"Mel! Hey!"
Melona turned around to see Drif running towards her, and did a double take. Seeing Drif outside, and, particularly, running outside, was like seeing a poodle walking on its hind legs. A short poodle. One with long green hair and a nearly-constant manic smile. A poodle that was a savant at alchemy the likes of which the world may have never seen, and one that was mediocre-to-horrendous at virtually everything else, including things like "propriety" and "restraint" and maybe this metaphor wasn't working as well as Melona had thought.
"Drif?"
Drif came to a stop in front of Melona, her heels nearly leaving skid marks in the dirt. "What--hah--what--what are you doing out here?" she asked between ragged breaths.
"Oh, just--" Melona shrugged. "Wanted to be alone, I guess. What about you?"
"Ingredients."
"What?"
Drif took a deep breath. "Okay, you know how in Professor Oyle's class, the only plants we use are dried?"
"Yeah," said Melona, "It's so they last longer. Also, a dead plant doesn't carry as much of the sympathetic energies from its environment, so--"
Drif shook her head and wagged her finger at the same time. It gave her the look of a deranged metronome. "Yeah, yeah. Well, there's another reason for that." She grinned. "It's weaker, too."
Melona cocked her head. "That wasn't in the textbook."
"Yeah, not in the text book for the first three years," said Drif. "But the seniors? They get the real stuff. Fresh clippings, taken right from the potted plants out of the greenhouses."
"So why are you here? The greenhouses would provide a far safer,"
"No, no." Drif pouted. "Those are under lock and key." She raised her voice an octave, adopting a whiny, mocking tone. "'Oh, it's to keep the plants in a magically-sterile environment, Drif, it's way too advanced for you, Drif, don't go to the garden to get ingredients Drif you're gonna kill someone!'" She blew a raspberry while making a rude gesture in the vague direction of the greenhouses. "Thing is, you don't need a lot of ingredients to a really crazy potion when you're using stuff that's basically still alive. And..." She opened her robe, as though she were about to offer Melona a counterfeit watch. On the inside of her robes were a line of test tubes, filled with water and each capped with a cork. Threaded through a hole in each cork was the stem of a flower. Melona had never seen that many exotic flowers in one place before. "I slipped one of the gardeners some cash to tell me where the really fun stuff is."
Melona blinked at Drif. This seemed like something that she should leave Drif to. "Well, best of luck," she said.
"Oh come on, Mel!" Drif closed her robes again, then made a mock praying gesture towards Melona. "Please come with me! I'm done gathering ingredients, and I've got a lab setup in the dorm. If I play this right I can show the professors here that they don't need to worry about me! And that they can let me into the alchemy cabinet again! And that maybe they can hire me instead of Sneayc, and she'd be at my feet like the dog she is and..." Drif's eyes glazed over for a second before she snapped back to reality. "Come on. Pretty please?"
"Well..."
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