“What the hell?”, Sion hissed under her breath. This faerie’s imprudence seemed to know no bounds. She had been fortunate enough to never meet someone as silly as the person floating before her, her luck looked like it had run dry at the orientation.

The boy’s grin only widened at her indignation.

“Amn’t I lucky! I thought I wouldn’t see a single familiar face around here! Ya know the faces around here are as posh as royal antiques, it’s good to see some other commoners!”

Sion’s mind stuttered at the word, commoner. Even with their amount of debt, nobody could consider anyone with Estrix blood as common. It took her a minute or two. A dreadful minute or two. Her look of confusion and the idiot faerie’s blatant jolliness were irreconcilable. Strange. Odd.

The boy's babbling continued, interpreting Sion’s confusion with being Aphasiac. He leaned in, casting a conspiratorial glance to the rest of his row.

“You see, most of the kids here are golden-fed children, you have to fake royalty to fit in! That’s what I’m doing, even the back-row kids are as aristocratic as the rest of them. I told them that I was from one of the lower classes, which made them shifty around me. Can’t believe what they’ll think if they find out that I ain’t even-”

Sion’s mind numbed at the faerie’s constant buzzing. She took her chance to stop his blabbering as soon as she saw it.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Faerie boy tilted his head at the question, to Sion he resembled a stray dog. She almost felt guilty for her use of a snide tone.

“Well, it… hard. It’s hard to be a peasant in this school, and I just thought that it might be nice for some company and all that.”

“You don’t even know my name.” Faerie boy’s jovialness returned at that.

“Well, that can change! I’m Rin, a pleasure to see you again, Ms?”

It was at that moment that it struck Sion that she had never actually said her Alantin with anyone other than the interviewer. And a greedy interviewer was different from another commoner. And a faerie for that matter. She had heard rumours that the faerie kind had sharper sense than any other species. Could the one before her tell that she was lying?

Her worries were damned when Sion decided that it did not matter if a pesky boy sensed something wrong with her. The most likely outcome would be that the faerie dismisses it as nerves. And that was certainly part of it.

“Vuela, Vuela Flinton.”, Sion answered as she firmly shook the boy's hand. 

“Well Vuela, I’m tremendously grateful to see you again.”

♕

Speeches weren’t as terrible as most people thought they were, or at least that was what Sion thought. It didn’t matter if you were the speaker or an avid listener, to Sion a good speech could electrify you. Even if it was as simple as a monologue in a theatre, speeches were one of Sion’s favourite things. Alantin students and teachers had a record for giving excellent speeches. The third founder of Alantin was invited to a royal coronation to give one of his famous speeches to the eager crowd. There was absolutely no way that the Orientation could go on without an epic speech.

Sion was thoroughly disappointed. There was a short minute speech at the end of the tour, however, it was so short that most people forgot about it altogether.

The orientation was turning out to be a complete regret for Sion. 

The tour was nothing special. A couple of tired graduating students pointed out a handful of sites around the campus, their monotone voices telling a different story from what Alantin tried to feed the incomers. Most of the “special” sites were statues as if the students had never seen those before. The only thing that gauged some kind of interest within the crowd were the dormitories. And most of the excitement was caused by rumours of the local ghosts that haunted the dorms.

After a short break to quench the thirst of the travellers, the students were ordered by a professor to go back to their respective seats. Hapless Sion was forced to sit next to the faerie that she was trying her hardest to avoid.

The dean of Alantin’s School Of The Elite strutted onto the podium with as much finesse as you would expect from a person with trillions of fans, and an endless amount of fame. They had waves of soft ash-white hair, cascading to the heels of their feet. When they reached the stage, their eyes flicked around the children, as if evaluating every single one of them. Then, they smiled a smile that could invoke a sense of comfort to even the roughest of souls.

“Hello Alantin!”