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 Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:08 pm
Yaviss glared at the clock, as if a dirty look was all that it required to move time forward. It never worked, and it would probably only get him into trouble, but it was better than concentrating on whatever it was that the teacher was saying. It wasn’t that Yaviss didn’t like school, it was more that…well, it was more that he just didn’t care. On a fundamental level, Yaviss didn’t really care about the future or what he got out of it, so long as he could visit his mother for the holidays. School was just busywork until he could get a job. Some stuff would be useful—life skills, obviously, and some of the electives, but honestly? School seemed like a waste of time most of the time.
Okay, now the teacher was telling them to pair off into groups to work together on…something. Interviewing each other, apparently. Some sort of exercise in getting to see things from other people’s point of view. Yaviss hid the face he was making in his arms. He didn’t want to understand people. He wanted to be left alone. But it seemed he was never going to get the peace he so desperately longed for. The situation was totally unsalvageable. The teacher was even now asking people who didn’t yet have a partner to raise their hands. Reluctantly, Yaviss stuck his hand up in the air. It was a half-hearted hand raise, one that didn’t want to be noticed, but unfortunately, the teacher noticed it nonetheless. “Yaviss, you work with Anchriesel.”
Yaviss glanced at the person indicated. Anchriesel was an Imp that looked as bored as he was. Great. This was going just perfect.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:09 pm
 Anchriesel had found it sort of hard to pay attention in class since the spring prom when he had so heartlessly dumped Ganymede. He wasn’t sure why it was that he was upset—sure, it was a cruel thing he’d done, and that was something to be upset about, but it wasn’t something to be moping about four months later. It seemed he couldn’t get that one moment out of his head. He groaned internally as the memory of Ganymede’s face rose once again in his mind. He’d been cold. He’d been calculating. He’d been downright cruel. And sure, Ganymede was a bully, someone who didn’t understand the proper principles of leaving people alone, someone who pushed his luck with people with no luck to give…well, when he put it like that, it seemed like Chries had made a decisive push for decency, avenging all of Gany’s victims. And yet, he still felt bad about it. He couldn’t understand why.
He was caught by surprise, then, when he heard the teacher calling people for groups. Huh? What had they been talking about? He looked up at the board. Ah. Empathy. That thing that he so obviously lacked. Ugh. They were supposed to write a paragraph about a classmate from the classmate’s point of view, for which they needed partners. Sadly, this would probably not be an assignment he could do on his own. Unless he could convince the teacher to let him write from the perspective of, say, his roommate, or maybe Ganymede…? He didn’t even need to interview Ganymede to know how the Geist was feeling.
No, the teacher was calling on them now to find out who didn’t have a partner, and Anchriesel found himself partnered to a Goblin whose name he hadn’t known until now. He’d just sort of labeled Yaviss as “that grumpy Goblin in the corner” and left it at that. Now Chries got up, gathered his notebook and pens, and moved to Yaviss’s desk to sit down.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:10 pm
Wow, okay, excuse you, but this is my personal space, you fluffy heathen? Yaviss didn’t say a word. He pulled his stuff to one side so that Anchriesel could set his stuff down. He flipped his notebook open to a fresh page and looked up at the board as if seeking divine salvation. It was not forthcoming. Kesedriax, this was going to hurt. He straightened his throat and tapped his pencil against the page. Okay, now what? The room was loud with other students chatting. He couldn’t pick out any sentences, although occasionally a word would float to the surface, usually “you” or “I.” Typical. Well, actually, it was to be expected, given the circumstances and given the subject they were discussing. Didn’t mean it didn’t still come off as a little conceited.
Now the rhythm of Yaviss’s pencil against the page was getting faster and faster and more and more furious. He didn’t want to say anything, but it was becoming increasingly clear that neither did his partner. The Imp didn’t seem prepared to say anything at all, which was…ugh. It meant that Yaviss might have to go first. Might. There was still a chance he wouldn’t have to say anything at all. The minutes stretched by (or at least, they felt like minutes) as neither of them spoke. Yaviss’s eyes were flitting around the classroom, moving from face to clock to face to whiteboard and back to the clock again. The one thing he refused to look at was Anchriesel.
