#palomapine

“Mendeleev would be rolling in his grave,” Paloma said dryly, though she lowkey smiled at the idea of a pumpkin periodic table of elements in the first place. It was good to have a place where she could even talk about Muggle science if she wanted to, and even better to have someone to talk about it with. It was part of the reason why she liked Kalasin so much. She didn’t think Merlin’s daughter of all people would be anyone she had anything in common with, but it turned out that the girl from the ultra-magic family knew and liked science just as much as Pal did. Pal actually liked Kally enough for that reason alone that she would’ve reached out to hang sometime this year but being the first one to reach out? Ridiculous. Preposterous. Blowing off plans was better than having them potentially blown off, but here she was, staring at the pumpkin she’d been trying to carve in the name of science camaraderie. “That’s okay, though. I think I’m not totally sucking at this. It kind of looks like DNA, right?” she asked, holding out the rudimentary lines she’d been sketching and squinting at it, trying to make it look right. Her attention was diverted when Kally suggested oozing pumpkins and her mouth went into an ‘oh’ shape, automatically more excited. “That, let’s do that! Not that this isn’t fun and all, but there’s a reason I’m a science girl and not an artist,” she joked. “Is it something along the baking soda and vinegar route or something more specialized?”

“It looks like DNA to me!” Kally declared; she’d instead started doodling the phases of the moon on her pumpkin, imagining that it would cast a cool light if she carved them instead of painted them. She stopped in her tracks as soon as Pal seemed intrigued by the experiment, though. “No, no, we can’t waste your DNA pumpkin, it looks so good! We’ll do the experiment with my pumpkin, I haven’t done anything useful to it yet,” Kally insisted, digging through her bag for the things for the oozing reaction. She might have come a little bit overprepared, just in case; unlike some of her newer friends, Pal didn’t seem to dote on her or tolerate her wasting time. And she liked Pal far too much to waste her time anyway; she was a brilliant mind, she probably had better things to do, and Kally was just appreciative that she was here at all. “It’s actually not baking soda, but you’re not far off. It’s hydrogen peroxide, food coloring, water, soap, and yeast.” Her nose wrinkled at the word, even as she placed a packet of it onto their workspace.

Desperate text for @palomapine !!