[Wright Library] Student Social (Sada)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

56th Day of Spring, 512 AV

"Checkmate," Minerva said, placing her clockwork Bishop (which was actually shaped like a clock's winding key) in a position near her opponent's King (which was shaped like an hour hand). The other student let out a sigh of defeat and shook Minerva's hand.

"Good game, Tock," he said, using the nickname she'd introduced herself with. "I've got a test in like twenty minutes. I'll see you in class tomorrow." Minerva nodded, taking out her blueprints and ink, and starting to draw again. The chess game has been fun. It was the first game she'd played on her new chess set since she built it from scratch. She left the chess set out on the table, figuring another student might see it and challenge her to a game.

The chess set was quite unique. It was designed from wood carved in the shape of clockwork parts. The white and black painted pawns were in the shapes of gears, the knights as wooden shields mounted atop metal springs, the bishops as winding keys, and the rooks as pendulums. The king was shaped like a clock's hour hand, and the queen like the minute hand. Tock had put many long hours into making it entirely by hand. She was quite proud of her work.

Now it was time for another project. She was considering a clockwork wolf. It was something way too complex for her current level of skill, but she was jotting down ideas anyway. Right now she was sketching a mechanical wolf's leg. She had a book from the university library on the table, filled with masterful pictures of wolves. She was trying her best to copy the images by hand, and jotting down notes alongside her drawing. She was recording the listed height, weight, and other figures the book had on wolves. Then she was calculating the dimensions of the springs and gears she would need in a leg that size. She had a long string of numbers next to the picture, and the calculations were quite daunting.

She was probably going to need a professor to help her with the numbers. There were so many angles and stresses and friction coefficients to calculate that she was worried she was making a mistake somewhere. She went back over the numbers again, biting her lip as she tried to sort out the mechanics required to make the clockwork legs move.

[Sada]

Sada was new here, so didn't know her way around very well. She was off to see her new dormitory. She came out into this large halls, with no windows, that surrounded a outdoor clearing. It was very neat. She decided to take a look. She went through one of the 4 openings on one side and came out into the beautiful clearing. It was grassy and green, and had little patches of flowers growing here and there. On two sides facing each other, there was two small little tables, each complete with wooden chairs. One of them was occupied though, by a girl scribbling on a piece of paper. She walked over to the girl, and sat down in the chair opposite her. "Hello there." she said, a smile on her face. Set on the table was a board, with little pieces scattered across it. It wasn't until she saw the king that Sada realized it was a chess board. She loved chess. She had only played it once before with a little girl who was crying because she had no one to play with. Sada moved the dark pieces over to her side, and set them up accordingly. She kept her smile, and then said, "Want to play some chess?"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva looked up distractedly and saw the... monkey... sit down and ask to play chess.

Wow.

She grinned and nodded. "Aye," she said cheerfully. She took a moment to point out to the ape what the different pieces were, since their shapes were different than what someone would be used to. She then opened by moving her king's pawn forward two spaces, a simple, classic opening. Then she started studying her opponent.

Kelvic? No, Kelvic couldn't speak in their animal forms; at least, the one she'd met hadn't been able to. Her research seemed to confirm that. Plus the Kelvic she'd met hadn't worn clothes or acted like a person. She tapped her quill against her lips for a moment in thought, then said out loud, "Jamouran?" The intelligent apes only made up less than one percent of the population, so Tock had never met one before. The ape towered more than a foot over Tock, and she was surprised she had never seen one before; they seemed like they'd be hard to miss.

Jamouran were supposed to be smart, so she figured she would ask a question. "Oy," she asked, "ya know anythin' bout Kelvic or Lupine anatomy?" Rather than looking up at Sada as she asked, her nose was back in her book. While she was waiting for Sada to make her move, she was working on sketching out the bone structure of a common wolf. She looked up numbers for how much stress a wolf's leg bones could take before breaking, and started a column of numbers down the side as she tried to calculate stress variables for different materials she might build a leg out of.

She then started sketching a series of wires and gears over the bone structure, trying to figure out the complex series of gadgets it would take to mimic a wolf's muscle movement.