He didn’t want to do this assignment. This was a stupid assignment dreamed up by the stupid kind of person who expected a Goblin to pour their heart out to a, well, quite frankly, a non-Goblin. It was absurd.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:13 pm
Yaviss started off their discussion with a scowl, which served to do two things. First, it told Anchriesel that he was not going to get very many places with this person. Second, it strengthened his resolve. It made him go from self-pity and self-loathing to righteous contempt in about the speed of light. It was amazing, and a little exhilarating. Oh, Anchriesel was going to pay for this emotionally in a few minutes, but he had time. He had time to bask in the antipathy he felt towards this stranger, breathe in the scent of a bad attitude and revel in not feeling like the biggest heel in this conversation. Oh, it was breathtaking. And it was soothing, like a warm bath or a massage, or a big, gooey fudge cake covered in buttercream frosting. Anchriesel took the begrudged seat across from Yaviss, opened his own notebook as well and uncapped his pen. He set the pen down on the page, arranged his paw over it, and waited.
He just waited. He didn’t say a word. Hey, buddy, if you’re going to be rude to me, then I’m going to force you to make the first move. Won’t be my fault if you don’t start. If the teacher comes along to glare at us and ask us why we aren’t starting, if they ask me to start the conversation, it won’t bother me. But I know just by looking at you, by that look you gave me when we first met, that it will sear you to the core if she orders you to start our conversation.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:13 pm
Their staring contest ended when the teacher snuck up behind Yaviss and straightened their throat. “Yaviss,” the teacher said in a warning voice. Yaviss jumped, then reluctantly looked at the page. The movement allowed his hair to fall over his face and hide the scowl. Sod! He’d been hoping he could get away with skipping this assignment. But it seemed that his recalcitrance had been noticed and he was now going to have to pay for it. Sod it all.
He coughed, trying to think of what to say. He busied himself writing “Anchriesel Interview: What It’s Like to be You” on the top line of the paper. There was a tapping sound from behind him. He looked down. The teacher was tapping their feet against the floor. Okay, no chance he could continue procrastinating now, then. “Anchriesel,” he said softly, to get things started. “How long have you lived at Asphodel Academy?” It was a good start. Not so much because he was interested in what the answer was so much as he knew that the teacher would like that question. It was a question that sounded smart without actually being clever. If pressed, he could give some excuse saying that one’s time at the academy and family background could give a lot of insight into a person, and that was true. It was absolutely true that you could learn a lot about a person by knowing their family history. It was also true that anyone who tried that sort of knob on Yaviss was going to get a scratch in the face. Nosy people made Yaviss’s tail twitch angrily.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:15 pm
The teacher did indeed arrive eventually, and of course when they came by it was Yaviss they picked on to start things off. Chries’s face didn’t move, but inside he felt a squirm of satisfaction as Yaviss leaned over his paper. He was obscuring his face with his hair. Obviously, there was some sort of fascinating expression going on there. Goblins were weird. A lot of them acted like this, if they didn’t act totally flamboyant. What was even wrong with that race, he guessed he would never know. He didn’t dare say that out loud, though. He frankly did not care why one group of people tended to act weird unless they or their weirdness was directly related to him. If he said it out loud, the teacher would demand that he ask Yaviss about it, and he really, really didn’t want to.
Okay, the shame was starting to come back, and a bit of the anxiety. He fought it off. Okay, Chries, just pay attention to this conversation. Get through this assignment, get through this class, and move on. But just to spite the Goblin one last time, Chries wrote down “how long have you lived at the Academy” on his piece of paper. Every question Yaviss asked him, he would ask Yaviss. They would keep this completely even and fair. “I’ve lived at the Academy my entire life,” he said. “I was awakened from the cache, so my family is probably long dead. This is my home.”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:16 pm
Yaviss noted the Imp writing down the question he’d asked Chries, but he also noticed the teacher nodding in approval. Score! Now all he had to do to get them to buzz off and leave Yaviss alone was to ask another question that the teacher thought was “hard-hitting.” Then he would be free to slack off once again. He just had to get through some questions, and then he’d be free. So…what should he ask now?
