Rising Shards

The rest of lunch was not fruitful for my mission. Neither was the class after, which was gym. At lunch I spent too long daydreaming and reading my recent diary entries, and gym class was a workout session, which meant we listened to loud music from the pop radio station on full blast as we ran around and did jumping jacks and stuff, which meant I couldn’t talk to anyone easily. But void studies class could be my next best chance to investigate the mysterious Zeta Faleur. Especially when the teacher, Caya (my aunt, I guess?) put us into groups for a worksheet. I normally would have been mad that I wasn’t put in a group with Zeta, but today was an intel gathering day, so this was perfect.

My group consisted of a green haired girl named Iris, her apparent close friend Maia, a tall cat Kanibari girl, a short haired girl named Kit, who was more interested in trying to do wheelies on her wheelchair than the assignment, and Tay, who kept looking around at the other groups and pushing her square glasses up as she laughed and muttered to herself.

I didn't know any of them very well, so I thought back my early diary pages I was rereading during lunch. For the first day of class, I tried to write my early impressions of my classmates. For my group:

 

Green hair girl: Didn’t get her name but she’s chatty.

Cat Kanibari girl: Green hair girl’s friend. Didn’t get her name either. Very tall.

Kit: Didn’t get a chance to talk to her yet. Her notebook has some space robot movie on it which looks kind of cool.

Tay: I said hello to her and she started talking about the observations for her societal grouping studies beginning or something which kind of creeped me out.

 

Zeta’s group had Kalei, Aira, Laenie, and Lillia in it. My day one diary thoughts on them:

Kalei: Kalei’s cool. She’s mean but in a funny way? She’s really witty. In addition to the aforementioned athleticness athleticism which really helped us out when we had to fight a void monster made of tires and pizza boxes I think? And the cube. 

Aira: Can throw up on command, which saved the day to help us escape the cube but also very gross. So she’s immediately loyal but gross. I’m making friends all over the place!

Laenie: Very timid and sweet. Aira’s bestie apparently. So if I’m friends with Aira we can lump her in too.

Lillia: Ice princess. But her power is fire breath. But she’s so icy. Ice-fire princess?

Zeta: She's been upgraded to friendly to really awesome. We talked today after the whole cube thing after Berin revealed that I was his (technical) daughter in front of everyone which was very embarrassing. But I sat with Zeta under a tree in our void practice node and chatted about family and she made me feel a lot better. She lives with just her sister. I wonder what her sister is like. Zeta spaced out a bit during class a few times today, like she was thinking about something. Maybe all this is overwhelming for her, too. I’m glad she’s my friend already, though. She also hugged me, and I don’t think I’ve ever had any friend that hugged me before.

 

Alright, that’s enough diary entries. Back at my table, I decided that the folks with me didn’t seem like too potentially hostile a group, so I deduced that they would be good to continue my Zeta investigation.

“Hey, so,” I started off on a confident note. I pointed over to Zeta as subtly as I could. “Do you know her?”

“Why, what’s up?” Kit asked. “Did she do something shady or something?”

“She looks innocent enough,” Iris said. “But it’s always the ones that look innocent that you gotta watch out for.”

“No, it’s not that she’s doing something shady,” I said. “I’m just…kinda curious about her is all.” My cheeks started to warm up. Everyone stared at me like I just gargled expired milk. Why did I think this was a good idea again?

“Aren’t you her roommate? Shouldn’t we be asking you about her?” Tay asked.

“Uh…yeah, I guess so…” I said.

“I thought you two were friends before school, you have that vibe.” Iris said. “Like me and Maia!”

Zeta and I’s friendship getting compared to two seemingly really good longtime friends brought a gushy feeling that felt totally alien to me.

“Heh…well…” I said. “I guess I was just wondering if…you knew things I didn’t.”

“Like what?” Maia asked.

“Oh, I do have something about her,” Kit said.

“Yeah? What is it?” I asked, a lot more eagerly than I intended.

“Alright, get this,” Kit said. “You have to be real careful approaching her, like she’s a scared little cat. She flinches so easily. I made her flinch just saying hi and felt so bad.”

“Oh my god, I did too!” Iris said. “Shall we dub her…” She raised her eyebrows. “’The Flincher’?”

“No!” I said, a lot more defensively than I intended.

“Huh? Why not?” Iris asked.

“Because it’s a crap nickname.” Maia said.

“Zeta The Flincher Faleur.” Kit said dramatically.

“Well, I haven’t gathered much info on ‘the Flincher,’” Tay said, physically doing the quotation marks dealie. “She’s not one of the big movers or big shakers of the growing factions among our classes.”

“The growing…what?” Iris asked.

