Tiny Writes

It's a warm evening in Strixhaven, and tensions are high in the Strixhaven Concert Ensemble. A big performance is coming up, and an incredibly difficult piece has been selected for the final number. Try as they might, it's just not quite coming together yet, though a few of the more experienced musicians have already managed to perfect their parts through ruthless practice. The less experienced ones, however, are unfortunately struggling a little, much to the more experienced musicians' frustrations.

"Do you practice at all, Rubina?" Dandelion snapped at the second-year student who has chosen Silverquill as her college of choice. If he had his way, this ensemble would be made exclusively of Prismari students.

"Of course I practice!" she retorted, voice harsh even as she carefully put her cello back in its case. "Excuse me for not being perfect!"

"That sounds like a personal problem. Maybe you should head to a practice room and work on that so you're less of an embarrassment to our section at the next rehearsal."

"You are such an ass, Dandelion!" Rubina huffed and hefted up her cello case before she stormed off. "No wonder you don't have any friends!"

Dandelion bit back a growl of frustration, one pointed ear twitching in annoyance.

"Don't you think you were a little hard on her?"

The drow heaved a sigh as he turned to face the new voice.

"No, I don't. If she doesn't get her part down, this entire piece is going to crash and burn, Aurora."

"She makes a point, though," the dhampir replied, tilting her head. "You really are quite the asshole, and you don't seem to have many friends at all."

"Oh, fuck off, I don't want to hear it." Dandelion slammed the lid of his cello case shut and gathered his things, preparing to stalk off and go back to his room.

Aurora, unfortunately, followed him. He didn't mind her presence, to be fair, as she was one of the few that didn't cuss him out no matter what he did. However, she was a little unsettling at times, being that she was a dhampir and a Witherbloom student. What a chilling combination.

"Why do you do it?" she asked as she walked beside him.

"Do what?"

"Push people away."

He nearly stopped right in his tracks with a short, barked laugh. "I don't push people away--"

"Yes, you do. You just demonstrated it perfectly with Rubina. So why do you do it?"

"What's it matter to you?"

"I'm the curious sort. I want to know."

Dandelion didn't hide his small growl of annoyance this time, a sound that got Aurora to give a grin that showed the tips of her fangs. He didn't respond right away, hoping that his silence would get her to give up and leave him alone, but it didn't. She was right there next to him, step for step. Incredibly odd, he thought, that a second-year would so willingly, so stubbornly, stick around a third-year that made it clear that most company was not at all wanted.

"Why delay the inevitable?" he eventually grumbled.

Aurora blinked. "What in the nine hells does that even mean?"

"My friends all leave me anyway, so why fucking bother making new ones?"

"Dandelion..."

"Don't. I know what you're going to say. Oh, surely that can't be true, Dandelion," he said, pitching his voice up into a mocking tone. "Surely you have friends that are out there somewhere, surely they didn't leave you behind, it's a misunderstanding. Well, guess what? They did. Many times over. And I don't see the point of trying again. I don't expect you to understand."

The dhampir gave a faint laugh. "Try me."

"My next-door neighbor growing up said we were best friends one year. The next year, when we got back to school, I was set aside for another friend, and they only hung out with me with their other friend wasn't there."

Aurora waited, clearly expecting more.

"In middle school, I had two friends that I was really close with, but they were best friends with each other. I would get to hang out with them individually or in larger groups, but forget it if I wanted to hang out with both of them together. I was left out, like an unwelcome third wheel, an addition to their duo that they didn't even want. They even talked about a party that they were throwing in front of me, and it was one I wasn't invited to. My high school friends all slowly dropped contact with me after we graduated unless they wanted something, and even my best friend stopped responding to me once he got married. My mom always says that I need to reach out, to keep trying, to fight for those friendships, but I'm so fucking tired of being the only one fighting for it, Aurora. They all leave. Every damn time. I'm sick of being abandoned and left behind, so at this point I don't even want to try. Why bother when it's clear you're only the spare friend?"

Silence fell over the two of them after that. They kept walking in silence, making their way towards Central Campus. They passed Rubina and her boyfriend, Grayson, along the way, and Grayson threw a venomous glare Dandelion's way.

