Zhül sat with her top pair of hands propping up her chin, and the bottom taking notes. It was afternoon, Friday, and she had one class to go after Biochem. But her note taking was faintly interrupted by a pair of the hoidy-toidy girls who were in the Cheer squad and all those other nice things (like, the ones who have an unlimited budget and a family that bent over backwards to keep them happy? Like, any of them could have whatever boy they wanted, but they refused - except for the football team's best players...). They were talking about her, she'd been in the class only three weeks, and frankly, Zhül wasn't sure how they got in the class at all.
They weren't bright, they were sly. They were smart enough to get by with B's and a smile, and with Anderson Vale at the chalkboard they might be able to swing a low A out of it if they only wiggled and giggled a little more.
That wasn't fair, especially to say about Anderson. He wasn't like that - he was not going to endanger his tenure at the school by allowing some 16 year old bimbette to wiggle her way into the books.
That bimbette however would be getting an earful later, since right now she was saying to her friend, "I wonder if the broad's head is covered with that crap or what? It looks like someone gave her a tar whirlie..."
"Bald," laughed the other, "with that mop head. I bet they whirled her and it clogged their drains."
"Hah ha," said the first, "and her name, 'Zero' is right! She's totally a loser."
The bell rang, and everyone packed up quickly. The girls were out the door long before Zhül could respond to them. She was about to leave the classroom and head to the math building, but Anderson stopped her gently with his 'clearing-my-throat-to-get-your-attention' cough.
She paused, her hair swung around and she pushed it back with her low arms. "Yes, professor Vale?"
"I heard them too," he said. "I could call their parents or the councilors, if you wanted."
"I... I don't think so," Zhül said, looking at him. It was hard to believe she was merely a sophomore, being at least half a foot taller than him. It was her breed, of course, what with the extra 6 or 7 inches of spine they had to accomodate their second set of arms. Even so, she'd be a long-legged, tall girl without them. Anderson had to drag his eyes away from her four breasts - that wasn't something they saw every day.
"If you want to, you could report them anyway. You don't have to site anything specific, just complain that they were offending you. If they were."
"They were," Zhül said softly. "I've... got to get to class." She picked up and sped away, and Anderson opened up his cell phone to tell the councilors anyway. This wasn't going to lead anywhere good.
***
It didn't. After school fortunately the girls had their cheer squad workouts, and Zhül slipped into the on-campus dorms where she resided for her duration at Carramba. But her mailbox had been sprayed with sticky hairspray, not the kind she'd ever use on her own hair of course, and patches of dirt or mud had been plastered on it.
"That's just not nice at all," said another passing student. He was of the thoroughly non-humanoid variety, and as he schlucked along on the ground with his ovoid body, he did something strange and the mailbox was cleaned up. He made smacking noises, "thanks, that hit the spot."
"You just... ate the dirt?" Zhül said.
"Yeah, whatever got sprayed on it was a little tangy, though." He disappeared into the lobby and then went his own way. Zhül was so stunned she didn't even have time to thank him. Her mail box had two letters in it, one from her Spirit Seeker mentors and the other was a locally-marked letter.
As she went upstairs to her semi-private room, her upper hands worked open the letter from the mystery source. It didn't have a return address on it, but the handwriting looked quite familiar. Her lips twitched into a frown, it was from Alexi Neuveau, the Sophomore councilor. Zhül sighed and flopped down on her bed, which wasn't quite long enough for her, and all four of her arms draped down over the sides.
"You look beat," said her room mate, a near-human girl with green-grey skin and long antennae. "What's wrong?"
"My councilor wants to talk to me about 'peer harassment'," Zhül muttered into her pillow.
"Those girls again?" Nayi asked, and she saw Zhül's head move into a nod. "Well you should talk to him about them. They're mean and awful. And if they're not going after you, they're always talking trash about someone else. It's about time someone put them in their place."
"I suppose so," the Zeddian said, lifting herself up with all four arms. "I just don't want them to know about it."
"Zhül," Nayi groaned, sitting on her own bed, "look, you've got to get over this ... fear you have. It's not good to go through life not enjoying yourself."
Zhül's memories drifted around, and she searched for a time when she was happy. It was tough. She nodded once, and looked at the letter. "Says he's free this afternoon, that was quick." She hupped herself off the mattress and made a quick check of herself in their mirror. Everything looked good - according to her breed's standards anyway. She didn't have that idiotically feathered or fancifully curled look that the human girls did. But by Zeddian standards, her 'mop' of hair was quite desirable.
