All the characters appearing in Gargoyles and Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles are copyright Buena Vista Television/The Walt Disney Company. No infringement of these copyrights is intended, and is not authorized by the copyright holder. All original characters are the property of "Alex Checnkov."

The Avignon University presented here is not meant in any way to represent the Universite D'Avignon and any similarities are coincidental.

Warnings: Partial Nudity (not explicit, not sexually themed).

Author's notes: In real life, the Cacapon River is in West Virginia; in this universe, there is no separate state of West Virginia. Furthermore, no disrespect is meant to either Tycho Brahe or Johannes Kepler.

Yes, it's been a long time since my last installment. Graduation, job, unemployment, new job, new place, more unemployment, another new job, you get the picture.

First Lessons, Part 1
Alex Checnkov

Banks of the Cacapon River, Virginia, July 2018:

Under the waning crescent moon, the young gargoyle couple sat silent near the river's edge. Malach had approached Rita after sunset to ask that she come out here with him, but after that the two gargoyles had not said a word to each other.

Malach was still holding the letter he had received last night and ran its creases between his fingers while they sat there. He had no reason to tell Rita what it said; he could tell she already knew.

Rita, dark blue-skinned with raven black hair, the membranes of her caped wings unbroken by digits, eventually broke the silence. "When do you have to leave?"

"They start on the equinox," he replied. "I would leave around that time I imagine, maybe a few nights before."

"Will you miss the festival?"

"I think so."

Rita sighed and leaned back on her hands. "You promised that you would watch me compete for the priest rank." She looked over at him, "Are you sure you can't stay for that?"

Malach looked back at her and smiled. "I have watched you practice the dances so many times I am able to picture the competition in my head, and I know you will be elevated."

"I was there when you were elevated to the First Order, why can't you be there for me?"

He moved closer to her to reach out and cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. "I am always here for you, you know that. I did not decide when the school would open, and I cannot go back on my promise to attend."

She sat up and placed a hand over his to carry it off her cheek. "I know," she said. "But it's difficult to think that you will be so far away for so long. There are good schools around here you could have attended."

"They all have human bias," he said. "We know almost nothing about what other gargoyles have done around the world other than what the human books say, and it is important for the next generations to know our history as we know it, not as the humans perceive it."

Rita sat in silence for a while and looked back towards the river, and her tail began to snake about the grasses of the riverbank. "What is it you'll want to do with all the knowledge you'll gain?"

Malach raised his brow. "I do not understand the question."

She looked over at him. "Yes you do. What's the point of taking so many lessons, Malach? What are you going to do with everything you learn?"

"You mean to ask if I am doing this for me or for the clan."

"Yes."

He took in a deep breath and sighed. The question had become routine for him, as had his answer. "I am learning both for me and the clan. I can become a better warrior through the training they will provide, and the knowledge they give me I can bring back to advance the clan."

She shook her head, released his hand and stood. Without pausing to wipe the dirt from the back of her tunic, Rita walked to a nearby tree and leaned against it, facing him with her arms crossed. "You know ambition corrupts, don't you?"

Malach stood. "How is this ambition?"

"You're going away to a distant school you hadn't heard of until ten years ago to become a 'better' warrior, even though you might already be the best warrior of our generation; and you think that you should 'advance' the clan. Why? Why do you have to do these things?"

"If my becoming a better warrior is ambition, what is your desire to become a priest?"

"To protect the way things are, Malach, and there's no shame in it."

"Why is it wrong to find new ways to live?"

"Because it's new doesn't mean it's better. We're living the way our ancestors did, and we're doing fine by it."

"Are we? They also got pushed out of their homes or killed off by the settlers when they came. Do you remember what the humans said when we joined the federation?"

She sighed. "No, Malach, I don't."

"They came to our clan and said we were poor, and that they could help us. Even though we were rich by the standards of our neighbors, by the standards of our ancestors, the humans saw otherwise. Look at what their aid has done for us – we have a well to gather water from instead of having to come down here with buckets, we have the machines to connect with clans across the country, we can preserve our food better.

"The humans were right, we were poor. I want to see what else we are missing and bring that back to our clan."

