ENCOUNTER Aegidius again (5: miss). ENCOUNTER Felice: 7-9: They'll do it if you have sex with them.

"So... I understand you needed to be really firm back there," you explain, flush-faced to your brother. Now that you are traveling by air together - your fellow group of young women in the 18-20 range mostly trailing behind the journeymen sorcerer leading you to an unknown destination - it's a bit easier for you to get close enough to him to have a bit of a private conversation.

"This isn't a good time. I was pulled away from my affairs to pluck the strings of fate so that you do not cause disaster for the whole lot of us. Save your usual games for later."

"Oh, come off of it! I know that your time at this school hadn't been entirely without incident." You protest, gritting your teeth as the chill air slices at you. You can't muster the focus to properly put up a shield against the wind and make yourself audible, but not TOO audible, with a cantrip, so you endure the discomfort... you can't take the risk that any of your fellow students might be fluent enough to follow your conversation even in your native tongue, as most magicians are trilingual if not outright polyglots.

"Fani," he says using the informal form of your name but with barely any hint of closeness or affection, taking the tone of a teacher who is sympathetically but firmly explaining to a pupil why she's failed an exam, "the sooner that you stop denying the fact that you are a soiled woman now and will be treated as such, the easier this-"

"WHAAAAAAT?" You raise your voice. "You-"

Aegidius looks back with a reproachful raise of his eyebrow and a flat crease of a frown visible from among the curls of his beard. "I was referring to the fact that you were using dark magic. Though - while it is of immensely less import - I cannot say I approve of your newfound... social habits... either. Was I entirely innocent? Perhaps not... but hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue."

You swallow and turn away, easing off on your velocity and falling back. It is a testament to your new, post-Boarbristle outlook that your first thought is that surely one of your new slutty friends will take the initiative at some point here for softening his outlook... he's remained unmarried for a scandalously long time, in fact, which is part of why your parents not-so-innocently pestered you so much about finding a man in the months leading up to your departure.

"Well, this is certainly a thrill, isn't it?"

You nearly roll off of your broomstick when a voice comes into your ear from mere feet away. With all the wind whipping past it's impossible to hear someone sneaking up on your, especially since your fluttering pigtails tend to block your peripheral vision. Turning aside you see Felice Collier's face looking as worthy of serving as a painter's model as always. Funnily, you knew some girls back in your primary-school level tutoring who'd begged their parents for advanced alterations just so that they wouldn't have to 'compromise their beauty' with glasses, but in her case the prominent, thick-rimmed portals only made her more alluring.

"What do you want, Felice?" you sniff, bringing your flight path close to hers so neither of you will have to raise your voices. "An apology? No, I think you know better than that - it is to make fun of me for being caught with the same kind of forbidden magic you are, yes?"

"Ooooouh," the pretty pale girl makes an ebullient sound. "Not at all, my pretty little lioness! I have to give you credit for organizing such a thrilling event and, at the end when it all fell apart, not trying to fold or run away from it all! Since that whiny ill-bred scarecrow," she tosses her head in the direction of your new enemy, Kinzie, "was caught with the command spell in her possession as well, you could've easily claimed you were forced into all this, or simply that the satyr charmed you into it... but you've stuck to it. And I think the cachet of having organized it all, and then dispatched those nasty little creatures that attacked, will last much longer than any consequences our families or Headmistress Porcinilla will see fit to impose. I know her better than you do.. she came from my house, you know. And we all know that she doesn't want the students to be TOO well behaved."

She licks her lips and lets her long, flowing black hair wrap around her neck like a scarf. "So, I thought that I would do you a favor... several, actually, but first and foremost is to help convince that stern, towering Teutonic brother of yours to let us hold onto our wands even when they aren't strictly needed on this punitive duty of ours. After all, there's a certain natural kind of magic that is best worked by holding onto someone else's wan-"

"GAGHH!" You make a sound like you did when a slug landed right in your mouth as a result of your vicious phantom prankster invisibly attacking you a couple of weeks back. "I do not want that mental image, thank you very much! It is enough to make me unable to even laugh at your stunning level of presumption and overconfidence."

"Well, failing my inherent charms," Felice says with a shrug, "... I should mention I've not had to do a single written assignment this year without even needing to give up any more to a boy than a momentary brush of my lips on his cheek... You are not the only one with an influential family, and one of the spells I've always had a natural talent for is far-whispering. The wheels are already in motion. Magic gives us so many useful tools for getting out of trouble... it is only the will to use them that is lacking. So that is why, pending getting back into contact with my House, I am going to, with no permission from anyone else, offer you an honorary invitation to House Draconis."

At first you start to roll your eyes and throw more jeers at her. But then again... even though you don't expect that a man as serious as Aegidius would actually be charmed into doing anything by this frivolous, mischievous little aristocratic princess, it might be amusing and fitting to have her spend this trip annoying him and getting in his hair. And you shouldn't look any advantage you can get in the mouth right now. If nothing else, she'll make you look better by comparison...

"Well... I suppose if you can manage it. I will accept this, er, invitation, Felice." you say with a nod that is almost, but not quite, a gesture of thanks. You start to back away from her and drop behind on your broom, but then she reaches right out and grabs you by your shoulder.

"Hold on now blondie. You've seen me at work before you know. You know me well enough that the first words out of your mouth were, 'what do you want'?" Felice purses her lips painted with electric blue lip gloss. "Now, some of the girls, particularly those in Leontes..." she mischievously waggles her nose at you and gives you a teasing look before, at the last moment, looking up ahead towards someone else, "...er, like that clumsy Milly Cherrywood up there, for example, are sluts who'll let a guy plow them into the ground for hours just in return for being told they're pretty."

You furrow your brow but Felice doesn't give you a chance to interrupt. "But it is so much more thrilling when there is a give and take. I've gotten so good at bartering, teasing and leading on that it's almost become boring. Soooo... I think what I would like now is, in true Draconis fashion, to try playing on the other side for once and tempt a proud little mouse into doing something... daring."

"Ahhh... uh..." in spite of yourself you find your cheeks glowing red and your thighs tightening around the broom you're astride in response to Felice coming right at you like this. "Well, it... it is not like I have no experience myself in several of the things you are playing at..."

"Not thiiiis," Felice says with a musical lilt to her voice. "Have you ever heard the expression... joining the kilometer high club? Oh, and there's a nice soft gray cloud we're coming up on just ahead..."

...Is she really saying what you think she's saying? And are you really tempted to go along with it? Despite your (until recently) rather solidly heterosexual identity and, more to the point, the INCREDIBLE social (and physical!) risks of such a notion you feel yourself sliding closer to her on her broom, the magic of the item reacting to your true intent intuitively, before you can work up the courage to say or even gesture at them...