The car rolls to a stop in front of an ornate gate, the golden swirls and spikes shining in the afternoon sun. In the middle of the gate, once again in brilliant gold, is an emblazoned ‘P’, standing for the school’s name.
Pandora Academy - a school for things other than human.
Because that’s what you were. Not human, and apparently, you never had been.
Mum turns around in her seat, her purple eyes warm. It still surprised you, even though it had been a week since she’d shown them to you. The old colour, the one you were used to, was simply an illusion. Because she wasn’t human.
Your mother was a witch and your father a werewolf. To say you were shocked would be the understatement of the century. And because of that, her eyes were a bright plum colour.
She said your eyes might change too as you grow up, and for some reason, you dreaded that. Because you were a witch too, and that meant your future wasn’t your choice anymore.
“Well, we’re here!” she announces, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice. Both her and Dad had been terrified when you’d discovered… magic. You asked them why they were so obviously afraid of - what you should be afraid of.
“We are,” you agree, “So says the gate. Are you sure there’s a school in there, though?”
She nods, rolling her eyes at your continued scepticism.
“You’ll get bullied by the other kids if you asks those sorts of questions,” she warns you, pulling the hand brake and stepping out of the car. You follow her, moving around the front seat to her side.
“I’ll get bullied anyway, Ma.”
She winces, unsure what to say. You’d never seen her so nervous before. These days she seemed to be trembling almost constantly. Dad was always scowling, and you sometimes heard Mum crying to herself.
You didn’t know how to comfort her either, to your grief.
You squint into the horizon, knowing you’ll find nothing along the treeline. Because magic was real (apparently), it was common for magical people to hide themselves from the outside world. Mum had told you that there was a barrier surrounding the school keeping the ‘Unknowing’ (the term for what you had been, someone who didn’t know about… magic being real), far away, and completely oblivious.
All you could see was mountains and woods, stretching as far as the eye could see.
But it was there. Apparently.
Your doubts are swayed by the creature that chirps into your shoulder, and you raise a finger to scratch under its chin. A dust bunny, a real, living dust bunny. Not just a pile of fluff on your floor - oh no, this little guy moved.
And he was yours, apparently. A ‘lower familiar’ Mum and Dad called it. You hadn’t had time to ask what was a higher one.
It had followed you all the way from home, through the airport (where Dad hadn’t) and into the middle of fucking nowhere. It had stayed, tucked inside the back of your hoodie, only moving when you called it. You’d been worried the Unknowing would see it, but apparently you’d only see it if your magic had awakened.
Which yours had, because you’d left your curtains open and your floor dusty, and apparently that was enough for you to conjure a lower familiar. Because you’d sat in the moonlight all night.
It still didn’t make any sense, but apparently the world wasn’t going to give you a chance to get your footing in this new world. It was going to throw you into the deep end, screaming and drowning.
And you knew you would drown here.
Mum raises her hand to a small blue crystal embedded in the black iron wall. The metal curves around it beautifully, and you distantly wonder what blacksmith made the design.
You wondered if they were human, too.
Her hand glows, that silvery-blue colour it always did. The crystal glows in tandem, before the gate swings open on its hinges, creaking ominously. Mum sighs, moving back over to the driver’s side, and you follow her back in, feeling a little stupid for getting out.
Your doors slam behind you, the car starts again, and you roll down through the dirt path. Something tingles against your skin, and you jolt, before realising it’s probably the barrier. It feels disorientating, and the bunny rubs against you to comfort you.
You raise your hand to pet it again, thankful for the reassurance.
Your eyes follow the woods that slowly drift past, noticing again and again, things that should not exist. Glowing orbs of any variant of the rainbow, animals that look like different ones smashed together and what you were pretty sure was something gigantic far off in the forest. It was dark, and you could barely see it, but what you did made you shiver.
Faint flashes of silver fur and white fang. Let alone its height. It looked tall enough to stand above the coniferous canopy, and you think it was standing on all fours. You hoped your lessons had nothing to do with whatever that was.
Somehow, with your luck, you hardly doubt it will be.
You turn away from the forest, facing forward. Still you can’t see anything, even though you’re past the barrier. Cliffs and mountain sides if you look far enough, but mostly all you find is the unearthly forest.
Mum drives through the forest and the car slowly ascends through to the mountains. The sun sets, and the moon rises. You recognise the familiar tingle of magic under your skin, coming from the waning crescent in the sky. It was something that had greeted you every night after you summoned the rabbit, and it wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. Strangely, you found it comforting.
Eventually, you spot something along a snow-capped cliff, the moon sitting snugly behind it.
It’s barely noticeable, but your eyes snap to it anyway. A clock tower, with lights on its four sides, glowing different colours. It’s huge, and this is how big it seems from far away. Bit by bit, the rest of the building shows itself to you. A castle in the mountains, leering off the edge of the cliff it hangs from. In the night air, the aurora borealis alights the looming fortress.
The car park you stop at feels like a slap in the face, the magical aura awkwardly stopped by the bmw beside you. Still, you can’t help but notice most of the cars around are obscenely expensive. Some are less obvious about it, but if you look closer, you still see brands that you could never hope to afford.