Rita looked back out at the river and bit down on her lower lip before speaking again. "Yes, the humans have done those things for us." She looked back at him. "But their luxuries also spoil us. The youths have grown lazy in front of the television, the supplies of food the humans bring have dulled our hunting abilities, and the humans' constant handouts of money keep our brothers and sisters from seeking beneficial labor. Because we're in a nation, their government – their government – can tell us what we can and can't do. Our leadership council is almost worthless in projecting our authority.

"What happens if the humans decide to stop providing for us? What will we have left? Or what will future generations look like if the humans continue to intervene? We will be weak, and I don't want to see it happen."

"They have not domesticated us like animals, Rita, we are not helpless. I share your concerns, but I see a different solution. If we learn the humans' ways and the ways of other clans, we might be able to fortify ourselves against conquest."

She snorted and offered a crooked grin in response. "You must share my concerns," she said. "You also see the humans trying to conquer us."

Avignon, September 24, 2018:

Jacob sat at his desk and flipped through his math textbook for the semester.

Before he looked through the school's academic program, Jacob had thought the six-year length of the school's program was to compensate for the gargoyles' circadian rhythm. However, once the school released its schedule, Jacob saw that accommodating the gargoyles' strict nocturnal life was just an underlying reason for the longer-than-human schedule.

"I learned all this in high school," Jacob said as he scanned the book's pages.

Centuries of experience had taught the leadership of Avignon that there would be wide gaps in the educational backgrounds of their students, whether due to natural gaps in their pace of learning or the structure of their education systems. The barrage of tests that the student applicants had been subjected to in the years leading up to their admission included basic tests in mathematics, science, and language proficiency, but the school had been less interested in what students knew than their ability to learn at all. As such, the first year would be remedial for some – like Jacob suspected it would be for him – and advanced for others, but in the end the entire class would have a common foundation upon which the students could build their higher education in the remaining years.

He closed the book and stood up to stretch and yawn, having slept longer than he anticipated. After the cold reception he and the other human students had received last night, Jacob hoped to shower before the gargoyles could wake up and harass him. However, though he couldn't see the sun from his window, the darkening sky told him that sunset was not too far off.

Jacob grabbed his towel and toiletries bag and off his bed and made his way down to the dormitory's bathroom on the ground floor. Though he was athletic, Jacob thought of the strain of having to walk down six flights of stairs for each bathroom run and then back up to his room – it was a tiring thought.

But when Jacob got to the bathroom door, he was stopped short of entering when a voice called out to him from down the hallway. "And where do you think you are going?"

Jacob turned and saw Aitana standing there, clad only in a towel and holding her own bag of toiletries, her eyebrows raised. The sight took him aback and he had to recover before answering. "I was thinking about going to take a shower."

"Not in there you're not."

Jacob looked around the door for signs indicating that, in his haste to get clean, he was about to intrude on the ladies' room. However, "I don't see any signs that say I can't."

Aitana grinned. "You really know very little about gargoyle culture, don't you? Bathing for them is like fighting or hunting – gender doesn't matter."

"Oh." Jacob nodded slowly as he thought about the ramifications of the gargoyles' unisex culture. "That could be a problem."

"Only if you think you're going in there before I do."

"I'm pretty sure I got here first."

The two stood there in a silent standoff until Jacob stepped towards Aitana, dropped his towel and bag on the floor, opened his left hand and placed his fisted right hand onto the open palm. He looked into her eyes and said, "Best two out of three."

Without breaking line of sight with him, Aitana dropped her bag and readied her hands for the impending match. "I'm ready."

They counted together as they primed their fists, "One, two, three – shoot!"

Aitana smiled. "My rock beats your scissors."

They reset and primed again. "One, two, three – shoot!"

"Ha! Paper beats rock," Jacob said in victory.

"Last chance," she replied as she reset. "One, two, three – shoot!"

Jacob heard the gargoyles wake up as he ascended the last flight of stairs. Aitana had been true to her word to not take too long in the bathroom, but he still had to hurry through his shower to be out by sundown.

He walked into the room just as Malach came inside from his perch. He paused at the window and asked, "Should I expect you to come in dripping wet and wearing only a towel every night?"

Jacob snorted as he closed the door behind him went to the bundle of clothes he had received from the school last night. "You wear a loincloth and make a crack about my towel?"

