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Dear Diary, when I got back to campus I had some questions for Ducks. He has hunted in these hills a lot and I couldn't think of anyone who would know better how to answer the questions I had. That manticore was just strange and I needed to see if that was just one more thing that was different in this time and place.  

So, first thing Monday, I made sure to run into Ducks between classes. He was with those women in the law school program, the ones that kind of remind me of cats. I could hear them talking about some girl with him as I got closer. Magically enhanced hearing is sometimes interesting. They were really giving him a hard time about some girl, asking him the most indelicate questions. I knew Ducks better than that -- surely he wasn't leading some poor girl on, promising her love and delivering only sex. Heck, he hadn't even kissed me, I doubted he was moving that quickly on someone else.

Then the chattering women saw me and smirked. I suddenly realized I was the "bouncy little bit" they were talking about (that is the most repeatable thing they had said, it would make you blush to hear what they had said about my shorts!). I could feel the wrath of kore building and the bull was imminent. Ducks just looked at me for a moment and suddenly stepped between us. I really wouldn't have killed the governor's daughter, I was just a bit irritated to realize just what they were saying about me.

"Indigo, how was your weekend?" he said, putting his arm around me and suddenly walking off at a right angle. I could hear the girls titter and one of them made a comment about what was I studying, ducks or geese?

"Classical studies" I replied, shaking off Duck's arm and looking at them. "Really" the one said, "What focus? I've an MLA in the area." Ducks tried to say something and we both just glared at him.

"The Mycenean and Greek common eras" I said.  Her response was a rather crass comment to one of the other girls in dog latin (well, that is what I'd learned to call it when talking about dialects and languages with my guardian's wife). it was an old play on words, and a nasty one, playing off of different meanings of the word manticore and its puns in latin.

My only comment was to say "You have the declension wrong." with a better accent, or so I think of my vulgate skills. She just looked at me. Then I turned to Ducks, "Though I did have a question about manticores."

With that I led him in the direction he was trying to take us both away. I had questions about the local manticores, the ones in the wild, not the ones he had in classes with him in the law school.

Well, I guess I ought to tell the story of my fight with the manticore too. So, here it is. As always, when I'm hunting, I got up early, about an hour before the false dawn. I had water and raisins for breakfast and bathed, scrubbing myself with sand until I was sure I had cleaned off all the scent of my meals and fire and everything else. I put on my belt and boots and indigo shirt and everything else and readied my chain. Then I began to track from downwind until I found the spoor of the creature. It was just settling down to sleep, after a night's hunt as I closed in on it. The raw chaos taint of it was foul, a bad taste on the back of my tongue when suddenly it saw me. It jabbed with its tail and I jumped, just as a cloud of poison gas went by. I circled, it jabbed, I jumped, until the poison was mostly gone. Then it rushed me and I gave the great leap, passing over it and striking as I passed, severing its tail. The bull was with me, its light pulsing strongly. Then the manticore rounded on me and I realized it wasn't the kind of manticore I was familiar with. It had two great claws springing from its shoulders. They had range, but I had more. I jumped and cursed it, then struck solid and true, my bladed chain a whirlwind. When we parted, it fell and I was standing. I back tracked the spoor to where the manticore had come, then burned the body (carefully, to avoid starting a wild fire), then hiked back down to the trail head, the bus and home (and another one of those wonderful meals in the dorms).

In my experience, about thirty-five hundred years ago, a manticore is a lion with the face of a man, teeth of iron and a scorpion's tail, but armed with spikes instead of a sting. The spikes can be used to strike or they can be whipped from the tail like balista bolts.

The manticore I found while hunting was more of a combination of a scorpion and a lion. Think of a great lion with a scorpion's tail and scorpion claws springing forth from its shoulders. This one could shoot a cloud of poison from its tail as well as firing drops of poison and jabbing with the stinger. Nasty, but the poison was only normal and I'm immune to lesser poisons like that, so I evaded the cloud, but didn't really worry. It was a bit unnatural, chaos tainted, like most manticores, but that did not save it from me.

But it sure was strange, and when I trailed it back to where it had come from, the spoor ran into a crack in the rocks that when I squeezed past, led to another world. Since the sun was setting there, I did not linger, but I could see a slope below me covered with trees, fading into a sandy plain with a rise in the distance and a tall city with spires. The city seemed more ruins than anything else, and I did not see smoke or light coming from it, but the air was clear and dry, the clouds few and very high.

