Chapter 114: Chapter 114

****** ****** Pandora Anthropodrome February 23, 2037 09:17 PM ****** ******

“I ran away from the Royal Ascot party,” Lute said casually. “For some reason, I left my homework behind and took two puddings with me instead.” Once again, Alden had no idea what to say. The remains of the trail mix was spread on the table between them. They’d eaten out all the dark chocolate and nuts, and now there were a bunch of raisins left. “The sticky toffee ones covered in all that gold leaf,” Lute added. “They were individual serving sizes. I don’t even remember going to pick them up. One minute, I was in my chair watching Hazel smile at me and the next I was on a train, holding two puddings on these little gold plates.” “I wonder if I wanted to hit her with them?” he mused. “Maybe I grabbed the puddings, planning to smash them into her face in front of two hundred people and a band playing Latin music, but then I just left instead. I ended up at Cyril’s place. I told him I’d brought the pudding for him. “Of course, she got a second Coming of Age party the next year.” What was the theme for that one? Alden wondered. “I can’t believe people memorize exactly how old other Avowed were when they got selected,” he said. “Down to the day.” “Really? To me it feels like a natural extension of everything else. The soon-to-be-super lunacy that takes people over as their big birthdays approach is something to behold when you think it doesn’t apply to you at all.” Lute crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back. “By seventh grade, I was starting to hate everything about it so much. On this side of it, I can see that I was unreasonable in some ways. A lot of what upset me was just…unavoidable for everyone. But after an entire year of people ignoring me, teasing me, or talking endlessly about all the cool things in their lives and their futures that I thought I couldn’t take part in, I was done with the whole country. I wanted it to vanish like Atlantis. “I did get an early audition with the youth orchestra in sixth grade, though. I was so tired of waiting, I went and asked, and it turned out they weren’t that serious about the age limit. It was just like, ‘Yeah, sure. Come on. Whatever.’” He pursed his lips. “Anesidora sucks that way. For someone like I was. Teenagers tend not to have really serious hobbies unrelated to their future dream class. And in a lot of cases, the way people practice for those dream classes is different from how a non-Avowed would practice for the nearest equivalent. So there really wasn’t anything for someone my age who wanted to get to the next level as a musician. I just had to stick with tutors.” “People who want to be instrument Meisters don’t study music?” Alden asked. “They study music,” Lute said. “But they’re encouraged to try different types of instrument instead of focusing too much on one. Youth orchestra is really just for them to see if they like playing in a group. The thing is, even if they know what subclass they want, there’s no guarantee that the System will offer something similar, or that their families will be able to get it for them. And musical instrument Meisters aren’t particularly common either. So the teachers and directors try to make sure they’re falling in love with music and the lifestyle of an Avowed musician, but they discourage them from getting too into any one thing. They want them to play around and get ideas for lots of different futures. It makes sense.” He raised an eyebrow then added, “It also means most of them are kind of terrible before they get chosen. And afterward they don’t…have quite the right mindset in my opinion.” “You’re saying that instrument Meisters don’t have the right mindset for being musicians.” Alden grinned at him. “All right. I’m extremely snobby about this,” Lute said. “I admit it. And my snobbishness is actually why I decided I wouldn’t mind being friendly with Lexi around the same time. He was one of the only people in our entire school other than me who had an artistic hobby he was actually devoted to instead of just killing time with.” “The ballet stuff?” Lute nodded. “It’s just his personality, I think. He can’t stand to half-ass whatever he starts. If his parents had given him a hockey stick or a paintbrush when he was little, he’d have done those things instead. But they were dancers, so they put him in dance classes, and that’s what he turned all of his perfectionism toward while he was waiting for what came next.” “Is he talented?” “I’m a musician, not a dancer. But he was a lot better than the other kids were. I heard he was dancing with a community ballet of adults a little last year…Avowed adults. I’m sure they were way more casual and nothing like his parents’ company, but that still had to be next level.” “And then he just quit,” said Alden. “To spend more time with his whip,” Lute agreed. “I mean…of course he did. You can only be a perfectionist in so many different directions at once, and the hero program was always his goal. Is he good with it in gym?” “I think he is.” It wasn’t easy for Alden to tell because he had no idea how difficult Writher might be to