pocked and multi-colored and curvy in some places where the parts of the building had withstood the Tragic Age. Wind rushed through the halls constantly, slyphs rushing back and forth with words tangled up in their tresses and toes, and as a result the whole place was kind of helplessly filled with noise, though not to a deafening extent.

There were so many voices around the Bell at any given time, however, and after they had made their way past a couple hallways Boula felt her ears start to strain; she flattened them against her skull and it was in that moment that a bell rang. It was unlike any bell she'd ever heard — it was unimaginably deep, and seemed to resonate in her chest and the bridge of her nose — it seemed to make the air shimmer for a moment, and immediately following it Boula thought that she had been deafened, until she realized that the sylphs had scattered.

"At lunch the voices always exalt, almost to lack of hearing," Frux Melior Prass explained, and Boula almost jumped — she had not expected him to speak to her. She noticed now too, that he had a sort of accent which only slightly edged his rich voice, but was more pronounced in his word choice.

"So the bell rings more often then?" Boula guessed.

"True."

"How do you know this already?" Wasn't he new like her?

"I crossed this campus much in my youth," he explained. "For my profession."

His profession? Was he a scholar so young? She glanced at his raddle. It was more of an impulse, because the text was too small for her to read, and he said for her, "I indeed am primarily Scholar, but natally and more fun a Tenor."

"Ah!" She was impressed. She was going to ask more but before she could, their party halted. Luserna, who had been leading at the front, gave a horrible gagging noise — "Uaagh!" — and stepped back without warning, palms pressed against her nostrils.

"Awful," she managed, wavering, and Nivus reached to steady her but before he could she had rushed to the window and was inhaling deeply. For a moment it seemed to Boula that she was trying to rid her nose of the smell, and then she realized that she was actually trying to take in more of it — her eyes were closed and her breast lifted with a heavy inhalation.

Melior glanced at her, bewildered as Boula was; Salt looked surprised; Nivus looked tense, and he glanced back and forth down the hallway, as if he expected something to appear at any moment.

"What is it?" Melior asked finally, and Luserna huffed at him. She looked back and glared.

"If you'd let me just concentrate, maybe we'd both know!"

"Luserna, this is the third counting of your behavior this flicker. Surely we deserve some explanation?"

"You don't need to even pay attention if you don't want to," she told him. "Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with you, I know that much."

"But with the rest of us?" Salt asked nervously. "Is it something bad?"

"I don't know. It's something powerful...but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad."

"Perhaps it's only a storm," Nivus suggested. "The passerines' seasons are changing at this time, after all. You could be smelling the foreign sylphs."

Luserna balked at arguing against Nivus. "I could," she admitted.

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