[@HereComesTheSnow]

[b]Teàrlag Cirsium - "Student Counselor", Armoury[/b]

It basically came to me as I left the office that it'dve probably been weird for the kids to receive a visit from the counselor (that of course being yours truly) on a day for chumming their folks around and generally just lazing about, so instead of rocking up just to be dingied, I decided that with all the brats out on campus, there'd be nobody around to get in the way of me doing weapons maintenance. And it was definitely, one-hundred-percent what I was thinking of doing in the first place, so you don't need to worry at all about the fact that I was dressed up all-professional for teaching or that I'd gone back into the office to grab [i]Lonnbeimnech[/i]. Being a teacher means that everything I do can be thought to have a purpose, and none of the brats who might've been around to see me can call me out on it.

That's a flagrant abuse of authority, right? How could you, Teàrlag! How could you be so petty despite being a twenty-seven year old woman whose job involves being a role model for impressionable brats one pamphlet away from filling their social media accounts with half-baked rhetoric? Well I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm a pretty petty person, but it certainly isn't in the top ten of flagrant abuses of authority, you know? People will naturally try and take advantage of their privileges, especially if it's convenient for them to do so. Sure, we claim to be honest, upright citizens and all, but we're always going to take the chance to chib away at loopholes or sneak some extra bikkies if the opportunity presents itself. You'd be a real div not to start feeling all the pressure of society at some point; it's cutthroat, and you'll never know if there's some nasty bizzo around the corner. Of course you'd want a break sometime, and if it's just something like dodging the bus fare when the driver ain't looking or using my job to make my actions seem more legit so nobody can judge me for seeming like a bit of a nincompoop, it's something you can probably expect from everyone.

I guess that's what they call [i]argumentum ad populum[/i], trying to fallaciously justify my behaviour by saying every other bugger's guilty of it too. Except the genuine fact in the end is that I'm just another selfish human trying to misdirect attention from even the smallest of my bugger-ups. A shame, isn't it? You'd expect a teacher to be more of a moral paragon or something, but keeping this game of charades up's important, you know? Folks want to know that those teaching their brats know what they're doing, and if you even make a bugger out of yourself once, that's going to stick on you. People are superficial, they're going to judge based on impressions, and it takes a real lotta effort to fix those impressions once they've stuck; more effort that cleaning some boggin' gum off the bottom of tables. I don't want to be stuck as that counselor who can't read the mood, you know?!

Anyway, [i]Lonnbeimnech[/i].

Well technically, [i]Lonnbeimnech Taranaich[/i], but the latter part of that real hackit of a word (according to folks who aren't from the Valic Highlands like me) is sitting comfortably on my wrists, so this cold, heavy thing I'm holding is just [i]Lonnbeimnech[/i]. It's what they call a lochaber axe, and I've actually had it since I was a wee lass of fourteen, because granda wanted to see what all the  "new dang-fangled tech the brats had these days" could make out of a traditional Highland weapon, and with a bit of dosh thrown at some bloke who knew what he was doing, blammo, a fancy combining whatever got dropped right into my lap. Helped me barely coast through Shade's curriculum, and helped keep me from getting chow-ed on by Grimm while I worked to pay for my teaching degree. Real pain on the spondoolies when you gotta go in for repairs, but that's why regular maintenance is a must. You'd be a daft bugger not to keep your weapon in shipshape and Bristol fashion, especially when your life depends on it!

Also if you keep getting your stuff turned into bing, you'd certainly be pretty brassic soon.

I'd actually misjudged there being nobody around in the Armoury, because not long after I'd settled down to do some work on [i]Lonnbeimnech[/i], some brat pinged my radar by coming into the place with a pair of gauntlets. By radar, I meant that the steel he had on him got electricity tingling on me - not as much as Atlesian steel did, because those buggers certainly knew their way around a forge, but it was pretty easy to feel, especially after he plopped down on the workbench in front of mine. He looked a bit familiar, with the long black hair and prominent cowlick, which was probably because he was one of the students around here. What other teenager would be using the Armoury to fix up their weapons, unless we've suddenly decided to let in random brats off the street?

Oi brat, just because you're a student here doesn't mean you should bump your gums off so much while working. It might be a holiday for everyone to meet with their folks and all, but that doesn't mean you're all alone. People are going to judge you, you know, and maybe they might think you've got your own Tyler Durden or something and are stark-raving mad. I'm, unfortunately, judging you right now to be a kid who must have been really happy with your breakfast. And that's distracting me from making sure [i]Lonnbeimnech[/i] isn't breaking on me too.

I guess it's my job as a teacher to make sure you're actually just energised, not crazy or anything.

"[color=d8bfd8]You look like you're thinking hard,[/color]" I say. On second thought it sounds weirder than the boy's self-mutterings, because who says things like that to start conversations? Teachers, I guess, which actually makes it less weird. Go figure.