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 Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:07 pm
 When Callessa’s mother Elienne had asked Cal if she wanted to bring a friend to the science museum, Cal had said, without hesitation, “Yes, Eidil. I’ll just call her up and ask her if she’s busy this weekend.” They’d been friends since they were freshlings, and if Cal was being honest, she’d had a crush on Eidil for nearly as long. They’d done practically everything together since they’d first met, from going on trips together to visiting festivals to watching movies. Honestly, how Mom could possibly not have guessed that Cal wanted to bring Eidil, she had no idea. She even asked her that. “Mom, of course I want to invited Eidil. She loves science. And I love science.”
Mom had nodded with a quirk of her eyebrow. “And you love Eidil.”
Cal squirmed deeper into her seat. “Of course I love Eidil. Would be kind of silly to be dating her if I wasn’t in love with her. I mean, who dates someone they don’t love? Ridiculous.” She knew even as she squirmed deeper and turned redder and redder in embarrassment that her mother was getting more and more amused. Why? She had no idea. Meddle not in the affairs of mothers, for they are subtle and quick to pull out embarrassing baby pictures of you. Generally, if Cal could get around her mother without trying to understand her, she was pretty content (even if her mother was not).
Turns out the reason Mom had asked her was that she was letting Teo bring a friend with as well. Yeah, guess who, it was Perigor, the really loud one. Apparently Teo had two other friends as well, neither of them as loud as Perigor was. There were detonations that were quieter than Perigor was. But in Mom’s mind, if one of her children could bring a friend, then the other one could, which meant that, squee, Cal got to bring Eidil with her to the museum! It was the same old museum they’d visited several times throughout the years, but the website said that they’d done some remodeling and revamped a bunch of their exhibits. Should be fun!
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:08 pm
 Eidil nodded in agreement. “They’ve got a new exhibit, too, ‘Life Under the Lens’! It’s about microscopic organisms. Apparently they’ve got five types of slime molds on display, including two species from Above! That’s why part of the museum’s been closed for a couple months, they’ve had to rearrange about half of their exhibits! I hear they’re going to make a new exhibit on forests both in Above and Below, with side-by-side comparisons between the two.” She beamed at Cal, then turned in her seat to look back. The two boys were sitting quietly in the back, which was odd, because Cal had told her that one of the boys, Perigor, you know, the one that wasn’t Histeol? Yeah, apparently he was super loud and obnoxious or something like that. But right now he was being very quiet.
Eidil was obviously very excited to be going to the museum. There were several reasons for this. The first reason was the new remodeling. It would be good to see what improvements had been made in the museum and how the new exhibits looked. They were all riffs on the old themes, but now they’d look smart and new. The second reason was that she got to spend the day with the best person in the world who wasn’t related to her by magic—her beautiful girlfriend, Callessa. And any opportunity that mixes love and science is an opportunity not to be sniffed at. Rather, it is an opportunity to be cherished and squee’d upon, and looked back fondly for many years. Eidil couldn’t wait to take pictures of them all at the museum.
The third reason was two species of slime molds from Above!! If that didn’t get you going, you were probably already dead.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:09 pm
Cal grinned. “Slime molds and a side-by-side of the effects on photodistinction on similar ecologies of Above and Below? Sounds like the new science museum is cooler than the new one!” She turned to her mother in the front seat. “By the way, full disclosure, Mom, I’m dragging Eidil over to the biology section as soon as we get there.”
Mom sighed, but agreed. The rest of the drive was taken up by chatting back and forth about rumors and hear-say that had been flying through the halls of Enoch house and amongst the students of the turquoise about what all was in the new museum. Physics, a new planetarium, rumor had it that they were going to open a new section on chemistry and its uses in the everyday world. As much as Cal hated chemistry, she had to admit that it was long since time they got their own space in a museum. It tended to get skipped in favor of…other things. She’d been about to call them “flashier” things, but then she remembered a video on the internet of a thermite reaction. It was hard to get flashier than chemistry, honestly.
The museum itself was full of people, busy, loud, with light pouring in from the new skylights onto the floor below. Despite the crowds, their little pack was able to stick together, at least until they got over to the biology section. “We’ll meet you for lunch at the café—how’s eleven-thirty? It’s going to be a zoo at noon, so we like to eat early,” she added to Eidil.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:11 pm
“Excuse you,” Eidil had said in the car. “I believe I will be the one dragging you, my feathered beauty?”
