Mirta Story by Cupcakedoll. Characters belong to Mr. Straffi, Rainbow, Nickelodeon, and whoever else.

Part 11

The first day of school dawned bright and way too early for Mirta, who was used to sleeping in! Hexen helped by hopping up onto the bed and walking over Mirta's legs until she woke up. Eventually the sleepy witch hauled herself out of bed and got ready for class.

She came down to breakfast with her hair still wet from the shower, wearing her favorite pumpkin shirt for good luck.

There were a lot of new faces in the cafeteria. The wolf fairy was chowing down on a plate of sausages. Karina was chatting with a pair of identical twins. A girl with silver hair- not blonde but actual metallic silver- was sitting by herself. She didn't have any food, but was holding a photograph. Her entire body language said 'homesick.' Mirta hesitated, then went over to her.

"Hey, want me to show you what's good to eat? They make good stuff on the first day."

The silver-haired girl looked up. Her eyes were silver too, like mirrors. "No thank you. I do not eat."

Mirta blinked. "Oh... well... I'm Mirta. If you need help finding your classes or anything..."

The girl smiled faintly. "I see. You are demonstrating benevolence."

Now Mirta recognized the language, and the clipped accent. "You're from Zenith aren't you?"

"Yes. My name is Vecta. I am a fairy of artificial intelligence."

"Well welcome to Alfea. This is a great school, give it a few days, I think you'll get used to it."

"I expect so. I had not predicted this emotional reaction to separation from my family. It is unnecessarily severe."

"That's called being homesick, pretty much everyone gets it. Are those your parents?"

"Yes." Vecta turned the photograph so Mirta could see. There were seven people in it. "They designed, built and raised me."

Mirta's train of thought derailed briefly, but she caught herself and only said, "It must be great having such a big family."

"Much more logical than the standard two parents required for biological reproduction. I would like to speak more but there are only ten minutes left before class starts and you require nutrition, correct?"

Yikes! "Correct! I'll see you later ok!" And Mirta ran for the food.

Mirta's first class, which she entered still stuffing down the last of a bagel, was called Arts of Rulership and it was new this year. The teacher was Miss DuFour, who taught the etiquette class too. The teacher welcomed everyone and talked a bit about how royals have a great responsibility to their people.

Kylie mimed, 'blah blah blah.' It was a speech everybody at Alfea had heard, even the nonroyals.

"...and this class will give you some practical experience in keeping a kingdom running." Miss DuFour clapped her hands and a map unrolled from the ceiling. "This is our realm. Each of you will be assigned a kingdom, accessed through the school computers. Your assignment is to keep your land peaceful and your people happy."

The other students mostly looked confused, but they all logged in from their desks. Mirta got a small, rocky country in the west of the map. She named it Mirtania and made Hexen the crown prince. Mirtania's resources were clay and manufactured items- pretty boring. The people were grumpy because they didn't have enough iron for making tools. So the point of the game, and the grade, was to trade for the things you needed or else conquer a country and steal what you wanted.

Mirta invested half the royal budget in defense, some more in exploration, and some to buy supplies from neighboring countries. Kimmy's land had some fancy goats that grew expensive fur; goats would do well on rocky unfarmable dirt, if Kimmy would sell some...

That class passed quickly, and the students filed out in silence because they were all planning strategy.

Professor Avalon announced that the first unit of the semester would focus on, "The four basic heroic archetypes: fighting hero, magical hero, holy hero, and rogue hero, and how all fairies should try to combine the best qualities from each type. He invited everyone to attend a lecture at Red Fountain about 'The Heroic thief, Archetype or Contradiction?' with a special field trip to the Magix thieves' guild. Katy almost dozed off on her desk. Magicophilosophy could be a bit dense at times.

On the way out Selene grumbled, "Heroic thief my behind, a criminal's a criminal."

"But what about... whatsername.." Katy fumbled, "With the ponytail. She was a thief and a fairy."

Mirta couldn't remember the historic fairy's name either, but she'd heard the story back at Cloud Tower as an example of how mushy fairies were, since the thief fell in love with a detective.

In potionology Professor Palladium greeted his returning students with delight—then handed each fairy a box of five bottles. "One of these contains plain water, the rest contain various embarrassing but harmless potions. You may use any of the equipment in the room to identify them."

Lolina looked down at the box the up at her teacher and wailed, "On the first day?!"

In the next class Professor Wizgiz mercifully helped his students transform back to normal, shedding the feathers, antlers and mustaches gained from drinking the wrong potions. He also announced that this year would be devoted to full shapeshifting, changing not just a person's form, but their every cell.

Kylie made the connection—they could turn into boys! Priscilla asked why anyone would want to.