The fact that she only had markings on her face, not on any other part of her body, put her into a different category on Zed. As she walked back across campus to Neuveau's office in the admin building, Zhül thought about how many ways she was singled out in her life.
When she was tiny, her parents were both killed. That landed her in an orphanage, but since she was still an infant and her hair hadn't grown in yet, everyone at the hospital could see her for what she was. A single-marked Zeddian was one in a million - literally. Most had multiple markings - on their face and head, but also on hands, wrists, legs, or down their bodies some how. Some had several sets, and the only rarer condition ever seen than her own, was to have white markings upon black skin. No one had ever been born to their kind with but one color skin. (That's not to say that mutants with only one pair of arms didn't exist, though they were shunned... How could you get along with only two arms?)
Zhül was elevated to a 'rich-person-only' adoption offer. All this was of course long before she even knew her own name or destiny. Those who adopted her had designs of a different sort in mind. One of their 'seers' had located her from afar, and demanded to see her brought to him. That began her journey as a Spirit Seeker.
While dead, her parents stuck with her. For a time, of course, she didn't know that they weren't physically present. Only their spirits, but that was enough for a little child. After a while, though, their spiritual energies began to fade, and they slowly vanished. This was traumatic to Zhül, and she retreated into herself.
(Zhül stepped past the speaker's plaza, not listening to anything going on there. Today it was a discussion about the flavors of slushie one could make if only allowed to use under-sea ingredients.)
The Spirit Seekers gave her purpose and direction. But they also - and she knew this even then - were using her for their own means. She was a prodigy, indeed. Able to see not only her own parents after their brutal deaths, but many others. But that was not the end of her abilities. The seer had selected her above all others, because he sensed a hidden talent.
That hidden talent came to the surface when they performed a ritual with her. It had been done before, this talent wasn't unique to her on Zed, but it was quite rare. Most who had it, either went insane without counciling, or abused it until they were themselves consumed with death.
A member of their sect had been found dead in her quarters, or so they told Zhül. She would come back to life, if only the young initiate could guide her spirit back into her body.
What they hadn't told her, was that it was not the spirit of the dead entering that body. It was Zhül's own. She gave a little bit of herself into that frame, and felt it briefly come to life.
Years later, by the time she was ten or so, Zhül understood that this ritual kept her from misusing the power. It guided her, and made her aware that she could in fact manipulate the dead matter around her. For a few months, it seemed to Zhül that everything was dead. Every. Thing. But soon enough she got over that and began lifting small animals back into warmth. Privately, she taught herself to use that 'guide' phrase and make it true. To find the spirit was one thing. To locate its dead body was another. Convincing it to return...
So she performed her rituals for the sect, and performed her own acts of resurrection for herself. She could guide the souls of small things back into their shells, carefully. She made sure not to show this off to the Spirit Seekers themselves. They would never have allowed her to leave!
Zhül entered the maze of the Admin building, and had to pay attention to where she was headed now. The councilors offices were nearby, and Alexi was in his room without any others present. He waved her inside, and she shut the door behind her.
Quietly, she sat down and didn't meet his eyes. Alexi was an alien, noseless, with wood-textured skin and short curved horns. He had reflective glasses on, but he took them off shortly. "Zhül, I've been hearing more from people that the cheerleaders are talking down to you again."
She nodded, and said nothing.
"Zhül, you've got to either stand up for yourself or tell me that it's okay for me to contact their parents. They deserve to be-"
Zhül said, "punished, I know, I know. That's what Nayi says too. I'm just... I don't like that kind of thing."
"It's not a reflection on you, Zhül, you're the one who is being hurt by this. And I can tell," he leaned his elbow on the desk and gazed at her seriously, "that it does hurt."
"They gummed up my mailbox today," she said quietly. "But this nice Voiodd cleaned it up for me."
"They what?" Alexi said, "that's a federal crime, you know."
Zhül's eyebrows tilted. "It is?"
"Yes, it's against the law to tamper with mail or a mail box. They should be punished for that, officially." He tapped his thick fingers against his wide jaw. "They will be taken off the cheerleading squad temporarily," he announced. Zhül gasped, but he held up his hand and shook his finger. "No, don't defend them. There is no reason for that at all. They're not being fair to you, and other people have complained about them too. They only share what, two classes with you? They've got four with another girl, Moshan Teek, you know her?"
