I looked up at the absolute unit of a unicorn, suddenly thinking that the extra-wide and tall passageways were a little on the small side.

Some questioning noises came from the inside, and a delicate elvenoid “pushed” aside the unicorn. She looked frail and pale, like a single snowflake drifting in the breeze. Her purple eyes were clouded with the characteristic look of a Mist classer. Interestingly, she wasn’t wearing the robes that the students of the School normally wore, and it seemed like the dress code was more relaxed in the private living areas.

Thank goodness.

She shot off a series of questions to us, and gods I needed to learn the language as soon as humanly possible.

Iona answered, pointing to her piece of paper that said where our lodging was. The woman furiously grabbed the paper, then sagged and groaned.

That was at least somewhat obvious, language barrier or not. She was unhappy to have new roommates, and I honestly sympathized. Who wanted to have more people in their living space?

She gestured us in, shouted something deeper into the apartment, and I got a look at my living space for the next few years.

There was a moderately sized space right in front of the entrance, with two more doors immediately facing the entrance. The unicorn turned around in the space, used his horn to open one of the doors, and walked in, kicking the door shut with a hoof. There was a deep scratch on the door where he’d clearly done this hundreds of times before, and it was obviously his room.

To my right was a cozy little living room, a couple of plush sofas and chairs around a small coffee table. To my left was a hallway, with a few more doors along on either side, and two more doors at the very end.

I was starting to have hope that I’d get my own room, and I wouldn’t need to share it with anybody. I’d done enough of that growing up.

Delicate-girl yelled down the hallway, and only one other door opened up. An elf emerged, deer antlers on her head and her eyes as deep as the stars.

Another Celestial classer! Yay! I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the sheer arrogance inherent to all the elves I’d met so far though.

Some conversation I couldn’t follow and gesturing later, and we were all sitting down in the living room, Auri on my head and Fenrir prowling over the back of the sofas, sniffing and investigating every little nook and cranny.

I felt totally left out of the conversation, Iona spending most of her time quickly talking with the other two. I didn’t blame her one bit, she’d spent far too many hours already translating for me. I could let her have some time catching up on her new arrangements, and explaining everything to our hopefully-two new roommates.

The elf was fairly quiet, and Iona spent most of her time talking with the frail-looking one. When she directly addressed the elf though, her words were strange. They were like deep whinnies of a horse, rumbling with magical power and echoing in utterly bizarre ways. The elf jumped about a foot in the air, and yelled something at Iona. In a more normal language. I was starting to get the hang of some of the intonations, and I thought it might be High Elvish.

She started stomping around in a circle while Iona frantically explained.

“Brrrpt?” Auri asked me, getting our own little side conversation going.

“I have no idea, but I wish I had popcorn.”

The whole thing was quite dramatic, like watching a foreign movie. Obviously, something big was going down, but I had no idea what. Still entertaining as heck.

“Brrpt BRrrrpppt?”

“Heat up corn basically.”

“Brrpt?”

“No idea, although if you can find some, that’d be great. Ooooh, that latest exchange must’ve hurt!” I exclaimed as the elf went pale and stormed off down the hall, only to come storming back a moment later.

Fragile-girl sat down next to me, watching the exchange like a volleyball match.

“Skye.” She offered me a hand, still watching what was going on.

“Elaine.” I shook her hand.

She tilted her head, and rapidly asked me something. I knuckled my forehead.

“Elaine. Elaine.” I pointed at myself twice, then threw up my hands in exasperation. That did seem to get the message through though, and Skye laughed.

Finally Iona sat down with a huff, and the elf also did. Nobody looked particularly happy, but I seemed to be mostly out of it. I had a sneaking suspicion that someone else’s secrets had gotten outed by Iona’s divine blessing of languages.

“Sorry about that Elaine. I know you don’t know the languages here, and I know that can be super isolating. It wasn’t particularly nice to exclude you, but we needed to have a quick chat, and I figured I could catch you up after.”

“It’s totally fine. You’re already doing so much for me, I can’t impose and have you follow me around, translating everything everyone else says.”

“Thanks for understanding.”

“Brrrpt?” Auri wanted to know what was going on, and I was honestly looking for answers as well.