"I wear two loincloths and a vest, thank you."

"Anyway, to answer your question: no. We non-nocturnals are going to work out a shower schedule so there aren't any more surprises."

"Pardon?"

Jacob looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Don't worry about it."

Malach stepped down from the window and grabbed a cloth off the top of his desk. "Did you leave any hot water?"

"This place could probably afford a water heater the size of a small house for each dorm. I think you'll be fine."

"Good. We did not get hot water for my clan until six years ago; I have spent too much time in cold rivers to go back to that lifestyle."

"I heard gargoyles weren't bothered by the cold."

Malach smiled. "Every gargoyle in the world looks different from all others, and yet you treat us as though we are all the same. I am amazed."

"Okay, forget it."

Malach let out a short laugh as he grabbed a leather pouch off his desk which contained a bar of soap. On his way out the door, Malach put a hand on Jacob's shoulder. "You have six years to learn these things. Do not worry about being wrong on a few things at this point in your training."

Jacob heard the females from across the hall leaving their room at about the same time as Malach, and the trio engaged in small talk on their way down the stairwell. Jacob laid out his school uniform on the bed and skimmed over a sheet of paper which came with the uniform. It listed his measurements to ensure the fit of his clothes, the uniform's cleaning instructions, how to properly tie his necktie – a Windsor knot – and what articles were optional during what seasons – blazers in September through October, then April through June, except when expressly required; and sweaters in place of the blazer at the student's discretion in the colder months.

"That's a lot to go through every evening," he said idly.

The school had provided two pairs of black slacks, three long-sleeved, collared white shirts with the school's crest – Gules, two keys in saltire Or, beneath an Azure gargoyle salient, Argent armed – embroidered over the left breast, two neckties with red and gold alternating in diagonal bars down the fabric, one black, single-breasted blazer with the school's crest embroidered on the coat's left, larger and with considerably more detail than on the shirt, and one gold sweater.

Jacob donned one of the pairs of slacks, a long-sleeved shirt, and the blazer, followed by a pair of socks and the one pair of dress shoes he brought with him, which fortunately happened to be black to match the slacks. The necktie, however, was less cooperative than the rest of the uniform, and it took several references to the provided sheet to get the knot right with some degree of accuracy.

Once dressed, Jacob consulted his class schedule and packed the necessary books into the simple, blue backpack that he had been carrying around with him since the fourth grade, which he slung over his right shoulder. Even he marveled at the fact that it had not fallen apart in the decade he had owned it.

For the second time tonight, Jacob left his room, made his way down the staircase and into the main hall of the dormitory, which was now well crowded by the gargoyle students standing in a single-file line which snaked from the bathroom and almost entirely around the hall. Most of them looked like their patience was wearing thin as they stood around with their toiletry kits, some still clothed and others in towels, and Jacob picked up on snippets of conversation:

"You know, they don't have this problem in Urban Hall. They get a bathroom on each floor."

"The first group has been in there for fifteen minutes. Someone shout in there and tell them to come out."

"At this rate, we're going to have to skip breakfast before class."

"Remind me to set the sun earlier so I can get here first."

Jacob walked past the line quickly on his way out the door, but as he passed near the end of the line a gargoyle reached out and grabbed Jacob's left arm.

It could well have been a bear that got hold of him. This particular gargoyle was close to seven feet tall and pushing three-hundred pounds – clearly a Class Five contender – iron-red skinned and with his black mane cut short but otherwise loosely styled. Barely turning his head, the gargoyle looked down at him and asked in a thick Australian accent, "Is that what our uniform looks like all done?"

"Yeah, this is it."

The gargoyle paused to examine him, then sneered and said, "It looks like a monkey suit." He then let Jacob go and nodded towards the door as if to give him permission to keep on his course, which he didn't hesitate to do.

Once outside he saw Osyka leave Urban Hall, and noted that her school uniform differed in that the slacks were replaced by a long, red, white, and gold plaid skirt, and he made a short jog over to her. "Hey," he said when he was close.

"Good evening," she replied, pausing to let him catch up before the two walked together.

"Listen, I never apologized for yesterday. I didn't mean to be insulting, I just grew up calling it the Territory. I'll be more careful from now on."