Zhül shook her head, "no, but ... it doesn't make me feel any better that they're like this to everyone. Everyone lower than them."
"You're not lower than they are, Zhül, you're different from them," Alexi said, standing up. "And they are afraid of differences. Their parents were the same way, the people at their country club are like that, and their kids will probably grow up like that too."
"Then what's going to stop their parents from just letting them ignore anything you do about it?"
"Good question. Maybe," he said with a glimmer in his eye, "they'll pull them out and send them to a private school where they won't be able to harass people like yourself."
***
"I don't see why she gets to stay in her class," said one of the pair, humiliated that one afternoon by Alexi himself coming out to the practice field and explaining the situation to Delia Carson, the PE and Cheering instructor. Tuesday would be the first day they'd be restricted from participating, and today, Monday, they were going to try and take everything out on her in Biochem.
"Because she's 'special'," said the other, and they hit their hand on their collar bone like 'what a retard'. Wickedly laughing, the pair stared at Zhül until professor Vale came into the room.
They were going to straighten out, act all nice-nice, but then they noticed that Alexi Neuveau was also with him. Both girls slumped into their seats.
"Alexi has something to say," Anderson Vale said, and Zhül noticed a faint trace of a smile on his handsome face.
"It's come to my attention that an attack on a public area was made by individuals in this class," Alexi said, and most of the class took in a breath of disbelief. In this era of terrorism and occasional random acts of violence, they couldn't see who it might be.
"The security cameras in the Alien dorms caught a pair of people defacing a mailbox," Alexi said, and Zhül could see faintly that his eyes had turned behind his glasses, to the pair of cheerleaders. "Which is, I have to add, a federal offense. There is a hefty fine involved, and possibly time in juvenile hall."
"That's so stupid!" Yelled one of the pair, suddenly. Everyone jumped at her voice, everyone except Alexi, Zhül and Vale. "There wasn't anything wrong with-"
"Shut-up," said her companion.
"Well now that we have the culprits conversing about the event," Alexi said, "why don't you two come with me, and we'll talk to the federal Agent who is in my office waiting for you. Your parents are on their way - again."
With everyone as wide-eyed as they were, it was a wonder most missed the scathing look that the pair of girls gave to Zhül as they passed her desk.
Beyond them, Zhül could see Anderson Vale give a tiny nod to her. Zhül smiled back at them. Then she noticed something faintly - and her smile got broader.
There were several dead insects sticking in the girls' locks, placed there somehow by someone. Was it Alexi? Anderson? How could either of them have done that? She didn't care.
Shortly, Zhül concentrated on them as they walked by. Shrieks and cries of disgust and fear suddenly erupted from them both as Anderson closed the door and began his lesson. That one moth would be flapping hard trying to get out...
***
"Wicked," Nayi laughed, hugging her knees and rolling back and forth on her bed. "That was absolutely wicked!"
"I just wonder who put them there," Zhül said, "I mean, I didn't, that's for sure."
"But you took advantage of it, and I'm proud of you!" Nayi giggled. They both looked up as a shadow passed by their window. It was the one facing east, overlooking the field. Both stood before the smallish window and gasped. Nayi said, "look, the dragons are landing!"
Sure enough, there were half a dozen of the local dragons coming in for a precise landing on the field. Apparently they'd planned for it, because the football team wasn't practicing today. Though they were pretty far from the fields, they could hear the muffled sound of the dragons bellowing. Others greeted them from afar. Here in Carramba's airspace there were quite a few.
Zhül wasn't used to them, really, but they were very cool. "Let's go see them," she said. Excited for the first time about something, she almost exploded with emotion.
"Okay," Nayi laughed, and they skipped down to the field. A batch of dragons looked up from their telepathic discourse, and a couple of their riders paused in their own conversations.
"Well look who we have here," said one, Vax Silverknight. His mechanical lower body eased off the dragon and somewhat stiffly walked toward the pair. The brown dragon he rode seemed a little too big for him, he wasn't very large considering that he didn't have legs of his own...
Zhül and Nayi glanced at each other, and Vax beckoned another rider near. He wasn't exactly unfamiliar on campus but was hardly a regular, Jeff Engell and his beautiful silvery white dragon. "Tehn is telling me too," he said. Nayi hugged one of Zhül's lower arms.
