Children of the First

Sorry it's so late. I'm happy with how it turned out though, so it was worth it.

Verris laughed, “It’s professor now, actually. After what happened last year, I resigned from Lord Jacobs’ court and came down to Raekos to give something back to the ol’ alma mater.”

“Oh yes, I was sorry to hear about that, how are you finding your new position?” asked my father.

Professor Verris looked disgusted, like he’d just found horse shit inside an apple. “It’s wretched,” he said. “You should see the sort of people I have to work with, they’re absolutely vile. But I wouldn’t want to complain, so enough about my lot; how have you been? Bet you’re still a heartbreaker, huh? Still bringing home a new young thing every night?”

“This is my son, Sha’anyr,” my father said pointedly. “He is just starting at Raekos this term.”

“Oh! Excuse me.” The professor’s bronze skin turned a slightly deeper shade of copper; “It’s a pleasure to meet you, young man,” he said. “Has your father told you that we were in Alpha Drakon together?”

“No, he’s never mentioned it.”

“We were. In fact, it was our senior year when—” he trailed off when he noticed Retis. “Who’s your… ehh… friend?” he asked.

“This is my roommate, Retis Siphon,” I told him, putting my hand on his shoulder.

“Good to meet you, sir,” Retis began, but the count cut him off, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“Roommate?” Verris looked aghast. He turned to my father. “And you’re allowing this? It’s bad enough that they’re letting every sort of reptile into the university, but to force a true Dragonblood to live with one? Just goes to show that this ‘equality’ business has gone to far,” he spat. “Treat equals as equals, I say.”

My dad didn’t say anything, so I did. “And who would your equal be , sir?” I asked the pudgy professor. My father glared at me, but that only spurred me on; I couldn’t tell himsomething. “It must be difficult for you to find your equal among such inferior creatures as there are here at Raekos; why, I would bet you haven’t had an intelligent conversation—”

Retis stopped me. “Shawn, it’s okay,” he said quietly. “I’m just going to go have a look around, I’ll meet up with you later.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.” He didn’t even seem that angry, he just looked confused and a little hurt. Then I remembered he had never met a Nedrak before coming to school, so he had never seen this kind of racism, let alone experienced it first hand. That took my mind off of Verris, and I calmed down a lot.

“I think you should join him,” my father said. “We will discuss this later.” Arguing with my father was always a mistake, but when I saw how angry Verris was, I was inclined to agree with him.

As we walked away I’m pretty sure I heard something about ‘the youth today’, but I can’t be sure.

I tried to put the encounter—and the soon-to-come tongue lashing from my father—out of my mind as Retis and I walked around the quad. A bunch of student organizations had booths set up around the edge of the grassy area, so we wandered from table to table, taking stock. I didn’t plan to sign up for anything, figuring I’d see how scramble went before I started adding other stuff on, plus I had no clue what else I would want to do. Retis got pretty excited when he saw there was a fishing club, and signed up for their weekly trips to the Ikan river.

“They’ll probably want me to stay on the boat and use a pole or whatever, but we’ll see what they say when I catch more than the rest of them put together,” he said with a grin.

“Man, I don’t know how you do that,” I said.

“Well, I grew up fishing every day. Plus, Saurians swim with their tail, which helps a lot with speed and turning. “

“No, I mean, how you can forget about what just happened with Verris and my father.”

Retis shrugged, “I don’t know, kin. I mean, it sucked, but there’s no point in dwelling on it. I’d heard that things like that would probably happen, but I guess I didn’t really believe it. I was pretty shocked when it happened, but now that it has, I kinda just feel bad for him. I mean, that’s what lost him his title, right?”

“What do you mean? I though he said he’d resigned.” I remembered hearing about a count in Loshar having to give an apology or something, but I never cared much about politics, so I hadn’t really paid attention.

“Why do you think he resigned, kin? I heard it was because of scandal with a hooker—some snake—sorry, I mean Nagiri—girl.”

“Really? What happen” I asked, noting that he had caught himself calling her a snake-girl.

“I’m not exactly sure, but it was pretty bad—bad enough that he had to ‘resign’, anyhow. He must have some pretty good connections with the school for them to make him a professor that quick… kind makes you think, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s pretty shitty, actually.”

“I guess.” Retis shrugged again. “Anyway, it’s not like it really matters what he thinks of me—it’s not like I’m going to be taking Nedrak Culture and Religion anytime soon, you know?”

“Shit!” I shouted, startling a couple of Half-Elf girls as they walked by. “Fucking hell, I knew that name sounded familiar; I’m in his Tuesday/Thursday class. Gai-damnit.”

“Hey kin, it’s not the end of the world. Look at it this way: you had the last word, and it was a damn good last word at that. I mean, did you see the look on his face? You could see the lack of comeback in those fat cheeks.”

