28 July 10 - 19:19My Favorite Story
I have a number of characters I like to think up stories about. But I've come to realize that I'll never really get to writing them all down, so here's some piecemeal bits.This is from The Booke of Drae Nars.
It was a decent day. The air, still reeking of summer's heat across the plains, was technically autumn weather as it was past the equinox. New students, a new teacher. A new class, for that matter. Millview College was nothing special, a local, community college which was close enough to the city Rim to draw students from the borderlands as attendees for their higher learning. Millview itself was just enough of a city to have electric cars, good cellular reception, and a small gridwork of pavement.
Not at all like the twentieth century, thought Drae as he plugged in the electric kettle to heat water for tea. He sat on the teacher's desk and stared idly out of the window, on the left side of the classroom as the desks faced, small and high, just next to the emergency exit door, which was painted some variant of brown that was probably called mocha. Of course, he'd never really known what that was like either, being born at the cusp of a century. We're on a whole different timeline now. But it's reasonably close. Through an amazing amount of effort, the literary boards managed to keep The Iliad and The Odyssey on high school reading lists nationwide, as well as, of course, the dratted Book of Drae Nars. For which I get my name. I'm not sure if Homer would have been better.
A new job, a new position. I'm just glad that grant went through in time. I never thought they'd have so many damned requirements. He'd passed them all. Well, at least History, Literature, and Biology. His Mathematics were apparently substandard, and the English department head, after his testwork had been reviewed, had actually asked how he'd ever learned to talk! Never mind his excellence in Latin, Greek, and ancient American. But he'd passed enough subjects to teach in the new, probationary course. Study Hall, it was called.
It was based on the theory that students of today couldn't find reliable tutors, and could use some structured time in which to do their homework. It was a one-hour class, slid into the school curriculum just after lunch. If it worked well, it would be expanded to a two-hour class, maybe a better time slot. Like evening. Or even morning, when students rushed to finish everything they'd put off for partying and drinking the night before. Actually, any time would be better than just after lunch, when students were tired and sleepy from indulging in the cafeteria's all-you-can-eat lunch ticket. Oh, well. Can't argue with the board on every point, it'd look suspicious. And I'm trying to keep my head down.
Even as a study hall, the rules and guidelines of Millview College required that all registered classes have a syllabus, and at least one gradeable project to determine the progress of the student's learning. So Drae had a stack of Course Syllabi on the end of his desk, opposite where he was idly bouncing one knee and window-watching.
Seeming somewhere in his mid-twenties, just out of college himself, he undoubtedly looked like perhaps just another student to the young men and women who dribbled in, as they finished their lunches and decided that, after all, it would not do to miss the first day of a class. He had short, jet black hair and fair skin, with eyes that were bright enough green to seem almost unnatural, in the days before the splicing wars, when humanity had nearly destroyed itself. But fae features, while not common, were not unseen around here, especially so close to the borderlands. Harder to deal with had been the censorious looks from the educational board. At least there were relatively few women on the college staff, and fewer still who were unmarried. People tended to get funny thoughts around him, about proprieties that were antique when they came back into fashion two centuries ago. As if it was his fault others found him attractive, something he didn't really think about beyond making sure he was always wearing a shirt.
Soon the whole class was assembled, fourteen students of sophomore or junior year- the class hadn't been allowed to new or graduating students, on the basis that proper data could not be gathered from a class review as to whether the class ought to be continued. They fidgeted in their seats, clustered in small groups of two or three, no one in the front two rows. Many of them cast furtive glances around the room, looking for the professor. Drae smiled at those who smiled at him, and looked around the classroom in interest as the students did, taking in the high cupboards in the back, the counter and sink in steel and orange vinyl, and the side counter covered in the old cardboard boxes and crates of a hastily moved teacher, when everything has yet to make a place for itself in the new room. For teachers lucky enough to have rooms, and not just an old office reminiscent of a concrete cubicle. Millview was old enough to have space, having once been converted from an old elementary school on a military base. No comments No trackbacks
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