“Real quick. How much do you want to tell our roommates?”

I hesitated.

“Give them the basics? I’d like to tell them my full story when I can.”

Iona nodded.

“Yeah sure, I can do that.”

Iona thought about it for a moment.

“Right, ok. First thing to know is this set of rooms are, according to Reinhard, one of the special sets of rooms. They’re not publicly well known or advertised, but the more, ah, special members of the School get placed here.”

I tilted my head in confusion, and Iona immediately picked up on it.

“Take Auri. She’s the best little bird ever, super colorful and always around, right?”

“BRRRPT!” Auri flew in manic circles around Iona, pleased with the compliment.

“Grrr?” Fenrir growled.

“You’re not a bird, you’re a wyvern, and nothing can compare.”

Fenrir looked mollified by that.

“Do you think you could keep her a secret from people you’re living with for years?”

I didn’t even need to think about that. I shook my head.

“No way.”

Left unsaid was my personal ability to grant Immortality.

“Right. Everyone here’s got similar interesting stories. The thinking is, when everyone’s on the interesting side, we know what it’s like. We know not to bother each other or freak out over Auri being a phoenix, your unique conditions, Fenrir being a frost wyvern, my divine blessings, Skye being an ex-princess, her unicorn companion Varuna, or Reinhard being a kirin.”

I was looking at Reinhard when it clicked.

A kirin. A legendary creature, just a half-step away from being a dragon, if not superior to them. How was she an elf though? Was there some sort of transformation skill at play? Was there-

Don’t freak out.

“Brrrpt!” Auri pecked me on the head, snapping me out of my daze.

Right. Speaking of legendary creatures practically on par with dragons, I’d gotten a little too used to my own little pyro. Figuring I’d make whatever greetings I could, I stood up and offered a hand to Reinhard.

“Hi! I’m Elaine! It’s nice to meet you.” I figured I’d start off on a good foot.

Reinhard looked at me, and rattled off a question to Iona, who rattled something else back. She shook my hand.

A promising start.

“She was wondering if you were introducing your class, and what part of that was your name.” Iona explained.

I chuckled.

“Of all the bad luck.” I griped at my name being the word for ‘healer’ again. On the bottom of my to-do list was to find out how that had happened.

“Elaine, this is Skye. She’s a Yuki-Onna, sometimes known as a snow girl.” Iona rapidly asked Skye a few questions. “She’ll tell you her full story once she can hear yours.”

I didn’t need the additional motivation to learn how to speak some of the languages here. My frustration levels were insane.

“Brrpt BRPT!” Auri was flying around Skye and Reinhard, saying hi in her own way. Reinhard lifted her hand up, letting the little bird land on her hand. I started forward, getting ready to heal her burns, but they never happened.

Kirins were about as bullshit as elves were. Even more so if they could transform themselves into one.

Iona had a few more quick words with everyone, then clapped her hands.

“Ok! Why don’t we all get dinner together, to celebrate meeting, becoming roommates, and figuring out where to go from here? My treat.”

Free food? Free food.

She repeated her question for the other members of the group, and with affirmations all around, we all got changed into robes and went to get food.

Food was tasty, and with Iona translating into High Elvish for the other two, we managed to have a conversation. I’d also gotten three levels in [Learning Languages], and had even managed a few short phrases here and there during the discussion, combining words I’d heard and learned earlier into short sentences. It wasn’t much, but the other three seemed to be warming to me at least, and appreciated the effort.

We also went over a few rules for living together, a code of conduct so that we could tolerate each other.

Rooms were sacred. We could knock on each other’s doors of course, but we had to get permission to enter.

The School had its own island time that it worked off of. From the 9th to the 12th block were the “night” blocks, and the 1st to the 8th block were the “day” blocks. I interpreted that to mean each block was roughly two hours. Easy enough. Classes only occurred during the “day” blocks, and I was able to reframe Yugure’s instructions to mean that practice was during the first block of the day. The sun could be high up in the sky during the 11th block, and the moons could be out during the 6th block. Didn’t matter, the island operated on its own schedule.

Our suite agreed that the 10th to the 1st block were quiet hours. It gave us a bit of time after classes to decompress, and it encouraged us to be quiet in the morning for anyone who wanted to sleep in, or had a slow start to the day.

