Wimbleton's Academy for Misfit Youth

Ellie missed the transport. It didn’t take her long to find her sister and friends again, though, as she searched through the common room’s different windows and mirrors. The usual one that she would take had been moved to some part of the school she didn’t recognize, but she was quick to find a new one. Nel waited, eyes darting between windows and mirrors until her sister appeared in the window by the girls staircase. She gracefully pulled herself free and joined Nel by the couch, where Aaron had just sat down.

“Were you too far away to catch a ride?”
“I think so! It’s okay though, I’m here now!” Ellie drifted through her and went to sit on the mantle. It was her favorite place to observe the others. She had a clear view of everything that went on in the common room from that height. The more she knew, of course, the more that nel knew. Nel knowing things had a different meaning than Ellie knowing things. When Ellie knew things, she gossiped. When Nel knew things, she got… scary.

Nel sat down next to Aaron, listening to their head of house give her usual speech. She seemed a bit more rushed than usual, her cheeks a little flushed as though she was trying to speed through this year's introduction. Not her business. She turned to look at Aaron’s phone, her eyelids hovering at half mast. She wasn’t allowed to have a phone or a computer at home, so she tended to rely on others at school for information about the world. “What news of the outside world?”

It was really hard being new. Cailet was doing her best, but it was still tough to look over at Aaron and Nel and not be a little jealous that she didn't have friends like that already. She supposed they must have been new once, too, and figured out how to get along - and if they hadn't done it when it was their turn, they wouldn't be having it now, so she was just going to have to deal with it, wasn't she?

Cailet was not a fan of dealing with it. Well, she was, in her own way, but that last part was pretty key. Cailet liked to find her own way to do things, and that wasn't always the way other people thought she should be doing them. It also wasn't always the easiest or the simplest or the fastest, but... well, things got done, didn't they? And she'd only accidentally ended up with one abominable mouse, so she supposed maybe she could count that as a win? It wasn't like Algernon had actually eaten anyone, right?

And he wasn't going to. She scritched him behind the ears, because that was a thing that you did with mice and not Eldritch abominations, and maybe it was a good idea to remind him that he was a mouse, especially after the blorping. It sounded like he wasn't the only one who had had to find his way here, although Cailet immediately wondered if she shouldn't have been listening in when Aaron and Nel were talking about Ellie. Cailet looked around again in a way that she hoped was surreptitious, and Algernon obligingly pointed her in the right direction.

"Do we have any classes together as a house?" Cailet inquired, full of curiosity. She wasn't going to be in all the same classes as the others, she didn't think, given that she was in eighth grade and there were definitely some students here who were a lot older. Even if she was precocious, she probably wouldn't be in Advanced Calculus or whatever it was that the seniors were taking. Cailet didn't know if she would be good at calculus or not - she was pretty good at trigonometry, though. They hadn't taught trigonometry in middle school, but Cailet had needed to figure it out for some of her experiments. Apparently lines and arcs and angles were really important sometimes when you were drawing a runic glyph and wanted to end up summoning a quasit and not a quokka.

Cailet had been unable to find any quokka summoning spells thus far and was rather disappointed by this fact. They were awfully cute, after all.

Then again, Algernon might eat it, so maybe not. "And... what about with the other house, with the... other... people?" With the weird people who had been mean. It did not take a particularly precocious child or a particularly Eldritch mouse to read that between the lines. Cailet was happy keeping her distance there. "Do we, um, spend a lot of time with them?"

Eve had frozen up when she felt something touch her. She had to take a few moments to loosen up and steady herself. Reminding herself that Cailet was just trying to calm her down helped, somewhat. A senior(?) classmate(??) introduced some other people, but before she would reply, someone else started talkng. No, no she shouldn't interrupt. It'd be weird if she started saying anything now. She had one friend, at least; that was more than she ever had getting homeschooled. Yeah, this was fine! One friend. One friend was okay. For now.

An adult, probably a teacher, came over and waved her arms out, spreading sparks and lights all around the class. Eve stared in wonderment, her eyes sparkling. In a flash everyone was somewhere else. Wow, real magic, just like Aunty Yvonne! She didn't register everything what the teacher said in her excitement, but she probably got the gist. Boys and girls had different corridors, submit your name to the wall. Got it, that wasn't so hard. She overheard some more questions and answers while retrieving a pen and paper and writing her name. She didn't even have a last name, just plain old Eve.



"...Why's that? I-if you don't mind me asking. About the wandering off. I thought this was a school, right?" Fiddling with the slot, Eve turned around to face... Aaron, was it?

From what Aaron said, it seemed like Cailet wasn't going to have to worry about the students from before too much, which was somewhat of a relief. She gave him a somewhat grateful nod at the advice, although his second bit of advice about not wandering around at night would have been immediately followed by a question from her... had not the same question been asked immediately by Eve.

Ha! They were going to be great friends. Cailet flashed the other girl a quick smile and a nod of support for the question. "And why at night? What is night? Is it a sunrise-to-sunset situation where the night hours would change based on the time of year, or is it more of a '9pm to 6am' sort of situation? What happens if you do, do you get detention?" Cailet had never had a detention in her life, although she had come very close in the 4th grade when she had accidentally let the teacher's pet tarantula out of its cage. She hadn't meant to, she just hadn't expected it to move that quickly.

She wondered if there were any pet tarantulas wandering around this school. She wondered if there were any other tarantulas wandering around this school - was this climate tarantula friendly? Cailet had never seen a wild one before. Were there Eldritch tarantulas? What did they eat? Were there Eldritch crickets?

Maybe that explained a lot about Pinocchio, come to think of it. Cailet added don't take advice from Eldritch crickets to her mental list of things to keep in mind for school.

"So... during the day time is fine, though, right?"

She was absolutely going to go look for Eldritch crickets.