Nosderag slowly and oh-so-casually walked back inside, Dalzonf following close behind. They went straight to the elevator and made sure to be the only ones there. No one was to see the effects of love magic on Nosderag.

This time the effects included Nosderag twirling one of her dreadlocks and gazing at Dalzonf with an innocent lip bite. Her uniform skirt swirled around as she swayed back and forth.

While Dalzonf waited for the effects to wear off, Nosderag tried to look around the room. Just like before, everything but Dalzonf was out of focus. However, she noticed something.

On Dalzonf’s bedside table was a miniature idol that was wearing green. ‘Is that Terio?’ Nosderag asked, squinting her eyes in the hopes that it would come into focus. Dalzonf hummed and nodded. ‘So, like, why? Shouldn’t you have a Marosos statue? Since she's, you know, the goddess of… love?’ Nosderag batted her eyelids at that last word. Dalzonf rolled her eyes at the gesture of affection.

‘My parents are from Terio city, so we worship her mostly.’

Nosderag giggled. ‘Huh, why do they name places after gods anyway? Isn’t that confusing? It doesn’t make any sense. And why-’

‘Alright, that’s enough out of you.’ Dalzonf chuckled. ‘You are so drunk.’

‘I am not! I haven’t had any alcohol.’

‘You’re drunk on… you know what? You’re going to get back to normal soon enough. I don’t know why I’m trying to reason with you when you’re like this.’

As if on cue, Nosderag snapped out of her daze. Dalzonf asked, ‘So what are we going to do about this fairy?’

Nosderag opened her already slightly open backpack further, letting out Daliki. ‘She must be so hungry. Will you feed her?’

Dalzonf held out a hand but curled her fingers in hesitation. Eventually she touched Daliki’s head and closed her eyes. A thin stream of pink mist surrounded the fairy and then entered her mouth. She gulped the magic down and then flew to Dalzonf’s side, rapidly nuzzling her.

Dalzonf tried to move away from Daliki but she continued showing affection. ‘Be grateful you don’t have magic,’ she said to Nosderag, who frowned when Dalzonf pushed Daliki away. ‘Anyway, we need to get her back to that enclosure.’

‘Should we just tell them what happened and clear up the misunderstanding?’

‘Yeah, no. I’m not risking running into the police.’

‘But you haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I don’t have to,’ Dalzonf retorted, creating a small ball of pink mist in the palm of her hand. Nosderag nodded in understanding.

‘So are we going to sneak in? What about the guards? And the magic shield… wait, how did I make it into that shed? It had a shield around it. I felt it but I made it through.’

‘Huh. Maybe you have powers after all. Is there such a thing as a power to break magic shields? Either that or their shields suck. That’s a distinct possibility. Whatever the case, we can use that to our advantage.’

The two were about to start planning when Nosderag’s stomach grumbled. After descending to the ground floor, Dalzonf led a lovesick Nosderag to the dining hall in the dormitory. She tried to ignore the stares from other students as Nosderag kept attempting to grab her hand.

The dining hall was about the size of a professional soccer field. Tall torches in the shapes of dragons stood at the perimeter, several metres apart from each other. Orange force fields surrounded the flames to prevent them from getting out of control. The tables were made of black wood designed to seem like charcoal. On top of each table were bowls of various brightly coloured fruits. A cart with a long line of students stood against a wall. In addition to granite plates and bowls, the cart contained sikoka beans for making hot sikoka, smelly dried blue kie kriz fish and a ridiculous amount of rice. 

Hanging over everyone’s head was a medieval European-style chandelier with, you guessed it, fire at the ends. At the end of the hall was a low platform with a giant unused cauldron atop it. Students loved to write inane and often offensive messages on the outside of the cauldron in pen. Knowing how many times this happened, the teachers never bothered to clean it.

Nosderag, still affected by love magic and seeing that she was in a public setting, tried singing another serenade. Dalzonf’s shoulders jumped up. Everyone was staring in silence. As soon as she could, she covered the other girl’s hand with her mouth. It was too late.

‘I guess she was getting desperate,’ Sosoka whispered to a friend, who cackled a little too loud.

Dalzonf lowered her head, turning back into the vulnerable girl Nosderag defended a week ago. She shuffled to the food cart line, Nosderag following closely behind.