The new museum was fantastic. Eidil loved all of the signs and displays on the wall, and hoped that they could find the geology section later. There was supposed to be a new earthquake plate that reproduced famous earthquakes from Above and Below. She refused to leave until they’d gotten to take a ride or two. That would have to wait until lunch, though. In the few hours between now and then, she and Cal would be pouring over the new biology section, dissecting it for all its beautiful secrets and discoveries. She linked her arm with Cal’s and began to skip over to the big green sign that marked the promised land. Soon Cal was skipping too, and, skipping and giggling together, they eased their way through the crowd and through a dark arch festooned with climbing plants (real ones!) and echoing with the sounds of a deep jungle. The arch opened into a small, dark hallway, cozy, warm, and slightly humid.
A voice boomed out from the end of the hall. “You stand in the middle of a teeming jungle. The mists curl around you and the warmth surrounds you. The animals and the plants all beat out a rhythm. It’s the rhythm of your heartbeat. Welcome… to BIOLOGY.” With that, the sounds of the animals got louder and a door opened at the end of the hallway. Eidil giggled and clung tighter to Cal’s arm. “What do you think?” she hissed.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:12 pm
Cal listened to the intro with a roll of all four eyes. Oh, brother. “A trifle over-dramatic,” she said. “It’s a museum. Your displays should speak for themselves without spectacle.” She sniffed. “Or kitsch.” She paused. “Maybe if they’d added a heartbeat sound, really driven home the connection between macrobiology and microbiology.” She stopped talking when she heard a guttural sound come from Eidil. It was a familiar sound—one of eyerolling made verbal. “You asked,” Cal muttered.
But when the doors opened into the rest of the biology section, she cheered up. There were displays everywhere, well-lit and decorated with the color the museum had picked for the biology section. “See? Green beats red. What did I tell yah?” she said playfully, nudging her girlfriend. She was pretty sure she was pushing her luck now, though, so she followed Eidil’s lead to the first display, which was one on anatomy and convergent—and divergent—evolution. Such displays tended to focus on animals, and this one was no exception. Cal pointed out her favorite parts—how animals that lived in the ocean adapted and evolved into fish-like creatures—and listened to Eidil cheerfully elaborate on the rest of the display. That was the one downside of museums: everything was written for the laymare.
After homologies, they went to a beautiful mural depicting the evolution of Nightmares and Daydreams, and the start of all life. Now they were starting to veer over to exhibits that emphasized the world of plants. This was more Cal’s domain now.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:13 pm
Eidil made a sound of disgust in the hallway. Cal could never live in the moment. She was too practical to have a flair for the dramatic. It was almost depressing. Cute sometimes, but mostly just depressing. And frustrating. “I liked it,” she muttered rebelliously under her breath, but Cal hadn’t seemed to notice. As for the color scheme? Eidil shrugged. “That’s alright. Red’s more for geology. Every subject has to have its own color. Oceanography’s blue, of course, though I don’t think they have a section for it. It might be with ‘earth sciences.’ Astronomy is purple because of the night sky, chemistry’s…actually, I’m surprised they didn’t reserve green for chemistry. If movies were to be believed, chemistry’s just a matter of electrifying green chemicals until ‘science!!!’ happens.” She gasped. “Maybe the people here are scientists and they’ll make chemistry pink?”
The anatomy evolution display was okay, if a little simplistic. It would have been nicer if it emphasized why homologies happened. It didn’t, but that was okay—Eidil knew that museums were made for everyone. The important thing, she thought, is that the museum acknowledges the things you care about, and mention the details you care about. Everything after that was just noise.
It was time to check out those slime molds. Slime molds may not have been animals, but Eidil had been curious about them ever since she’d first heard of them. They weren’t quite animals, but they weren’t quite anything else, either, and they seemed to operate on an intelligence all their own. Colonial, truly altruistic, and yet, well…there was a reason one of them was called the “fox vomit” slime mold. “Unprepossessing,” that’s what they were.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:14 pm
Cal giggled. “This place was made by scientists, or at least designed by them. It’s a science—oh.” She felt her cheeks burn as she finally got the joke. “Oh, uh, yeah, yeah. Seems like no one really appreciates how bright pink a lot of the chemicals in the labs are, huh? Hey, remember that experiment with molality a couple years ago when you knocked over that kid, Zalir’s, pipettes?” Cal kissed the top of Eidil’s head. “I think zey finally forgave you.” It was something that they had joked a lot about at the time—well, Cal and Eidil had, anyway. And by “at the time,” she really meant a few days over, after the mess they’d made over the counter was a distant memory and the teacher had finished with them all. Excitement. Drama. Deadly carcinogens surrounded by tittering teenagers. Fun times.
