bought a month and a half or even two months worth of mushroom gruel with the right buyer. Or better than that, some actual hunting supplies.

"Yeah, I can get those," said Marco, "You just need a fire?"

A month ago though, she wouldn't have dreamed of asking anyone for real butter. But it was just there in the cafeteria every day like it was no big deal. A king's ransom in meat, fruit, vegetables, grains and lastly, butter going into the trash every day because the students weren't hungry.

"Just a fire and some sticks," said Fuzzy.

Marco rubbed his chin in thought.

"How about we put one on a stick and I grab some alfredo sauce or something?" asked Marco, "If you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of big and I think we'll need to stretch the meat if I want anything more than a snack. I'll see if I can find a recipe on the island's terminal."

Fuzzy had no idea about Alfredo's sauce, but she figured it was like Dale's own pomegranate juice. Apparently people just named food after themselves sometimes. But she did venture a question anyway.

"Terminal?" she asked.

"Oh, the old cyberterminal," said Marco, "It's like your commlink, but huge. People used terminals before commlinks. My grandpa told me that there used to be these things called pay phones before there were cell phones. Then cell phones couldn't keep up with all of the data, so we got terminals and then comm lin..."

Marco saw Fuzzy's eyes glaze over as she understood absolutely none of this. So he cleared his throat in embarrassment and gave up.

"You know what?" asked Marco, "That's ancient history. The terminal for messing around on the matrix and making comm calls outside of the island. It's really, really old and crappy. If you try using it for VR it's just so slow. But I can get a recipe off it."

"Yeah, we can sit around a fire afterwards if you want."

She'd seen those around and sitting around campfires at night seemed to be something to do. Again, Marco's eyes lit up at the mention of sitting around a fire.

"You and me?" he asked, with a large finger pointed at his chest.

"Yeah."

"Uh...Ye-Yes," said Marco, both a bit flustered and pleased, "That's great. I uh...I usually don't get invited to those."

He blushed a bit as he seemed to have been a little too honest. It wasn't attraction, it was just that he wasn't used to the attention. He seemed to act differently alone than when he was in a group. Besides, trolls tended to only date other trolls due to the sheer difference in size. Though sometimes they would date orks as they tended to be somewhat larger than humans and elves.

"Anyway, would you like a quick tour before we start?" he said, quickly.

Fuzzy looked around the cabin which was much like hers except much better furnished. Also if it was anything like hers, it would just have a main room for living and sleeping, a closet for clothes and a bathroom. Again, it all seemed like too much to her. She'd gotten her own bunk in Rat Man's house when she'd started hunting, but now she had her own room. And there was water too. Running water. Clean water. Cold water. Hot water. Flushing water. All the kinds of water. There didn't seem to be an end to it either. Not even after a month.

And there was even chemically softened toilet paper, which she could now no longer live without. If she ever went back to Puyallup, she would find a way to bring as much toilet paper back with her as possible.

"A tour sounds good," she said.

Marco laughed a little.

"Not a lot to show," he said, "But I don't get to do this often."

He waved his hand to the trideo.

"My trideo tank," he said, "It's going on its fourth year. Getting new tech screened by security is kind of a pain so I haven't bothered replacing it. I have a gaming system but I don't use it much. A bunch of Christian and Russian shows and trids if you're ever interested in either. Also some pre-Crash stuff too. Like the first one, not the second. I watched the first re-rescreening of Chariots of Fire after they found it again in 2071 and I think I'm one of ten people on the planet who has the full collection of Cadfael. I paid to have it remastered because it wasn't only just in 2D, but the resolution was really...Really dire."

"What's Cadfael?" ventured Fuzzy, more out of politeness than interest.

Again, Marco's eyes lit up.

"Oh, it's about a Benedictine monk in the twelfth century who solves murders in old England," said Marco, "I really wish that it wasn't just an all human cast, but metahumans have only been around for about sixty years ago and Cadfael from...I think the nineties. You know, the nineteen-nineties. So it's really, really, really old. But finding good Christian media is um..."

Marco struggled for a word.

"It's...Um..." he continued, lamely.

"Bad?" offered Fuzzy.

Marco nodded vigorously.

"Oh, you have no idea," said Marco, seriously, "Finding good Christian literature is basically impossible and I have the money to try. There's so much garbage out there. It's probably a small part of why the faith is such a shadow of what it used to be."

Again, Marco seemed to understand that he was losing Fuzzy so he soldiered on.