Vecta was in that class, because she had a special talent for shapeshifting. She demonstrated by shaping her normal pink hand into a silver-colored hammer.

Lolina whispered, "She gives me the creeps."

"She's nice, I met her." Mirta replied, not angrily. That hammer-hand was pretty creepy.

"Full shapeshifting is fascinating." Alice said. "Sorcerers use it to help endangered species. Of course only very powerful magic users can do it, even if we get our enchantix we probably won't be able to permanently switch species."

Lolina sighed. "This is going to be the most boring class ever if we can't even do the stuff we're studying."

After the excitement of the magic classes it was a relief to get to History. There was a huge reading list, and they already had an assignment to write about the origin stories of their realms, but at least this was a class you'd leave in the same shape you entered.

Too bad Witches' Sphere had such a boring creation story. It had been built by magic as a vacation spot for witches to get away from the hustle and bustle of Coventry Island or Arcadia City. It had started as a witch-only realm but later the laws were changed to let fairies live there too. That was the whole history. Boring!

Not like Kimmy's realm, founded by the Nameless King and Queen Rose back in the depths of history. They were Kimmy's ancestors apparently, and the ancestors of most of the population.

Or Linphea, colonized by dryads who discovered the habitable moon of planet Marigold.

Those worlds were interesting, but Mirta had to write about her boring one. Se left that class grouchy with a pile of assigned reading.

The others met her at lunch, all similarly grumpy and carrying piles of books.

"This much on the first day!" Lolina mourned.

"It makes sense. We'll be spending time away from school on our enchantix quests so the teachers need to give us our classwork quickly."

"It won't seem so overwhelming tomorrow when we don't have all our classes." Alice said serenely.

"I think Arts of Rulership will be harder than it looks." Kimmy said. "My country has a troll problem and I'm not sure whether to accept an alliance with Kylie."

This was the conclusion Mirta had come to. "I think some people will take it more seriously than others. I'm not sure how seriously we should be taking it—it's just a game after all and we'll never have to rule real countries."

"Miky will. Stella will. Kadija's people aren't exactly a kingdom but she's the next leader." Alice said seriously.

Mirta was glad she would never have to run a kingdom, but this talk of responsibility did bring up the question Mirta had been pondering half the summer. This was the last year of school. What was she going to do next? What realm had a place in it for an 'honorary fairy?' Her parents wanted her to move home and inherit the potions business, but Mirta didn't think she wanted to live in Witches' Sphere permanently. Her folks wanted her, but the neighbors didn't.

She was munching her sandwich, lost in thought, when Livy appeared in front of her face. Mirta jumped a little, startled. Then she said, "Let me guess, Miss Faragonda wants to see me?"

"You got it!"

"Ok, I'll go see her." Mirta stuffed her stuff in her backpack. "See you later guys."

"I'll save you a seat in Biology!"

"Thanks Katy!" Mirta hefted her backpack and headed upstairs.

Miss Faragonda was in the middle of something important; her desk was piled with papers and she had three connections open to the school's ethernet. Mirta peeked in. "Headmistress..?"

"Ah, come in Mirta. Don't mind this; it's always this way the first day of the new year. Everything you planned for suddenly needs a whole lot more work!" The headmistress chuckled; she seemed to be enjoying the work. "But I wanted to talk to you about your plans for this year. Since you can't get an enchantix like the other girls, is there anything else you'd like to do as your graduation thesis? Miss Griffin described the Cloud Tower graduation requirements, but I would prefer not to have my students raising the dark forces on school property."

"I'd prefer not to raise them!" Mirta said quickly. "What sort of thesis did you mean? Writing something?"

"Or discover something, any great deed would do. Truthfully I think the year ahead will present you with many opportunities to prove yourself ready to graduate, but it is best to have a plan in case nothing interesting happens."

Mirta immediately had an idea. "What if... I'd like to find out why witches and fairies don't get along. Miss Ediltrude at Cloud Tower said the fairies did something unfair back in ancient history that started the feud, but there's probably more to it. Do you think?"

"I think that's a fine idea. I don't know what you'll find, but the attempt alone is a heroic quest. I'll let Concorda know; perhaps there's something in the archives that could give you a direction."

"Thank you, Miss Faragonda! I was reading up on it over the summer, and nobody seems to know how it started. You don't, do you?"

The headmistress shook her head thoughtfully. "I learned in my history class that the witches tried to steal something precious from the fairies and were not to be trusted. Whether that's true or not, who knows? The historian who recorded it certainly believed it, but when you're speaking on a scale of thousands of years it's hard to trust anything for certain. I'll be interested to hear what you discover. Come back anytime if you have questions- anytime but now I'm afraid; alas, these papers must be filed."

Mirta smiled. "Compared to your job class doesn't look so bad! I'll see you later, Miss Faragonda!"

