Demetri’s footsteps echoed through the large, empty school auditorium as he rushed to the children's classroom. Once a month, he taught a history class so that future generations would never forget the trouble the world went through to get to where it is now.

“Alright, so who's excited to learn?”

Two dozen bored preteens stared back, one already sleeping. Tough crowd. Their ages actually varied quite a bit, as different species aged in different ways, but they were all at that same basic time in their lives where everything sucked--but, he came prepared.

He clapped his hands twice and snapped his fingers into the air. The classroom became dark. A few sat up from their semi-slouch. A rumble of thunder sounded above their heads. Now they all—except for the girl using her mane as a pillow—looked up.

“Did anyone hear it was going to rain today?” He glanced around the room, and grabbed a bright orange umbrella he’d set by the teacher’s desk that morning. The rumbles became louder.

“Hey, it’s not going to get us wet, is it?” A raven-haired pixie crossed her wings over her head to shield her hair from getting rained on. She tried to look tough and annoyed, but when lightning flashed above she squeaked along with a few of the others. The sleeping girl woke from the noise of her classmates and her eyes went wide at the sight of the storm brewing above her head.

Demetri popped open the umbrella. Just as dark, oily droplets began to descend on the students. He wished he would’ve remembered his squirt gun. Missed opportunity. “Well let me tell you about a rain that happened about four-hundred and fifty years ago that no one could’ve predicted.” Thunder clashed above their heads. He’d had years of practice, timing his words with the thunder claps.

The kids figured out quickly the rain wasn’t real and they watched in awe as it pooled at their feet before disappearing. Demetri closed his prop umbrella and set it down on the desk. “This story starts, as most good stories do, with a beautiful princess.” He snapped his fingers high in the air, sending the storm clouds away and revealing a virtual rendering of Talia. Her long, brown hair pulled into a high pony-tail, held together with royal blue and golden bow, the colors of Athlone. The hologram pinched the matching blue and gold dress between her fingers as she dipped into an elegant curtsy, waving to the children with a bright, cheerful smile. “You all know our lovely princess Talia, don’t you? Born June twenty-fifth, 2087.”

The kids whispered amongst each other about how pretty and lifelike she was. As nobody but the guards were allowed in that part of the castle, this had been the only way Talia had ever been seen by the outside world. A mere picture of her, animated to give her a shadow of life.

“It was on the eve of Princess Talia’s eighteenth birthday that Marius appeared in Athlone.” He snapped his fingers again changing the image to that of a man. A dark-haired young man, posing proudly with a diploma in hand. ”And this is Professor Marius,” he said the name with a creepy dramatic affect. “It was thought at one point that he had been the smartest man alive, but not much else is known. It was like he just popped up out of nowhere and decided to destroy the world.” The children cringed back into their seats in fear. To most of this world, Marius was quickly turning into more of a boogieman rather than the real-life mad-scientist. Demetri feared the story would soon be forgotten altogether or remembered more like a fairytale.

“Before Marius,” he continued. “Things were different. We were different. He changed the plants, the animals, and even us humans.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Before Marius, nobody had shiny or scaly skin,” he said, pointing to Emony in the front row. “Or feathers, or horns.” He pointed to others throughout the room. We were all the same, all skin and bones like me. But, even though I look like them, I’m still very different and way, way cooler. Right?”

The kids laughed, some throwing out some sarcastic taunts and rolled eyes. He lit a fire in his palm, spinning the flames between his fingers. “Well, at least I’m this much cooler. Regular humans couldn’t control fire, or any of the elements for that matter.”

“Nearly four and a half centuries ago, Marius changed every single thing on this planet. And he did it with this.” He snapped his fingers. The machine flicked away to a picture of an olden-times ice-cream machine. The kids laughed again. “Ok, you’re right, this isn’t what it looked like. Unfortunately, since he sent that one up into the clouds before anyone could see it, we don’t have any idea what it really looked like. So, I’m going with an ice-cream machine.”

He snapped his fingers. The storm clouds above them rumbled again. “Even more unfortunately, the Marius Machine didn’t create ice-cream either. It sent nasty chemicals, raining down over the entire world.” The holographic rain descended, but this time the students watched it in horror.

“Why didn’t somebody stop him?” A small voice came from the back.

Demetri got excited. Questions are good. It meant they were paying attention. “Nobody knew what he was doing until it was too late. ‘The planet was dying,’ Marius shouted when they captured him. ‘Humans are killing it, and I had to save it! No one else was willing to do what needs to be done, but I have!’” He tipped his head back and did his best maniacal laugh. “And then boom. No more Earth. It was a tough life for everyone who survived that day. Eventually, with how much had been lost, no one could bear to call it Earth anymore. Hence Ataris. The only change our ancestors chose to make.

“What happened to Professor Marius when they caught him?” Nolan, one of the older students, shouted.

“Ah, well the thing about Marius was that people kept underestimating him. Even when they brought him to the throne room in chains. He had one last terrible trick up his sleeve.”

Demetri held his hands up like a gun and crept slowly in front of them. “When they took the professor before King Nathan for his crimes, he brought a special gun with him. Instead of bullets, he loaded it with poison darts. One by one, he attacked the royal family.” He shot imaginary poisoned darts into the awed crowd of children. “He shot the princess first, then King Nathan.”

The whole room gasped, and Demetri had to keep his dire face from breaking. “The King collapsed, poisoned with something that made him very ill. And, Princess Talia fell into a deep sleep almost instantly.” Demetri lowered his voice to add a bit to the scare. “As Marius was dragged from the throne room, he yelled at the king, ‘You will live long enough to watch your one and only beloved princess rot to dust!’”

