Welcome to Gaia! ::

Thorn trawled through the library bookshelves, armed with a pile of history books he wasn’t interested in, hunting for something actually worth reading. He meandered through the aisles, occasionally tugging at the short jacket of his slightly unusual brown outfit. It wasn’t exactly comfortable – it had originally been a Halloween costume - but it was, at this point, the only paint-free garb available. And it wasn’t his school uniform, which was a big point in its favour.

‘Need to research’ was a reliable way to get off the Hillworth school grounds for a few hours, and this afternoon, Thorn had found himself with a pressing need to escape. There had been… an incident… in his drab little dorm cell, and he’d decided it was best to dump the paint-stained clothes at the laundry and run like hell. The state of the bathroom was now entirely his roommate’s problem, he thought. He was going to need to wrangle some new paints.

A glossy cover caught his eye, and he pulled the book down from its shelf, flipping pages and finding the contents favourable. Half a page in, he’d forgotten all about his roommate. He lowered himself slowly to the floor, the large book cradled on his knees. Legs half drawn up so he didn’t completely block the aisle, he leant back against the shelf, settling in to read.

Thorn didn’t twitch at the loud voice among the quiet shelves. In his experience, nowhere was absolutely peaceful, and he had become adept at tuning out the extraneous noise and taunts. But he was not yet so deeply engrossed to completely ignore when the speaker kept talking. And the idea of a devil in the library made an interesting image, capturing his attention away from the book.

He lowered the hardcover a fraction, looking up from between loose purple strands of hair that had fallen over his eyes, to see what the comment had been about, but the only person present was one red-headed boy, and the boy was staring down at him. The teacher-stance and tapping foot set him on edge, though the other kid couldn’t be any older than him.

“Is that a trick question?” he retorted. “Where else is a devil going to read? Church?”

Thorn shuffled his leg, brushing a hand defensively over the spiky pants. Okay, so his rogue kit wasn’t exactly fashion standard, but there was no need to gawp like that. He wasn’t sure what about the brown outfit said ‘devil’, at least in a conventional sense. So what mythology was the kid thinking of? Part of him wanted find out, but if the other boy was just being a jerk for the sake of it – and most kids were.

Thorn sighed. “What’s your problem? I’m not blocking you.”

He flexed his pointy-toed shoe, indicating the narrow space between his feet and the next bookshelf. Though the temptation to trip the other boy up if he went past was high.