There were three more classes after lunch, then afternoon free time which Mirta spent writing a long letter to Orion and deciding which month-long and week-long classes she was going to try to do this year and marking them on her calender. Professor Palladium was going to be giving some lectures on magical animals in extreme environments, and there was the "Heroic thieves" lecture at Red Fountain and Miss DuFour said she was doing a short class on elven culture which Mirta wanted to attend. She'd read somewhere that young elves looked like pixies and then they went through different forms before becoming adults. Or something.

After dinner Mirta climbed up to the roof. It was empty, all the other students were apparently in their rooms grappling with the challenges of the first day of school. They were missing a lovely warm summer evening.

Mirta stretched out her arms and summoned her power. Magic swirled around her, stripping away her school clothes and replacing them with the fairy outfit she'd discovered last year. Wings opened from her back, stiff from months of disuse. Mirta stretched her wings, bending over to work out all the kinks in her back. It had been way too long! She'd only transformed once over the summer—and then realized everyone on the entire block was watching her from behind their curtains. She hadn't done it again.

But here, nobody would care. Just another Alfea student.

Her wings were eager to fly but Mirta waited another minute. She summoned her gloomix and felt inside her head for the presence of her patron spirit. It was pleased. It didn't understand humans well, but it understood that because Mirta had talked at the meeting there would be no new pollution in the air. The spirit was satisfied Mirta was keeping her half of the bargain.

Time to have some fun.

Mirta fanned her wings and took off—straight up, as fast as she could fly. Up fifty feet, a hundred feet, her wings catching great scoops of air, pushing her higher. She sighted on the crescent moon and headed for it with all her might.

Of course she didn't reach the moon, didn't even get high enough for the air to thin before she ran out of strength. She leaned back in the air and floated, leaning on her wings, the magic making her weigh no more than a feather. Her hair, made lighter still, drifted around her head. Extra magic thrown off by her frantic dash trailed behind her in glittering clouds. Below, Alfea was tiny as a doll's house.

It was good to be back. From up here she could see past the homework, straight to the fall dance and all the interesting trips they'd be going on. It was going to be great.

It was dark by the time Mirta landed in the garden. The pixie critters were running around, leaving trails of sparkles behind them. The pixie frog bounced over Mirta's head when she landed. Mirta waved at them and went inside. She still had her wings out, and fluttered from tile to time down the hall, just because she could.

"You don't fool me."

Mirta looked up. A new student, someone she didn't recognize, was blocking the hall. And trying to look scary.

Mirta wasn't trying to fool anybody so she just said, "...what?"

"Bouncing around trying to be a fairy. Why don't you go back to Cloud Tower where you belong?"

It seemed unfair, this happening now when she'd been in such a good mood. Mirta sighed. "I'm not pretending to be a fairy, everybody in the whole school knows about me. We don't have any classes together so how about I'll stay away from you and you stay away from me, then you won't have to worry about it. Ok?"

The strange fairy looked like she was thinking about it. Then she lunged and grabbed one of Mirta's wings.

Mirta shrieked. It didn't just feel like someone pulling her hand, more like touch on skin that had just had a bandage removed. It was very rude to touch a fairy's wings, but Mirta hadn't known it felt this skin-crawlingly weird. She jerked away and had to spend a minute just going, "Ew, ew, ew!"

"Oh come on, you're just-"

"Bullying? Puh-lease, that went out with tie-dye!" said a green-faced monster at the end of the hall. The monster had long yellow hair and was holding a cucumber.

"She's a witch!" The fairy protested, "Witches try to destroy everything! They tried to destroy this school!"

"I..." Mirta began.

The slime monster talked right over her. "Sure, lots of witches do. But this witch helped us beat those other ones, and she's got a scholarship here and you'd better believe Miss F knows who she's giving scholarships to! Actually she knows everything that goes on in this school, so we're getting out of here before someone comes to give us detention. Bye-e!"

Mirta succeeded in shifting back to her normal clothes and followed the monster. "Thanks, Stella."

"No problem. Who was that fashion-challenged fairy?"

Mirta hadn't even noticed the other fairy's clothes. "A new student I guess. She said I was a fake fairy and grabbed my wing."

Stella shuddered. "Ugh! Doesn't that totally feel like taking a bath in spiders?"

"Totally. Hang on, how do you know what taking a bath in spiders feels like? Were there that many in Shadowhaunt?"

Stella giggled. "Waaaay too many spiders in Shadowhaunt, but no actual spiderbath."

Mirta found herself walking with Stella without really thinking about it. Soon she was being invited into the Winx common room for a slice of pizza and 'first day of school facials- the stress is already causing wrinkles!' A few minutes later Hexen showed up to steal pepperonis.