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 Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 7:56 pm
 School would be starting again soon, but that wasn’t for another few days. Right now, it was still move-in week, when students from across the worlds gathered once again at the Academy to set up their rooms, squabble, catch up with old friends, and avoid old enemies. The halls were a mess with animals making noise and Nightmares and Daydreams making even more noise. Times like this were rather stressful for Lillian—not because she had to move herself. She hadn’t had to move rooms since she first arrived at the academy a few years ago. She lived with the other Nixie and Naiad freshlings on the first floor. The only stress to be had there were new students coming in. No, the stressful thing about move-in week for those students who lived here year-round was just listening to it all. Everyone was making a lot of noise, there were people crying everywhere and screaming and even some swearing when you got out around the senior dorms. Everything was just a mess everywhere you went, and the emotions running wild throughout the building was enough to crowd in on a person and make you want to weep and scream and shout just like everyone else.
Lillian was avoiding her dorm room at the moment. There were new people there with homesickness. She didn’t want to be there right now. It was just…too much. She’d much rather sit out here on the lip of the fountain, where the only sounds of move-in were from passersby and shouts echoing through open doors. The weather was a little too warm for open windows, thank goodness. Lillian was lost in thought when she sensed someone sit down next to her. She turned to see a Litch, probably a junior or maybe even a senior, sitting next to her.
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 7:58 pm
 Zalir didn’t want to be involved with move-in. It had been a few years since zey had had to move to a new room. This year would be zeir last year in the junior dorms, so next year, all of this hustle and bustle would be zeir life and zeir burden. Zalir hated move-in. It hadn’t been fun in the first place—all of those boxes to move, and all of zeir balls of yarn had fallen out of a box, and gotten dirty, and rolled around…No, move-in was terrible. It was embarrassing as you went from room to room trying to find yours, it was exhausting to lug all of those boxes and bags from one floor to another, and it was awkward to have to negotiate terms with a new roommate. At least, that’s what other people said—Zalir had had the good fortune to be put in a single when zey became a junior, so zey hadn’t had a roommate in a very long time. But next year would probably be different. Next year was going to be very stressful, with a new person in zeir life that zey would have to deal with. Zalir found zeir heart racing at the idea. Zey did not want to have a new roommate. At all. But no one ever went two dorms in a row without a roommate. It was just unheard of. So zey were pretty much doomed from the start.
It was a lot of gloomy thoughts to be having, so zey left the dorm to sit outside at the fountain. When zey got there, there was a little Nixie child sitting on the lip, dipping their toes in the water. Zalir looked away hurriedly when she looked at zem. Zey didn’t want to be caught staring!
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 7:59 pm
Lillian watched the teenager as they turned their head away from her. An idea suddenly struck her. “Hey, you’re a junior, aren’t you? What’s it like to move to a new dorm? I’ve never done it.”
Lillian was not a very social child. She never had been. She preferred to stick to herself and her small circle of friends. Talking to strangers was not in her repertoire. So why was she talking to a complete stranger? An older kid, at that? Well, because talking is what’s polite. You talk to other people, even if you don’t know them, and you make small talk. She thought about that for a second. No, that doesn’t hold water. For one thing, she tended to ignore the rules of politeness that made no sense or made her feel uneasy. So talking just to be polite was not it. For another thing, small talk normally did not include “what’s it like to be you in a stressful situation.” Small talk was things like the weather, or telling people that you like their clothes, or asking them how they are. It wasn’t really personal stuff like this. So why had she engaged them in conversation? Was it to be friendly? She looked the Litch over. No, probably not. They looked very nice, but Lillian preferred her friends to be closer to ground level. Her age, basically. Her friends were all as young as she was. They hung out together all summer. They threw parties together, they went to parties together. They’d won prizes together at event after event. Someone she met at the fountain one afternoon didn’t seem likely for a future friend.
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:00 pm
Zalir was startled by the question, but not put off. It was an interesting question, and the child asking it seemed very earnest. Worried, even. It would probably be a good idea to give an honest answer. O-or, was it a mollifying answer zey were supposed to give right now? Oh dear. Um…zey decided to go with…what was most natural…? A way to answer? Yes. Natural. Which meant honest. “Um, um, I’m, yes, I’m a j-junior. I’m, um, well, I haven’t moved in, um, a while. Uh. I-I’ll be moving next year, though, so, um, I guess it’s something I need to start thinking about.” Zalir sighed and leaned back on zeir arms. Zey and the Nixie were seated facing opposite directions, the Nixie towards the fountain and Zalir away from it. Zalir turned zeir head towards the Nixie. “It’s…um…” Zey hesitated. What was moving in—or moving out? “You…you have to have all of your stuff together. A-all of it. So you, um, you spend a few days taking all of your stuff and putting it in boxes. Then you have to figure out a way to figure out what’s in all of your boxes. You take them up the stairs on the day when all of the students who live here full-time move out, and, um, you have to unpack everything.” The words coming out of zeir mouth were slowly making their way back to Zalir’s mind and it occurred to zem how banal all of this was.
