Silent on the ottoman: Rusk at the Eschaton disciplinary meeting

texture · 10 Nov YDAU

• When: 10 Nov YDAU (the post-Eschaton summons to the Headmaster's office)
• What: Rusk's first bodily appearance on the page, and she neither moves nor speaks. Waiting outside Tavis's office, Hal reasons from Avril's diddle-check duty (event 5) that Rusk must be inside — and reads her presence as a barometer of administrative dread: "C.T. would have to be really upset to want to have Rusk included; Rusk might be there more for C.T. than for any studential psyches." Inside, Pemulis's hissed inhale confirms it before Hal even looks: on the ottoman along the east wall "sits sure enough Rusk, her hose laddered and face betraying nothing," next to poor monitor-headed Otis P. Lord, as Tavis prepares the disciplinary-and-urine scene. She is furniture-adjacent staff apparatus — deployed for the Headmaster's comfort (in Hal's reading, as printed), her one described feature a run stocking and a professionally blank face.