use. When Lexi practiced picking up small objects with it in the apartment, he had a tendency to cut them in half instead of lifting them. “He seems really good at changing its length, phasing it, and slicing. I think he might be having trouble with aiming the tip and controlling its general danger level? But that still seems impressive to me. He’s only had it a few months.” “I knew he was going to pick Meister, but I still can’t believe he chose to have an Artonan chain whip linked to his brain. That was kind of ballsy. I pictured him with something much more traditional. Like a sword.” “My class at selection was Meister.” Lute looked startled. “How did you end up with Chainer, then?” “I traded into it.” “Ha!” said Lute. “That means Corin’s office screwed up! They should have been glued to the class trade system. Or it was luckier for you to hand deliver it to them for some reason? Or someone whose family hated mine had it, and they would never have sold it to us. But they didn’t want to force their kid to take it either. In that case, you’d think they would sell it to someone else who hated us, though.” Alden had thought about Andrzej a bit since coming to Celena North. Lute’s comment just cemented his opinion. “I assume the person who gave it to me was offloading it before their family found out they had been chosen. I think they were afraid they would be forced to take it themselves if someone knew.” “Ooo…a clan of extreme Velra dislikers then? Those are fun. They came out of the woodwork when I was in seventh grade and all their offspring turned extra monstrous for a while.” “Why then?” Lute’s eye shot skyward. “Aulia ran for re-election. You wouldn’t think it would be that bad since she was on the council for ages. You’d think they’d have gotten used to her, right? But no. They dug up old family news and pretended it was just as shocking as the day it happened. About halfway through the year I tried to quit, actually.” “School?” “I asked for private instruction, like I’d had when I was little. Like almost all the Velra kids get. It had gotten to the point where I thought I could withstand my relatives better than some of my classmates…total reversal, I know.” He stopped leaning and let the legs of his chair hit the floor with a clack. “Jessica said no. She wanted me to stay in school.” ****** ****** Nilama Paragon Academy July 19, 2038 7:46 AM ****** ****** The wind was freezing, and the sky was still dark as Lute climbed the steps up to the front doors of the middle school building. I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m doing this, he thought, as he clutched at his scarf with a gloved hand and stared down at his shoes. I can’t believe I announced I was leaving like some kind of drama lord on Friday. Why didn’t I just stay quiet? It was in his second science class of the day. Biology. That one went off the rails a lot, and the teacher always let it go too far before he stepped in. He was a brownnose who always wanted to pick the right side, and he could never figure out which of his illustrious young Avowed to suck up to at any given moment. Things had to explode before he said some tepid thing like, “Now quiet down, everyone. We’re all friends here.” Why didn’t I just stay quiet? Wasn’t the plan to stay quiet? The door handle felt icy even through his glove. He pulled it open and headed down the hall, trying to hide behind his scarf. They’d called his mother a mule. Declan was a terrible comedian who couldn’t even make his jokes work without a minute-long explanation in follow up, but still…still… You know how horses and donkeys make mules? And mules are barren? Well maybe if a human and an Artonan make a mule, the mule can’t ever do magic! The Lutes-mom-is-half-Artonan bullshit had been all over the school since before the election. The votes had been cast now. Aulia had won. Why wasn’t it going away? We used to be friends. He came to my sleepovers. Mom was nice to him. Lute didn’t understand what was so enthralling about the half-Artonan rumors anyway. There were other people who had similar features. There were people who begged the System or their surgeons for similar features. Everyone knew alien-human hybrids weren’t a thing. We were in a biology classroom surrounded by books and computers that said they weren’t a thing. Lute had snapped. He’d stood up and told the whole classroom full of his peers not to expect him back on Monday. So long, you psychos. I hate you all, and I’m looking forward to never seeing a single one of you again. He’d been one hundred percent confident that his mom would let him quit school if he told her he was being bullied. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford tutors for him. It wasn’t like he’d get a worse education at home. He’d get a better one. The classes at Paragon were excellent. For most of the people here. But now that they were older, so much of the day was focused on the Triplanets, the Contract, System theory, superhuman history. At home, with his own program, he could skip all of that pre-Avowed crap and focus on things people learned in the real world. A literature class would be cool. Paragon didn’t even have those. He’d been so certain, he’d cleaned out his locker. Now he was trudging toward it with a loaded backpack. To fill it back up again. If Anesidora wasn’t an island, he would already have run away. He tried not to meet anyone’s eyes as he hastily shoved everything back into the locker. “Uh…good morning, Lute.” Konstantin. Two lockers over. He’d never said a single cruel thing to Lute. He never would. It just wasn’t his personality. He’d even tell people to knock it off, sometimes, if they said something completely awful by his standards. A lot like Vandy. A lot like Tuyet. A lot like a lot of nice people who didn’t want to see something too bad happen right in front of them… But it ended there. Kon had friends over all the time. He put together groups to go hang out at Rosa Grove. Sometimes Declan Gao was in those groups. Lute never was. “Good morning,” said Lute. In classes, he was quiet. At lunch, he sat alone. He made it through another week. And another. One more. They had an ongoing pen pal assignment with students in Canada. Lute’s Canadian was depressed that she was Lute’s Canadian. All the other people in her class got to have video calls and send emails to future Avowed. The instructor announced that they would start rotating pen pals. Everyone knew why. “Honestly,” said Carlotta. “You knew what she wanted to hear. Why didn’t you just lie and say you were one of us? The rest of us were having fun getting to know people and now we have to swap!” “She doesn't mean it like that,” said Haoyu. “It might be fun to swap.” “I did mean it like that,” she said. She stalked away. “Well,” Haoyu said, sounding uncomfortable. “Her older sister just got D. She’s stressed out.” “Yes, it must be so stressful for her,” said Lute, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear him. “Just imagine how horrible it must be to get D when you’re expecting C. I think I’d cry my eyes out every day if I wound up as a lowly D, don’t you?” It wasn’t quite fair. He knew he was being a little bit of an asshole, too. But he felt less like a ghost after he’d said what was on his mind. Without meaning to, he kept doing it. A retort here. A waspish remark there. It didn’t feel like he was doing it very often at all. Every minute of every day, someone was stabbing him. On purpose. Accidentally. And the ones who weren’t stabbing him were ignoring the ones who were ninety percent of the time. Will the world really come to an end, he wondered, if I just stop trying so hard to stay out of everyone’s way? He took Angela Aubergine to the school talent show. They each got three minutes. He played his song. The biology teacher was the one who was giving everyone the signal to get off stage. Lute looked at him, and he suddenly realized…that guy will wait ages before he walks out here and actually makes me move. He kept playing. There was no grand plan. He had no delusions that anyone would think he was cool for this. They didn’t even like the harp. They thought classical music was dull. He could’ve played something popular to try to win a few of them over, but he didn’t. Arranging Handel’s Suite in D Minor for himself was his current project. He cared about it. He had to listen to what they cared about every second of every day. They could listen to him for a change. I am good at this, he thought as he plucked the strings with more vigor than Handel might have wanted. I have made myself good at this. You’re all so proud of what a magic spell is going to turn you into. One day, I’m going to be the best harpist in the world. Maybe that’s not as spectacular as what you’ll all be. But at least I’m going to earn it for myself. The stage lights were getting hot. Lute Velra was getting angry. When the biology teacher finally stomped onto the stage and tried to touch Angela, Lute quit. The auditorium was full of people giggling or staring at him with wide eyes. “This is inappropriate behavior, Lute. You need to apologize to all of us.” Oh, though Lute. I’ve actually made him mad. He didn’t look that mad when they were torturing me in class the other day. “Why?” Lute asked. “I think you know why! You took five times as long as students are allowed—” “That’s because I’m five times as talented as the rest of them,” said Lute.

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Declan Gao was evil. So were a few of the others. Unless the System installed one hell of an empathy patch in their twisted brains when it gave them their powers, they were going to grow up to be supervillains. Terrorists, animal abusers, politicians in favor of a zero-human Anesidora—something like that. Deciding they were evil helped. Lute despised them, and he still braced himself as he walked through the doors of the building, trying to prepare for whatever terrible thing would be funny to them that week. But even though they could still hurt him, he was no longer hurt by the fact that they wanted to hurt him. Evil was what they were. What else could you expect from them? An evil person nicknaming you Quadruple Decimal because your chance of being granted powers was four decimal places to the right of zero wasn’t surprising.