Zalir tried again. “It’s, um…it’s…weird? And a little sad. Because you’re leaving what you’re used to. And it’s s-scary. Because nothing will be the same as it was before. But you’ve got to do it,” zey added, as the thought occurred to zem. “B-because other people will be coming in and they need your space, and they’ll use it to grow. And you’ll, you—you’ll change. As a freshling, and as a j-junior, and as a senior, and you can’t change yourself if you st-stay where you always were.” Zalir paused. “Or something like that,” zey mumbled.
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:01 pm
Lillian thought about the Litch’s answer. She missed the first part of it, though, as she had still been thinking why she was asking the Litch about moving in and moving out. She finally decided that she was asking because, well…because she was scared of moving out. She was scared of having to move to a new place, and she wanted a reassurance that everything would be all right from someone who had done it before. When she tuned back into the conversation, she got exactly the confirmation she’d needed. Lillian thought about the reply for a few seconds, then nodded. It sounded about right. The right mix of—what was that word? That really nice one that one of the adults on the bus had used the other day? Oh, right—trite. It sounded about the right mix of trite and true. So far as Lillian could tell, that meant that it was a very old truth. Old in the sense that you had to be old to understand it. Frankly, even with the reassurance that everything would be okay in the end, she still didn’t want to move out.
“Thank you for your answer,” she said finally. Now what? “I don’t think I’ll have that much to move,” she added. The conversation had felt like there was a blank space in the middle, one that needed a bit of filling. That comment, perfectly innocent seemed to fit neatly into that space, and that was about all a sentence had to do in a conversation.
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:03 pm
Zalir smiled. The Nixie seemed so serious it was hard not to smile. Zalir twitched zeir feet as zey considered this comment. “I th-think you’d be surprised. That is, um, if you’re anything like the rest of us. Um, there’s always a lot more to move than you think. Take stuffed animals for one thing,” zey said. Talking about stuffed animals was an impulse, probably brought on by the fact that zey were sitting next to a freshling. Freshlings seemed obsessed with stuffed animals. Zey knew zey zemselves had been. Stuffed animals usually came from carnivals and festivals, and it wasn’t until zey were a junior that zey had had the courage to go visit festivals. All those people crowding around zem had made zem feel nervous and confined. Since that had been the only way to get plushies, Zalir had avoided those events for a very long time, and so zey had only ever had one plushie as a child, a stuffed wolf named Zacharaiah. Zey’d only been able to get more when zey’d had the courage to move out and about.
“And me, personally, um, I have a lot of yarn to move, since I love knitting so much, and clothes will be hard to move, and all of my books. My guess is it’ll probably be a l-lot of stuff for you, too, um. If you’re, um, anything like, uh…well, if you’re anything l-like…p-people.” Zalir looked away and fiddled with zeir braid, hunching zeir body over. Zey hated stammering like this in front of people, and umming so much, but what else were zey supposed to do when zey got anxious?
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:05 pm
Lillian shrugged. “I don’t have that many stuffed animals. My friends have more.” She paused and began to count. “I have…three wolves, four seals—no,” she said thoughtfully, “I have five seals. Coral’s just so unlike the other seals that I don’t remember her. Um, and I have five fish.” Now that she thought about it, that was actually quite a lot. In all, it was thirteen stuffed animals. She made a face. “But my friend Talya’s got way more than I have. She’s got, like, a billion. Whenever there’s a festival, she gets all of the pink and purple ones she can find. She also gets the rest of us stuffed animals,” she added. “But she has all the luck when it comes to winning plushies.”
It occurred to Lilly that she was talking more to this Litch than she ever had to someone older than her. Not even Guereda and Mesektet had gotten this much chat, and she saw them all the time. They were Evelyn’s parents, but they always had time for Lillian and Talya, taking them with their own children to museums. Lillian would smile, and thank them, and even hug them, but she never talked to them—at least, never as much as she’d talked to this Litch. A little, sure, some small conversations, but nothing on this scale. “You’re very easy to talk to,” she added. Her voice made it into an accusation. And why shouldn’t it be? She didn’t want to be friendly! She wanted to be…herself. And she’d long defined herself as being quiet and shy, never chatty to strangers. Especially old strangers.