"My couch!" he said, awkwardly, "All my furniture, really. My family makes their living through furniture."

She had no idea what either Christians or Russians were but she did know what a couch was.

"Do they make it?" asked Fuzzy.

"Ah, no," said Marco, "My parents oversee ergonomic design for metahumans at EVO, my corporation," said Marco, "Which is a fancy way of saying that my parents oversee the people who make furniture for big people like me. Or very small people. Anyone really, but very big and small are their specialties. EVO is a megacorporation that appeals mostly to metahumans. But we don't discriminate. We believe that humans are part of the larger metahuman community too."

He waved his hand towards the couch.

"I helped found a small community in the Ork Underground," he said, "I wanted to build a community. So...You know. Anyway, it's called Touristville. Not in the one in Redmond. That was a kind of branding screw up I guess. But I bought the rights to a bunch of furniture designs and gifted it to them. They used to sell weapons and drugs and...And...Relations of an intimate nature..."

Fuzzy figured out what he meant.

"They sold sex?" asked Fuzzy, awkwardly.

Marco cleared his throat again.

"Not anymore," he said, "They're split between restaurants and hand crafted furniture with a few other smaller businesses. I helped found it early in my freshman year. It took a while, but the gangs are gone, there's no more drug problems, no killing and poverty is pretty low. It's a nice little place. I normally go there to church on Sundays but I thought if you needed help that my pastor would understand."

It was his turn to puff his chest up with a bit of pride as well. The buttons on his button-down shirt strained.

"Anyway, all of this furniture that you see is made by hand," he said, "I'm no carpenter, but I do help run a soup kitchen on Sundays. I heal the sick for free and feed the poor. Though there aren't nearly as many sick and poor since I started helping. It's um...It's my little project."

"That sounds good," said Fuzzy.

She probably would've appreciated a little help like that. Especially during the winter when food got scarce. But she was also wary of becoming dependent on that kind of help as well. Still, food was food. The fact that Marco had functionally reshaped an entire community of who knew how many people escaped her. The sheer scope of changing the lives of hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people just didn't register as possible, nor did she even begin to know how to start grappling with that kind of power.

"It's been my passion project for some time now," said Marco.

Fuzzy's eyes roamed and she went to the big, black bag with the chain on it in the corner.

"Oh, and that's my heavy bag," said Marco.

Fuzzy wondered just what a heavy bag was for. Certainly not a weapon as Julian didn't allow her to have any, but it looked incredibly heavy and it was on a chain. Marco seemed to grasp that Fuzzy didn't know what it was and began to explain.

"It's for boxing," said Marco, "It helps me work out my aggression."

Fuzzy grasped for what that meant and remembered the conversation that she and Kenji had while looking at boxing ring in the Red Market of the ACHE. The idea of combat sports was lost on her though.

"You hit the bag?" she asked.

Marco frowned down at the bag.

"I did," he said, "But I've had it for a few years. Normally I'd work with a trainer drone as a sparring partner. That'd basically look like a regular metahumanoid robot, but I've never seen a drone allowed on the island before. So I have the bag. Or had it."

Fuzzy pursed her lips at the bag and thought about it now that she knew what it was for. She looked up and saw where some steel was mounted onto the top of the cabin where it could be hung from.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

"I uh...Punched a hole through it," said Marco, hesitantly, "It's on the back side. You can't see it and I did patch it with duct tape, but the materials are too refined to get a fix spell to work on it."

Fuzzy knelt down and looked at the heavy bag. She couldn't see the hole on the back side, but there were thin spots all over the bag. With a glance back at Marco's knuckles, she saw that they were not only huge, but there was smooth bone here and there that all trolls had on his hands just like the rest of his body.

"Why can't it be fixed with magic?" asked Fuzzy.

"Oh, materials that are...Well, that are too high tech resist some kinds of magic," said Marco, "It doesn't matter if you blast them with a fireball or something or try to levitate them I suppose, but altering its structure means it's likely to resist magic. I actually have a harder time healing people who have cyberware or bioware installed because of that. So a fix spell could work on it, but none of the students know it. They think of fixing things as ah...Beneath them. I don't think any of the teachers know it. I have had someone on the security team try and fix it, but the materials are just too complicated for them since they're not as strong as the teachers. They're good, but the fix spell at this level really complicated even for an expert."