We were all responsible for our own stuff, and the dirty looks Reinhard shot Skye implied that wasn’t as obviously a given as I thought it should be.

The language of the suite was High Elvish, and Reinhard and Sky were hoping that we’d be alright with that. Iona spoke every language fluently, and High Elvish was on my to-learn list anyways, so I had no issues with that either.

We also agreed on incredibly generic things like “look out for each other”, “be respectful of each other”, “don’t occupy the bathroom forever”, and “don’t go blabbing about each other and the suite to everyone”, but that was so vague as to be unenforceable.

Some of my old Ranger Academy lessons in rules, laws, and enforcement were coming in handy. I’d tried to protest the poorly-framed and practically unenforceable rules, but got such skeptical looks from everyone - Auri included - that I surrendered the issue and shut up.

Probably made me look bad, bah. I was totally right though, and I’d try not to be too smug when the rules blew up in our faces.

Iona buying food was so nice though.

Tasty, tasty food.

We made it back to the suite, and needed to pick rooms.

Fenrir made a beeline for the second door across from the main doorway, headbutting his way in.

“Is that your room?” I asked Iona. She shook her head.

“Fenrir’s own room.” She explained. “Frost wyverns get big. Like, he’s going to make Varuna look tiny when he’s fully grown, and I’m honestly not sure if this place will be big enough for him by the time I graduate.”

“BRrrpt! BRPT!” Auri hovered in front of me, demanding that we share the same room.

“Ok, ok! I never thought otherwise.” I told my little darling.

“Brrpt.” Auri perched herself on my head, glad I knew the pecking order.

“Reinhard’s got the far room, Skye’s in the room closest to Varuna, do you have a preference?” Iona asked me.

Three middle rooms.

“Not at all. Well, cancel that. I’d like one of the rooms next to me to be empty. Don’t sandwich me in!”

Iona shrugged, and grabbed one of the doors.

“Suits me.” She said as she vanished into one of the rooms.

I grabbed a room, opening the door to see my living arrangements for the next few years.

To call them spartan would be understating things a bit. The room was tiny. A desk and chair against one wall, and a mattress on a small frame on the other wall. The door didn’t quite open all the way, the end of the bed stopping it from swinging all the way open, and it was a good thing I was skinny, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sit in the chair with the bed being where it was.

I had a window, which was nice, and it was frosted in a way that didn’t let people peek inside. A good thing, considering we were on the ground floor.

I peeked around, finding a flat chest under the bed. At least I had some reasonable storage! I put my old clothes in it and my admission paperwork.

It was sadly empty, even with how small the chest was. However, it was nice that I had it. I’d see about getting my gear back from Artemis, and storing it.

Although… I didn’t need it right now, and it might save Artemis’s life. I’d probably leave it for her.

“Brrpt brpt?” Auri asked as she flew around the room a bit.

“I’m not sure. Maybe on the desk?”

Auri landed on the desk, and I eyed it, half wondering if it was going to go up in flames, and how badly that’d go. Fortunately, it seemed to be fireproof - or Auri was restraining herself.

“Brrpt…” She sadly cheeped, and I saw a single crystal tear roll out of her eye.

I felt a lump in my throat that wouldn’t go away. I picked Auri up, and delicately hugged her.

“I know, I know…” I comforted her even as I tried to stop my own tears.

This room was a far, far step down from what I’d come from. I used to have practically half a wing all to myself. A room just for baths, a luxurious bed I could sink into. A whole sphere of Arcanite for Auri to look at herself in.

A home filled with loving family. Friends.

Now I had a tiny rectangle. Auri had a wooden surface to sleep on, forget a nest.

I didn’t even have sheets.

I heard a knock on the door.

“Elaine? Are you ok in there?”

I opened my mouth, wanting to answer no. Wanting Iona to come in and wrap her arms around me, to tell me that everything would be ok.

But no.

I’d get attached. We’d become friends. The adventures we could have, the stories we could tell. Oh, the imagination boggled.

She’d die, like everyone else, and I’d have another person ripped away from me. Another name to carve on my own personal Indomitable Wall.

After a few moments, I heard her move away, respecting my boundaries and privacy.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.