introduction to being a college student

[self_composed]

Bella packs light. (She can conjure whatever she wants, mooch off Alice for anything she wants to buy. She's wearing her riding gear and riding Tegu and only has a few other favorite-things she'd like to retain in their original forms. The black dress is one of them.) Her swag goes in saddlebags and she goes to Stanford.

It's a road trip; she wants to be able to account for her time, and besides, she likes her motorcycle. She checks into crappy little motels and once spends four minutes watching someone try and fail to disassemble her bike, from her window. (The fellow gives up eventually. Tegu does not want to come apart or move.)

At Stanford, she is there before her new roommate, who is reportedly named "Janine". Bella unpacks, and since no one's there yet, she wishes up some decorations too. She introduces herself to the RA, Maureen, and then loiters in the hall lounge, waiting for more people to meet.

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

Meanwhile, Alice is combing the area invisibly, looking for a good place to put his magic door. Preferably near Bella's building; ideally in Bella's building.

[Ooh,] he says musingly over brainphone. [How about the bottom of the stairs?]

Not that many people take the stairs in a building with elevators anyway, and the ones who do probably don't head down to the basement that often. The space under the last turn of the stairs is plenty wide enough for a magic door; hell, it's wide enough for two.

[self_composed]

[Nice. If you make the door itself invisible so we can just walk through, then you won't even have to wait till the place is empty, if you're invisible.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Yeah, that's the idea!]

He pulls up his memory of the lair in Forks and chooses a section of wall there - in the main room, beside the door to the bedroom. He decides that the magic door will exist only for himself and Bella; nothing else will pass through it unless by specific exception. He decides that from either side, they (and only they) will be able to see through the magic door as though the relevant bits of wall were almost transparent, with just enough wall left to serve as a visual reminder that it is a wall to most people. He decides that they will be able to bring stuff through the door, including people, but only exactly who and what they intend to bring when they walk through it.

[Double-check me?] he requests.

[self_composed]

[So we can't throw things through?] Bella asks. [If other things go only when we walk through? Also, what if we trip near it?]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Do you want to be able to throw things through?] he inquires, but he edits his intention accordingly, and also stipulates that only-passing-through-when-meant-to applies to themselves as well as to what they are bringing or carrying.

[self_composed]

[Might be useful if I wanted to surreptitiously stash something without disappearing myself. Otherwise, looks fine, long as "stuff" includes sound and breezes and such.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Yeah? Like, if you really want to shout through the magic door, you can, and if you don't, you won't.]

[self_composed]

[Cool. Go for it.]

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice wishes.

Then he steps through the magic door.

His Bella-compass informs him that Bella is quite a ways south.

When he steps back through, suddenly she is not very far at all up-and-thataway.

[Cool,] he says happily.

[self_composed]

[Very nice,] Bella approves. [Now if you don't feel like telling them your mom and Hilary don't need to know that you're probably going to be visiting me all the time.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Hell, I can stick another door in my basement if I wanna be lazy,] he says. [I think I'll go do that.]

Back through the door, and zoom!

[How's your residence stuff going, anyway?]

[self_composed]

[Janine, my roommate-to-be, isn't here yet that I know of. I've got my room set up and a parking permit for my bike and I met the RA and now I'm hanging out pretending to mess around on my laptop in the hall lounge.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Aww. I don't know why that's cute, but it totally is.]

[self_composed]

[I can't imagine why that would be cute either,] Bella laughs. [What are you planning to do with yourself while I settle in here?]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Dunno,] he says. [Go back out your door and fly around, maybe. Get to know the place.]

In the meantime, though—ah, there's his house. He drifts in the open back door and zips down to the basement. Halfway there he realizes that he could have just made the door from the other side, but what the hell, this way's more fun.

[self_composed]

[Why was the back door left open?] Bella wonders.

[edgeofyourseat]

[Ask Hilary; it's her kitchen.]

[self_composed]

[I can't ask Hilary, I'm in Stanford and have no way to know that the door was open. Don't you have air conditioning? Is she even there? Are you being burgled?]

[edgeofyourseat]

[I guarantee you we are not being burgled,] he says, sets the door to work just like the other one did but attach to a wall that's in his bedroom, and zips back up to the top of the stairs. When he peeks down the hall, Hilary is just wandering back into the kitchen.

[See?]

[self_composed]

[Well, ask her why the door was left standing open like that, then.]

[edgeofyourseat]

[Do you care enough about that answer for me to fly out of the house, un-invisible, walk back up to the door, and ask why it's open?]

[self_composed]

[Bah. Nevermind. It's going to bug me, though.]

[edgeofyourseat]

He laughs.

[Okay, then yes, you do.]

And he flies out of the house, un-invisibles, walks back up to the door, and sticks his head through it.

"Why's the door open?"

"Aren't you halfway across the country or something?" inquires Hilary.

He laughs, gesturing down at himself to indicate his obvious presence. "Do I have to answer that?"

"Yes."

"Got bored, came back. Why's the door open?"

"Because I felt like it. And if you're so bored, you can help me bake cookies."

[self_composed]

Bella introduces herself to various new neighbors in the lounge as they wander in and out. She makes a point to learn all their names.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice helps Hilary bake cookies. See, things like this are why it's sometimes more fun to do stuff the long way around.



A short, nervous-looking girl with long blonde hair shuffles past the lounge door, dragging an absurd quantity of luggage—four duffel bags and two enormous plastic packages of what appear to be styrofoam packing peanuts, all tied together with bungee cords and stacked precariously atop a comparatively tiny suitcase.