A magic school story

Chapter Eight: We eat

It was by some miracle that he did eventually find the dining hall.

He had expected to see many more students hanging around the campus, but they seemed all more studious than he expected. Everyone seemed to be indoors somewhere probably studying.

The dining hall was massive to say the least. It looked like it had a standard cafeteria system- for a magical school. You'd grab an order card from the stack on the table to check out whatever you wanted from the menu on the card. And the kitchens would know from their own order cards which table ordered what and bring it out for you.

There were rows and rows of tables, and all were massive and made of a softly glowing wood. There were cushioned chairs instead of benches though. There were still a few students hanging about here some of them studying and having a snack or drink. And it looked like they did still serve outside of dining hours after all. There was a person at the front of the cafeteria ordering from the chef directly. Perhaps they only used order cards during mealtimes.

No matter, he made the walk all the way to the front of the hall. Man, all this walking was killing him. At this rate he could get away with having hot chocolate every day and not get fat.

"Well look that." He said to himself.

Who else would be surrounded by books alone in a corner with a scowl that scared off any would be approachers?

"Hi, Gwen." He greeted, sitting down at her table and pushing aside a mountain of books so they could see each other.

"Still here?" She asked, and surprisingly she put her notes down.

"Oh, yeah. Especially since I'm not allowed to leave. Kind of banned from home now." He said dryly. "But I am hungry, you know all I ate yesterday was half a bag of doritos?"

"Have a full one next time."

You know... When she spoke without the usual hostility she might pass for dryly funny.

"I might." He replied, the corner of his lips curling humourously. "I'm still hungry."

"Potato chips are not food." She said. "It's empty calories and cholesterol."

"It's actually corn, so it's healthy isn't it." He teased, slumping back in his chair.

"Those chips are not corn, it's maize." She said, matter-of -factly.

"Gwen." He said, with a slowly spreading grin. "What's maize?"

"Maize is maize. It's a plant."

"Yeah," he said, grinning so widely it angered her scowl back to life. "Of course, you know maize is corn though, right?"

"Don't be stupid."

"Oh my god, Gwen." he laughed. "Listen, maize is corn, did you not know that?"

"I-" she only reddened and jammed for a second before the rounds started firing again. "Not all of us were shlepping around in the human world in farm school. Some of us were actually in combat, not Checkers."

"Combat?"

"Yes. I'm taking some of the military courses."

"You wanna be in the military?" he said, coyly with his chin resting on his hand.

"Of course, don't you?"

Jess shrugged. "I don't know."

"How can you not now?"

"That's a long way from now. You cant just decide something like that."

"No one said you had to stick with what you decide, but you have to have some kind of plan."