Osyka let out a short laugh. "I don't care, really. I just wanted to see if I could get you to jump."

Jacob shook his head. "It seems like everybody's been doing that lately."

When they were at the top of the stairs heading down to the parade grounds, Jacob asked, "So, why is it that you wanted to come here? I didn't hear you say that yesterday."

"I want to be the gargoyles' representative in government," she replied.

"Do you have some genetic secret and know some legal loopholes to make that happen?" he mused.

She looked at him with a crooked smile, "As in with the Bureau of Gargoyle Affairs, not Parliament."

"Congress."

"Parliament's the building, Congress is the body. Same thing."

"Anyway, so you came to a French school to be an American bureaucrat. Seems odd."

She laughed. "It is. In high school I had to do a certain amount of community service for graduation credits, and I got a spot at one of the nearby gargoyle schools. My job essentially was limited to grading papers and doing some basic tutoring.

"My first day there – or night, rather – the youths' instructor says to the class, 'This is Osyka. She is a human, but she speaks for me. If you give her trouble, then you're giving me trouble, and then you'll be in trouble. Any questions?'"

Jacob snorted and said, "Sounds like some teachers I've had."

"She was actually very nice, but you know how gargoyles are when it comes to hierarchies; they're very important to establish. And it certainly did the trick, because I never had a single youth give me grief. Actually, after my community service ended there, I was asked to come back as an assistant lacrosse coach; so I was in a position of authority over them, not just an auxiliary.

"The more I spent time with the gargoyles, the more I learned of all the things that they need and all the ways the government tries to do just the bare minimum when it comes to enforcing the Health and Welfare Act. Secretary Glenn does what he can, but there's so much more that they need. I want to fill in the gaps in service, so to speak."

"And by coming here you want to get some credibility with the gargoyle population."

"Exactly. And when you figure that probably every gargoyle here now is going to end up becoming a clan leader at least, if not national leaders, these connections will be invaluable."

"Spoken like a true politician," he said with a smile.

She replied only with a grin.

Jacob and the other humans managed to get more of a breakfast than the gargoyles, who slowly filtered into the cafeteria as they finished their shower rotations. As with the first night, the humans sat at their own table and the gargoyles established a rather large buffer zone of empty tables as they came in to sit down.

After the meal, Jacob made his way through the former palace in search for his first class: astronomy.

The room in which the class was assigned was arranged like a small lecture hall, with the capacity to seat about sixty students. The gallery's six rows connected ten seats on a common bar, but the seats themselves independently swiveled and reclined to some extent, and each came with a transparent, acrylic desk surface that folded over from the right arm. The wall which the seated students faced had a tall whiteboard which was connected to the room's Network outlet to allow notes the professor made to be uploaded to the class' netsite. On the floor of the lecture hall were the much more traditional desk and lectern for the professor.

Jacob debated where he should take his seat and eventually settled on a seat in the middle of the second row back from the floor, as he could never stand sitting in the front row of a class. Other students found the class as the start of the period drew near, including Loren, Mai, and Aitana, who all joined Jacob in the second row.

By the time the five-minute warning bell rang at five-to-eight, a few over forty students were seated in the classroom. Not long after the last student trailed in, the professor entered. He was a tall male gargoyle who, in Jacob's estimation, could have been either a very fit one-hundred-year-old or an eighty-year-old who looked a few years older, but tall as he was, he was not the mass of muscles that so many of the gargoyles of that stature were which Jacob had met. His skin was olive-colored, and his short brown hair was penetrated by four horns, each about as long as Jacob's forearm, which grew out from his brow towards the posterior of his skull.

While the students fidgeted in their chairs as they adjusted to their new uniforms, the professor was clothed simply in khaki slacks and a button-front shirt with the top two buttons left open. He also wore a navy blue blazer with the school's crest on the left breast, the only article of clothing which indicated his status as a member of the school's faculty.

The opening bell rang at precisely eight-o-clock. The professor looked up from the stack of papers he had placed on the lectern and, despite his speaking in French, spoke with a recognizably English accent, "Good evening students, my name is Warren. In case you haven't looked at my biography page on the school's netsite, I was a student here from the years Nineteen Fifty-Eight to Nineteen Sixty-Four, and this is my second teaching session here. In the years I haven't been here in Avignon, I've mostly been at Cambridge, but I have also taught at Yale and Stanford Universities.

