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 Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:03 am
Merroth's face scrunched up in frustration. "I can't!" he shouted at her, leaving off the epithets he was tempted to sling. "Do you understand? I can't do it and you can't make me!" There. He had said it. He was not merely some puppet toy, dancing on a string when told.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:17 am
"A teacher can't make, Merroth," Beatrix snapped back. "Haven't you ever heard the saying, 'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink'? All I can do is provide the numbers. It's up to you whether you do anything with them. If we sit here and you choose to do nothing the whole time -- if you choose to leave -- I can make you do nothing! Don't you think I understand that?"
She sucked in a breath and reflected; and revisited what she had said, and he had said. She did not apologise. Merroth didn't appreciate weakness, and neither did she. "What do you mean, can't?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:36 am
Merroth's face took on a look of such exquisite suffering he could have been the model for a painting of the Crucifixion. He hated even more weakness in himself. When his response came, it was a veritable explosion of pent-up frustration. "I can't do it! The numbers are gone! You-- you stupid--" He did not have a sufficient vocabulary of insults to some up with anything better, even if he had lived with Nerys and Black, who both could swear quite convincingly. "<********>"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:43 am
It was obvious that something had gone on to the point where Merroth had blocked out his ability to do mathematics; in her mind, she was already filling out the professional form that indicated he was being abused at home, as she would after the session with him, but Beatrix closed herself up like a book. "Do you think I took the numbers away, Merroth?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:51 am
Merroth waved his arms in the air in frustration. He was surrounded by idiots. Why couldn't people ever seem to understand what he meant? It wasn't as if this had just happened suddenly upon his arrival in Beatrix's office. "No, don't be stupid!" He covered his face with balled hands, pressing on his eyeballs.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:00 am
"So stop blaming me for it," said his teacher, "and let me help you for once; don't wring your hands, calm down. You're mature enough to handle this intellectually. If the numbers won't work for you any more, then we will get them back. Do you agree?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:13 am
He put his hands down immediately, completely awed by this idea. His voice rose hopefully. "They'll come back? They can?" The possibility had never occurred to him. The numbers had been so omnipresent in his mind that their absence had a feeling of finality, like it might be impossible to get them to come back, but Beatrix had never lied to Merroth. She had always used more honest means of enticing him to do his work.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:17 am
"Your head is intact, isn't it?" She placed her hands on the desk as well, unconsciously mimicking him, raising her head high. "Your brain is still there, Merroth. There is no power that can take the numbers or your genius away from you. When you are stressed -- when you hurt -- you lose what matters most to you. Your memory, in some cases." (Beatrix spoke with such feeling that it sounded as though she had been through much the same. Perhaps she had.) "It will come back. It must come back. But you can't force it."
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:22 am
If Merroth had been a more affectionate child he might have hugged Beatrix, but this was the boy who thought it was acceptable to call his math tutor a "stupid ********" and who had an easier time throwing things at people than expressing his feelings. If he had thought it would have pleased Beatrix the way it pleased Black, he would have thrown his shoe at her head. He did at least possess enough sense to know not to do that.
He said in a heavy voice, "Oh," disappointed that he was expected to wait for the numbers to come back to him. He would have preferred Beatrix possess some miracle cure, so he managed to be ungrateful for the small hope she had given him.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:28 am
Beatrix was about to say something fairly dry about Merroth and how he took in hope when the door opened; it was her eldest daughter, pushing the office door open with her butt, as her hands were full with plastic coffee cups.
"... one hot chocolate for me, one soy-based vanilla no-milk no-cal fagaccino for you, M.B.," said the redheaded girl, "and one Fluffy for Wisp -- what the hell?"
"Jacoba," said the maths tutor, "please. Merroth turned up after all; thank you for the coffee, no thanks for the intrusion."
Absolutely unimpressed by her mother's chiding, the girl set the cups down on the desk, metal legs glimmering in the faint light from the window. "I thought he was a runt still," she said, "not like, a fully-grown whack-a-mole. 'Sup, pinball whiz?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:32 am
"... Hell?" repeated Merroth. He had met Beatrix's daughter -- her other daughter. This, though, was an unknown quantity, and Merroth did not thrive on unknown quantities. He liked to control everything around him, and failing that (which was almost constantly), he liked to at least know everything around him and have it be familiar. Jacoba was not familiar. She was the opposite of familiar. She was... unfamiliar.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:37 am
"Jace," the redheaded girl supplied, arms crossed over her skinny chest. Her skin was burnt brown and she was rangy all over, no spare scrap of fat that had not been converted into embryonic muscle to show up more once she reached puberty. "So you're the maths nut M.B. goes on about? Oh, yeah, and you once spat on my sister. Not judging you there. Go you, mathtard."
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:44 am
Merroth became conscious of the fact he was making a totally idiotic, shocked face, and hastily replaced it with a scowl. "Cheese face," he managed, not really sure himself what that was supposed to mean, but able to recognize an insult when he heard one and wanting to reply in kind.
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:49 am
Beatrix was so befuddled by her daughter's conduct that she could hardly say a word as Jace barrelled back: "Dorkass."
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:59 am
It was true Merroth was bigger than a rugrat, but it wasn't by much, and when it came to sharp banter, Jace had a distinct edge of age and experience on her side. Merroth was a five-year-old to Jace's ten-to-twelve. He did have one distinct advantage when it came to tactics: the ultimate juvenile fallback.
Merroth stood on his chair and bent over, sticking his butt out in Jace's direction, and farted. To add audiovisual insult to injury of the olfactory nerves, he blew a raspberry at her, too, and said, "Take that, fatass!"
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