provincialbelle | (no subject)

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fred

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Belle had been so grateful to Jane for all the help she had offered and all the lessons, but she felt that sometimes she began to pester her. After all that fuss and to-do with the portal, she'd found a ray of hope in the mess and was just waiting for the right time to pursue it. She'd felt sick for so long and then there'd been the body. Now, though, she was tired of huddling to herself and tired of putting things off.

She wanted to learn more about all the wondrous and mad and perfect things out there and if she didn't take a step out her front door, she was never going to find that. So, she ventured out to the lab when she knew that Fred worked there, knocking apprehensively on the door. "Miss Burkle? I'm Belle, Jane's student. Can I come in?"

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"I want to learn about anything," Belle spoke with great passion, a desperate look in her eyes. "I spent so long with books and no friends to speak of that now that people are willing to actually talk to me, I don't want to lose the opportunity," she confessed. "I'd be happy to learn anything you wanted to teach me, however simple; however basic."

Fred's somehow reminded of her time in Pylea. Except she hadn't even had books there. Pretty much everything there was to read, she'd written it herself on a cave wall.

"Well, most of what I studied back home was theoretical physics and particle physics. I guess maybe we could start there if you wanted?"

Which isn't really basic, but maybe they can work up to it.

"I'd have to read up on the whole subject in my spare hours to even be close to what you do," Belle admitted aloud, mostly wanting it clear that she was going to need some measure of patience. "But yes. Yes, I would love that. I could offer something in turn? I'm fairly good with all things literature. Or, do you want to learn French? I could teach you about french or singing or wines...?"

"Wines? Really?" Fred asks, only because the suggestion takes her completely by surprise. She knows pretty much next to nothing about wines, come to think of it. Except for the effects of it, and the science of fermentation, but that's probably not what Belle's talking about.

Belle nodded eagerly, hoping that this would be the thing that would get her lessons in all sorts of mystical and strange and wonderful sciences. "I lived in a small town in France. We didn't really have much to offer, but we did have very good wine. I learned a thing or two from how to recognize a good one."

"Seems like a pretty fair trade to me," Fred replies, because heck, where's she ever going to get to learn about wines on the island? It's not as if there are any classes at the school for it. And besides, once she figures out a way home, maybe she'll be able to dazzle everyone with her knowledge of cabernets.

You know, between nearly-thwarted apocalypses.

Belle gave a thoughtful nod, pushing her hair behind her ears as she leaned in, espousing the secrecy that Fred seemed intent on. "So, where do we start in the search for his notes?"

For a second, Fred had thought that maybe Belle would forget the part where she'd been snooping at someone else's notes.

"I've actually found a lot of them already," Fred admits, and she walks over to one of the work stations where she's found a collection of papers, "At least I think so. Though I think this one might actually be about food."

She tipped her head to the side to inspect it, trying to make some sense out of it. In the end, all she can really make out is that it's probably coded to some kind of comprehension that she can't even begin to know. "Well, food is very important," she allowed.

"Not when you're tryin' to figure out what it'll take to make a portal that'll go exactly where you want it to," Fred replies, because it'll be one thing to get another one built at all, but making it go to the right place is another problem entirely.

That much is pretty clear from the last time someone tried a portal.

"Well, no," she conceded, because that did seem the world's most inopportune moment to do something like that. "Maybe we can try and suggest that food comes after life-threatening portals," she said. "Can't you make it a lab-rule or something?" she asked, earnestly.

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