"To get right to the point, the purpose for brining humans into this fine institution was not so that we can learn to live side-by-side – I think we've been doing that well for the last few centuries – but to live amongst each other. So, while I see that you have congregated into your respective packs, I think you will find it much more exciting to be amongst each other than simply next to each other."

Warren ignored the various groans of discontent from the gargoyle students while he consulted his student roster. "Miss Moraes-Ribeiro?" Aitana raised her hand and he looked at her with a smile. "A lovely name. Why don't you come up front between these two fellows?" he said, indicating an empty seat between two medium-sized males, and Aitana made her way down.

"Excellent. Mister Duceppe?" Loren nodded. "I think you'll find a seat among the students up there in the fourth row."

Loren collected his books and crossed over Jacob on his way to the aisle. "And I thought we were uncomfortable in the auditorium," he said idly.

"Miss Ling?"

"Yes."

"Again, another lovely name. Humans do have the best names, but then I suppose you came up with the practice and would know best. I think, Miss Ling, the seat directly behind you would be comfortable."

After Mai took her seat, Warren looked at Jacob. "Oh, but I can't just leave you alone, Mister," he consulted the sheet, "Goldberg, now can I?" He scanned the rows of students and settled on a blue-toned, gryphon-like gargoyle in the front row. "What is your name?"

"Anna," she replied. "From the Ohlstadt clan."

"Would you mind going back a row and making sure Mister Goldberg doesn't feel left out of this class?"

Anna looked back at him warily, but then looked at Warren and said, "Of course, professor." She collected her things, moved back the one row, and took the seat next to Jacob that had moments before been filled by Loren.

Warren spoke after Anna was settled in her seat, "Excellent. I think the experiment this school has embarked on will be a fine success with your cooperation. Now, to the subject for which you all came out this evening."

He handed a stack of papers to the student nearest to him in the front row and said, "Would you please take one and pass them down?" He then looked up and addressed the class, "I trust you all to read the syllabus on your own time, and if you should lose a copy or would like one in another of the more familiar languages this school accommodates in its publications – English, Spanish, or Chinese – consult the netsite for this class.

"The Roman soldier, philosopher, writer, and gargoyle Rostratus said that humanity would learn to tolerate gargoyles once it found a use for them, and the worst possible thing would be for humans to decide that gargoyles were useless. He thought soldiering and hunting would be the gargoyle race's niches within human society, but humans became quite adept at conducting wars and tracking down game on their own time – to say nothing of domestication and agriculture. And so humans did decide we were something of a nuisance, and I'm sure we are all aware of the consequences of that determination.

"In the late-Fifteenth Century, however, a human decided to break five-hundred years of European isolation, and however many years of his own misfortunes, and felt it was time for him to cross the Atlantic Ocean. He got the best navigation instruments of the day, but he insisted on one particular instrument to keep him on course at night – a gargoyle.

"Why a gargoyle would willingly get on a boat knowing that he could be adrift for months will always give rise to speculation, but Carlos the Strong of Linares provided expert navigation for the voyage, and indeed it was he, not the humans, who was the first to spot the Caribbean islands in the early morning hours, thus discovering the New World for Europe.

"From that point on, gargoyles were found to have usefulness in human societies. As the years went on—" he was briefly interrupted as a student walked down from the back row with extra syllabi in hand. "Just put them on the desk, thank you. As the years went on, gargoyles slowly integrated into various human professions, but we were always valued for our keen knowledge of the night sky.

"Our knowledge bore fruit with the arrival of a gargoyle in London in Fifteen Seventy-Seven, who had glided in on the wind from Wales with copious amounts of meticulously recorded astronomical data he had taken over forty years, and which he said could explain such things as the motions of the planets, the stars, and other heavenly bodies.