Tay pushed her glasses up, grinning. “Oh, green haired one, I’m about to blow your mind…” She got out a notebook that had a bunch of names in circles and arrows scribbled all around it. “While there are obviously cliques and factions in place from the upper classmen, there hasn’t been a lot of action yet in our grade. It's understandable. We just got here after all.”

“Um…” Iris said.

“I think we could stop here and get it.” Maia said.

Tay continued without acknowledging them. “In our sector of first years, there are four main classes that I've dubbed A, B, C, and D. But there's some overlap, so the letters are a bit of a misnomer. Kit and I are AB. But you three are BA. There are others that are BC, CB, DC, and so on. Are you following me?" 

"No," Iris said. "Maybe slow down a little?" 

"Or stop completely?" Maia suggested.

"Completely being the important word there." Iris said.

"Ovie Chirhart seems to be a big personality," Tay said. "Perhaps the big personality of the BA group. I think if any formal clique arrives soon it’s gonna be around her. She just has that vibe. And she’s rich, and she has friends and followers already. The snowball’s a-rollin downhill for that one.”

“I don’t want to sound rude, but you’re kind of a lot, Tay.” Kit said.

We weren’t even talking about Zeta anymore, so I got really bored and ended up doing the group work on my own. With Zeta’s group still working, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself with the free time after I finished. I scanned the room.

A rare opportunity offered in this class as void studies was one of the few where we had some boys from Falling Shards there. From what Berin told me there was some overflow and weird scheduling, and some kind of mandate to not keep the sibling schools too separate. I wondered where the boys' classes fell in Tay's ABCD class grouping, but figured that would be a huge waste of time to fret about.

I decided on a table of boys where most were on their phones, not looking up at all. Two were up to something else. One of the boys, who I dubbed Sandwich due to the hoodie he had on being covered in a pattern of sandwiches, was testing his biting power or something as he clamped his teeth down on the edge of the table. He had his body in a plank like position as his friend, who I dubbed Not-Sandwich, slowly raised him by his legs.

“You good?” Not-Sandwich said as he lifted Sandwich more and more. I was impressed with Sandwich’s jaw strength as well as entranced by whatever it was that occurred before me.

“Mhhm.” Sandwich said.

“Alright, ready for step two?” Not-Sandwich asked.

Sandwich gave a thumbs up. Still holding on to Sandwich’s legs, Not-Sandwich reached into his pocket and blasted a gross smelling body spray in the general vicinity of Sandwich’s head. He strained, but the odor was too much (he probably got some in his mouth too) and Sandwich fell over, coughing on the ground.

“Oh, did you need something?” Not-Sandwich asked, casually dropping Sandwich’s legs after noticing my observing presence.

“Er…sorry for catching you in the middle of something there.” I said.

“Nah, you caught us at a good time.” Not-Sandwich said.

“Yeah, I need a break.” Sandwich said, not getting up off the ground.

“Right, so I was wondering…” I asked about Zeta slightly more smoothly than I did to Kit and Tay, and managed to subtly point to her without her noticing.

“If you’re trying to set her up with us, you’re outta luck, girlie.” Not-Sandwich said. “I dunno if you know the stories about these schools, but you ain’t gonna find a lotta boys into any of the girls, if you catch my drift.”

“Gay boy school!” Sandwich said, rising to his feet. “Up top!” They high fived.

“What about people who aren’t boys or girls?” I asked.

Zeta told Kalei and I shortly after we became roommates that she’s transgender. I knew a bit about transness from Cani studies at Tesata, learning about shapeshifting and such, but nothing in great detail. I did have a kick for a week or so post Tesata of reading a bunch of Cani science magazines in a self-induced crash course in learning about the modern world that Tesata staff did not want us learning that had an article about the pills and treatments and stuff trans Cani can have nowadays. But after meeting Zeta, I had another research session that taught me a lot about gender in general.

“Hmm, fair.” Sandwich said.

“Do I have to rescind my up top?” Not-Sandwich said.

“No, no, lemme work this out,” Sandwich strummed his chin as he pondered. “While it’s probably quickest to say easy catchphrases like ‘gay boy school’ for Falling Shards, it can be reductive and can potentially leave out those who fall outside of the gender binary. In my opinion, you just gotta make it clear that even when you say something that all of us are in it. Make sure all your siblings in the gay are included, you know?”

“Yeah!” I said.

I didn’t really gain any info about Zeta from that conversation, but it was a pleasant one overall; despite whatever their table biting test was there, Sandwich and Not-Sandwich seemed very wise.

During our class in the void, I was back with Zeta, and put what I had learned so far in my investigation to the test, making sure to approach her cautiously to not make her flinch.