"I've been left behind, too, you know," Aurora murmured as the glittering dome of the Biblioplex came into view. "I never knew my dad. Hadarai left without saying goodbye."

"Yeah, a whole two people," he scoffed, knowing he's being horrible and trying not to care. Aurora never knew her dad, for fuck's sake.

"I know. But they were two people who were important to me. It stung, to be left behind like that. I still have people who didn't leave me behind, though. I have my mom, I have the friends that I've made here. It's possible, Del, you just have to push through that fear that's holding you back."

"I can't."

"Yes, you ca--"

"No, Aurora, I can't. I can't be anything but horrible to people because that's all they expect of me now. That's all they'll see. And besides, that's all I want them to see, because I'll be damned if I let another person in and they break my fucking heart again. I can't do it. I won't put myself in that position."

Aurora fell silent and slowed to a stop beneath the floating stone chunks that made up the Strixhaven Bow. Dandelion kept walking.

"I hope you can reevaluate sometime soon, Del," she said, her voice fading as he walked away. "I don't think you realize just what you have around you."

Dandelion scoffed, refusing to grace her with a response, and stalked into his dorm room. It was a single room with no roommate, so he could be alone, just how he liked it.

The feeling of envy is such a pathetic, stupid thing. At least, that's what I had always thought it was. I had no reason to believe otherwise. I wanted for nothing, after all. As a child born to nobility, I had everything I could ever need: access to a good education, good food to make sure I grew up healthy, a roof over my head, everything. And yet, I still found myself envying my friends. I didn't know exactly why I felt that pang of jealousy whenever they ran home to their parents to be received with smiles and open arms. I had parents of my own, after all, it's not like I was an orphan. But despite that, the jealousy lingered, and it twisted in my gut more often than I care to admit.

As I got older, I started to understand the feeling more. My jealousy wasn't as pathetic and stupid as I had originally thought it to be. If I had everything a child needed, then, perhaps, I would not have felt the way that I did, but despite my earlier beliefs, I didn't have everything a child needed. The one thing I lacked, the one thing that made me the most envious, were my friends' loving families. And that was when I started realizing that envy may not always be that feeling of wanting what everyone else has, regardless of if you have something similar or not. Sometimes that feeling of envy or jealousy is grieving something that you never got to have, or something that you had once and lost.

Even as I realized that, though, I continued to keep my feelings secret from my friends. I didn't want them to think less of me for being jealous. I was the Crown Baron, born to powerful people to take over their position of power one day. We were incredibly wealthy. We wanted for nothing. At least, that's what everyone believed. I did want for something, though. A family. An actual, loving family. So I stayed silent, regardless of the pain it put me through, regardless of every pang of jealousy, regardless of my tiny sliver of hope that they would notice that something was wrong and that they would ask or figure it out on their own. I am out of my parents' house, now, but the jealousy still remains.

It probably always will.

It's late at night and Lucian is alone.

He's not alone alone, in that no one is ever there for him, but it sure feels that way sometimes. He's the last one awake. He's the only one here, right now. All his friends are either asleep or out doing things with their big, interesting lives. Without him.

That's not to say Lucian's life isn't big or interesting. It is. He has so much that interests him, so much to explore, so many things he likes to do. But right now, none of it is calling to him, out here in this field with nothing but a dark, starlit sky above him. Even the moon has left him tonight.

He feels this way more often than he'd care to admit, this feeling of being so small and insignificant to others that he just slips through the cracks of their lives. He thinks it to be inevitable, at this point. Every time he finds a new group of friends, they all slip away, one by one. He loses them to distance, to time, to partners, to anything and everything he can imagine. And the worst part is, he feels absolutely certain that if his friends were asked to choose between him and the things that he fears he's losing them to, he knows which ones they'd pick. The answer is never him. That's okay. He's come to expect it.

The evening breeze rustles the grass and his hair. He settles into the field, then lays back, gazing at the endless dark expanse above him. A whirl of thoughts swirl by of the people he cares about and all the things they're doing without him. How they didn't notice he wasn't feeling like himself this evening, though that may be a blessing as he couldn't explain it if he tried. They're not here. He is.

So, Lucian tries to make peace with his thoughts and rests here.