Welcome to Gaia! ::

In that, Joshua was not alone. It had turned out that although getting your school supplies was quite fun really, there was very little you got to do with your crayons on the first day -- especially when you were losing time writing your name on all your books and being shown how to rule them up, and generally being lost in a classroom of people who all seemed to know what they were doing already -- lost in a sea of people who seemed to find the entire thing so automatic that it made you feel like a moron not to fall in line. And even more difficult at lunchtimes when everyone else was friends already, and -- out of forgetfulness or just simply not realising -- made you utterly isolated.

The cafeteria was huge, for one thing, and also had members of the public wandering in and out for coffees as well as the schoolkids -- there were a lot of bigger teenagers who talked loudly and punched each other on the shoulders, and just generally confusion and bustle.

At the other end of his table was a boy who had sat down to wait, a cup of coffee in his hands -- even though he was no older than Joshua -- his wings cloaked over his shoulders, huge clawed hands and huge clawed ungainly feet as he settled himself. He had a shock of blue curly hair tied back in a ponytail, and obviously wasn't human at all -- but so weren't a lot of kids at Liberty.

Their eyes met. The boy hesitated. It was familiar by now: it was just that Joshua had made himself hard to ignore, made it impossible to walk on by, even if the boy had perhaps sat down with the intention of pretending Joshua wasn't there. There was a bit of an unwilling dip of the head, all, hi.

The kid yawned hugely, showing sharp teeth, then closed his mouth again.

"You're in my English class, aren't you?" he said.

"Casca Naborn," said the boy, and waved a languid hand. "I think that it's okay to like some of your teachers, but not all of them: if you like every single one of your teachers you're either too easy pleased or you're someone who is in for a massive disappointment, you get me? I'm not new -- I'm old as the hills, mon cher ami."

He did not look as old as the hills, but he sounded as though he was. He spoke in a bit of a drawl. "So, Josh," he said, and he looked at him as though the answer was hugely important -- "how do you like our grand and gracious school, right?"

The coffee was swigged. The other boy shifted along a few chairs down, so that he was sitting diagonally from Joshua -- not opposite, but a little closer, at least. He did not respond either enthusiastically or in shock-horror that school was only 'okay'; just looked a bit contemplative, one hooked elbow back over his chair. For someone who had wings, bony ridges on his face and general monster features, he also dressed pretty cool.

"Okay," he said. "Which teachers have you had? English, yeah, she's a reliever though. Maths?"

He drummed his fingers on the table. He only had three, and a thumb, ending in wicked claws. "Let's see," he said. "Science. Then Art, last period. Is that on your timetable, huh?"

The gargoyle boy drained his hot drink and set it down. "Art is with Mr. Prosper," he said, not waiting for a confirmation as to whether or not Josh did have art and science next periods. "He's not bad. Science sucks, though. I hate it. If I wanted to mix chemicals in my own time, I'd do it, you know?"

"Like dying slowly, with dates," said Casca dismissively; obviously the other boy was no fan of the subject. "Dates and wars that nobody cared about for a million years, maybe two million years. Seriously. History is dull. Do you like it?"

The question was asked with the same tone of, you like eating vomit? The same amount of horror, edged with a little disdain.

"Oh, that kind of thing," said the gargoyle immediately, who came from a similar background. "My mum talks about magical history. I, mon cher, am uninterested. She makes me go do magical cultural stuff all the time."

But it wasn't entirely okay to trash your mother to someone you'd just met; so Casca said, a bit casually, "She's cool though. So do you know anyone here?"

"Kaimi," he said, and seized on that, a bit relievedly; if they had a person in common it meant that Joshua probably was not that uncool. "I know Kaimi. Kaiminelli. She's cute. Maddy -- she's in one of my classes; don't really know her; Nataya -- seen her around. But Kaimi, I know Kaimi. You don't know anyone else?"

He'd passed some kind of test; obviously not with flying colours, but Cascati shrugged expressively. "That's how it goes."