Omnes adsint, quamvis dementi, quamvis nefasti.

It seems that today the classroom has been mostly cleared out of the remnants of the last lecture you’ve had here: All wax meticulously scrubbed and scraped off all the surfaces, no spores on the ceiling, no staining orange milk spilled on the desks. Instead by the shelves and leaning against the walls are nets – for butterflies and moths, for fishing, for scandalous legs. Landing, weighted, one doily that might have gotten here by an accident and now everybody is too afraid to leave it out, because yes, technically it is a lot of holes surrounded by a thread.
However, on the lectern – where the ledger of attendance usually lays – is a big, and here we mean a really big bowl of apples, stacked to a neat trigonal pyramid.
A helpful little piece of cardboard says claims that you are free to help thyself to a reasonable amount
The teacher’s desk itself is buried under boxes. Boxes one might use when moving from past premises to new ones. One solitary pitcher of water stands beside them.
The classroom which usually smells of poor air circulation today carries sweet scent of apples, recently upturned soil, and a sharp cologne with a hint of sandalwood to it, you know, the one so popular in saloons and conferences this season.( Read more... )( Read more... )

The Selected Chapters from Practical Subterranean Mycology have a reputation of a laid-back class which more than anything else serves as a meeting spot for the naturalist freaks eccentrics of Benthic. Reader Guildenstern, who has been teaching this class for years, is known to use the allotted time to share dirt on personal anecdotes from the lives of his most respectable colleagues. Which is precisely the reason why no student is allowed to take up the class more than once in their lifetime – to prevent amassing of too much power in one pair of hands
But the day when all the classes are posted and signing up for them is available, there is, as the academics call it, a minor uproar. The aforementioned Selected Chapters are entirely missing from this year register. There are complaints. Bolder individuals threaten to demand back tuition paid.
After much fussing about, the Chairman of the Subterranean Mycology Department gives a public apology for this – and several other – clerical errors, and the omitted class appears with its lost compatriots on the bottom of the register. It now bears such disrespectful neighbours as Cellular Mechanisms and Crimson Genetics. Yes, we suppose those are alright courses to attend if you want to make money, publish papers and maybe push the quality of life forward for further generations. But this is a university, for grief’s sake! One’s primary goal is to increase their own social standing.

Because of this little clerical oversight, the class is held in one of the smaller lecture halls in the basement. It is not particularly hard to find if you know where you are going. The class is also held fairly late. Not awfully late, but certainly you are missing some of the happy hours in less secluded places, such as the Veilgarden.
There aren’t that many students. Most of them already have a busy schedule with the classes that were posted on time. But the door is not locked and the timetable clearly says that the Selected Chapters begin in a couple of minutes.
( [Enter the class] )