[english] in which students arrive in their dorm rooms and make their way to orientation

Accept our Terms of Service
Our Terms of Service have recently changed! Please read and agree to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy

Annisa lands and throws up - there's nothing in her stomach, so it's not very dramatic - and then rolls to her feet and blinks rapidly. Her room's floor is a thin grate over void, which is too bad, the best roll is a void ceiling, but it's fine. At least she'll never have to sweep her floor. The luckiest thing is to be near the bathrooms and not too near or too far from the stairs, which she'll have to leave the room to check.

She's seen pictures of all the rooms but she holds still anyway, taking it in.

Dorm rooms are five feet by ten feet, narrow enough in the one dimension that you can hold out your arms and brush both walls. They have a bed, a desk with drawers, two bookshelves, and a chair. You're supposed to dismantle the desk, drawers are places where something can hide, but not first. First you're supposed to step outside, memorize your room number, and find the cafeteria. The cafeteria is in the middle, and the other kids should be going there too, and there's safety in numbers, and there's older kids in the cafeteria, eagerly awaiting their letters.

Annisa opens her door. All around the hallway there are kids doing the same thing. Someone is shouting "open your door, memorize your number, and come to the cafeteria!" as they pass each door, though why is deeply unclear to Annisa - what parent wouldn't have told their kid that already? And if you're the kind to freeze up and forget, well, you're not going to make it.

She's having a hard time breathing. Some kids are crying, though they're way too old for that.

And she joins the flow of students heading hopefully cafeteria-wards.

The room was as her mother had described it. She had fasted since breakfast yesterday, aside from one apple and a little cheese, both of which she lost into the void wall; her mother had been right about that too.

Once that was over she went to the door, remembered her mother’s parting advice — with a mana stock inadequate to bar the door against an unfriendly ant or burn a hostile bumblebee she had best follow it. She used the tip of the dagger her father had given her to open drawers — nothing in them. Nothing under the bed.

Next the cafeteria, letters to deliver and a friend to meet. Best to keep her pack on her until she could secure her room. Out the door. Her room number was 512, easy to remember but her mother had told her to write it down, so she did.

The hall was full of people all moving the same way; she joined them. More than she had ever seen in one room — the record for that was seven, when she visited Mari in her enclave. Probably more than she had seen in her whole life before. One thing that would be different.