So… everyone here is rich? Well, it makes sense you suppose, since most of the people here are immortal, and the other half are growing into it.
You would be one day, too. Apparently.
You shake away the terrifying thoughts of your mortality no longer being a threat, and go back to your more idiotic thoughts. You bet these people ruled the world, that every other world leader was secretly a vampire or something. That all those crazy theorists were right, because nothing could be more crazy than the dragon you see flying past turrets and towers.
A real mother fucking dragon. You feel shocked, but at this point you’re used to it. Back to the dumb thoughts before you start hyperventilating again.
You bet the Illuminati is real. You’d have to ask Mum it was later.
She turns off the car, letting the poor rental’s engine finally have a break. She leans back in her seat, rubs her head, and then turns to her purse. She rifles through it, pulling some painkillers out and chucking them back dry.
…Who knew witches could get stress migraines, huh?
“…Alright, we’re really, really here now,” she says, breaking the silence. You nod, smiling a smile that’s a tad too sardonic.
She sighs, shaking her head at you. You get out of the car first this time, moving to the back where your luggage lies. You open the latch, and Mum comes around to help you.
Your hand moves to pick up one of your bag’s handles, and Mum tsks you. Oh, not helping, just scolding you. Maybe she thinks this is helping.
“[Name]…” she lightly chides you. You play dumb, tilting your head at her. She rolls her eyes at you, and you grin again.
“With your magic. You need all the practice you can get - and the moon’s out too, so no complaining!”
You grunt under your breath, letting go of the bag and stepping back. You clench your hands, once, twice, three times, and take a deep, long breath. Mum bites her lip, shifting on her feet. You ignore her, focusing on the feeling and closing your eyes.
Inside, like Mum taught you, you visualise a glowing silver ball. It’s excited, as it always is. It pushes through your skin, wriggling and desperate to be free and used. You coax at it, drawing the tiniest bit you can, and pushing back the rest that wants to follow. You get barely a single drop of power into your veins before you gasp, eyes flashing back open.Cool magic flows from your chest down to your hands, and unwillingly, your hands start clenching again.
Mum looks down at them, worry evident in her eyes.
Grasping the edge of your hoodie, you raise it to your face, and curse at the light reflecting off of the fabric. You pulled too much again, obvious with how your eyes glow white and your hands feel like all the world’s tension has flowed into your fingers.
You clench, shake them, begging the extra magic to leave you.
“There’s training grounds here, lots of them in fact. You don’t have to worry about it coming out,” Mum whispers to you, and you push air out from your lungs. Good fucking god, that’s a relief. You’d probably be visiting those training grounds multiple times a day, just to burn out the extra magic.
Right now, you choose to give the magic a small outlet before it starts doing… weird stuff, again.
You raise your hand, and mum gently grabs it, putting it back down at your waist. Your cheeks heat, and you ignore how you made that mistake again.
The magic flows from your fingers, zapping at your skin in a way that still makes you jump. You imagine the bags floating upwards, gently. They slam into the roof of the car, the loud noise humiliating.
“Gentle… you’ve got this, [Name],” she cajoles you, and you resist the magic’s call for chaos. You controlled it, not the other way around. You did, you were its master, its creator, and its conduit.
You controlled it - now you just need to believe that fact.
Your hands clench again, shaking with how tight you hold them. Teeth grit, shoulders tense, entire body tense… you pull the bags up again.
…They move delicately, listening to your order. They float carefully in the trunk, waiting for your next instructions. Calling to them again, they glide out into the air, resting in front of you.
“Now follow,” you order, pointing at them like a rowdy child that’s misbehaving. They bob in the air, and you can almost imagine them nodding at your command. They spin at the thought, your imagination taking control of your magic again.
“[Name], no words. And keep those bags under control - it’s your stuff inside that’s getting tossed around.”
You groan into the night air, the chilling magic buzzing under your skin. You were going to hate this fucking school.
The lobby of the school is huge, like everything else about this place. Four women work as secretaries, and even then we have to wait. You and Mum sit beside each other on one of the incredibly fancy lounges, made of golden velvet and dark wood. The rest of the room is similarly decorated, with high ceilings and delicately carved wood bannisters.
Everything here feels too expensive for you to touch, which really doesn’t help the anxiety growing in your stomach. You go to stroke the dust bunny again, but remember it fell asleep a while ago, and you don’t want to wake it up.
Your left foot taps against the marble flooring, and when Mum puts her hand on your left thigh, your other foot starts tapping. She sighs, not bothering to try and stop you anymore, instead wrapping an arm around your side.
Your hands won’t stop clenching. Clench, unclench, clench, unclench… The muscles in your joints hurt from the strain, but you can’t seem to stop yourself.
You also can’t stop the glare you send over to the secretaries, cursing them. They wouldn’t let you pass till you were signed in, and you had to wait for everyone else who came before you to sign in. Mum had quietly explained in a hushed voice that you really needed to expend some of your magic, and the woman had looked at you in a way you really hadn’t liked.
She’d been hesitant, but she’d explained it was for security reasons, and you’d gone and sat back down.
