This choice: Petra is just making sure her fellow students don't scare Bernie • Go Back...Chapter #8Smuggled student by: Mathoo   "Please become the calm," Petra says, her voice quiet. "I have the knowledge that you are afraid around persons other than the professor who is most new. You are like prey." Only after the words leave her mouth does she realize that that was exactly the wrong thing to say right now, considering Bernie's size, and especially considering the fact that the shrunken student already assumed that she was going to be eaten. Quickly, she adds, "And I have the imagination that your size of now is making worse fear."
She could feel Bernie tense up at her repeating the fact that she was prey, but she could also feel that Bernie knew she was right. Her size was adding to the usual fear of people, exponentially.
"I am having the plan to go back to the professor when he is by his loneliness," Petra says. "The other students know you are having the smallness, but will not have the knowing where you are. Only me, and the professor."
"I..." Bernie paused, frowning as she tried to parse what had been said. The Brigid princess had a decent grasp of the vocabulary of the Fodlain language, but did not understand the grammar very well. In a way, it slowed down communication, but doing so also slowed down Bernie's hyperactive imagination...Sometimes, at least. Other times, Petra would say something like you are like prey and it would set her imagination off instantly. But this most recent statement...she planned to...give her to the professor in secret, so no one else knew where she was?
If this was real, what Petra was offering her was too good to be true. Perfect isolation, only needing to interact with the professor, and with no one else being able to ruin it.
"What's the catch?" Bernie finally said.
"I am not having understanding," Petra remarks, finally feeling like Bernie had calmed down enough to set her down on a table. "What do you mean by catch?"
Bernie paused, realizing that the Brigid princess wouldn't know the idiom she had used. "You are offering me something that is perfect to me. You know that this is something that I want."
Petra smiled. "Yes, I know you have the wanting for this."
Bernie paused again, figuring out how to phrase her next question without resorting to idiom again. "What...do you want from me in exchange for giving me this?"
It was Petra's turn to pause. She hadn't thought of getting Bernie to do something for her. "Friendliness is not give and take," Petra said slowly. "I am giving this to you because you are wanting it. Not because I am wanting something from you."
At this, Bernie pauses once more. She could sense the sincerity in Petra's words, largely because the longer parsing time prevented the shrunken student from over-analyzing everything. After a bit, she nods. "Okay," she says, smiling slightly. "On one condition."
"Condition?" Petra repeats.
"In order to take me out of this room and give me to the professor without someone seeing me, you are going to have to keep me hidden," Bernie says.
Petra nods. "Yes, I will have to make you unseen."
"Can you...not hide me in your shirt again? It was soft, but, uhm..." Bernie blushes.
Petra chuckles a bit, then blushes herself when she realizes that she hadn't buttoned her shirt back up, instead focusing on trying to calm her shrunken classmate. "I am having the apology, Bernie," she asys as she fixes her shirt. "It was...a way to hide you that had the speed and easiness."
Bernie nods. "I understand, but...I don't think the professor would look favorably on you if you had to pull me out of there in front of him."
Petra nods in agreement, chuckling solumnly. Bernie was right - the professor would not like that, especially since he wouldn't know the reason for her unbuttoning her shirt until after she had done so. Petra was not Manuela!
After a moment of thought, Petra rummages through her things to pull out a belt with a little pouch attached. She opens a drawer to pour the contents of the pouch into, then scoops Bernie into the pouch, eliciting a surprised yelp from the shrunken student. Petra buttons the pouch closed, then puts the belt around her waist. She grabs a few more things to make it look like she was going out to hunt, and leaves her dorm.
She heads downstairs, and first checks the professor's dorm, before remembering that he had said he was planning on waiting for Bernie to come out from the hole in the wall. So she heads to the Black Eagles classroom, only to find Caspar standing just outside it. After a moment of pause as she decided how to handle this, she merely grabbed his arm and yanked him back.
"Hey!" he yelled, turning to face his attacker and noticing who it was. "Petra? I never pegged you as the revenge-seeking type. It was an accident. I thought your arm was Bernadetta."
Petra pointed into the classroom, and more precisely, at the bookcase where Bernie had hid, and where Caspar assumed she still was. "You are able to be seen. Be going to the infirmary to fix your arm."
Caspar sighs, understanding her meaning. Petra makes sure that he was actually gone, before she slides into the classroom and closes the door. She walks up to the podium where the professor was standing, and lifts the pouch to it.
"I had to be telling a lie earlier," Petra said calmly as she opens the pouch. "I did do the catching of Bernie earlier." She lifts the shrunken student out of the pouch, and sets her on the podium before returning the pouch to her belt. "I was having the worry that if classmates of specificity knew that you were the one who was giving her the care, they would be not leaving you to lonliness, and she would not become the calm."
The professor looks between the two purple-haired ladies before him, taking in what the larger one had just said. Unlike Bernie, he was able to parse her language quite quickly - partially because of the girl in his head who was able to stop time if something took too long for him to figure out, but mostly because he had dealt with some people with strange speech patterns before, during his time as a merchant. His pause was more due to figuring out her logic, which ultimately made sense to him. She had essentially smuggled Bernie to him, to make Bernie feel more comfortable with fewer people knowing where she was.
Meanwhile, Bernie herself was looking at the professor. "Put me in your pocket," she says.
But Petra shakes her head. "The professor is not having of pockets to do the carrying of you," she reminds her shrunken classmate.
Byleth looks at his own outfit, and frowns. "May I borrow that pouch?" he asks Petra.
Petra shakes her head. "This has only use for temporary carrying of Bernie who is small. It does not have safety for times of length."
Byleth nods. What the hunter princess said made sense. "But I need some form of carrying her until I find a more permanent solution."
Bernie smiles, turning to Petra. "Go grab my quiver from my room! There's a pocket on the front of the sash."
Petra nods, then leaves. She's not gone for long before she returns with the requested item.
"Did anyone see you enter her room?" Byleth asks.
Petra shakes her head. "I was having the stealth."
"You may leave," he says. "It would be best if you left before I did."
Petra nods, then walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.
After a few moments, he removes his jacket, setting it on a chair behind him. He puts the quiver on his back, then puts the jacket back on, hiding the quiver's bulk. Opening the pocket with one hand, he gently picks Bernie up with the other. It felt weird holding an entire person in a single hand, but he puched past that for her sake, and slid her into the pocket.
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