Earnest Thoughts

The students shuffle to their designated seats, eyes blank. I pick at the unfamiliar uniform, trying to remember my spot. We have so many classes, so many rooms and I have to remember which spot is mine? In all of them? It felt, impractical to say the least. I already have so many rules to remember why add one more? At the front of the room the teacher starts talking, waving the laser pointer at particular phrases written on the whiteboard, “I hope you’re getting this down it’ll be in the test!” they speak with the air of a tape recorder played one too many times. I feel a wave of fatigue crash through me just hearing it.

Realisation dawns on me as those next to me scribble down the same phrase, like mirrors facing each other each paper must echo the same phrase. It’s a memorisation game. I stare at the board, nothing about it makes any attempt to make sense. They’re still using maths, but words make no sense. Measuring where lines meet by degrees, naming them angles and angle types. Symbols that do not signify magic being copied down rigidly. To what end is this information memorised? It’s no secret and easily available on the books lining the shelves. Are these books somehow sacred? I’ve seen the resources these humans horde they have enough to share these books between them surely? Not all could even have need for this information.

It’s like everyone in this room is writing for their lives as each new symbol is met with scribbles. I’m falling behind. I may not have grown up like these humans, but I am concerned that this is not a natural custom, that each are pushing themselves to the extreme over symbols. What information is this pushing out? Surely their time would be better spent in that unnatural fields outside this establishment rather than cooped up in here every minute training a dozen symbols each as useless as the last.

My pen trails behind the rest. Unlike the others perfect reflections of the board mine is like a murky puddle my hand smudging each symbol as soon as they touched the paper. I don’t know how else to hold the pen, how to not drag my hand across each symbol as I attempt to write the task should be so easy and yet I fell further and further behind.

The scribbling stops. An unnatural halt to sound. I look up. The teacher soundlessly rubs the symbols off the board. I look to it, then to my work and back to the now empty board. How am I meant to keep up with these people? How am I meant to fit into a world of desks and mindless repetition? How can I fail at such a simple task?

Everyone sits as still as lillypads on the smoothest pond I mimic the action, terrified that this is the beginning of some spell, then a shrill trilling rings out through the air and everyone stands to leave. Somehow that brain rattling sound ordered everyone to leave the room, to shuffle out single file. I follow, keeping my eyes to the ground least anyone look me full in the face and notice that they’ve never seen me before.

Fortunately, we shuffle out on to the field, pale sunlight filtering through the grey clouds. I stare across the grey expanse on the ground. Occasionally littered with colourful lines it served no purpose but to cover the expanse of grass and dirt that must have once resided here. An ugly block keeping us from the earth. My eyes drift longingly to the green grass. Small mounds of mud rested between the blades. The dirt is so inviting. I don’t want to be on this grey slab. I want to run across that green expanse. I want to slip on the mud. Why are humans restricting themselves? Are they scared?

I’m scared. It’s fear that forces me away from the welcoming arms of nature and roots me to the grey slab. A cage without bars. Except there are bars, out on the field a cage within a cage. Does this species really trust their young so little that they’re not allowed free? Sure, the young ones may wonder off and the older are prone to pushing boundaries but the watchful eye of an elder keeps many forms harm and those who chose danger soon learn the error of their ways. A short human barges into me, rushing off without a word. I look around myself, conscious that while I looked like these beings, I was not acting like them.

Fear of standing out pushes me to copy their actions, milling around, sitting on benches and eating weird smelling food. I know how to sit. I move toward the bench, it’s strange trying to keep your eyes fixed on an object while everyone around you is dangerous. I want to look around see if they see me but prey does that and I can’t present to be prey. I finally reach the bench and pull my diary out my pocket and position it on my lap. From here I can see almost all of the slab. I relax slightly and then I feel it. The air, it’s sucking at me. There’s a vacuum that needs to be filled. It wants to pull everything from me. Tug my insides out and dry them just to take me from myself. What I have it misses. What I have it wants on non-negotiable terms.

I imagine a barrier, closing my skin off from the air. Surviving on my own essence to keep out that wanting pull at my insides. There’s only so long I can close myself off, but I don’t plan on staying long. Hopefully I will return before my strength wanes and I fall.

I refocus on my diary, describing how they do class here. My hand passes over each word I write, the letters don’t smudge. What are they making their paper from that it absorbs the ink so slowly? I note how everyone is just mirroring each other. How they so naturally avoid nature?

