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"The book?" Ylaine's eyes narrowed. Irelia's explanation did not make sense to her, and if there was anything that upset Ylaine, it was things which she could not, in her near-infinite wisdom, explain. Ylaine squinted at the tome Irelia was holding. She did not see any sort of title or detail for cataloging. She knew the contents of every book, but this was one she did not even recognize. It put a knot in the bottom of her stomach. Had she tried to tell Reginald about this feeling, he would have mistaken her explanation for an upset of the stomach and given her medicine. She simply did not have enough of an understanding of her own feelings to interpret the sensation with its proper meaning.

"I hate magic," said Ylaine very simply, the bitter bite of honesty in her voice. "There are ways to disrupt magic depending on the properties of the universe or universes involved. I know all of them." It was either a threat or a brag or a little bit of both, but mostly it was directed at her quiet inner fear that magic was unusually out of her control. Ylaine's frown was deeply thoughtful. In truth, her mind was momentarily somewhere else and her words were not truly directed to Irelia, but under the circumstances there was no one else to whom her words could be directed.

Ylaine was as cold in her anger as Irelia was hot. "I am not ashamed," she seethed, "I have simply taken the necessary steps to elicit from others a desired response. Perhaps if you are so dissatisfied with your life you should the same." It was, in Ylaine's own mind, a daming condemnation. She was prepared to stick her heels down and be stubborn about it, too.

Ylaine snorted and folded her arms. "What, pray tell, makes you think I care whether anyone likes me? I would thank you not to compare me to you." It was intended to mean that Irelia's appearance was hardly a deformity to the degree Ylaine's was -- surely Irelia had never caused anyoen to gag and throw up -- but came off sounding slightly as if Ylaine thought Irelia was far more monstrous in appearance, or unspeakably pathetic for reasons including both her physical appearance and an implied need to seek the approval of others.

Then it came, that trademark roll of the eye. "I don't care what people think," repeated Ylaine, "I care what they do when they are around me. You are not half as observant as you believe yourself to be."

Ylaine still stood with her arms crossed and a glare on her face. Irelia's scrying did not affect her. She was not even aware of, having been born without a single magical gift. Though she possessed in her head many treatises and manuals on magic, it was doubtful she would ever be able to make use of them for anything practical. It was just more dead, useless knowledge in Ylaine's head, a handful of secrets among a thousand billion trillion more. It was virtually impossible to find anything specific in that, perhaps impossible even to conceive of for anyone other than Ylaine.

Had she not been unconscious, Irelia would have learned this about Ylaine: that she cared not what people thought, or whether they were in need of medical attention. Luckily, it was not up to her. The library's doors burst open and Reginald came running in with a vaguely exasperated and genuinely concerned, "Ylaine!"

Ylaine was nonplussed. Standing next to the body of an unconscious girl, she knew she had done nothing wrong here, and in her own way she assumed that everyone else knew the same. It was extremely fortuitous that Irelia was not in fact dead, because Ylaine had little grasp of the concept of "guilty at the scene." Reginald seemed, if anything, relieved that there was no danger whatsoever to Ylaine and almost tried to scoop her up, but she sidestepped. Unsurprisingly, Brahim and Jalloun were with them.

"You take her to the hospital," said Reginald to Jalloun, quickly taking charge of the situation. Jalloun instantly mobilized, slinging his gun across his back and retrieving Irelia and her book. Reginald started towards the door. "I'll have Percival contact the parents."

Ylaine's voice stopped him. "And what am I to do?"

Reginald paused for only a moment. "Whatever you did, don't do it again," he advised her, and dashed off, leaving Ylaine alone with Brahim Fallali. Ylaine only frowned. As if she had anything to do with what had happened.

She looked up at Brahim, his features hidden far more thoroughly than her own were. "Well then," Ylaine said to him. Brahim said nothing back, but had they had the benefit of Irelia's tome and magics, Irelia would have found that Brahim secretly wished he had been the one sent to the hospital with her, and that maybe, just maybe, sometimes it was better to hide the things that made you different from the rest of the universe.