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Edelgard took her responsibilities as house leader of the Black Eagles very seriously. After all, she was the future emperor of the Adrestian Empire; how could she lead an entire empire if she couldn’t look after a handful of young nobles and one Dorothea? She considered it her duty to not only keep her fellow students in line, but to make sure that every single member of her house got the best education possible. She was not above dragging Linhardt or Bernadetta to their classes if she had to, and of course she offered to help whenever she saw someone struggling; even if she might later regret it.
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When she found Petra in the library, the girl from Brigid was staring at the book in front of her, eyebrows deeply furrowed. It looked like she had trouble with the text.
“Good morning, Petra” she greeted her classmate, “Is everything going well?”
“Not as well as I hoped,” Petra replied, “this book is giving me difficulties!”
“You know you can ask me if there is anything in the text that puzzles you.” Edelgard took a seat next to her. “Maybe I can help you understand it better.”
Petras face lit up immediately. “That is very gracious of you. I am indeed in need of clarification of a particular phrase.” She put her finger on a passage in the book. “It says here ‘She found herself in a pickle’, but the text never mentions how she ended up in a cucumber.”
Edelgard laughed. “No, it’s not meant literally. It’s an idiom, a commonly used expression. It implies that someone is in a difficult situation!”
“I see.” Petra nodded as she processed this new information. Her eyes darted back and forth as she reread the passage, but her brows remained furrowed. “I am afraid the full sentence is still not giving me understanding.”
“In that case, just read the entire sentence out loud, and I’ll see if I can clarify it for you.”
“Thank you; I have appreciation for your help.” Petra tapped her finger on the page and started reading. “The full sentence is ‘She found herself in a pickle, which was weird, because it was usually the other way around!’”
It took Edelgard a few seconds to grasp the meaning of what she just heard, but when she did, it was as if someone had suddenly dunked her into a pool of ice cold water, and she realized two things in rapid succession:
One; that she had no idea how educated her classmate was in matters of, ahem, lewd nature.
And two; that she, Edelgard von Hresvelg, was definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, the least qualified person to talk with her about this! After all, her own familiarity with this delicate subject matter was woefully inadequate!
Edelgard couldn’t remember a lot of her childhood, but somehow she remembered the time when she had been given ‘The Talk’. Her father had hired a ‘professional’ lecturer who had specialized in teaching young noble children all about the sexual intercourse, though he spend most of his time talking about all the things good children shouldn’t do because they would make the Baby Sothis cry. Because of that, Edelgard’s knowledge of sex was comprised almost entirely of what she had heard from other young nobles – who were not a very reliable source, needless to say.
As Petra looked at her expectantly, waiting for her friend to clarify, Edelgards mind started racing for how to handle this. Should she ask Petra how familiar she was with… intimate matters? No, that would be way too embarrassing. Just the thought of broaching the topic made her uneasy.
What if she didn’t have to do it herself? She was the house leader of the Black Eagles, after all. She could ask one of her fellow students to do this task for her. She briefly considered each candidate.
She was sure that Hubert would do it if she asked him. She was also sure that she should not ask him! A talk with Hubert could be… intense, even when he wasn’t trying to be intimidating.
Asking Ferdinand von Aegir for help in general was unacceptable, because she knew she would never hear the end of it, but asking him for help in this matter specifically just felt wrong in so many ways.
Dorothea seemed very… worldly when it came to the subject of sexuality. She might be eager to educate a fellow eagle. Maybe a bit too eager, in fact, if Edelgards own interactions with her were any indication. Getting overwhelmed with flirtatious innuendos would hardly be of help to Petra.
Linhardt was clearly very well read on many varying topics, perhaps even this one, but he was hardly the right person for the job. He could undoubtedly explain the subject matter better than Edelgard, probably with diagrams or a flowchart, but his dry matter-of-fact way of teaching might not be ideal. And of course trying to make Linhardt do anything he didn’t want to do was an exercise in futility anyway.
If anything, Bernadetta was arguably the one member of the class that was even less qualified to talk about this than Edelgard herself, and probably needed this talk more than Petra.
And Caspar… was Caspar!
Perhaps she could ask one of the academy staff – they were teachers, after all – but then she remembered what her options were: The new professor was very capable in the martial arts but seemed shockingly inexperienced in literally everything else, Professor Manuela was as much an admirable icon who cared deeply about her students as she was a drunken mess of a woman who shouldn’t be left in charge of a potted plant, Professor Hanneman was basically a more energetic Linhardt, and Seteth…
If the rumors were to be trusted, the church had banned books that handled inconvenient topics, and Seteth in particular was said to keep removing any literature of dubiously wholesome content - and yet he apparently had missed this one book, somehow! In any case, he clearly could not be trusted with this.
It thus became abundantly clear that Edelgard could ask no one for help with this; she would have to do it on her own! Was she confident enough to handle this? Well, no – but she would do it anyway! After all, she was the Flame Emperor, the one who would bring change to Fódlan! Her future would throw countless impossible odds at her, how could she hope to achieve her goals if she shied away from this comparatively simple task? She was not one to be intimidated, not anymore! She was a survivor! She would not falter in the face of hardship; she would not give up no matter how…
“Edelgard?”
“Huh?” She had been so deep in thought that Petra’s voice startled her.
“You have been staring at the wall for five minutes!” The brigid girl sounded worried. “Are you… having feelings of unwellness?”
“No, not at all. I was merely… pondering the appropriate answer to your question!” Edelgard cleared her throat. Alright, let’s do this! “In this particular instance, only the first half of the sentence is meant as an idiom, indicating that the character is in some kind of predicament, while the second half is meant literally, implying that she, erm, regularly has, er, pickles inside her, because, uhm…”
Petra’s face brightened up before Edelgard could continue. “Oh, I am getting it, because she is usually eating the pickles!”
“YES!” Edelgard almost shouted, “Yes, that is exactly what that means, well done Petra!”
“I see, I have understanding now! Thank you, Edelgard!” Petra sounded happy, and Edelgard couldn’t help but feel relieved, like a great burden had been taken off her shoulders. Though she knew that her future would hold countless hardships for her, surely none would be as terrifying as having embarrassing conversations with your friends!
“You are welcome,” she said, grateful that she had dodged an arrow there, “I am always happy to help.”
“That is good to be knowing,” Petra replied, “because I am having difficulty with another part here!” She turned back a page and pointed at it. “This word is unknown to me. What is a gangbang?”