Someone jumps over he bench. I scream. The human plops into the bench as my diary hits the floor. I scramble to pick it up and shove the notebook back into my pocket.

“Sorry,” the girl laughs. Is she laughing at me? I try to smile, go along with the joke even if it’s me. She clocks her head sizing me up, “are you new?” I stare back at her she’s light blonde hair with brown roots, dark freckles contrasting paler skin that shows off each minor imperfection. Shouldn’t her skin be thicker? She looks so fragile. What protection did her skin serve from the elements? Was the air trying to draw from at her too? Clawing away at her insides? Would she notice? She’d lived in this world her whole life. How would she know different? “hey” she waves a hand in front of my face.

I pocket my diary and look to her, “sorry, I was thinking.” I look at her, she stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to answer her question, “yes. I’ve never been here before.” I didn’t plan for direct interaction with one of them but if she thinks that I’m one of them then I’m safe. Hopefully. Maybe.

“Oh cool! Where did you come from?” there’s a hint of enthusiasm to her voice, something that sparks in the air before being sucked up through the vacuum. Her expression changes as if the sharp edge of her curiosity had been somehow dulled on what lay in the air.

“Home, I was being homeschooled,” not the full truth, not a full lie. I don’t want more questions. I don’t want a discussion into where I was. I don’t think I could survive a conversation about the school I’m really at.

“Nice! That must have been so,” she lets the o in her so drone on for a second, “different! Is it weird having so many teachers?” she hesitates a second, “actually scratch that, what’s your name?”

“Axel.” She’s silent a second and I feel compelled to fill that gap, “it is weird here.”

“Axel is such a cute name! Mine is Kateryna” she doesn’t answer my last statement instead looks at me expectantly.

I have no idea how to respond but to attempt to mirror her mode of interaction, “yours is so cute too!” I try to match her levels of forged enthusiasm but the shock of being in a real conversation with a real human dampens it somewhat.

“Hey what form are you in?”

“Uh?”

“What form are you in?” she repeats seemingly not understanding that I was stalling. This is good. This gives me time.

“Fortitude?” I phrase it like a question, and she laughs.

“Is that from a book or something? I mean like class, who’s your form teacher?”

“I think I saw you in form,” it’s a shot in the dark but it works, her face brightens, “I didn’t see you! I’m sorry I’m usually trying to keep my head down, you know, avoid attention.”

I didn’t but a short nod of my head could be seen as me just acknowledging that she’d spoken.

The brightness spills out of her for a split second, crackling in the air between us before being sucked out of existence again. She doesn’t seem to notice, “you must have English with me next, it’s with Mr Tompson, he’s so” she lets the o drone on again, is this just how humans talk? “Boring but he’s terrible at paying attention so I usually just knit in the back,” she pulls out two large needles with woven wool connected between them. I stare, confused as to how that could be formed by just her and two pointy sticks.

“I know, cool right!” she notices my staring, “come on I need to go to the loo.”

“What?” why am I expected to go with her to the toilets? Do humans watch each other? I don’t want to watch her. Is this some kind of custom where humans watch each other’s backs while defecating to avoid danger. It’d make sense. She seems so weak. I still don’t want to go with her.

“Come on,” she stands, grabbing my hand and dragging me to my feet. I don’t think I should resist. I shouldn’t cause attention to be drawn to me. I feel a seed of dread sprout within me, quickly growing roots in my stomach. I don’t want this but she’s dragging me away from the bench.

We move towards the building. It’s the same as my building. Yet it’s less saturated. Somehow it radiates plainness, sucking at you too, costing you energy to look at the uglier building.

Kateryna seems not to notice this, dragging me through the door, through a crowded seating area and too an overly crowded toilets. There are so many cameras in here. I know cameras. Humans that come to our world are obsessed with using those on us. I can’t appear on one. I can’t afford it getting back to the elders. Kateryna’s hand slips from mine, I turn on my heel and run.

The walls are the same, rooms the same, despite the different decorations I know where I’m going but doors are locked, false walls in my way. I stumble on looking for an empty room. They’re all inhabited by students chatting in groups or angry teachers eating lunch.

Finally, I reach a locked cupboard, I wrench out a clump of hair holding out in front of me and whisper the spell. The lock falls off and the door swings open. The hair dissipates in a puff of smoke, and I dive into the cupboard, yanking the door closed behind me.

I pull the vial given to me out of my pocket, down it and disappear from this world. Safe.