Fuzzy pursed tried pushing the bag, but it was so heavy that it wouldn't budge even though it'd been damaged. As someone who worked with leather, she did some calculation in her head and thought about how many devil rat pelts it would take to make a new one. With heads, tails and feet removed, maybe a few dozen. A fortune in Puyallup, but probably not to Marco.

"Why not just buy another?" asked Fuzzy.

She heard Marco shuffle his feet behind her.

"I don't like advertising how strong I am," said Marco, awkwardly, "I did in my freshman year when I cared a lot less about who knew how strong I was and ended up alienating a lot of people. It turns out that people don't like it when you hit a five-hundred pound heavy bag so hard your fist goes in one end and out the other...And into the wall. They fixed the hole in the cabin pretty fast though. Good as new. So I really don't like having to throw these out. They're just too big to move easily."

Fuzzy rose to her feet.

"What is it made from?" asked Fuzzy, as she turned around.

Marco looked nervous, like Fuzzy might bolt at his strength, but she didn't feel threatened by him. His strength was impressive to be sure, but there was a difference between someone who could be a threat and someone who was a threat.

"I have no idea," said Marco, "Something complicated."

"Could that security person fix treated leather?" asked Fuzzy.

"Um, sure," said Marco, "Maybe with a little difficulty, but not much since it's a natural material to begin with. But Fuzzy, I'd rip through leather in a single session."

"Not devil rat leather," said Fuzzy, "Like my hunting leathers. Those can take small arms fire...Low caliber and not a straight shot, but still. It's a little less strong than Kevlar, but it's lighter. And you could have someone fix it if you broke it, right?"

She couldn't help it. It was the saleswoman in her trying to make a swap. If it were in Puyallup it'd be the swap of her life too. Dozens of devil rat pelts to make a heavy bag because it could be easily fixed with magic would fetch a heavy price.

"I...Huh," said Marco.

He thought about it for a minute.

"There would be some heavy stitches," said Fuzzy, "Could a fix spell fix them? Same material."

"That's exotic material," said Marco, "At least I assume. Do you know someone who could make it?"

Fuzzy nodded and smiled. Perhaps the next time she talked to Rat Man she'd have a nice, fat project for him. Enough to put food on the table for him and all the kids for months.

"It really is a pain to keep throwing them out," said Marco, "We'll talk later."

That part of the conversation done, he turned away and busied himself. He opened his closet and scrounged for a dusty looking kettle style grill. Though only after some banging and crashing as he looked for the top, which was so high up on a shelf that Fuzzy couldn't see a single thing on top. He even found an old bag of charcoal. And of course there were a number of changes of clothing there, a mix between school wear and the formal church clothing he wore now. He closed the closet and brushed the dust off the top of the grill.

"A fire put is good, but we'll probably need this too," he said, "And I'll see if I can find a pot or something that'll fit in it. That's how grills work, right?"

The grill was incredibly dusty and Fuzzy only shrugged as she had little experience with grilled meat.

"I'm more of a meat on a spit girl," she said, "I'm pretty good with food in tin foil though."

If she could find it. In Puyallup, anything that could be burned would be burned and of course, poor materials effected the taste. Out here when she could burn wood, she figured that her food would taste a lot better.

"We'll figure it out," he said, unconvincingly, "I think I might be able to find some marshmallows and hot chocolate too. Oh, the bathroom is through that door since you'll be staying a while. There's an attachment for the ah...Well, it'd let non-trolls use the facilities if need be. So you don't have to walk all the way back to your cabin."

"Okay, good," said Fuzzy.

It made Fuzzy feel a little sad for him. It was obvious that he wanted to have people over, but it seemed like he just didn't. A fire pit with no one to sit around it but himself, a dusty grill, a doorknob for smaller company that was never touched and even some of the furniture was oddly shaped so it'd be easier for someone smaller to sit on. Her first impression had been right. Marco was lonely. At least when he was here at school. And it stood to reason that he'd taken one of his precious weekends to try and teach her how to read instead of going to whatever this church thing was.

"There," said Marco, as he set up the grill in the room, "Still intact."

He folded it back up and set it aside for now.

"Anything else left on the tour?" asked Fuzzy.

Marco almost shook his head, but he hesitated.

"One thing," he said, slowly, "I don't show this to other people."

It stood to reason that he didn't show anyone as he normally didn't have company.

"What is it?" asked Fuzzy.

