The Problem With Pink Hair and Cat Ears

Elayna found the right corridor on the second attempt, which she felt was very reasonable given the size of the building, and arrived at her door with the excited energy of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment all day and was finally, actually here.

She put the key in the lock. Then she took it back out.

She then knocked.

She stood there for approximately one second, key in hand, before realizing that this was her room and she had a key to it and knocking on your own door was perhaps not the most confident start to her dormitory life.

She put the key back in the lock and opened the door.

There was a girl inside was facing her, or rather, facing the door, which happened to be where Elayna now was. White hair. Fox ears. And a tail that was, frankly, extraordinarily large and full and so densely fluffy that Elayna's eyes went to it immediately and stayed there longer than what was probably appropriate for a first impression.

The Foxgirl was holding something while arranging items on her desk, apparently mid-task. She looked at Elayna with pale purple eyes that expressed approximately nothing about how she felt about being looked at, Elayna was somewhat reminded of the teacher.

Elayna pulled her gaze away from the tail with some effort.

"Hi!" she said, slightly breathless from the stairs and the excitement and the general weight of the day. "I'm Elayna — I think we're roommates! I'm really excited to meet you, I've been thinking about my roommates all day actually, all week to be honest, I wasn't sure who I'd end up with and—"

She stopped herself.

"Uhm, Sorry," she apologized, slightly more composed. "I'm very excited to be your roommate!"

The girl looked at her.

"I'm Kiri, and yes, I'm your roommate" she said flatly.

A short pause.

"For seven years," she added, with the same flat delivery, like this was simply a fact about the situation that Elayna might perhaps find useful to have.

Elayna's mouth opened slightly.

"Seven—" she started. "The whole... we're roommates for the whole seven years?"

"Generally," The Foxgirl said. "Unless changes are requested."

Elayna looked around the room — at the four beds, the window, the shared table, at the two doors she hoped were both bahtrooms.

Seven years.

She was going to wake up in this room for seven years. Come back to it after training, after exams, after... whatever things she hadn't experienced yet. She thought about all the late night talks about all kinds of things she hoped she'd have with her roommates — friends, she hoped. This was basically her new home.

She felt something warm and slightly overwhelming settle in her chest.

"I'm even more excited now," she said, truly excited about the prospect of it all.

"Hm," Kiri said, with the smallest forward tilt of her head before turning back to her desk.

Elayna's eyes, decided before her brain, that they should drift back and look more closely at the tail.

It was moving gently in a slow unhurried sway, the white fur catching the afternoon light from the window. It was extremely fluffy. It was, objectively, one of the fluffiest things she had ever seen in her life and she had been alive for eighteen years and seen a considerable number of fluffy things. She'd had countless fluffy bedroom toys. And she thought about another persons tail she'd seen earlier, and if Caitlynn's tail was soft and pink like something exotic and decorative, this Foxgirl's was like a small weather event.

She was still staring awed at it when Kiri turned around and caught Elayna's stare. Kiri glanced down at the floor briefly — then looked straight up at Elayna's face with those flat and expressionless pale purple eyes.

"Do you want to touch it," she said.

It didn’t sound like a question exactly. More so like someone offering to move a chair out of the way.

Elayna's body made a decision before her brain had finished processing the sentence.

She took a guarded step back. Both hands came up slightly, weight shifting instinctively onto her back foot into an automatic defensive stance. She'd already had one tail-related interaction today that ended up changing her greatly. She wasn't prepared for more.

Kiri looked at her hands. Her defensive stance. Then her face. And then her hands again.

"N-no," Elayna said, slightly apprehensively. "No, I-I'm fine, thank you. I wasn't — I was just looking. At the room..."

A short silence.

"The room," Kiri said dryly.

"Yes." Elayna agreed, a bit too quickly.

A short silence.

Kiri's expression did not change. “... And my tail.” She turned back to her desk.

With the threat of touching another tail now safely behind her, Elayna sighed a relieved breath and lowered her hands while relaxing her stance.