It was like a leech sucking your blood. Or like Hazel screaming at you to stop playing while she was chaining because she was fifteen now and she had mere days left to practice before she became one of the most powerful creatures on Earth. It was just what they did. You could hate it, but you couldn’t be surprised by them anymore. What hurt his feelings the most lately was all the others—the ones who weren’t evil. The friendly ones…who still didn’t really want to be his friend. Well, I guess, he thought one morning in November as he sat down at his desk, I am an inconvenient person to be friends with. My family is complicated. We’ll only be in school together for a couple more years before they all head off to the Avowed high schools. My own life goal is to leave them all behind. What else did I expect? Part of him knew that what he’d expected was for primary school friendships to last. He’d expected them to keep liking him and wanting to hang out with him until they were all grown up. Because he’d liked them so much. They hadn’t been like the cousins, so he’d thought they were similar to children on cartoons—friends forever no matter the differences or distances. But that was just an embarrassing thing to want, so he pretended he hadn’t. That he didn’t. It was easier that way. He reached into his bag for his fountain pen. Fountain pens were his latest collectible distraction. All the different ink colors and the nibs and the chore of cleaning them gave him something to do. When school was particularly bad, he bought himself another one. Some people use them for art. Maybe I’ll learn to draw. When he set the pen inside his desk, his fingers brushed against something unfamiliar. He grabbed the unexpected object and looked down. It took him a minute to realize what the thing in the pink foil wrapper was. This…is a condom. They’d had an uncomfortable so-you’re-all-growing-up-now sex education class a couple of weeks ago. He’d only just managed to wipe it from his brain. Was this left over from that somehow? How could he not have noticed until today? I can’t let anyone see me with this! He shoved it into the back of the desk, blushing furiously. If anyone found it, he’d have to swim to Antarctica and feed himself to a leopard seal. There would be no other option. His nerves about one of the super children developing the ability to see through wooden surfaces or his teacher announcing that there would be a desk-check for the first time ever kept him so distracted that he almost forgot to hate class. And he’d been really devoted to hating class that week because they were playing a game. A stupid game. It’s all they ever talk about anymore anyway, so I don’t see why we have to make it official. It was supposed to be a career-planning assignment, and it was a reward for making it through the school year. They were about to take their December break. Seventh grade was pretty much over. They’d all go home for a few weeks and come back as eighth graders. This week was full of fun activities that were pretending to be work. For the assignment, they had bags full of multisided dice. Some were even big, hundred-sided ones that looked like golfballs. To start the game, they closed their eyes and grabbed a random black bag from the plastic crate full of them at the front of the room. When you opened it up, the slip of paper inside determined your rank, and the color of your dice determined your Avowed class. Congratulations! You’ve been selected! They had a trading time slot and fake money where everyone tried to talk their friends into giving them the general class they wanted. Then you used one of the dice to pick you subclass. And the others could be rolled to randomize whatever was applicable to your class. You looked up corresponding numbers for talents the System might offer you on a chart, and you slowly built your dream profile as well as you could within the limits of chance. Afterward, they all talked about how great it was to be that type of Avowed and what kinds of jobs they could have. Lute wasn’t required to participate. But if he didn’t participate, he had to sit in his desk trying to read a book while everyone squealed with excitement or groaned in despair at their imaginary fates. And he caught pitying looks sometimes. He hated those, and they didn’t bother to shoot as many his way if he played, too. The only one who’s almost always happy with how it works out for them is Haoyu, he thought while he rolled a green die. He seemed to be gradually settling on Stamina Brute as his class preference. Nobody else ever wanted it. Kind of unexpected. His parents could get him just about anything, and what he wants is the simplest thing to get. Lute was a C-rank Meister today, rolling for his tool. “Lute? Hey, Lute! Can I have your bag?” The plastic die bounced across his desk, and Lute slapped his hand on it to keep it from escaping. He looked at Carlotta. She’d crossed the room with a bag full of the red Brute dice in her hand. Declan was behind her. Other peoples’ dice were clattering around. The door to the hall was open so that they could come and go to make trades