Marco decided to show rather than tell. He went to a flat expanse of wall and pressed a hidden button. There was a click and another door that Fuzzy hadn't noticed because the door had no seams suddenly appeared in the wall as it opened by a few inches. His hand grasped at it, lingered and then he opened it wide enough for Fuzzy to see.

This was a door that Fuzzy didn't have in her cabin, or at least she thought she didn't. She'd check later. Behind that door was a small room, or at least small by troll standards. There was more of the fancy colored glass with pictures on them. More crosses of many different types. books, candles, necklaces made up of beads with tiny crosses, jars full of odd but pleasant smelling spices and one that was just full of gold.

"What's that?" asked Fuzzy, suddenly interested by just how odd and busy it was.

"That's my lodge," said Marco, reverently, "Though Christian theurgists prefer to call them monastic cells, or just cells. There are mundane ones and I suppose that can be confused but ah...Context clues I suppose. I have a hard time using the shamanic lodges so I had this built custom so I could do something like learn a spell or do ritual magic."

"You can't learn in the regular lodges?" asked Fuzzy.

"I can because I've lived around shamans for so long but normally you can't," said Marco, "Magical traditions tend to interfere with each other where magic is thick, like a lodge. So if you tried to learn a spell or cast one or summon a spirit in my cell, it probably wouldn't work. I'm used to it so I probably could since I've been at this school so long. I actually used to practice shamanism, but Christianity just called to me I suppose. Blame my pastor. There aren't a lot of schools for Christian theurgists though, so I'm here."

"Why?" asked Fuzzy.

Marco grimaced and closed the door to his monastic cell. It sealed with a soft click and it was as if the door was never there.

"Yeah," he said, eyes on the ground, "Most of the major religions of the world didn't react well to magic coming back. Or suddenly that there are elves, dwarves, orks and trolls...Or...Or dragons. Anything non-human, really. It was a shock. That made people afraid and one of the most fearful populations were the Christians who reacted...Well, I would say badly, but almost everyone reacted badly."

This wasn't the first time that Marco had mentioned this Christian stuff. Sasha said that she'd explain it, but she never did so Fuzzy really didn't know what this was. But she could tell that the topic weighed heavily on Marco as he leaned against the hidden door to his monastic cell.

"You know, you're lucky," said Marco, quietly, eyes once again on the ground, "You have people that came before you. Three generations of awakened, each teaching the next one, learning, growing. We're the fourth, you and I. The first of the fourth generation of magically active people. The first generation would've been our grandparents or even great-grandparents. Some of them were even older, because magic came even to the elderly in the first days. All at once."

Marco licked dry lips and seemed to deflate.

"But I don't really have many elders to turn to," he admitted, "Some but...Not many. Barely any at all. All of that time where we should've been growing and learning and teaching and spreading the good news, lost."

Fuzzy wasn't really sure what to say. There was so much she didn't understand, but she could recognize trauma even if she didn't understand the source. Puyallup was not a kind place.

"What happened to them?" she asked, quietly, "Your elders?"

Marco let out a long sigh. For a moment, Fuzzy thought he wasn't going to answer, but he did.

"Other Christians happened to them," said Marco, bitterly, "Or at least people that called themselves that. Wolves in sheep's clothing. So many, many wolves that were tolerated among the flock. And then then they ate up almost all of the sheep. Anyway, going elsewhere to learn isn't an option. I mean it is, but there aren't many of us and we're forty years behind you shamans in technique. Technique that I need if I want to be a good healer someday."

It seemed like Marco wanted to say more but he didn't. He cast a longing look over at his much abused heavy bag. No joy there. His finger lingered near the button to his cell but it moved away. And there was Fuzzy, paralyzed by indecision at what to do.

"Do you want me to come back later?" asked Fuzzy.

Marco's face fell and Fuzzy realized that she might've just said the wrong thing. The school's only troll was a lonely person and that sounded a lot like he'd just opened up to her and she was going to abandon him. So she tried again.

"Fuck, I mean do you need a minute?" she amended.

His face didn't brighten, but his frown at least became less intense as he realized that she wasn't looking for a way to leave. In that moment, she saw him clasp his hands together and bow his head. He muttered something to himself and when he stopped, he seemed a little better. Not good, but better.

"Let's start in on that reading," he said, "if you still want to that is."

It was generous to give her an out like that. Someone else might have taken it, but Fuzzy was stubborn. it seemed like the gift that she'd brought today wasn't the bird meat, but her company. So she climbed onto the oddly shaped couch and took a seat, ready to learn.