There are three sorts of students at EU; those who ignore the strange and are ignored by it in turn, those who fight the strange with iron and fire, and those who embrace the strange and are often lost to it.
The first group often graduate and go on to be doctors or architects or even novelists (the sort who can’t see past their own brilliance to the wonders of the world). They tell stories about their college days with a strange sense of having forgotten something but the memories aren’t there to be recalled or they were never there to begin with, it’s never quite clear. “It’s just a superstition,” they loudly tell anyone who will listen, “Just a superstition.” They don’t understand why people stare at them so intently.
The second group arm themselves with knowledge and with iron. Their parents graduated (survived) and they will too. They’re ceramics majors and lawyers and they have chips of silver in their eyes and saltpeter on their fingers and logic wrapped tight around their hearts. They wear iron chains around their necks and when they find love they pledge unbreakable vows surrounded by salt and moonlight. “I will” they whisper to themselves in the darkest hours of the night, “I believe and I will.” They learned from the time they were small that will is the most important thing of all.
The third group are the most diverse. They enter school with big eyes and bigger plans. Their first week they seek out the older students, the ones with gazes that don’t quite track right and fingers that never stop dancing. They bring gifts (gifts are the most important thing, their parents always said) and they listen. They tend towards majors with fuzzy boundaries; linguistics and polisci and theoretical mathematics. They spend their nights surrounded by textbooks written by alumni and they learn. They learn to weave little bracelets of silver and morning glory, they learn to argue without ceding ground, they learn to sleep without really sleeping, and when they think they’re ready they find a circle of mushrooms and they wait.
The linguists want to document, to record, and to preserve. They’re fascinated by the idea that humans from everywhere can understand. That shouldn’t be and so they will figure out why it is. The ones who return are oddly good at parsing complex syntax, at reading the meaning behind the words, even when the words aren’t produced. They travel the world and document the languages of liminal spaces and they speak to one another with a signed language no one else understands (the Others don’t like signed languages, the ASL department is delighted to learn).
The theoretical mathematicians spend their days in the building no one knows the name of, the one in the middle of the quad with no offices and no classrooms. They cover chalkboards with equations; some that define the beautiful things in the world and some that don’t define anything in this world but are beautiful all on their own. The Others like to watch them and every once in a while a chalkboard will be filled when the students arrive. They’re careful not to stay in the building for too long though, everyone knows the stories of the students who starved trying to define the Equation for Life. They rarely visit the other side, but when they do they return with faint smiles and dreams of never ending tessellations. The dreams never go away, for worse or for better.
The polisci majors hone their skills by yelling into the woods. It seems counterproductive, but the woods yell back if you bring offerings of good wine and bread. They whisper back if you being $2 dollar wine and poptarts. The dollar store near campus can’t keep either item in stock. The budding politicians have an unofficial exchange program, but you have to negotiate the terms on your own. Those who return inevitably end up as governors and heads of state. When you’ve argued for your life, trade deals seem easy.
The students of the third group are the most likely to visit the other side. Many return, not quite the same but not necessarily worse than they were before. Some return and wish they hadn’t; the other side is so much more.
Some never come back.
Elsewhere University loses more students from this group than any other. Alumni parents dread hearing their child cheerfully declare they’re going into creative writing or culinary arts or linguistics or mathematics or polisci. Why not ceramics? They plead. Why not be a nice creative writing major? Why not be safe?
The students know better though; no major is safe. Not if you’re curious and clever and want to know more. So, they simply smile and try not to look to longingly at the Woods on parent’s weekend. They don’t call home too often, so it won’t be strange if they go missing for a few weeks and they don’t tell their parents about that one friend they have with the far away eyes.
