Chapter 12

A loud beep, one note drawn out for a few seconds, sounded and the hallway was soon emptied of students. Some of the peers around her were chatting amongst themselves, talking about an assignment that had been due that day or something like that. Jayde relaxed a little as the attention of her classmates veered to class topics rather than being on her.

“Okay students! Are we ready for the pop quiz?”

A tall man with long platinum hair glided into the room. His piercing gray eyes settled for a moment on Jayde before he stood at the chalkboard and started to write. The sides of his hair were braided back, keeping the hair out of his face but also showcasing the pointed ears he had. He wore a long green tunic shirt with leggings and leather boots that went to his knees. The tunic was long-sleeved, but you could easily see the muscles of his arms as he wrote equations on the board, his long fingers around the piece of chalk in a grip that looked loose but was probably nearly unbreakable.

Jayde almost let her jaw drop as she took in the man’s appearance, but held herself together. If her step-father could be a fairy, obviously there would be elves too. She blinked a couple times, just to make sure she wasn’t staring at an illusion, then busied herself with getting out a notebook and pencil to start working on the equations he was writing.

“You will have fifteen minutes to complete these five questions,” he announced, setting the chalk down and turning back to the class. “I expect everyone to finish on time, or we will have an extra problem or two on the homework due tomorrow.”

Jayde flinched as a couple of students looked at her, glaring like they thought she would be the one to damn the class with extra homework. She ignored them as she started on the second question, glad she had been in calculus at her other school as she realized the questions on the board weren’t just geometry ones. Thankfully, Jayde had always enjoyed math and this was no different. She soon had all five questions done with two minutes to spare. She quietly set her pencil down at the top of her desk and looked up. The teacher was walking along the aisles, looking at every person’s paper. He soon was at her desk, giving her a small smile.

“May I look over your work?” he asked, holding a hand out towards it.

Kind of shocked, she simply picked it up and put it in his hand. He quickly read through the written work she had done, then handed it back to her with a nod. She took it back and he continued walking around, finishing his walk at the front of the class as a small timer went off on his desk.

He clapped twice and all of the pencils still held in hands were dropped to desks with groans filling the room. “Oh, come now, it wasn’t that bad. To be in a college math class, no matter which kind it is, you should have taken other math classes that had problems such as these. You all know that, and know that I expect quick minds on pop quiz days,” he paused, looking over the room, resting his eyes on Jayde for a second before moving on. “Does anyone have questions about certain problems of the quiz?”

Hands shot into the air, students pretty much begging to go over the whole quiz. Jayde simply checked her work as he went through the problem. They got the same answers, just a couple of them were done differently. It depended, of course, on the way they were taught. Both ways were effective, as seen by how they got the same answers.

“As you have all seen, we have a new student joining us today. Miss Vaninee, if you’ll please stand and introduce yourself.”

The room fell completely silent as students stopped chatting with one another or stopped asking questions. Jayde could feel her cheeks heat with slight embarrassment at being called out. She slowly stood, keeping her posture straight and confident. “Hello, I’m Jayde Vaninee. Uhm, I just arrived yesterday from Ashland, Oregon. Nice to meet you.”

The man nodded and she quickly sat back down, hating the feeling of all the other students staring at her. “Miss. Vaninee is a senior. She just entered our world, so please be kind as she gets used to what we consider normal. My name is Rhothomir Sharie, please call me Mr. Sharie.”

Jayde nodded, wishing the man had just continued the class and not worried about introducing her or knowing his name. She would have figured it out eventually, and he already knew hers obviously.

Mr. Sharie quickly got into the groove of his lesson, the students around her quickly taking as many notes as they could. They were going over trigonometry, something that she had actually learned last month, so Jayde was just taking notes of things she had forgotten about. They were going to end up with an extra question on the homework but it honestly wasn’t bad considering the homework literally consisted of ten questions.

Class went by quickly. The bell or whatever it was soon went off, ending class as students quickly stuffed items into bags or carried them in their arms out of the room. Many were grumbling about the extra homework problem, amusing her since it was literally the easiest bonus question ever. Jayde followed at a slower pace, thinking Mr. Crea wouldn’t mind too much if she was a minute or so late to his class.

Mr. Sharie approached her as she stood up and handed her a textbook. “You’ll need this to do the homework. You must have been taking advanced mathematics in your other school?”

She put the textbook in her backpack. “Uh, yeah. I kind of enjoy math, so I needed harder classes for the challenge.”

He smiled and nodded at her before turning and walking back to his desk. Feeling uncomfortable with the weird exchange, Jayde hurried out of the room as students slowly filed in. She went back down the stairs, unsurprised to see Mr. Crea standing at the bottom. They nodded at one another and then she followed him back to his classroom, which was already filled with students.

He pointed towards the back seat along the wall. “The second to last seat is open for you.”

“Okay, thanks,” Jayde walked to her seat, grateful she was in the back rather than up front. She also figured that Mr. Crea wasn’t the type of teacher who walked around as she turned around to see him sit down at his desk and open a book.

Ophelia walked in the door and Jayde smiled at her. She got a small wave and a smile back as her friend walked down the column of seats to her left and sat in the chair next to her.

“How’s it going? Do you like your professors so far? I can’t remember what class you had first.”

Rolling her eyes, Jayde said, “I had Mr. Sharie this morning. He’s kind of weird, but that’s okay I guess considering I think he’s an elf.”

Her friend laughed and nodded, about to continue the conversation when the bell rang. Pheli shrugged, still grinning, and looked forward as Mr. Crea began talking.

“Good morning students. I hope you’ve all had a good weekend. Fast recap on what we talked about last Friday. Jenni.”

A tall brunette, short hair, wearing an atrocious pink sweater, stood up from the row by the window. “We discussed the origins of the Fae on Friday. It’s believed they were created by the goddess Gaia between 10,000-8,000 B.C., and their magical strength came from the large masses of people who believed or believe in them. They started out as just elementals, until the sorceress Orion in 3000 B.C. put the souls of the elementals into humans, creating a spark of magic that created the elves, pixies, and...”

She stopped, thinking about what the last species was that had been created. Mr. Crea smiled and nodded to her. “You are correct, Jenni. On top of the elves and pixies, Orion created the fairies and goblins. The elementals weren’t happy about the loss of those who were put into the humans, but they found that the balance between magic and non-magic had become more even than before. Now, who remembers more about the elementals? What exactly were they?” Hands shot up and his eyes skimmed the room, settling on a guy a couple seats away from Pheli. “Daryn.”

He grumbled but stood up. “The elementals are exactly as they sound. Made of the elements, fire, water, air and earth. Like separately. The air elementals are called sylphs, water called undines, earth called gnomes, and the fire are called salamanders.”

“Good job, thank you,” Mr. Crea smiled then turned to the chalkboard, quickly writing and drawing. “Now each of the elementals were given the job of making sure the elements stay in line, as we all know it can be hellish with a rainy, windy day or when fire overtakes a home. As the civilizations of man grew, it became harder for them to keep up with controlling the elements. Orion thought that if the elementals had more help, that it would be more manageable. The creation of the four species was not planned, but without them, the rest of the smaller Fae wouldn’t be here today.”

Jayde studied his drawings of the elementals going to the humans then the roundabout to the elves, fairies, pixies, and goblins. Almost a circle of life. She quickly wrote down as he continued talking about the Fae, drawing what he did in her notebook with quick fast movements.