Thinking a bit on Alice, she must really be something with an oar for her to be as popular as she is. I wonder if Orange Company doesn’t maybe go out of its way to get her into magazines, perhaps pointing out a combo of her skill and younger age as something people should be reading about.

Given Alice’s problems with understanding people and social situations, I’m amazed that she chose to become an undine, a trade that absolutely requires dealing with the public, with a deft and skillful hand. Athena’s difficulty as a Single, dropping into brown studies when close attention to the world was needed, isn’t really that much like Alice’s, and it doesn’t touch the core of what an undine does. Alice’s difficulty does. She could master the geography and history of Neo-Venezia, and the art of singing canzone, as well as she has already mastered the oar; but none of those matter as much as the quiet courtesy Athena had even as a Single, which for Alice is as a foreign tongue. Her singing earned Athena her opportunity with the Orange Company; what makes her a Great Water Fairy, though, is being an excellent “left hand”.