He wrote down the question he’d asked Chries, along with the answer: always lived at the Academy. Family dead. Doesn’t seem to care at all. Says this is his home. He left a long space after that. He had more he wanted to add onto that, namely “he’s obviously a sick sot who doesn’t know how good it is away from here, what a Demon’s goon he is,” but he didn’t dare write it while the teacher was looming over his shoulder. He had to play it safe for now. “Okay, then,” he said quietly. What could he ask next? Hm… An idea came to mind, but he wasn’t sure if the teacher would approve. Okay, he had to think of something else to say. But what could he ask? He didn’t want to ask about what it was like to be an Imp (they had assignments like that at least once a year) or what his hobbies were (those were little kid questions to ask). He wanted to ask something substantive enough for the teacher to decide that he could continue unsupervised, but mild enough that they didn’t raise a fuss.
He needn’t have worried. The teacher moved on and Yaviss relaxed. Now he brought out his question: “What have you done that you’re most ashamed of?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:17 pm
Anchriesel noticed that what Yaviss wrote seemed a bit longer than what Chries had said. Okay, then, Yaviss was sassing him. Two could play at that game. So long as the teacher was around, their war wouldn’t turn drastic, but he could at least defend himself and land some harsh emotional blows in the next few minutes. Or so he thought.
The teacher moved on and the end of his tail twitched gently. Without the teacher around, there was a possibility that his classmate could turn savage. And turn savage the Goblin did indeed. What have I done that I’m most ashamed of? All of the bad emotions, the shame, the self-loathing, the wishing he could take back actions, the anxiety, all of it came flooding back in a tidal wave of discomfort, threatening to drown him or else to sweep him away. He shuddered inside as he tried to find some sort of handhold, something he could hold onto to prevent himself from being swept away in the tide of bitterness. Spite. Ah, yes, the most trusted of holdfasts. This he could clutch until the end of time, something to help him cling tight to in the storm. He could spite him.
That little Goblin was trolling him. He was deliberately trying to upset him! And the way to deal with trolls was to not react. Chries was good at not reacting. In the two seconds since Yaviss had asked his question, Chries had stiffened, but made no other movement or change of expression. His face was still mild. “I dated a guy recently just so that I could dump him and break his heart,” he said flatly. “I wanted him to know what it felt like to be hated. My turn, I think. How long have you lived at the Academy,” he asked. He needed another question—he refused to use Yaviss’s question on him. “And why can’t you go home?” he added in the same breath.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:18 pm
Yaviss was disappointed to see that the Imp did not react. Sure, he went a little tense, but he didn’t get angry, or cry out, or look ashamed or anything. It was totally pointless. Now what would he do? Well, he supposed, he’d have to write down Chries’s answer. It was a very simple one, and yet… Against his will, Yaviss found himself curious about the situation. What had the other guy done to merit such a cruel punishment? Was it anyone Yaviss knew? Did Chries feel hated by the guy before or after? It was a weird thing to add to the end of a sentence, “I wanted him to know what it felt like to be hated,” and in Yaviss’s experience, weird was just another word for significant. Nothing weird was ever incidental. It was always a sign of something important or fundamental to the question.
Okay, write down the question, and then the answer given. Catfished a guy out of spite. Wanted him to feel hated. But before he could ask questions to elaborate, Chries launched back with a question that felt like a slap to the face.
Yaviss felt his face—and his entire body—freeze into one solid lump as the question he never wanted to hear was asked. He would rather someone have asked him about his…intimate habits than ask him that question. “I’ve lived at the Academy for three years,” he said quietly. For the first time in their acquaintanceship, he looked his partner in the eye. “And I…” He sighed. The words kept sticking in his throat. We do not tell. We do not share. Not with outsiders. Never again. “I can’t go home again,” he said, shoving each word out, “because there’s no place for me back home. Not now, maybe not ever.” It was both a truth and a dishonesty, telling all while revealing nothing.