Cal thought about the colors. “What about physics, then? The fundamental underpinnings of the universe? If red, green, blue, purple, and pink are already taken, then what color does King Physics get?” She followed along beside Eidil, pausing to examine a display on how photosynthesis works. Ah, mentioning the layers of the chloroplast, good, good. “I think it should be yellow. That’s a good color. Calls into mind sunlight, and sunlight’s all about physics.” She gestured to the display. “Least so far as us plant people are concerned.”
Slime molds were pretty exciting. They could be either very beautiful or very ugly. “I wonder how they’ll display them, since they’re only visible for brief periods of time.”
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:15 pm
Eidil shuddered. “Ugh. I remember that way too well. I wonder if it’s too late to send Zalir an ‘I’m super sorry about that’ gift. Probably,” she added. “Besides, I think I’ve already apologized about that to everyone except the queen of the Elves. It’s probably only a matter of time before she sends me to a letter asking for a formal apology.” Eidil had no idea if the current head of state for the Elves even was a queen, or whether it was a king or other liege. Either way, she was going to stick by her lame joke, and stick by it like glue. Or byssus threads, she thought with a smile.
“I was going to say that physics should be orange, because it starts with the letter P and P, somehow, makes me think of orange. Maybe it’s because of pumpkins,” she added. “But I like your explanation better. Yellow for physics, because of sunlight.” She giggled. “With meteorology taking white, I think we can all agree, then poor orange is left out, high and dry.”
The slime molds were actually quite pretty in their tanks, dangling from logs like arranged pieces of artwork. She took the opportunity of a nearby docent to repeat Cal’s question. Apparently they had several terrariums full of slime molds in the back. They put whoever was reproductive out in front so that people could admire their structures. The one from Above was more brightly colored, but the ones from below glowed in the dark. It was amazing! There were some that looked like delicate mushrooms, and one that looked like a big, papery sac. They asked the docent a few more questions, read the signs, and moved on. “Definitely worth it,” Eidil said, leaning against Cal.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:16 pm
Cal snorted. “Probably you still can, but I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not, Eidil. It might open up some old wounds.” As for the colors? “I dunno. Orange isn’t totally out of the loop. They could use it for the café. Or for the gift shop. No color left behind!”
The slime molds were, as Eidil said, worth it. They must have spent at least fifteen minutes there, which was longer than they’d spent at any of the other stations. Personally, Cal felt that their local slime molds were way cooler than the exotic ones from Above, but that could just be a matter of opinion. She hadn’t met very many Daydreams so far, so she didn’t have an opinion of them quite yet. But some old ones run deep, especially the ones of the Demons, Baphomets, Geists, and Imps that made up most of the population of the school. In a very real sense, Cal had been raised by her peers as much as by her mother, and their point of view on the War carried as much weight as her mother’s stories of forgiveness and the teamwork of the saints. Or maybe it was that Cal wasn’t easily impressed by bright colors, but was easily impressed by bioluminescence. Normally it was caused by bacteria, but apparently this was not the case. Amazing! She wondered if there was anything they could do with the stuff, or if she could find some on her mother’s property. She made a note to check the gift shop to see if they had any books on slime molds.
They skimmed through the rest of the biology section, chatting and elaborating on the displays, which earned them odd looks from the other visitors. Cal ignored them. “You know, we have really weird standards for dates,” she said as lunch drew nearer.
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Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2016 9:17 pm
Eidil sighed. “I just hate to think that there might be an old wound that never healed over properly. Maybe I can make it heal over, make someone feel better about the costs of my mistakes. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a softy.”
Eidil leaned against her girlfriend. “Going to a museum isn’t weird. I mean, it isn’t any weirder than going to a slasher flick.” She ran her fingers over a diagram of a Nightmare’s digestive system. “At least a museum isn’t gory or gross.” She looked up at Cal and smiled. “And anyway, shouldn’t a date be what you like to do? You shouldn’t go on a date where you do something you hate to do. If you don’t like heights, you don’t go on a date rock climbing. You pick something you’re comfortable with. And you and me, we’re comfortable with science, and with all sorts of new discoveries.
“I mean, I guess it’s weird to be cooing over ambulatory reproductive structures with your girlfriend, but let’s face it, Cal, we’re both pretty weird. I can’t think of any other couple that get into regular arguments over whether pollination was an idea made up by plants or by animals.” She paused. “Although to be fair, we haven’t gotten into that argument since we were seven. I think I won? Or maybe you won. Doesn’t matter. What does matter,” and here she turned Cal around so that they were facing each other, “is that this has been a beautiful day that wouldn’t have been as beautiful without you. Now all we need to do is eat lunch and ride the earthquake plate, and this will have been the best date in the history of romance."
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