and discuss things with seventh graders in the nearby classrooms. Their current teacher was chatting with one of the others by the lockers instead of monitoring them. The last days of the school year were always so haphazard. “I’m already rolling for my subtype,” said Lute. “And I haven’t been Meister before, so…” He always kept whatever he drew so that he didn’t have to negotiate with his classmates. It had been Brute every time so far. There were more of them in the box than any of the other colors. “Yeah, but I’ve been Brute already,” she said. “And you know I want Meister so much.” “You should give it to her,” Declan said. “Meister’s more fun than Brute,” said Lute. “Maybe you’ll get it tomorrow.” “Come on!” said Carlotta, thrusting her dice bag toward him. “Don’t be selfish!” “She needs it way more than you.” These two were the worst of the worst. And Lute wasn’t being a doormat anymore; that was the only thing that was keeping him sane. He wasn’t giving them a damn thing. He squeezed the bag of dice. “No. Leave me alone. I need to finish the assignment.” And then… “You really ought to give it to her.” The voice cut across the classroom. Vandy Carisson had a tendency to announce things for all to hear when she made a judgment. Everyone started to look up to see who she’d decided to correct. She’d been sitting on the floor by the board, casting her dice with some of the other girls. She’d stood to make her proclamation. “She wants to make a Meister profile to prepare herself,” said Vandy, staring at Lute with her pale eyes. She’d gotten rather pretty this year. What a stupid thing to think at a time . “You never take this seriously, Lute,” she continued. “You just pick random foundation points and talents that don’t fit together and then write them on your form.” “What else would he do?” someone muttered. “I don’t have to give her my dice.” Lute wondered why he felt nervous, suddenly. Everyone was staring. “I drew them from the box the same as everyone else. Nobody has to trade. Those are the rules.” Rules. Vandy loved rules. She’d probably printed out a copy of the student handbook to sleep with. “You don’t have to,” she said slowly. “But why wouldn’t you? This is important to us. And it’s not to you.” “She’s kind of right,” said Konstantin from a desk nearby. “I mean, you don’t care, and she cares a lot…” No, thought Lute. No, this is wrong. It’s not fair. They had these looks on their faces…like he was hurting them. Even the nice ones. The probable high ranks. The hero kids. Why…? What do they expect from me? They know how she treats me but… Was this game so important now that the way she treated Lute didn’t matter in comparison? “I guess…” Vandy said, her eyes going round as if she’d suddenly had a shocking thought. “Oh. Did you really want Meister, too? I guess if you did want it…that would be different. If you wanted to take building a profile seriously today. In case.” A few people had still been playing around with their dice. The last one clicked to a stop, and the classroom went so quiet that they could hear the teachers murmuring together in the hall. Lute felt like every eye in the room was carving out a piece of his heart. “You will never be chosen. You will never be an Avowed. You will never do any magic other than wordchains. Do you understand?” “But, Mommy, everybody else…” “Say you understand.” “I’m going to be a harpist,” Lute said. “I’ve never wanted to be anything else. Why would I take any of this seriously?” Something left the room. Some enormous tension between him and them—worse than any he’d ever felt before—faded. Eyes rolled, chairs creaked. “Of course he doesn’t want to be a Meister for real, Vandy. He's got his own thing. He played boring music for like an hour at the talent show.” “Quadruple Decimal’s got his whoooole future planned out,” Declan said. He shoved his hand into Lute’s desk. It was clear he knew exactly what he was looking for. “And look! He’s being responsible.” He slapped Lute on the back hard and held up the pink foil wrapper. “We must prevent more whiffs!” People gasped. Or laughed. “Declan, seriously, what’s wrong with you?” said Kon. “That’s not funny.” “Is that a condom?” someone said in horror. “Is it?” Vandy asked, looking around for an answer. Lute suddenly didn’t care at all about the condom. It was just Hazel’s original revelation about how some Avowed talked about people like him in a new form. The terrible joke of the day. Instead, he cared about the fact that when Carlotta reached for his dice, his fingers let go. Even the nice ones had said he shouldn’t have them, so… Everyone else was freaking out about that condom though. They made a ton of noise about it, the teachers heard, and Declan got dragged off to the principal’s office. Lute sat in his desk, and he tried to roll his dice. Red ones. His vision was blurry for some reason. Not tears, surely. He was thirteen. He’d seriously rather be eaten by a leopard seal than cry in front of them. But he couldn’t see the numbers. Two days later, when everyone went to select their dice bags, they discovered some of the dice had been replaced. The discovery