Orchid Lynx pushed her way through the crowded halls of Lafelle High School, wondering if there was any possible way she could get to her humanities class on time. A massive, immovable wall of people lined Hallway 4, packing it from one side to the other. It was a perfectly engineered traffic jam. The bell was going to ring at any minute.
Several people cried out vehemently as a pair of hoodlums came dashing up the hall at top speed, ruthlessly pushing people in every direction. Some freshman got slammed headfirst into a locker and started crying. "Yo, sorry dawg!" one of them shouted as they shoved past Orchid. Had it not been for her lightning quick reflexes, she would have dropped the stack of books she was carrying.
'Insects.' she growled mentally. She couldn't wait until she got out of high school. Then she wouldn't have to have so much contact with idiotic humans. She could move somewhere where the Night People were in command - where she could hit someone upside the head when she got angry at them and not really get in trouble for it.
"Ding! Ding! Ding!" Well, there was the bell. It looked like she would be sitting in tardy hall again. Not that it mattered much. School was wretched no matter what class you were in. Maybe she could get away with taking a nap instead of writing an essay.
"Tardy hall!" Shouted Mr. Sid as those left in the hallway slowly made their way down to the auditorium. Mr. Sid was one of those beings that everyone in the school, human or not, utterly loathed. He wasn't exactly a teacher. He was more of what you would call an administrator. Somebody who got paid solely for standing in the halls and yelling at kids to go to class and tuck in their shirts.
Orchid was about halfway down stairway 2 when she decided to cut class completely. School was almost out anyway. What did she have to lose? None of her people were going to care. She inconspicuously slipped out a back door and made her way into the courtyard that the Seniors normally ate lunch in. It would be pointless to go off of school grounds. She didn't have a car and there was no place in the area worth walking to. She definitely didn't want to go back to her apartment. Her neighbor's infant triplets always started screaming around this time of day.
So Orchid sat down at one of the crumbling stone tables and took out her sketch pad. She felt kind of stupid, sitting in the courtyard doing sketches. If she was going to cut, she could at least have the integrity to do it the right way. But then who really cared what other people might think if they saw her? She was already completely different from them. She certainly acted different. The Night World had it's own set of rules. It's own lifestyle.
She even looked different from most people. She was paler. And she was beautiful. It was a given that if you were born into the lamia you would be beautiful. Her hair was naturally a deep, ebony black, though she had given in to one of the human habits and put cherry highlights in it. Her eyes were a very warm brown. So warm that they had a reddish tint to them. That reddish tint turned to a deep scarlet when she was angry or about to feed.
It amused Orchid that so many guys thought she was a freak and were completely smitten with her at the same time. Not that she would ever give any of them a second glance. Humans annoyed her so. In fact, just about everybody annoyed her. She wished she could do like she'd heard other people talking about - just randomly pack up and go on a vacation in Africa or something like that. Go somewhere where she could be blissfully alone.
As she dug in her backpack for a charcoal pencil, her eyes fell upon the thin golden band she had found that morning. For some reason her heart gave a funny little jitter at the sight of it. It was probably somebody's wedding ring, she realized. It wasn't hers. But then, what else was she supposed to do with it? She'd found it in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't like there was a lost and found she could take it to. And why was she even wearing it anyway? It wasn't her style at all. Maybe it was because of the words engraved inside of the band. I am my only master.... somehow she seemed to be able to relate to those words in a million different ways at once....
If Orchid hadn't had such refined senses, she would have been quite startled, for the person coming up behind her made no sound at all. However, Orchid had ways of sensing things that didn't involve the ordinary five human senses. So instead of screaming and jumping about a foot off the ground as someone's fingers brushed her shoulder, she quickly turned around to stare at the hottest guy she'd ever seen. She didn't bother closing her jaw after it dropped.
"Hello," the boy said, in a voice that sounded an awful lot like rushing water. "Mind if I sit down?"