I just wanted to know if that sort of manticore was common here and if Ducks had been through the crack (it looked a little small for him to fit into the depths, but heck, that manticore had made it out and it was a lot larger than either of us -- twice as big as the biggest lion I'd ever seen). Ducks had never heard of either.

About that time, as we were talking, the women (girls? English doesn't have a good term for non-matron adult females) from the law school caught up with us.

Which led me to a question I had for them. I'd decided I needed to go clothes shopping and wanted advice. Figured they should know (I kept hearing how law students knew everything -- though come to think of it, I'd only heard that from law students). They tittered (weren't they a bit old for that) and one of them suggested a store in a voice that made the others smirk. The bell went off and Ducks had to move quickly to get to class and he and the lawacores (female manticores masquerading as law students -- ok, its a word I made up) took off together.

Ducks was cute, and good in a fight, but I was thinking that he was too busy to find for a date.

But I decided to head off to the store and after classes, later that week, when Tindalasse asked where I was going, I told him shopping and gave him the name of the store. He said he knew the place and would be glad to show me how to get there.

So I'm downtown for the first time. Different. The sewers are along the sides of the street, instead of the middle, and they were all dry. No smells came out of the drains either. Nice. Of course the automobiles, the "cars," they all stunk a little, some more than others, but overall it was a lot cleaner and nicer than I remembered a non-temple district to be like. No wonder people didn't avoid the city.

When I walked in the store, the first sales person I saw just wrinkled up his nose at me. I guess me in my indigo shirt and a pair of khaki shorts wasn't the way to dress to shop for clothes. What did I know? All I knew is that I wasn't going to keep wearing those shorts any more. Not after the things I'd heard those girls say, not to mention I was going to change some other things too.

I almost walked out, but then someone spotted Tindalasse and we had more help than I knew what to do with. He offered to pay for whatever I was buying, which seemed awfully sweet, but it turns out that I have a lot of money in my debit account, more than he has available in his line of credit. An older man, turns out he is the owner, just told my salesperson she could sell me the store's entire inventory and all the pending orders and not to worry if I wanted all the available jewelry from the special orders department to go with anything else I felt like ordering.

I didn't want that much. But I had decided that I wasn't going to wear shorts any more, or skirts either (how do they keep them from flipping up?). Well, maybe a dress for Sundays, I've been attending a church. The lightwalker refused to tell me which one would bring me closest, just smiled at me when I asked, so I just started with one near the campus. I'm learning a lot about what they call the Greek common era of the time of Christ. Greek classes seem to center on that. To think I never thought I'd see the day come and instead I'm living long after it passed.

Anyway, before I knew it Tindalasse had said good-bye, the wrinkly salesperson was on the other side of the store and I had the nicest lady helping me find some "jeans" and shirts and all the parts for a layer of clothing everyone wears underneath their clothes. That really changes things. I even bought some tasteful jewelry, two of what they call a tennis bracelet (though I understand you shouldn't play tennis in one), one in diamonds and the other in sapphire and white & blue topaz. I like the feel of the gold on my skin and they had some tasteful, but nice matching necklaces. I even bought shoes, though it it was hard to give up my dragonskin boots. These shoes were not as comfortable, though many were pretty. For a girl who only wore sandals and boots, shoes were a real change. Did I tell you about heels?

I even got running shoes for exercise. Assicks? I can't remember the name, but they felt so nice, I was tempted to wear them forever. Turns out they had special clothes just for that.

Which led me to an entire new department, including getting a couple-three swim suits. I found myself getting three lined single piece suits (I couldn't bring myself to try a bikini, no matter how cute, and the speedos were like being naked),  One was indigo, one was teal and one had a pretty pattern on it. They were specially cut for "zaftig" builds, as the salesperson put it. My waist is small, but I'm pretty much finished growing.

Anyway, the clothes were fun. I'm actually going to use all the closet space I have in the dorm. Right now I use a drawer for my four pairs of shorts and hung my shirts and t-shirts in the closet. Everything else was pretty much empty. Now I have socks and shoes and shirts and jeans and a few dresses and ... they were very nice, they have a storage facility for dresses and such. Mostly furs, but I'm not sure I want a fur (it was always too warm at home).

It was fun to start wearing my new clothes. Ducks even gave me a nicer look than usual, guess he likes them, and those lawacores, I had to thank them for sending me to the place with the best jewelry department in town. Ducks suggested that I not wear the six carat diamond on the pendant necklace for every day wear though. I guess he is right, though the lawacore who was going to but into our conversation just walked off after hearing his suggestion.

I'm still learning, but it was fun.

Now I know more about clothes and manticores and lawacores too.

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