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:06 pm
Zalir nodded. “I-it sounds like you, um, you have a theme. With your stuffed animals, I mean.” Maybe Zalir had noticed it because zey zemselves had a theme with stuffed animals—zey gravitated towards the orange, yellow, and brown ones. Those were always the prettiest. That wasn’t the only reason zey’d picked up on that, though. Zalir had, at points in the past, won two plushies that zey didn’t really want. Zey didn’t go with zeir color schemes, zey were a little too bright and loud. Zey weren’t really Zalir’s style. Zalir’s only plush that wasn’t one of those colors was a purple one that zeir friend Anchriesel had given them at an event last year. Zalmon, however, as the plush was named, had sentimental value—zey would not be parted with it. The other two plushies, not so much. Those had been won at some distant time with zeir first friend, Vaden. Zalir remembered asking Vaden for advice on what to do with unwanted stuffed animals. Give them to some deserving freshling, the Geist had said. An idea was striking Zalir now. “I, um, I like stuffed animals that are all one color. Or another. Um, but I have two—a wolf, and, and a seal—and, um, I wonder if, you’d, um, like to—to have one of them? Or both of them,” zey added. “It’s, um, up to you.”
Zalir blushed once again when the Nixie accused zem of being too friendly. “I, I’m, um, I’m sorry, I didn’t, I didn’t mean to make you, oh gosh, I’m so sorry!” Zalir flipped zeir braid out of zeir face and half-rose. “I’ll, um, I’ll get out of your way…I’m so sorry, I’m really bad at rea-reading people, I never kn-know if I’m going to upset someone, I’m just, I’m so sorry! I’ll, um, I’ll leave you alone.”Gifts being given:
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:07 pm
Now Lillian felt bad about being annoyed with the Litch. Her eyes went wide as she realized how they had interpreted her words, and impulsively she reached out a hand to grab their sweater. She gently pulled them back down to the fountain. “No, don’t go! You’re…um, you’re nice. I’m not,” she added quietly. “I’m just…I don’t talk a lot, so it’s weird when I find something to talk about. Someone to talk to.” She sighed. “I have friends, I’m just not…chatty. I’m not really a people person, either.” Her tail twitched. “I’m…I’m sorry I got upset at you. You really are easy to talk to. I think it’s because you don’t think that much of yourself. I mean, most other people—even my friends—they talk a lot and they talk like they know what’s going on.” Lillian sighed again. “I feel like I never know what’s going on or why people are getting upset or anything. So it’s nice to meet someone else who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on.”
Lillian blinked when she heard the kind offer, and hesitated. Did she say yes and accept charity from a stranger? Or did she say no and risk upsetting the Litch. “I’d, um, I’d love to have a stuffed animal. That would be really sweet of you. I don’t have anything to give you in return, though.” That was another reason to say no. She did not want something if she had nothing to give in return. But she couldn’t say no—the Litch looked so upset, and to refuse such a kind offering—even if Lillian didn’t like resting on the charity of strangers—would be hurtful.
It wouldn’t be the charity of a stranger if they aren’t a stranger, a gentle voice said in her head. Which reminded her… “My name’s Lillian, by the way. It’s nice to meet you, um…?”
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 8:08 pm
Zalir took zeir seat again at the Nixie’s insistence. Zey didn’t know what to say, so zey didn’t say anything at all, instead listening to the Nixie’s explanation. It made a lot of sense, in a way. And Zalir could hardly deny the fact that zey felt like zey never knew what was going on. Zey had never thought of it that way before, but it was true—zey were often confused, at least of what people’s intentions were. For example, that bit right there with the Nixie getting upset. Zey still didn’t understand why they’d gotten so upset, but at least zey understood now that it was a silly upset, one of those spur-of-the-moment flashes of annoyance that are there and gone in an instant. Everyone had those—even Zalir did. “I’ve never thought of myself as being, um, easy to talk to,” Zalir said. “I guess I a-always…I’m very…I’m shy? So I don’t tend to talk much. I don’t, um, get a lot of practice. But it’s, it’s nice to know that even without practice, um, I can still talk to people?” Zalir hazarded a smile. It wasn’t a very good smile, as smiles went, but it was pretty good by Zalir’s standard of smiling.
“You don’t have to pay me back. Um, not now—and n-not ever. Um. But you…you d-do have to do, um, one thing, which is that you have to do something kind for someone else. Um…give them something nice, without e-expectation of getting something back. That way, the gift goes around further,” zey explained. “It’s called ‘paying it forward.’ It, um, it works. I, um.” Zalir blinked at the offered hand. Zey took it and shook it. “My name’s Zalir, although,” zey added in an attempt at levity, “I guess ‘um’ is a pretty good nickname for me.” Zalir smiled again as the Nixie smiled back. This smile was a more confident one, and a happier one. “So, um…let’s go get those stuffed animals, huh?”
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