She stood there for a moment, not entirely sure what to do with herself. Kiri had returned to her desk and was doing something — arranging, organizing something, some quiet task that had some, apparent purpose Elayna couldn't figure out.

So, she waited.

She wasn't sure why she was waiting. She just felt, somehow, that interrupting whatever Kiri was doing by talking would be the wrong move. So she walked over and claimed a bed. Then looked at her key and at the room and tried really hard not to look at the tail.

After a while Kiri set something down on her desk.

"I'm done," she said outloud but to no one in particular, more so just generally. Or maybe she sensed Elayna wanted to talk.

She turned around and looked at Elayna with her flat pale purple eyes.

Elayna felt this was her cue.

"So!" she said, perhaps slightly too brightly. "Where are you from?"

Kiri looked at her for a moment.

"South," she said.

"Ooh... Like the southern province?"

"Further."

"Further than the province?"

"The Kaelith jungle." A pause. "I'm from the Miren'kath Clan."

She said it the way someone might say "I'm from the third house on the left," or "I'm from the capital," she said it so plainly, as though the information was self-explanatory and required no further elaboration.

Elayna had approximately fifty or so questions about the Miren'kath Clan and the Kaelith jungle. She had read about something called the Aerthveld. A vast jungle region far down south, very exotic and very dangerous, but the Kaelith jungle specifically meant nothing to her. And she could tell from Kiri's expression that asking all of the questions immediately was probably not going to yield proportional results.

While Elayna was struggling to figure out where the Foxgirl was from, Kiri’s gaze drifted downward briefly.

"Indecent," she said, completely expressionless, and it didn't sound like she'd said it directly to Elayna either.

She said it the way someone might note that it was raining outside, factually and unbothered, stating something requiring no follow-up because it's just there in front of her.

Elayna's face went slightly warm. She faced forward and tried to distract herself from the self-consciousness she now had quickly developed over her behind.

"What — what do you use?" she tried to ask. "For combat?"

"Wind magic," Kiri said.

"Ooh" Elayna blinked. "I-is that so."

"I cast fast wind attacks at a range." A slight pause. "And blast people away."

She delivered this the way someone reads ingredients off a label.

"That sounds really cool actually. And strong" Elayna said, and meant it.

Kiri looked at her.

"Hm," she said, with the small forward tilt.

"...Uhm... What's your favourite food?" Elayna asked, because she wasn't sure what to ask and felt that stopping would become awkward somehow.

Kiri thought about this for a moment with the same complete flat expression.

"Kaervyn," she said.

Elayna tilted her head ...Eh?...

She knew what a Kaervyn was.

A large magic beast, very large, the kind of large that made the word feel very insufficient. Four-legged stalking low on the ground. It had no fur, it's skin was something closer to the hide of something ancient, it was dark and faintly iridescent, shining like oil spilled in a puddle of water. It was rippling with the muscle underneath, carrying a broad and heavy head and it had claws and fangs designed for predators that didn't need anything else to already be considered extremely dangerous.

Native to the deep Aerthveld jungles. One of the apex predators of its region.

But the beast’s magic was what made it genuinely terrifying. It emanated a non-visible field from its body, disorienting it's prey first, balance becoming unreliable and making the ground feel like quick-sand one second and solid stone the next. And then cancelling out sound entirely. Complete silence. No warning. Just making its prey suddenly both dizzy and deaf as it very calmly approached through the bushes and trees.

She looked at Kiri.

Kiri looked back at her with her pale purple eyes.

"The meat is juicy," she added.

"R-right," Elayna said, slightly taken aback. "Yes. I imagine it is... yes."

They settled into a quiet that was surprisingly not uncomfortable.

Elayna unpacked her things with the slightly self-conscious efficiency of someone aware they were being observed by someone. Kiri sat at her desk and quickly settled down like someone who had found their place.

After a while Kiri said:

"How do you fight."

"I'm a swordmage," Elayna said immediately as she turned around, like she was always ready to answer that question. "I use a long sword and lightning magic. The lightning is secondary and somewhat of a work in progress. I fight with the sword primarily. My aim is to be a master sword mage."