came after the colors had been seen and the trades had happened. It came after almost everyone was holding the dice set for their dream class. Sometimes, when you rolled one, instead of getting the number that should have been on that face, you got a percentage. And a message written in tiny logograms. People had to look up the meanings on their phones. “This…this is an A-rank Adjuster’s chance of returning home after an emergency summons,” Kon said in a high voice. “Mine’s for A-rank Brute! And there’s another die with the chance of being killed in combat on Earth!” “Here’s one for…for unhealable mind damage,” Tuyet whispered. “Mine’s S-rank Meister. It’s for death on Matadero. But the number’s zero.” Yes, thought Lute, sitting at his desk with the red dice again. I wanted to be evenhanded. Nobody ever actually dies on Matadero. “Mine’s the annual chance of getting an emergency summons as an S-rank.” “Is the death rate really this high for S-rank Life Shapers?” someone said in a panicked voice. “You guys! Is it? My mom gets summoned sometimes, and she’s an S-rank Life Shaper!” Alden and Lute stared at each other for a long time without saying anything. “Alright then…” Alden said finally. “That was all horrible.” “I know. I ruined the end of the school year. And apparently Haoyu’s mother was on an emergency summons when I did it. He was probably really scared for her. I didn’t know. He should have punched me. I hope I wouldn’t have done it if I had known, but I’m not sure. I snapped. Really snapped. It took more than a day to look up all the statistics, design the dice, and have them 3d printed. And it still felt like a reasonable and measured response when I shoved them in the bags.” “I didn’t really mean you,” said Alden. “Just all of it. Your school sounds like hell.” “They did take me to see Victoria Falls,” said Lute. “It was breathtaking. Then he grimaced. “Haoyu’s tried to get me to hang out with some of them a couple of times. During Diwali. This morning at the skate park. He says he thinks being selected made them more mature, and…I do believe him. Mostly. The mood was already starting to shift when I left Paragon to come to CNH. But you should see their faces when they look at me.” Alden had seen their faces when Lute name was mentioned. He could imagine. “People like Vandy didn’t hate me before I said I hoped they and their parents all got summoned to die agonizing deaths—” “Was that really what you were trying to say?” “No. But that's how they took it. My enraged thirteen-year-old self thought he was making an impressive point. About how if the dice were so serious that I was a bad person for not giving one of my bullies her favorite color, then maybe the dice should actually be serious. That nuance was lost on everyone else. It turns out that a die covered in ways you and your loved ones might die doesn’t lend itself to conveying anything beyond, ‘Die, all of you.”” He rested his elbows on the table and propped his chin on his hands. It was getting later. The noises of people moving through the building and outside on the walkways had gone quiet. “I don’t think any of them ever understood I was upset about them making me give up the dice. They thought it was all about the condom, and I was being insane by taking out my anger on them when they didn’t have anything to do with it.” He looked at Alden. “I told you the story because I wanted to explain…I don’t feel that way. I grew up here. I know seriously bad shit happens to Avowed sometimes. And I know it’s not something to mock.” Alden cleared his throat. “What are the statistics for B-rank Rabbits getting stuck on moons without Systems?” Lute’s face relaxed. “You’ll never believe this, but I didn’t include that one on my ‘terrible Avowed facts’ dice.” “Major oversight. You’ll have to pay more attention to the safe ranks and classes next time.” “Chainer’s a safe class,” said Lute. “The safest there is. Everyone knows we don’t die. I guess Keiko could doing hero work, but the rest of us…I can’t imagine that adds to my old classmates’ opinion about my charact—” “Oh, screw that. Your character’s fine,” said Alden. “Except…you know…” “What?” Lute asked worriedly. “You’re a bathtub hog,” said Alden in a serious tone. “I know it’s usually Lexi who complains, but that’s only because he wants to hog the tub, too. Haoyu and I get nothing but showers. We’re starting to talk bad about you both.” “You guys get the fancy drug sauna! You don’t need the tub!” “We pay for the drug sauna,” Alden said. “The tub is a free household resource. We are entitled to a quarter of all tub nights each. I understand you’re used to having constant access to multiple swimming pools—” “Only two…or three if I didn’t mind putting up with certain people!” “And in the absence of your two or three swimming pools, you’re clearly suffering from a lack of hydration,” said Alden. “Like some kind of tropical Velra plant. But you need to learn to water yourself in the shower once in a while instead.” Lute looked thoughtful. “Are you going to tell Lexi he’s a tub hog, too?” “No way. He carries a whip with him to the bathroom. Haoyu can tell him.”