When Nosderag returned to her senses and looked around the hall in confusion, Sosoka and her friend laughed at the sight. The other students joined in. The girls in line stepped away from Dalzonf while still keeping their spots in the line.

‘Why don’t you just tell them about the elevator?’ Nosderag whispered in her ear, absentmindedly grabbing her arm. Dalzonf tore her arm away and turned towards her with a fire in her eyes to rival all the torches in the room combined.

She ignored her for the entirety of breakfast and left for class without saying a word. The two didn’t share their first class of the day.

Instead, Nosderag had Potions Sapphire Class. As one of the few omlers on campus, she had a more limited curriculum but had to make up for it by taking more advanced classes and excelling in academics. While everyone else her age was in Potions Topaz, she was a year ahead.

A fact that brought a scowl to her teacher Dr Lomaschramm’s lips.

‘Try not to make anything explode this time, Ms Zotmin.’ The teacher’s voice went up and down like a children’s show character. Or a poor person’s impersonation of a rich person. Take your pick. Nosderag tried to laugh the comment off as she took her seat.

The air of the classroom was chilly thanks to the refrigerated potion pantries in the back. The teachers claimed that this was not the case as the fridges were closed. The non-refrigerated potions were kept in a wide, locked cabinet against a wall. A fat lot of good that lock did when students kept punching the unshielded glass and taking out potions to pull pranks on each other.

The class was small, with only half of the ten benches being used. Nosderag turned to her designated lab partner for the term but the other girl ignored her. Someone whispered behind her but stopped when she turned around.

‘I hope you’re paying attention in class, Ms Zotmin.’

Dr Lomaschramm towered over Nosderag. Her hooked, pointy nose made her cat-eye glasses slip down it as she looked down on her. She smelled of hand sanitizer and, when she opened her mouth, minty toothpaste.

‘Now, what do we never mix Aja’s Vine with?’

‘Himalayan healing water.’

Dr Lomaschramm pursed her lips. After a moment of thought, she grinned, showing off her eerily perfect white teeth. 

‘And why is that?’ Nosderag didn’t answer. The teacher turned her back on the class and returned to the whiteboard. She picked up a marker and began writing the first sentence of her answer. ‘We… do… not… mix... healing... potions... together. They’re like those newfangled interwebz security softwares. They compete against each other and are unable to work. Unlike the softwares, two healing potions will create an explosion.’

As she continued her lecture, Nosderag slumped in her seat, trying not to fall asleep. Slumping in her seat soon turned into slumping onto her bench. She closed her eyes.

A second later, she heard a zap and felt a sting on her neck, making her sit up in attention. She didn’t have to turn her head. The sound of snickering students allowed her to fill in the blanks.

‘Save your tolxing for the classes that require it,’ Dr Lomaschramm said.

The laughing quietened but was still audible. 

Nosderag’s other classes were similar. Strict and seemingly sadistic teachers, students high on schadenfreude and lessons that could put an insomniac to sleep.

There was one exception: cryptozoology. No, not the omler version in which wackjobs search for Bigfoot for the millionth time. It was a class dedicated to real magical creatures. The teacher Mr Fot was a portly soft-spoken old man with a clear passion for the field but little confidence in controlling a classroom of bored students. However, he always greeted Nosderag with a smile and gave her high marks. She listened to his classes with rapt attention, in stark contrast with the other students.

The classroom for this subject was cramped between two similarly plain rooms. The only interesting thing about this room was the globe on Mr Fot’s desk, which was decorated with pictures of magical creatures on the countries they originated from. The man brought it into the classroom every day in the hopes that it would inspire intellectual curiosity in his students.

Most of the students were too busy making jokes about his name, which meant ‘flow’.

‘Hey, sir, do you want some tampons?’ one girl asked in between fits of laughter.

When Mr Fot sincerely replied, ‘Oh, no thank you, I don’t need them,’ Nosderag’s heart broke on his behalf.

When Nosderag returned to her dorm, she kept interrupting her fairy-saving plan meeting with Dalzonf to rant about her day. Dalzonf eventually gave up on planning and listened to the other girl’s ramblings.

She even found herself smiling at Nosderag’s wild array of facial expressions.