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:20 pm
Anchriesel frowned. It wasn’t much of an answer. It wasn’t enough to write something with. He did write down the answers to his questions, though, because he needed to remember them, even while they were easy to remember. Of course, everything was easy to remember for Chries. I gave him a flitterrat, because I know he loves flitterrats. I love flitterrats too. That’s something we have in common. He pushed Ganymede out of his mind and tried to concentrate on Yaviss. He needed to know more to write his paper, and, he supposed, Yaviss needed the same thing. It was time to get down off his high horse and strike a bargain with the Goblin.
He leaned forward and began to speak as quietly as Yaviss was. “I’m not being honest with you. And you’re not being honest with me. That’s okay. We don’t have to be honest with each other. We just have to talk to each other enough to write a stupid paper about what the other person’s like and how they view the world. So tell you what—I’ll tell you enough of the truth for you to write your paper if you tell me enough of the truth for me to write mine. Then we can walk out of this classroom and never have to talk to each other ever again.” He hesitated. “I mean, the teacher might still force us to work together as a group. But I’m going to suggest a covenant between us. We’ll work together, but we will not be friends. We’ll get along with each other on group projects so that we can finish our work as soon as possible and never have to talk to each other outside of class. Deal?”
To his surprise—and delight—Yaviss agreed. Chries smiled. “Okay. I’ll go first, then. So. When I was a freshling…there was this guy. His name was—no, never mind, I won’t tell you his name. But he was a real—”
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Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2016 9:22 pm
They got their papers back the next day, graded. And to their surprise, everyone got two pieces of paper, stapled together. One was the paper they’d turned in, and the other was their partner’s page. The idea, the teacher explained, was so that everyone could see what the other person had written about them. My partner was Anchriesel. Anchriesel is a cache child and has lived at the Academy his entire life. While he lived in the freshling dorms, he roomed with a boy who was very rude to everyone and bullied people. Chries says that this boy would ask to be left alone, then torment you if you didn’t leave him alone. He says that the boy’s cruelty and hypocrisy upset him so that he carried a grudge against him. Last year, he started dating this boy with the intent of dumping him to make him feel bad and prove a point. Anchriesel is very ashamed of what he did.
I think Anchriesel is an okay guy. He’s a little spiteful and rough around the edges, but he wants to be a good person. The problem is that he keeps letting his spite get away with him. He’s lived in the microcosm of this school for so long that he can’t get away from anyone off-campus, so it’s sort of internalizing his emotions like a pressure-cooker until it comes out in a steam explosion of being a jerk. I get the impression he’d be less of a jerk if he had a place to wind down.Anchriesel had never thought of himself that way before. He filed the paper away in his desk for future reference.
My partner, Yaviss, is from Above. He has only lived in Below for three years, all of them at the Academy. He is terribly homesick, although he did not admit to being so when I talked to him.
Yaviss is very independent, at least partially because he cannot return to his home—at least, not for a while. He said he could not give me all of the details, but would not explain why. This much was about all I was able to glean from our interview:
Goblin society has rules. One of them has to do with honor, I think? Yaviss said he’s embarrassed his mother and neighbors on many occasions. He said this like it was a very big deal, so I think what’s happened is that communities have a shared pool of honor that each individual can chip away at with a bad attitude. Yaviss has chipped away so much of his community’s and family’s honor that his family is threatening to disown him if he embarrasses them any more. He didn’t come to Below of his own volition. He’s been sent here as punishment. As such, Below feels like a prison to him, hence his acting out on the world.It couldn’t be more inaccurate. But in its inaccuracy…it was accurate. Yaviss stared at the page and reread it five more times before slipping it quietly in his notebook. He hid it in a safe place back in the dorm, taking it out occasionally to look at it and reread it again and again.
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