In a room full of things you definitely couldn’t afford to pay back if you broke. You feel like a geyser about to fucking burst, but you absolutely can not fuck this one up. And with the way those secretaries keep glancing at you like a ticking bomb, you feel justified in this.
Maybe it’s the glowing eyes thing. You check with your hands, and yup, still as bright as a light bulb. The man across from you, wearing a suit, looks flabbergasted at you doing that. You tilt your head, looking back at him, but he just averts his gaze to the ground.
Yeah, you think it might have to do with the glowing eyes thing.
You knew that it meant… something important. Not that Mum or Dad would explain. Mum’s eyes didn’t glow like yours, but like you expected, they wouldn’t explain why.
You think everyone else in this lobby but you knows, and that makes your teeth grit even harder, the sound of them grinding down torture in your ears.
You don’t think you’ve ever been this tense in your life, and that was fucking saying something.
“Uh… [Name] um.. [Last Name]?” the secretary calls out your name, stuttering on the words. You raise an eyebrow at that, and then you notice the quiet. Everyone in the room is completely silent, all commotion ceasing entirely.
Mum stands up, taking all their attention. She tucks you behind her when she pulls you up, trying to keep all eyes on her.
Unfortunately, they don’t, and apparently, for some fucking reason, everyone stares at you.
She clears her throat, and grabs your arm, dragging you along beside her. You look up to her, questions in your eyes. She expected this, somehow. She expected some big commotion… all at your name.
The questions nearly spill out of your lips, but you hold them back, wary of the stares. You remember how afraid Mum has been of coming here, and you bet all of this… has something to do with it.
You move past the small crowd, people moving away from you like you’re carrying covid or something. You push your gaze to the floor, willing away the white glow. It doesn’t leave, because life is apparently like that.
“Yes, [Name] is my daughter,” Mum says, and the woman’s head whips to her, complete shock on her face.
“Uh- You- You’re-” she stutters again, this time even worse than with your name. She looks at Mum like she’s a ghost. Mum’s glaring her down, a stony expression on her face. Yeah, there’s no doubt she didn’t expect this.
Another secret. Another fucking secret, on an ever growing pile of secrets. And fuck if you’ll ever get any answers for them.
You taste blood in your mouth, and you realise you were biting so hard you tore the skin inside it. You wince, finally noticing the pain blooming on the right side of your inner cheek. It really hurts, and your magic spikes out at the pain.
A vase shatters, the bouquet inside exploding from inside. Water coats the walls, and your face drops in horror.
A rose slaps the woman in the side of the face, the wet petals sticking to her cheek. It slips down, slowly, ever so slowly, and lands with another wet slap against the polished wooden desk.
She gapes, looking even more horrified, and you look horrified, and Mum looks horrified and-
Laughter, masculine in origin, starts from behind you. You turn around at a snail’s pace, finding a stranger sitting on one of the lounges. The first thing you notice about him is the pair of ears atop his head - cat ears.
The second thing you notice is that he’s fucking crazy. The entire room is silent, except for this random boy who won’t stop cackling at your mishap. He has his head bowed, hand covering his face as he laughs like a hyena, the sound echoing throughout the room. You can only see his midnight black hair and his hand, covered in rings and veins.
Eventually his laughter tapers off, leaving only the awkward silence. He removes his hand, looking up at you. Green eyes connect with yours, and his grin grows, fangs flashing.
“Oh wow! That was the most I’ve laughed in ages! Oh- oh my Goddess…” he says, laughter still in his voice. He falls back into his laughing, the sound fainter as he hadn’t taken a single breath.
You just stare, mouth catching flies.
“Ah… that was…” he gets up, raising to his full height. You’re struck by how much taller he is than you, only going up to his shoulders. He grins down at you, and something flickers behind his back. You look down, eyes growing to the size of saucers when you see he has a matching tail.
And… It’s moving. Apparently, this guy has a real fucking cat tail and ears.
“Are you normally like this?” he asks, tilting his head to the side, the cat ears flopping with the action. You notice faintly that he has piercings on his ears - both of them, silver ones that interconnect and cover nearly every inch of flesh.
He also has an eyebrow piercing. You stare at that.
“Uh, I… I guess?” you say to the eyebrow, and it scrunches with his laughter.
Through his giggling he stutters out- “That’s- That’s amazing! Oh holy fuck!”
“M-MacMurrough! No ah-no swearing! That will be ten points deduction!” the secretary from behind you stutters, and the laughter from the boy ceases. He gives the woman a glare, which she audibly yelps at, and you turn to look at her from the noise.
“Ah! Hey!” the boy says, and you look back at him. He grins at you again, green slitted eyes crinkling at the edges.
“I’ll just earn it back anyway,” he says - to her? You? You don’t know, but he doesn’t once stop looking at you.
“Anyways! Anyways!” he grabs your hand, pulling it close to him. You start to protest, pulling back, before he places your hand against his cheek.
“Wanna be my Master?” he says, placing a kiss in the palm of your hand, eyes sparkling. Your mind falters, heat coating your cheeks.
…Another vase bursts, soaking you in cold water.
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