I chuckled. He had a point, I had won that exchange pretty definitively, which was completely worth whatever consequences there were. Retis was right, it wasn’t the end of the world; and I reminded myself that I was supposed to be keeping an eye out for Roo and Jarn or the scram coach, not dwelling on stupid Nedraka.

We kept walking along the row of tables, stopping here and there to read displays or listen to pitches. While we were walking, Retis wondered aloud what the Bubble Club was, and they explained that it was a club devoted exclusively to blowing bubbles. (We both signed up for the weekly newsletter and the next two bubble workshops, “Zen and the Art of Bubble Blowing” and “Discovering Your Inner Bubble”).

We came to a booth with a sign that read “WOYHFALT Club” and a pissed-off looking Gibri guy sitting behind it. When I asked him what his club was, he just pointed at the sign on the table. I rolled my eyes, “Yeah, but what’s it mean?”

He let out an exaggerated sigh. “It’s the Walking on Your Hands for a Long Time Club,” he said, like I was an idiot.

“Why don’t you just call it the Walking on Your Hands club?” Retis asked.

“They’re over there.” The insolent Gibri pointed at a table across the quad. “If you want to hang out with a bunch of amateur jerks with no dedication, that’s the way to go.”

I tried to keep a straight face, but Retis either didn’t care or couldn’t help it, and was laughing hysterically. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” he said.

That got the guy on his feet. “Hey!” he shouted. “Just because they lack commitment doesn’t mean they can drag the rest of us down with them!”

“What ‘rest of us’?” Retis laughed, “And you’re walking on your hands, not training for the Alinic Games!”

We started walking away and I couldn’t take it anymore, the Alinic Games thing had gotten me, and I started laughing too.

We were still chuckling when I saw the Alpha Drakon table. I had no interest in joining a fraternity, Nedrak exclusive or not, and was even less interested in another encounter with Nedrak prejudice. One of the brothers had noticed me, so I quickly suggested we go get some food.

“Don’t you want to find your scramble thing?” Retis asked as I led him away from the ADK table.

“Yeah, but there’s plenty of time. Besides, we might run into Roo and Jarn at the buffet.”

“Alright,” Retis shrugged. If number of shrugs is any indication of how laid-back a guy is, then Retis could have been a beanbag chair with scales. Come to think of it, a scaly beanbag chair probably wouldn’t be very comfortable, but then again, I wasn’t planning to sit on Retis.

It turns out my prediction came true; we spotted Roo sitting at one of the long white picnic tables right after we got our food—a hamburger for me and three trout fillets for Retis. He waved at us, so we went over to join him.

“Heya, how’s it?” he asked through a mouthful of fruit salad.

“Not too bad. Where’s Jarn?” I asked as we sat down.

“Went to look for th’ scram table. I wanted food first, but he said ’e couldn’ wait. Damn impatient one, an’ it’s good fruit, yeah.”

We talked a bit as we ate, but Roo had his mouth stuffed the whole time so he didn’t say much, and when he did it was a little hard to understand. I was the last one to finish, since Roo had a head start and Retis was finished in about forty-five seconds.

Watching him eat was pretty interesting; he tilted his head back and dropped the fillets in one at a time, swallowing them whole. I guess the Saurians I had known in Rowyra might have trained themselves to chew so as to not attract attention, but it’s just as likely that I had never seen a Saurian eat before—it’s not like I was really friends with any of them before Retis.

We had just gotten up to throw our plates away when Jarn appeared.

“Roo! I found th’ scram coach, yeah,” he chattered, practically vibrating with excitement.

“Yeah? Where is he? What’s he like?” Roo asked.

“Not he, she. She’s a Cat; she’s a Cat, Roo! Stripy one, too. Orange with black stripes like Lora Lena. Like Lora, Roo!”

“Calm you, Jarn, Gai,” said Roo. “Show us where she is.”

Jarn got slightly irritated when we wouldn’t run after him, but he stopped a few times to let us catch up as he led us across the quad. When we were out of earshot, Roo turned to us and said, “Sorry ‘bout that, Jarn has a thing for Cats, gets stupid ‘round ‘em. ‘Specially since he saw ‘Dark Mountain’.”

“The movie?” Retis asked. “Is that who Lora Lena is?”

“Yeah,” said Roo. “She’s one of the warrior girls. Stupid movie, but she was hot, yeah.”

It was a stupid movie, but if the scram coach looked anything like Lora Lena, then this was going to be an interesting experience. Actually, it would be even more interesting if she acted like Lora Lena; making us run wind sprints while she vanquished trolls during practice, then taking a different scrambler home each night to have hot, passionate sex.

Retis and Roo must have been thinking the same thing, because all three of us started walking faster.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 3:39 am and is filed under Chapters, CotF Main Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.