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I LAY IN MY DORM STARING at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I hadn’t heard from Sig since he took off from the Groove Brew parking lot a little over a week ago. Mary and Alewar had been hospitable to me, telling me about my lance, which only further distressed me. Apparently I’m to be a great warrior for whichever Master I choose, leading armies to great victories of blood and power. Greisen seemed quite interested in how that worked. I had refused to pull my weapon at that point and his mood changed to bored and detached again. He and Collette left shortly thereafter. I was glad for it; I was really starting to not trust them. Well him, Collette, I felt immensely sorry for, he abused her and she thought it some strange sort of affection.
Things were getting tense on campus. The things Mary had to say were too true. The Deviant Class was becoming unstable without a Leader to turn to. The Human class was becoming increasingly more hostile toward us. I could hear girls snicker and talk shit about me in the corridors as I passed. I mean, I can ignore it. Mostly they were jealous little bitches, I’m fucking hot. Five foot ten, a rocking body with some curves to run your hands along, and thanks to the Dragon, awesome hair! But I was also gaining a reputation for fighting. That wasn’t a good thing, not at the college level. Hell, not at the Human level. For the Fey it would have been good, but I wasn’t with the Fey any longer. The dissent was only going to grow, I could feel it, the Deviant Class would only put up with the whispering for so long before they blew up.
The Humans were pushing on to celebrate one of their many stolen festivals, filling the quad with booths and fake foliage. Some were trying to encourage the Deviant Class to participate, perhaps we should have. It would have shown more effort on our part, but as I said, there has been a severe lack of leadership lately. Mary joked that I should take over, that they would follow me. I just laughed and changed the subject.
As I tossed myself over for the umpteenth time, listening to the racket of them all partying outside, I heard a faint knocking. I looked at the clock, it was well past two in the morning. I stumbled out of bed and headed for the door. Hearing the faint thump again, I realized it wasn’t coming from the door, but the living room window.
I stopped staring at the window, something was swinging in front of it. With the curtain pulled I wasn’t sure what it was, and frankly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Whatever it was, it was still kicking and wanted down. I jumped back as the window shattered and the curtain was tangled up in blood and glass.
“Fuck!” I screeched as I heard laughing from below. I side stepped over the large writhing thing to find it had been a large snake that had been partly gutted before being hung from the roof over my window.
“Oops, did the mighty Dragon lose a cousin?” I heard snickering. “Go home, Dragon!”
I put the snake out of its misery, and only caught the briefest glimpse of heads as they piled into a burgundy car as the tires squealed.
These people were sick. I turned to the body of the snake. Why did they have to go and mutilate such a beautiful and defenseless creature? I lifted its body and put it in the sink, rinsing it down and then using my acid to dispose of it completely, hoping the porcelain sink could withstand the burns.
I leaned against the front of the sink and cried. Not for the creature, or myself. I think I cried for mankind. Fear. It was a great motivator, the Human fears what it does not understand. What it does not understand, it wants to destroy. It will claim that to understand a thing it must dissect it, cut it up, learn from the inside out. It’s not true, to learn from a thing is to experience it in its living glory. In its natural untouched, unsullied, uninfluenced world. To come in with anything but one’s self is a disruption and a change to another things world. None of us are as we once were. I had no idea what it was to be a Dragonborn, I was raised by Faeries! They’ve mocked and teased us, but they had no idea that most of us are just as fragile as they are, just as insecure, as frightened of this world. Society has been a cruel mistress, and she has the added bastard son, social media to broadcast all our faults across the world in a breath. We Otherkind have kept to the shadows, even after the integrations. Sure, a few of us have taken to the limelight, but so many more are still hiding out of fear. I sniffled as my mind raced on these thoughts. Mary was right. The Deviant Class needed someone to protect them. Needed someone who was going to hear them, who could represent them to the rest of the student body, that wasn’t going to just disappear. Someone who wasn’t attached to a house that kept them down.
I stood up, the smell of the snake cooking down was making me sorta hungry. I tried to ignore that as I was filled with a resolve at three in the morning. I would start with boarding up the window and then I would pull it together and go see the Dean about becoming a Class Representative in the absence of those who should be.
***
WHAT HAD I DONE? I didn’t plan on inciting a riot. I just wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want people leaving me gutted snakes outside my window, was that too much to ask? I’d gone to the Dean’s office and been sent away, told that it was just a prank, a little freshman hazing, that my window would be fixed, but if I couldn’t pinpoint the culprits there was nothing more they could do. I was furious, so when I saw Mary I ran my mouth. I didn’t know it was going to start her on a tangent. Or that her tangent would become a soapbox performance in the Quad calling for justice! The Deviant Class got so riled up that they trashed the Rugby field just hours before the championship game and the school had to forfeit.
I didn’t want that. I was furious, Human and Otherkind alike suffered from that kind of devastation. The whole school lost out from that fuck up. Dean Baker was going to expel us all, but Mary came to the rescue, she and someone named Leonas Calder. Apparently he was the man who raised Greisen. Seeing him in action, I now understood where the apple landed, right in a tub of slime.
I was all ready to just go back to my classes and pretend nothing else was wrong, but when I came out of that meeting it was apparent that it was not to be. The school was divided. Us and them.