To the Unplanner: Yeah, I agree. I went both ice skating and roller skating once (on two separate occasions) and I'm never going to do it again. I'm about as graceful as a newborn foal. I mean, I'd like to, but it just ain't happening any time soon.

Anywho, I'll be the first to admit that the first chapter is super rough. Like, bad, rough. This chapter is probably going to be the same- where the last chapter had a lack of dialog, I feel like this chapter has too much. Meh, I'm still trying to figure this world out, so be patient with me, I guess?

While I was sorting out the details, I do have what pairings I want to get at eventually. I don't have room to put them in the description, so here they are; a slow burn EphemerxOC, one sided StrelitziaxOC, implied AvaxGula, and maybe even a VentusxOC ship if I can figure out how to get my other OC into this mess. It's all going to take awhile to get to each ship proper, so it's something to aim for later.

The next chapter will bring us to our first proper introduction to Ephemer! But he and Anora will not meet until chapter 5-ish. I hope. I haven't written it yet. We're also not going to breathe a word about 'prom' until we reach 10 chapters, at least, if we get there.

But until then, thank you for reading!

"You're new around here, aren't you?"

"Ohuh?"

Anora had been sitting alone in the cafeteria when someone had come up to her. She blinked for a moment at this new person, another girl dressed in white overalls and red pirate bandana around her head, with tanned skin, blue eyes, and long silver-like hair.

"You're the new kid everyone's talking about, yeah?" the girl then asked again, taking a seat across from Anora. "My name is Pyra. My friends and I were talking, and figured you looked pretty lonely, so we thought we could invite you to our study group!"

Anora blinked. She must have been giving an incredibly distrusting glare because Pyra gave a small, nervous laugh.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." Pyra then sheepishly admitted. "There's only four of us now, so even if you aren't used to a lot of people, we're still pretty small. I remember when I first came and everything seemed to confusing, I just want to make sure that you don't feel the same way; you know?"

Despite herself, Anora gave a small smile and a nod. Pyra happened to see it and smiled right back.

"Here," she then decided, digging around for something to write with, "Let me write down the building and room number. We'd have our meetings in our dorm rooms, but, you know, it's a tight segregation. No boys in the girls' dorms and vice versa. Not that I'm particularly opposed to it or anything..."

Once Pyra finished writing, she looked over it once more before handing it to Anora with an even wider smile. "There." she said. But then she had an idea and pointed to a table not far from them. "You can also sit with us if you want to- we usually sit right over there."

Anora looked at the paper before looking at where Pyra was pointing. At the other table were three other kids; one was dressed in what looked like a pink ninja inspired suit and pink frog hat, another with a large white afro, and one who an abnormally large moogle hat. The two of them couldn't hear what the group was saying, but judging by their laughter, it must have been something interesting. Anora looked up at Pyra.

"Can I?"

Pyra seemed momentarily surprised to hear Anora's voice. "Can you what?" she asked in a moment of confusion. When it hit her, she then asked, "Sit with us now? Sure! Come on, I'll help you bring your stuff over!"

Anora mumbled a humbled thank you as she and Pyra got her stuff together.

"Hey guys," Pyra shouted at her friends once they were close enough to her friends, "The new kid wanted to sit with us!"

Immediately after her saying this, everyone at the table turned to look Anora dead in the eye. A moment after they started to shuffle themselves around so she could sit. Anora timidly took a seat across from the kid with the moogle hat, while Pyra sat next to her. With everyone's eyes on her, Anora could feel her face heat up from embarrassment.

"Hi." she softly said to them. "My name is Anora."

"Hiya!" the kid with the moogle hat immediately replied. "The name's Mog!"

The kid in the ninja getup gave a nod before saying, "Nin."

"I'm Affie." the kid with the afro greeted. "Nice to meet you Anora."

"Hey Anora," Mog quickly spoke up, "What house did they place you in?"

Anora shifted a bit in her seat, refusing to look at them for some reason. "Vulpes."

"Really?" Affie wondered. "Seems like everyone and their brother gets saddled into Vulpes."

"Makes sense though," Nin mused. "Vulpes and Leopardus are kinda the junk drawer houses; it doesn't take much to get sorted into them."

"Excuse you- you're talking to a member of Leopardus here!" Mog detested, slamming his fists on the table.

"Yeah, so?" came Nin's careless retort. "Are you super smart like the folks in Anguis? Or even physically strong like the Ursus people? Dude, your debate skills don't even hold a candle to the uptight ninnies in Unicornus!"

"Not all of us are uptight, Nin." Pyra pouted. "Which is absolutely rich coming from someone in Anguis."

Nin gave a small, callous half shrug in response. Pyra rolled her eyes at Nin before turning her attention to Anora. The new kid had only been half listening to the others and still seemed a bit overwhelmed. So Pyra decided to give Anora some context.

"You probably haven't noticed it yet," she said, "But there's a bit of a rivalry between the houses."

Anora gave Pyra a confused raise of her eyebrow. It went unnoticed by Affie, who then gave a sage-like nod before saying;

"Thankfully, not only are the dorms separated by gender, but house as well."

"You do not want to see a fight between Ursus and Unicornus." Mog then insisted, leaning in close to Anora. "They're brutal."

At this, Affie jumped a little in his seat as he remembered something. "Speaking of; didn't one guy from Ursus send another dude from Unicornus to the hospital last week?" he asked in a hushed tone. "They said it was an accident during their fencing practice, but..."

"I thought it was just a rumor?"

Pyra shifted a bit in her seat before replying, "It kinda is? I didn't know either of them personally, but everyone in our dorm was talking about it. Some of the newer students had a harder time going to sleep that night. It was awful."

A hush came over the group now. Anora felt herself shiver at the sudden silence- it was Nin who noticed and gave a small frown at Anora.

"Are we scaring you Anora?" Nin asked in a slightly worried voice. "Trust me when I say we're all sorry- it's just not school if things weren't complicated, you know? Most of us live on campus, and there are days when you can really feel the cabin fever setting in."

But Anora shook her head and gave a small smile. "Tell me more." she insisted. "About the school, please."

Nin gave a small smile and started to open her mouth to say something, but was cut off my Mog.

"Man, where do we even start?!" he bemoaned quite loudly. "There's this whole rumor about Professor Ava and Professor Gula being together, and then there's that kid who's always hanging around Professor Ava, and that's not even going into how the whole Ursus versus Unicornus thing is because of Professor Aced and Professor Ira's absolute hatred of each other!"

"I think she meant about the school history, not the rumors." Affie snorted.

"Same thing." Mog argued with a wave of his hand.

"No, it's not." Nin retorted before going into a small laughter.

Anora looked at the group before going into a spontaneous laughter of her own. They all looked at her for a moment in surprise, but it quickly melted away as they joined her. It had only been a little under 24 hours since Anora had arrived and now she had a group of friends to call her own. Even if she didn't feel like she belonged at Daybreak Academy, at least she had a group of good people to talk to. At this point in time while they were all happy, she even dared to question, what could possibly go wrong?