"Yup, I probably can." She grinned. "Although I need to find a copy of The Odyssey somewhere."

"To be honest, I didn't like the Odyssey or the Iliad much," Andy replied. "I preferred Ovid's Metamorphosis."

"The Odyssey is good," Belle said. "The Iliad not so much, because I don't really like Achilles. Or any of them, really. At least you can laugh at Odysseus."

"I never liked Achilles, either," Andy agreed. "I still like Ovid's Metamorphosis better, though, it has the actual myths, rather than just references to them. But if I had to choose a second, it would be the Odyssey."

"And if you've never read Dante's Divine Comedy you need to. It's good."

"High school literature never got that far," Andy replied. "I was lucky I got to read Homer. Sophomores never read Dante."

"I never read it in school either. I bought this gorgeous hard-bound copy that had all three of the books in it, and illustrations. That was a good book." Belle sighed a little. "OH well."

"It must have been a gorgeous book," Andy sighed. "I had a leather-bound, gold-edged copy of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, I loved it so." She grinned. "I had more books than I really had space for, it was wonderful."

Belle laughed. "I was the same way. I had bookcases in my room, and the guest bedroom had been converted into a library because we had so many books, plus boxes of books out in the garage that were from when I was really young."

"Sounds wonderful," Andy replied. "I just had boxes in my room. Big plastic tubs, for when my book case was full and the shelf on my desk was about to break. Oh, and the four boxes in the basement... I think I left some books in my locker at school, I wonder what happened to those..."

"I dunno. It's hard to say what happened to any of our stuff." Belle was silent for a moment. "Luckily we can get basically all of the same things here, too." She brightened at that, looking over at the bishis. "Although it helps when we're not, y'know, crammed into rooms because the frigging system isn't working."

"Belle," Eclipse said, his voice quietly admonishing.

"I know, I know. Patience is a virtue, it's probably not their fault, blah blah blah."

"Actually, I was going to say you shouldn't be angry because you can't blow things up." He grinned suddenly, and it was his evil wreaking havok grin. "I, on the other hand, can."

Andy couldn't help but giggle a bit.

"Hopefully, they'll get the system back up and running before everyone goes stir-crazy," she said. She knew she would be one of them; she was far too used to traveling to stay in one place successfully for too long.

Belle nodded. "Yeah. I can manage for maybe a week here until I start going kinda nuts." She paused for a moment. "Although..." She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, starting to scribble furiously. "I just thought of a way we might make some money while we have to stay here anyway."

"I'm all for ideas," Andy replied. She was definitely interested. "What did you think of?"

"Well, since everyone's bishis are out anyway, we could do a sort of meet and greet. I know I've met a lot of trainers who have never seen an Ash or an Eclipse and want to glomp them. So what if we charged a very small fee per glomp per bishi?" Belle grinned.

"That's..." Andy considered the idea. "That's a good idea, actually." She ignored the scandalized looks from a couple of her bishies. "Are we allowed to do that?"

"I don't see why we can't," Belle said with a shrug. "I mean, it's just a little fee, and there's no rule that says you can't. Lots of people have their bishies help in shops and stuff, so long as no one really complains I don't think there would be a problem."

"It's not a bad idea," Andy said. She glanced at her guys, and couldn't help but laugh a bit at the look on Lucivar's face. "Oh come on, Yas, you're a big strong warrior, you can handle a bit of glomping." Lucivar grumbled a bit, both at the nickname and at the fact he couldn't argue without sacrificing his pride.

"We can have them switch off and take turns so no one gets glomped too much," Belle continued. "Maybe we can start that up tomorrow, see how it goes."

"That works," Andy said. She grinned. "I could also let people hug Kaelas. Big kitty and all that good stuff."

"Hell, you could give dragon rides. Now that would be fun, and worth the money." Belle grinned.

Andy grinned as well.

"And Temmy would get a kick out of it," she said. "He loves meeting new people, and he wouldn't mind half a dozen riders or so."

"Yeah! That could be really fun. Maybe you could do the dragon rides, and I could be in charge of the bishi glomping," Belle said with a grin. "Just don't go more than a mile away, maybe just kinda circle over town with Temmy, and everything would be fine."

"That, or I could ride with Temmy," Andy replied. It made sense to her.

"Yeah." Belle grinned. "I think we should try that tomorrow."