A Welcome, More or Less

The carriage rattled away behind her. She was here. At last. She tightened her grip on her trunk, trying to decide whether she wanted to laugh or yell for the driver to come back.

Voices and footsteps filled the morning air, but Mira could still hear her own heartbeat pounding in her chest. She stood with one hand on her trunk as people hurried past.

Mira looked down. The towering walls of Aethervale wavered in a puddle at her feet. Pale stone rose in the water, window after window, until a boy splashed through and broke the academy into pieces.

"Sorry!"

He was gone before she could answer. Mira shook the water from her skirt and took her first proper look at Aethervale. She had heard her tutors praise its libraries and elven teachers for years. Their descriptions had not prepared her for the sight of it.

Beyond the gates, students crossed a courtyard with books under their arms. A fountain splashed beneath a spreading tree. On the far side stood a residence hall, its open windows framed by flowering vines. Families were carrying luggage through the open doors. The air smelled of wet leaves and something baking.

She crossed the courtyard slowly, resting her trunk beside the fountain. No one here knew how many tutors had given up on her. She could almost believe that would make a difference. When her fingers stopped aching, she picked up the trunk again.

At the residence hall, an elven boy was struggling to lift his trunk over the threshold. Mira started toward him, then hesitated. He hadn't seen her face. If she startled him, he might drop it on his foot.

"Would you like a hand?"

His eyes widened at her horns. He looked at the handle she was offering to take, then nodded.

"Please."

They lifted it over the stone lip. He rubbed his palms, glancing at her horns again.

"Thank you," he managed.

"You're welcome."

His mother came through the doorway, smiling until she noticed Mira. She caught her son's sleeve. "Come along. You can ask one of the staff next time."

Mira went back for her own trunk. The other demonkin at House Drevein could have carried his in one hand. The boy's fingers hurt just as hers did, yet nobody seemed disappointed in him.

Inside, a woman with spectacles on a silver chain handed out keys. Mira joined the queue behind two girls comparing class schedules.

One girl began a question, then noticed Mira's black horns and pink skin. She turned away. Mira lowered her admission letter. The smile she'd practiced in the carriage window hadn't helped.

"Next, please."

"Mira Drevein."

Her father had requested copies of her marks, the woman said. But the academy left that to Mira. She hadn't expected a choice.

She slid over a key. "Seventeen. Upstairs, left at the landing. Supper at six."

"Thank you."

"Mind your tail on the door. It snaps shut behind you."

Mira caught its pointed black tip before it could stray behind her. "That's useful advice."

"I give it to the ones with long coats, too."

On the landing, an open common room smelled of woodsmoke. Two worn chairs faced a fire beneath an old brass sigil. Mira lingered in the doorway. She imagined a winter evening with her feet near the hearth and someone in the other chair. Someone who would be glad she’d stayed.

Room seventeen had a narrow bed, a washstand, and a desk beneath the window. Mira closed the door and stood listening to laughter from the courtyard. Nobody could see her here. She let her tail uncurl and, after a while, began unpacking her books.

Practical Foundations was first on tomorrow's class schedule.

The first exercise in the preparation booklet took three lines to solve. She checked it, found a shorter way, and wrote that underneath. Then she drew a small star beside the answer. Nobody was here to call that childish.

She set her pen on the desk and tried the lifting spell she'd just worked out on paper.

The pen trembled, rolled a little, and stopped.

She tried again. It didn't rise.

She picked it up herself and laid it across her answer.

Perhaps tomorrow's teacher could show her what she was missing.