Another round of gasps. “What happened to her?”

He snapped his fingers. Talia’s glass casket appeared before them. They all gathered around the projection. A few even tried to touch it, but their fingers faded through. “The bodyguards ran to tend to King Nathan, ‘NOO! Care for my daughter first!” Demetri dramatically held an arm to his forehead like he was the dismayed King and quickened his voice. “They put her in the first dream-pod they could get their hands on and hit the button. Which, unfortunately for her, happened to be running the most boring Earth simulation from the 1990’s.”

“Why don’t they move her to a better one or change the simulation?” Emony asked shyly.

Demetri put his face in the hologram light. “Because it’s haunted,” he said in his scariest voice. “They didn’t know it wanted to trap her in there... forever!” In truth, the last person had died when they tried to take him out. The pod didn’t want to let go of him and he went braindead. But, there was no need to tell the kids that.

“You’ll free her someday, right?” Aleah questioned.

“The scientists will do it.” Another kid scoffed. “My dad’s a scientist and he can figure out anything.”

“They’re working on it,” he assured them. Though, most had actually given up on her long ago. Demetri gave a sad smile. The engineers thought they’d come up with a way to get Talia out of the pod without killing her, but everyone agreed there would be no point until they found a cure for the poison running through her veins.

“What else changed, Mr. Demetri?”

The sun still peaked through the cracks of the curtains. He clapped twice to turn the lights back on. “Let’s take a walk outside and see.”

He tucked the projector under his arm and led the kids out to the gardens. Several greenhouses lined the back of the school, perfectly positioned after years of experimenting with their location to catch the optimal amounts of rays from the sun.

Pointing to a line of oval, red melons growing in planter boxes between the glass buildings, he asked, “who here has ever been bitten by a blood melon?”

“Ooh, me!” Nolan threw his hand up as though it were an honor. “Didn’t hurt me though.”

“Those used to be called watermelons.” He snapped his fingers at the projector and a picture of how the fruit used to look appeared. “You could easily eat them, any time you wanted, because these fruits never used to have teeth.”

“Ewww! Why are they green? That means they’re diseased right?”

“How did they defend themselves without teeth?”

The students were still shouting questions when Demetri held a finger in the air, asking for silence. “What if I told you all plants used to be weak and entirely defenseless? And what if I told you that if a tree wasn’t getting the nutrients it needed from the soil its roots were buried in, it wouldn’t even move an inch. It would just stay in that one spot and wither away until it was dead.”

He snapped his fingers, depicting an entirely razed forest. The kids studied and compared the field of burnt stumps to their own beloved forest. “Nowadays, the Verndari would never let an army of men with machines and saws get far into a forest. But at that time, man would cut trees down by the millions just to make frivolous things like paper and money.”

Kett raised his furry paw just a little above his shoulders like he was actually afraid to be called on. “My mam says Professor Marius was a hero,” he said, a tinge of guilt in his words.

Demetri smiled and knelt down to the boy. “Some think that, yes. Some of our ancestors easily accepted the changes and started living in harmony with nature.” He stood to address them all, taking on a more serious tone. “A lot of people, however, turned to science and technology to undo the changes, or just to make life a little easier to accept. Small groups sought out to destroy everything that had been changed, out of fear and anger, but those groups quickly died out when the Verndari stood against them.”

Many of the kids seemed to feel relief at knowing they were justified in idolizing him in some ways. He didn’t want to push them to hate Marius, but he needed to make sure they knew what he did was far more devastating than they could ever realize. “But try and remember, no matter what good he did, hundreds of thousands of people died because of what Marius did. We all had to rethink the way we lived in order to survive this new hostile world. We have to remember to take better care of Ataris than our ancestors ever did of Earth.”

“Hey, look!” Brea yelled, kicking a hoof toward the trees about half a mile away from them down the sloping hills. Everyone stood and looked around for what she saw.

An enormous mass of black fur slowly crept just inside the trees. “Oh, perfect timing.” Demetri snapped his finger a few times at the projector. A picture of another Verndari slowly spun in a circle with its dimensions labeled above it. “I’m sure most of you have caught glimpses of one before but here’s a full picture.”

Demetri pointed at the real one. “As you can see, the Verndari move slowly, surveying the forests. When they attack, they do it in groups, calling to the others for help with a deafening roar, which I’m sure you’ve all heard at least once or twice in your lives when the monkey-bats have annoyed them for too long. Once they see an enemy, their huge claws extend and grip into the earth, allowing them to run at high speeds, tearing everything in their path to shreds. They protect the forests from any who try to destroy it. It took a long time for humans to understand why they attacked, but now we know that so long as you don’t go in with any intention of destroying it, they won’t bother you.”

The children studied the image and watched until the real one disappeared deeper into the thick trees.

“That thing looked terrifying right?” he said with a coy smile. He loved building up the tension to show them the final image. “I mean, look at those huge claws, probably bigger than most of your bodies.”

They all nodded.

“Before Marius’ rain changed them, they were known as badgers during Earth’s time, only they used to be about a hundred times smaller.” He snapped his fingers for them to see the adorably fat, waddling creature it used to be, drawing Oohh's and Aahh's from the ones who thought it was cute.

The sun began to disappear behind the trees and Demetri realized he’d be late for guard-duty again if he didn't hurry and leave. The class always ran longer than he expected. “Alright, everyone. Thanks for coming. I’ll see you all at trade day next week.”

The class collectively bowed. “Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Demetri.”