Rising Shards

Art was one of the two classes on the schedule that didn’t list our teacher. After Corinani, I was bracing for another disastrous first class, especially after the first five minutes passed with no sign of a teacher.

“This is so boring,” Kalei said. “I’m just gonna go.”

“You’ll get in trouble,” Lillia said, grabbing Kalei’s arm as she stood up.

“There’s no teacher here, c’mon.” Kalei said. “They probably forgot to give us one.”

“If you leave, I imagine the teacher will show up seconds later,” Lillia said.

“That’s how it tends to go, isn’t it?” Kalei said. She sighed as she sat down. “My phone’s gonna die if I spend any more time on it though, and I don’t wanna run to my room and grab a charger. So give me something to do.”

“I’m not responsible for your entertainment,” Lillia said.

“You’re making me stay, you gotta make it worthwhile.” Kalei said.

Lillia scanned the classroom. “I see Michi has found some colored pencils and scratch paper. Maybe ask them if you can borrow any? Perhaps they got their supplies from somewhere in the classroom.” Lillia gasped.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I see where Michi got the colored pencils,” Lillia said, pointing to a table at the front of class. “And copies of coloring book pages. Were we supposed to be coloring this whole time? Have I been missing out on my assigned tasks?”

Lillia rushed to the front of the classroom, and Kalei followed, finding this very amusing. While they were gathering supplies, Marmalade leaned over to me.

“Hey, Oka,” Marmalade said. “Quick question.”

“Sure, what’s up?” I said.

“When’s Kalei’s birthday?” Marmalade asked.

“Huh? Uh…when is it? I’m not sure, actually.” I said.

“Yeah, it’s not on her Friendliest page so I wasn’t sure either.” Marmalade said.

“They have birthdays on Friendliest?”

Marmalade stared at me like I said something silly.

“You’re…sheltered, huh?”

“Very sheltered, I know.” I said. “I wasn’t allowed to have social pages like Friendliest growing up.”

“Bummer,” Marmalade said.  “Well hey, on the plus side, at least you’re dating someone who’s also sheltered. I’m not trying to sound mean, obviously.”

“Is it obvious?” I asked. I got a bit sensitive when people poked fun at me not knowing things due to my upbringing at Tesata being so closed off from the world. Zeta helped me out a lot, but I felt her absence at the moment. She definitely would’ve chimed in with something to save face for me, then explained what I didn’t understand later.

Finally, some adults showed up. One I recognized, because I’d met him in Litus Empirica; it was that trench coat wearing fella that was part of the detective group. Rain, Amara, and KJ gasped in sync at the familiar face.

“Hey all,” the trench coat wearing man said. “I’m Mars, and I’m half a teacher. But your main teacher for this class had something come up today. She’ll still show up, it’s all good. How’s it going, Rain? And Amara and KJ?”

“Wonderful, now that you’re here!” Rain said.

“It’s good to see you too,” Mars said. “And, er, the rest of you that I don’t know yet.”

Mars Valor was joined by a tall wolf Kanibari woman, who got everyone in class to shut up just with one snarl. I remembered seeing her picture at the exhibit in Lil East Valataran. “And this is Kara. She’s the only one without a teaching degree, so she is relegated to teacher’s assistant.”

“What the hell?” Kara growled. “Now they’re gonna think I have no authority.”

“You’re a seven-foot-tall wolf Kanibari, I think you’ll have some authority.” Mars said. “And you know what Tik said: there’s nothing wrong with being a teacher’s assistant.”

“Yeah, and we’re both teacher’s assistants by the way, Mars was lying his ass off as usual.” Kara said.

“Um…” I raised my hand. “Aren’t you two detectives? Why are you teaching art class if you’re like, detectives?”

“That’s an excellent question,” Mars said.

Mars stared ahead as Kara scratched her ears.

“Are you going to answer that question…?” Kalei asked.

“Probably not today,” Mars said. “Let’s all just hang out and draw a bit, because I don’t remember what Tik was gonna do.”

After a fairly chill drawing session (there was a bit of a skirmish when Latte tried to show off a weird toy gun she’d loaded with coffee beans), we gathered for lunch, where I felt the same energy we all had during finals, a kind of unspoken teamwork to get through this together.

“Strange start, huh team?” I said. “Oh.”

“What?” Kalei asked.

“It’s weird to say team and not have Zeta go ‘team Starlight!’ right after.” I said.

“Kinda more nice than weird.” Kalei said. “Weird would be the two art teachers who aren’t our art teachers.”

“I think Mars and Kara were more qualified than Corinani, at least.” I said.

“For real,” Kalei said. “I’m still processing that one.”

“Is it weird being someone people look to?” Marmalade asked Kalei.

“What do you mean?” Kalei asked. 

“Like. Everyone wanted to hear you goof on that Corinani. That’s like. Power.” Marmalade said.

“Huh…” Kalei said. “I didn’t think about it that way. Usually people just tell me to shut up about it.”

“I’m not pleased,” Lillia said. 

“Sorry my material wasn’t good enough for you?” Kalei said. 

“Not about that, about the teacher herself,” Lillia said. “I’m mentally drafting a stern letter to the school board.”

“She really doesn’t seem cut out for this…” I said.

A pang of worry hit me when I thought about art class some more. If Tik Moonheart was our teacher, and she couldn’t make it on her first day…there could be a lot of reasons for that. Mars told us how busy their detective group was with cases when we met him. But Tik was also now asking Zeta for help with that memory trial thing. I hoped there wasn’t an issue there. But naturally, I started worrying about all the issues that could be popping up.

“Oh, I should call Zeta!” I announced, as though I needed to act casual to hide the rising panic brewing within me. Or that I needed to announce that I was making a phone call. As I waited for her to pick up, I wondered if I should’ve texted her first. “I think she might be a cat again, hold on…”

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