She said the last part before she'd decided to, which she blamed on the general energy and excitement of the day.

Kiri looked at her briefly.

"Hm," she said, with the small forward tilt, and returned to her desk.

Elayna decided to take this as approval and went back to unpack her things.

She sat at her own desk a little while later, paper in front of her, pen in hand, and stared at it.

She had promised letters. Three of them, to her father, her mother, and Mira. She had been thinking about writing them all day. She knew what she wanted to say. She knew what she couldn't say. The problem was that the gap between those two things was, on reflection, quite large.

The academy is beautiful and amazing, she started to write. The ceremony was this morning and the headmistress gave a very weird but very interesting speech. I have already met some of my classmates and they seem—

She stopped.

They seem what, exactly.

She stared at the paper. Kiri, from across the room, glanced over at her.

"What are you writing," she said.

"A letter," Elayna said. "I promised my parents and my personal maid I'd write the moment I arrived." She looked at the paper. "There's just one thing I can't exactly tell them about."

Kiri was quiet for a moment.

"What thing?" she asked.

"Someone," Elayna said carefully. "Someone said something to me today. And... did something, I guess... And I'm not sure what to do with it and I feel like I definitely can't put it in the letter."

She was aware that this was extremely vague. She was also aware that Kiri's expression had not changed in the slightest, which was somehow making it easier to talk to than a face that would be reacting.

Kiri considered this for a moment with flat patience.

"Do you like them?"

Elayna opened her mouth. Then closed it.

Her face, went a deep and committed shade of red that started at her cheeks and worked its way to the tips of her ears within approximately one second.

She looked at the letter.

"That's uhmm—" she started. "I mean I only just—we only just—it's not like I already know—"

She stopped. Looked at the paper. Picked up the pen. Put it down again. Put her head in her hands and roughly ran her palms over her head for a moment.

"I don't know," she said finally, sounding exasperated.

Across the room, Kiri tilted her head approximately three degrees to the left.

She looked at Elayna's frustrated face for a moment — the red ears, the pen going up and down but not touching any paper, the instead very careful and intense study of said blank piece of paper.

Then she turned back to her own desk without a word.

She had her answer.

Elayna eventually wrote all her letters.

The first was for her father, which was careful and warm, the kind of letter that said everything he'd want to hear and nothing he'd worry about.

The second for her mother was longer, more endearing, starting in one place and quickly ending up somewhere else entirely the way their conversations always did.

The third for Mira, which was less a letter and more a list of things she'd eaten, a brief description of her room and Kiri, and a small apology she really hoped Mira would at the very least find funny.

She folded a fourth inside Mira's envelope with a note on top: Give this to Vaelithra.

She looked at all four of them lined up on her desk, held her hand over them, and cast her father's spell, designed for exactly this. Somewhere in the palace a device he'd created would recieve the letters.

They were gone before she'd even managed to exhale.

"What was that," Kiri said, with the slightest change of tone in her voice.

Elayna looked up and turned around. Kiri was watching her with those flat pale purple eyes that were not particularly surprised, just watching. The way she had watched everything else up until now, which was to say with complete calm and unhurried attention.

"It's just—" Elayna said. "A communication spell. For sending letters. I learnt it — it's uhm convenient, for you know, keeping in touch! Lots of people use communication spells like—"

"No," Kiri said. "Normal people can't do that." She said it in the exact same flat and emotionless tone she had saying anything else, but Elayna could clearly tell she was being slightly accused, or judged.

Elayna became aware she had been saying too many words. She stopped.

A short pause.

"It's a family thing," she said finally, which was technically not false.

Kiri looked at her. "Is that so." she said slightly quiet.

Elayna's back straightened. "Y-yes!"

Kiri's head tilted, and not the small approving forward tilt, but a different one. Slower.

"Hm," she said, and turned back to her desk.

Elayna looked at the empty space where the letters had been.

She was fairly certain that this "hm" had not been an approving one.