Poets Gonna Poe

Sarah ran a hand through her hair and tapped the eraser end of her pencil on the desk, then glanced around to make sure she wasn't disturbing anyone by it. Then she looked back at her homework and finished off another written line.

A Poe anthology sat at her elbow, open to The Pit and the Pendulum; she glanced over at it every so often as she wrote. It was an interesting assignment, to turn one of her favorite prose stories into poetry. She ought to find someone who could critique it for her once she was done.

Thrall was slowly getting used to university classes. They weren't completely different- he was going to the same school and everything, anyway- but having classes only two or three days a week and making up that time with much longer papers and shorter terms was still something to adjust to. It left a lot of time for reading and pondering, at least.

Speaking of reading, he'd been walking around in circles with an armload of books for about ten minutes when he noticed Sarah and had a strong feeling.

He walked over, peering over her shoulder, and frowned. "Ah, crap. Will you be done with that today? It's the only comprehensive one we've got."

Sarah looked up at a voice she didn't recognize, and smiled up at the person who'd spoken. Dang, their eyes were pretty. She looked at the book, then at the paper she'd been writing on. "Should be pretty soon. The Pit and the Pendulum isn't that long, and I'm almost at the end. I'll just finish some notes and this'll be all yours." It was about time she stopped for a snack break, anyway.

Dmitry sighed, looking irritable, but then he just shrugged. Might as well be sociable, he figured, at least briefly. She might be a classmate he'd missed. "Whatever. I guess I don't need it right now anyway."

"Hey, I haven't seen you around before. You new? You university?"

Sarah nodded, then shook her head. "Academy. I'm a senior, just enrolled this year. My friend Gorokhan is in university, though, maybe you've met her? She's really tall and muscular, with blue hair and green eyes. Easy to misgender as a guy despite her pronoun."

He ran that description through his head. "You mean the dragon woman? I've heard of her, I don't think we're in classes together. She's your friend? How'd that happen?"

He decided to sit his books down for a second. He wasn't sure if he was distracting this girl, but he was curious.

Sarah grinned. "Totally by accident. Long story short, I opened some kind of portal to her homeworld and wound up in the cave where she was living. We talked a bit and became friends, and then I got tangled up with the humans there when a knight tried to 'rescue' me from her." She waggled her fingers in the air to shape quotation marks.

"That didn't go over well with Khan, you can imagine. It all worked out in the end, more or less, but getting home was a lot harder than getting there. And I accidentally brought her with me when I did finally get it right. Lucky for us she'd learned to shapeshift into a human by that point. We wound up here by another accident, and figured what the heck, might as well stay and learn stuff. Like figuring out how to manage my portal-opening-thing, which so far has turned up nothing."

She took a breath and laughed. "Sorry for rambling. I'm Sarah, by the way. Who're you?"

As Dmitry listened to all that, his eyes widened a little. Then a lot. Then one eyebrow started to quirk a lot higher.

When she was done, he stuck his hand out towards her. "Dmitry Gilespi. Some people call me Thrall. My Dad's a faerie and I gotta say your story is the weirdest fuckin' thing I've ever heard. Good job!" He sounded genuinely impressed.

"Uh, thanks?" Sarah couldn't tell if he really believed her or not, but she decided to take it as a compliment. She grinned and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you. So you're half faerie? How old are you?" He didn't look too much older than she was, but it was hard to tell sometimes.

Dmitry couldn't tell if he really believed her or not either. It probably didn't matter much.

"Eighteen. It's just the ears, really. And the stunning good looks, though I guess you can sympathize with that part, eh?" He grinned dramatically, then stood up straight. "Ah... though if I want that book later, I should probably let you get back to it."

Sarah's cheeks went a bit hot when Thrall commented on her looks. He was right about his own, though. She looked up at him when he stood, and nodded in agreement. "Good point. Are you sticking around? I can bring it to you when I'm done. Or just flag you down again, maybe."

He shrugged one shoulder and tapped his stack of books. "I'm gonna check these out and head back to my room. I'll be there all evening except for dinner, so you can stop by or toss me a note under the door or something. It's 505."

"And, uh, nice to meet you or whatever." He had a thought, then a broad grin spread across his face. "Maybe I can meet your friend sometime. I know some people who'd enjoy meeting a dragon who came here from some portal or whatever."

Sarah nodded, her grin returning. "Alright, I'll do that. And I'm sure Khan would love to meet you. She's really enjoying it here. So am I, honestly. It's nice to know I'm not the only one with weird magical powers."

"Cool. Yeah, I hear this is a pretty nice place for magical people." Not that he would know. He'd never lived anywhere else, and he hadn't even been allowed on most field trips until he could consistently glamour himself.

...He decided not to think about that now, and grabbed his books back under his arm.

"Enjoy your Poe. That's a good one." He stepped away from the table.

Sarah nodded. "Yeah, it is. Will do."