fandomhigh | Comparative Religions, Monday, Period 3, Class #1

As the students entered, Vala was perched on top of her desk (yes, she had a desk!), and looking over her notes and class lists. Once they were seated, she began,

"Good morning, everyone. For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Vala Mal Doran. Please feel free to call me Vala, or Professor Mal Doran if that makes you more comfortable."

"This class is about different religions," she explained, "and the first half of the class will focus on strictly the Earthen religions. The second half will be broader in scope and expand our study to inter-planetary religions. The only thing I ask--in light of the fact that more bloody wars have been fought over religion than anything else in human history--is that you have respect for the teachings of the guest speakers, and of the other students in this class. You don't have to agree, and I don't expect you to convert to their religion, but I won't tolerate any insults or baiting on the subject. With any luck, we'll all come out of this with a better understanding of religion."

"Today's class will be relatively simple--introduce yourselves, explain why you're taking this class, and explain your religion in broad language, if you have one. If you don't, explain why you don't. There are no penalties for not having one, by the way."

"As far as food and drink are concerned," she added, "I don't make enough money to feed you all every week, but you should bring whatever you want that you've provided for yourself."

She pointed to a student at random. "Okay, go ahead."

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Adah carefully unfolded the paper in the fashion of someone who was an expert at passing notes and not being cause, smirking just slightly at the very urgent and inspiring message held within. She was about two second from writing back in the style of her notes, a simple little Ruojnob!, but managed to get herself going the right way again, and in English no less as she scribbled down a "Hello," passing it back his way.

Luke was pretty darn sneaky when he chose to be, so he got the note open with a minimum of crinkling.

He grinned over at her at the reply.

Do you have a roommate yet?

"I had a roommate before," Adah wrote back, thinking it a terrible shame that there's one thing that words alone couldn't do and that was capture tone. "But if what you mean is if I have met her or she has finally arrived in the room, the answer is yes.."

Adah paused as she wrote here; Luke would notice she left a gap to indicate the thoughtful pause. She continued, though. She was feeling...talkative this morning. "She has many books; I would not be surprised if, in a few weeks, one won't be able to find us for all the volumes in the room."

And Adah was pretty certain that this would be a good thing for both her and Honour.

Luke smiled. You would've gotten along with my best friend. She just moved to college--by the time we finished putting her things into the dorm, most of her room was books, and she's going to a school with 22 libraries.

Adah's head tilted a moment before she wrote back. Luke would find, in response, a list of the top five universities in the United States with the number of how many libraries each had. Her statistics, while outdated and from 1962, were impeccably precise; she'd looked into in her research once she got back from Africa, considering it important for her undergraduate and graduate studies and the numbers stuck to her memory like glue.

Luke circled "Yale" with a proud smile.

And now Adah was glad that words couldn't catch tone, or else Luke would notice her sadness and envy.

"Your friend is lucky; it's an excellent school..."

She was very excited, Luke wrote back. I'm not nearly smart enough to go there, but college isn't exactly in my future anyway.

"What is?"

Simple enough, and better than Adah making herself all panicked about her own future.

Going home and restarting the Jedi Order, Luke wrote. Right now, I'm pretty much it.

No, Adah didn't know what that was, and she spent a good deal of time looking at the words and thinking about them. She liked that 'Order' was one of them; Order she liked, and she played around with Jedi a little. Jedi. Idej. I Dej. Je Di. and liked how it gave her images and thoughts of places still exotic to her that the Congo hadn't ruined.

"That sounds very ambitious. Restarting can be harder than starting. Motion stops, decides motion was too much work, does not want to work again."

Luke nodded. And people back home had done a pretty thorough job trying to make sure we didn't get started again. I'm just more stubborn than they were.

Adah grinned wryly at Luke's note, and considered leaving it there. Stubborn was a good place to stop; she was a Price, after all, and they were stubborn about stubbornly stopping at the point where their stubbornness might surface.

But, after a moment without a response, her mind shifted slightly, regretfully, a bit ashamed that she didn't think of it at first. The next note would be accompanied by a small smile, hopefully sincere, although Adah could not always trust her expressions.

"Good luck."

Comparative Religions, Monday, Period 3, Class #1

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