"I don't want to disappoint you," Vax said to the green skinned girl, "but our dragons have only searched Zhül here, not you."
She squealed anyway. "I knew it! I knew it!" She jumped up and down, dragging Zhül's arm with her. "They've searched you! They've searched you!"
"But..." Zhül said weakly, "what does that mean?"
"It means," the white-haired Engell said, "that you should stand at a dragonry for an egg, which will then hatch," he waved his pale hand at the snowy dragon beyond, "into a dragon. Which you then," he smiled, "would ride."
"With us," Vax added with a grin. The oddly bald man peeled his rubbery helmet off his head, exposing wiring and plug openings. "Ahh, it's way too hot for this."
"Stand... for a dragon," Zhül said.
"I know you're not that dense," Nayi said. "You're perfect for a dragon. You'd be able to hang on even when they do those great loop-de-loops!" Perhaps she only said it just to get the eyes-wide-open look that Zhül gave her as she imagined the activity - she'd seen them doing their acrobatics out here, but no one rode them when they did it!
"I ... suppose!" Zhül whispered, "but won't that interfere with my studies?"
"Like it would interfere with your studies after we get through with you," growled a voice behind her. The group all spun, including the dragons turning their great heads to listen. The anger in her voice was obvious, her friend was silent.
"We are so not letting you get away with this," said her friend.
"What, making you pay for your crime?" Zhül said. For some reason, the dragons behind her made her feel more comfortable, more confident. "Getting away with it is the least of my worries."
"My father is a lawyer, and he's going to fight it for us." Said the first.
"Well your father is going to learn a thing or two about law," said Engell with a smile, sidling up to the tall Zeddian. "I have no idea what your little enemies are talking about," he said to Zhül looking up at her with a broad smile on his face, "but you do know that I am one of the richest lawyers in any dimension, right?"
"I do now," Zhül said. "Can I afford your services?"
"You don't need to, I'm offering them to the school pro-bono. It's in my contract."
"Maybe while you're arguing with them," Vax said to Engell and then turned to Zhül, "I can take you off to a dragonry or two and see where you'd be best likely to bond. How does that sound?"
"Wouldn't I need to be there for a -" Zhül said, but Engell shook his head.
"Of course not. Tehndarinth has been informed that this pair was caught on a security camera that my company installed, doing something against the law. How clever of them to do it right where they could be seen." He glanced at Zhül, "no, your presence would only get them more riled, and you would be better off on the sands somewhere."
Angrily, the girls fairly yeowled with words best suited to prison, not high school. Engell and Tehndarinth stepped between them and Zhül, while Nayi stood there grinning like a total idiot and laughing when they were led away again.
***
"Here does seem like a good option," Vax said. "Now, you're going to want to have a few things with you, clothing and any special needs you might have to address. We'll make sure that your letters or calls get where they need to be."
Zhül looked around her at the dragonry. Draco's Inferno was its name, and there were several clutches on the sands. Zhül wondered why there was so much concern over the one, but it turned out to be the clutch she was most interested in.
"I like it here," Zhül said with a wistful gaze around her. There weren't all that many people about, but she knew that in a month or so, perhaps less when the eggs hatched, there were supposed to be a ton more. The tall white-skinned marked girl strode around investigating. Now that there were no hoidy-toidy girls to annoy her, she was freed up to act more like a proper teenager exploring a new place.
There were three dragons hanging close to one another, on the sands - a female and two blue-type males. On the way around the dragonries that Vax had shown Zhül, he explained the variety of colors, gender breakdowns and the like. How some world had gender-based colors, ranks and sizes, while others had a mix of results. There weren't many two-colored dragons that he knew, so when Zhül asked about the blue and green who stood proudly near the small green dam, he had little to say.
"Perhaps you should ask him," Vax suggested.
She did, and what she learned - about the blue, blue-green and their green companion - made her even more determined that this was the right clutch for her. Abandonment was something she understood intimately.
Her bags, moved from her cabinet in the dorm, came and went. There were rooms for the candidates, and her barrack was much bigger than the room she shared with Nayi! How she would miss the girl, too, because her bright laughter and her constant reminders of friendship were always welcome.
Shortly, Zhül settled in. It would just be a matter of time now.
But she had homework to do, loads of it, since she was still 'in school'!