"He, of course, was chased out of London on the next favorable wind. Worse still, he found himself in Oxford." He paused as a few students chuckled. "But there by some miracle he did manage to find a person willing to give him a fair audience, Sir William Claybrook. Sir Claybrook helped the gargoyle refine his work, gave him a name, and then represented the work to the scientific community; and thus were born Robert of Wales' Laws of Planetary Motion, which have allowed the humans to do all sorts of fantastic things and which we will explore in further detail as this course goes forward."

Warren picked up a remote control from the desk and pointed it towards the back of the classroom. He pressed a button, and a panel opened from the wall to reveal a projector while at the same time a screen lowered from the ceiling to cover the room's whiteboard. The professor then aimed the remote at the light switches near the door and, turning a small wheel on the remote, turned down the lights.

"That, my students, is very cool," he said with a grin. He pulled a laptop from a shelf in the base of the lectern, and after a few key strokes the projector came to life to display time lapse photography of Avignon taken with an east-facing camera on top of Constantine Hall.

Over the course of two minutes, one month of sunrises and sunsets, good weather and bad, flew by. Warren spoke while the small movie played, "What I intend to teach you in this class is quite simple: How the universe works." A few of the students snorted in amusement.

"Other than glimpses on the television or in the theatres, you will never get to see the sun – other than our human friends, of course – but you shouldn't lament this. The light from the sun hogs all the glory from the other wonders of the universe that you will spend your natural lives looking at. It's only fair that, as you live by the stars, you should also have an understanding of how they work."

Warren looked at the projection screen as the mini-movie came to an end, and he said, "That's actually from my first session teaching here back in Nineteen Ninety-Eight. I tried to make a film from this past month, but some joker decided to steal my camera."

He typed into his laptop after the movie ended, and a detailed view of the night sky appeared. "Were you to go outside right now and find that all the lights in Southern France were out, this is the kind of night sky you could expect to see. In honor of our navigator ancestors, who paved the way for our 'usefulness' in this human-led world, I will also teach you to know the night sky better than you know yourself."

The professor let the students admire the projected night sky for a few moments before he turned off the projector, retracted the screen and turned on the lights. He then took another stack of papers, blank star maps, and walked to each row to distribute them to the students. "To that end," he said as he passed the maps out, "I would like you to tap into your memories and – oh, let's make this easy – draw the northern sky over your homes as it will appear this month at midnight, and assume a new moon."

Jacob joined with the other students in a not-so-silent airing of discontent, but they were quieted by Warren. "It's only for diagnostic purposes. You will be able to draw any month at any time for either Avignon or your homes by the end of this course. And, to be sure, I do have very precise coordinates of your homes to allow me to check and make sure you aren't merely putting a myriad of dots on your sheets and hoping to approximate the positions of stars in the process.

"Do the best you can, naming constellations and stars as you know them. Although you will be receiving a grade on this assignment, again, it will be a diagnostic grade only. But when you consult your syllabus, you will see that future quizzes like this will each count for one percent of your grade, for a total of fifteen percent of your trimester grade; and one of these charts will appear on your final exam."

Warren sat at his desk and the students looked back at him almost expressionless. He smiled at them and said, "You have twenty minutes. You may begin."

How am I supposed to know the positions of the stars from memory? Sophie asked herself. I can barely see any stars in the city! Indeed, the last time she ever saw a brilliant night sky was during the Blackout of 2009; and that during in the winter, not September as Warren had asked for.

She looked at the clock and saw that there were only a few minutes left before he said he would collect the quizzes, and all she had managed to put down were Ursa Minor and Major, and Draco.

Where is Cassiopeia?

Sophie tapped her pencil on her desk and then tugged again at her uniform's skirt, which she was finding to be uncomfortable at best, despite its being tailored.

A quick glance around the room reassured her that some students were having just as much trouble as she was, but others still seemed to be having no trouble at all. Two rows down she noticed that Malach was leaned back comfortably in his chair as he twirled his pencil between his talons. His quiz sheet was turned over on his desk.

He lives in the forest. Probably all he can do is look at the stars, she mused.

"One more minute," Warren called out from his desk, and Sophie sighed. She squiggled a W in the higher altitude where she figured Cassiopeia should be, made a rhombus of sorts over Draco and labeled it Cepheus, then turned her paper over.

This, she figured, was not going to be one of her favorite classes. But then again she had never particularly cared for classes that were scheduled so close to lunch.