[anna takes a slow drink as she ponders what kind of crazy teacher could be. she doesn't think she knows yet. everything she's learned about him makes him just seem fake; if there is real pain behind his eyes, it seems like it might have been lost over millennia of following his own stupid quest to make the nine houses know him as god. but if there is that real pain, then she may... she may want to give more credence to that first point.]

I can't tell how real he is. That's the problem. I don't know how ruthless he is, or if he really thinks that he can get away with this shit here, or... if he's even trying to get away with shit in the first place. For all I know, this is all just stuff that happened already and he has no interest in doing it again here.

[she holds her beer up off the table; it's more or less empty by now. like she's debating whether she wants another, she tilts her head one way, then the other.]

He told me once that he doesn't see the point in dragging out old ghosts. That when something's dead, it should stay that way. [she lowers the bottle; it thuds audibly against the wood.] I don't believe him for a fucking second.