Private I'm Lost And I Can't Read Maps! LIFE ALERT

It was early afternoon on a dreary spring day, and Verda Combfoot was lost.

She had a room number, and she had determination. What she didn't have was a clue.

The building she'd entered she'd thought was the Arts building, a massive conglomerate of rooms and twisting hallways, but she passed a room a few minutes ago that had the distinctive sounds of a table saw echoing down the corridor. The layouts seemed so clear on the outside! The first digit in a room number indicated the floor, and the rest followed some sort of system inside, usually counting up or down in a curve from the stairwell or elevators, with odds and evens alternating down hallways. But here the numbers skipped strangely, and some of them had letters on the end?

She was a brick red freshman with a bookbag and an air of desperation, staring at the fire evacuation map stuck to the wall between elevators, a scrap of note paper clutched in her hand. Her hair was starting to frizz out of her braid from the stress of the day (and the humidity outside, eew).

"Find your classes the day before you go to them," Verda muttered to herself, wings twitching, "then you won't get lost before class. Great idea! Just get lost earlier."

She trailed off, staring at the map on the wall that had outlines but no room numbers, and turned her head to see if it made more sense sideways.

It didn't.

@Max!!

Verda startled, jumping a bit and clonking the curve of her horn against the wall as she spun around. She paused for a moment, shook her head, and took a step away from the treacherous not-map.

"That would be great," she said, "I am so tragically lost, it's like a comedy of errors up in here." Relief washed over her with the force of a riptide at the sight of a friendly face.

Verda stepped over to the helpful stranger with an earnest look, offering a hand with blunt-trimmed claws.

"Thank you. My name's Verda, I'm new here- I mean, obviously-" she gestured vaguely at herself and the hallway with the scrap of paper in her other hand, "and I could really use some help finding some classrooms, if you've got the time?"

Verda offered a much larger smile out of sheer, genuine relief.

"Nice to meet you, Rigel! It is a lot, yeah." She laughed a little, then smoothed the crinkles out of her note paper. "I figured I'd find classes before I actually went to them, so I could get to them on time when I went to check them out? But this place is a maze. I'm looking for a pottery workshop right now, and I thought this was the Arts building? But I heard a table saw back there?" She gestured vaguely down the hallway.

"Is this even the Arts building at all?"

Verda clasped her hands to her cheeks and put on her best shocked expression.

"Oh no!" She said overdramatically, "I've been taken in! The table saw was a ruse! I have become lost because of your machinations."

Verda staggered back a step and flung an arm over her face. "What EVER shall bee-comb of me, isolated and pounced upon??" She raised her arms to the ceiling in supplication, "what are your nefarious plans?!"

Verda threw him a wide, toothy grin, and dual wielded finger guns for emphasis. "Sure as shootin'!"

Her face wiped in complete shock at his next sentence.

"Barf.... bees? Bee barf?? I mean I can sort of talk to them a little cuz I keep a couple hives but I don't-- barf bees? Like, like just--" Verda hunched over a bit, opened her mouth, and made a retching noise, hands gesturing from her mouth to the air, then straightened up and popped her hands out with her fingers wide as she made a "bzzzzzt" through her teeth.

Verda stared at Rigel for confirmation, her eyes wide under the hall lights. "just- hurk there she bzzzt?!"