An Elsewhere University Short

Hey guys! If you're familiar with Elsewhere University, then I think you'll like this short story I wrote after I got frustrated with editing a different project.

If you're not familiar with it, all you need to know is that it's about a college with a fairy hill underneath it. The entire concept is made by charminglyantiquated.tumblr.com

You can find the original comic here (X) 

Enjoy!

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“Oh,” her mother sighs wistfully over the phone. “You’ll be a junior next year. So close to graduating. My little biologist.”

She is not a biology major. She doesn’t try to correct her.

She looks down at the notebook spread across her lap. There’s a developing caricature of a frog on one page, mouth cartoonishly large and eyes nearly all white except for pinpricks of pupil. Nothing like their pupils. It’s important that her notebooks carry as little of them as possible. “I’m not sure I’ll graduate in four years, Mom.”

She’s been tracking the days since she first realized Elsewhere was like nowhere else. The back of this notebook is filled with increasingly small tally marks. She doesn’t know how many there are now, but she does know there are more than a 1000. 

“That’s okay,” her mom says. It’s a good thing she’s not here. Those words are dangerously close to a promise.

She carefully hides words in the reeds she’s drawing behind her frog as her mother assures her that’s fine, she can take as long as she needs. Her father took six years to graduate, after all, and it’s not like her scholarship doesn’t cover most of the expenses anyway.

She hums in agreement and carefully doesn’t look up when something cold stops just behind her shoulder. They don’t know how to look for words in pictures, not like humans.

Not yet, anyway.

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“So,” a freshman asks her during orientation week, “what are you majoring in?”

“Art history,” she says. It’s one of the safer subjects. They tend not to be interested in art that’s already been done. They tend to focus on the art that’s happening now. “You?”

“Chemistry,” the freshman says. A girl behind him with lips the color of parchment grunts, displeased, and moves on. The freshman doesn’t notice and sticks out his hand. “My name’s To—”

“Bye,” she says and slips back into the crowd before he can do much more than splutter. She’s not interested in carrying any names but her own.

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“Major?” the man at the desk asks her. The man is supposed to be Mr. Brown-Eyes, her academic counselor.

The man at the desk is not her academic counselor.

“Pre-law,” she says. She saw Mr. Brown-Eyes walk into the woods last night. She hopes his replacement didn’t see her standing in her window, watching.

The not-Brown-eyes visibly loses interest. The pre-laws aren’t interesting to them. “I’m sure you’re fine. Send the next student in.”

She’d made this appointment to see if she finally had enough credits to graduate or to at least move out of the dorms. Living off campus is starting to look preferable to watching the freshmen disappear. She decides it’s better to leave while not-Brown-eyes lets her, questions unanswered.

She is careful not to say ‘thanks’ as she leaves and even more careful to not speak to the students waiting in the hallway. Some of the experienced ones notice the look on her face and follow her out.

Some do not.

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The boy in her shadow has an extra joint in his fingers. He doesn’t do much other than follow her, doing his best to stick to her shadow’s edge and not make too much noise. She hears him anyway, sometimes, giggling to himself.

Then, two days after she notices him, he does something after all.

He’s sitting on her new roommate’s bed when she gets out of the shower, legs swinging and eyes blacker than black. Her roommate’s clothes are lying crumpled on the floor and, when she squints, she thinks she can see their profile in the boy’s shadow.

Her fingers ache for her pencils and notebooks. It’s…interesting.

“I know what you are,” the boy sing-songs.

She heads for her dresser and tries not to mourn her roommate. She doesn’t say anything to the boy’s expectant silence, just finds a blue sweater and slips it on over her towel. It’s big enough to hit her at mid-thigh so she feels comfortable dropping the towel while she searches for pants.

The boy, as they so often do, runs out of patience first. “What will you give me to not tell?”

She turns, folding her arms over her chest and just looks at him. She’s lost so many of her words since coming here, but that’s okay. People understand her most of the time anyway.

Sure enough, the boy hisses. “Fine! Be boring.” He hops off her roommate’s bed and wanders to the door. “I don’t like Animal Science majors anyway.” She must make some sort of noise, because he turns, grinning, triumphant. “Don’t know why’d you hide it. Anyone with eyes could see. It’s all in how you watch.”

He’s gone the next second, his shadow dragging behind him, full and heavy. 

She waits until the door closes and she can’t hear his footsteps to sag with relief.

She is not an Animal Sciences major.

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“I don’t think I caught your name?” her anthropology TA asks during discussion. They’re staring at her, brow furrowed. “How long have you been in this class?”

She knows she’s quiet, but it’s one thing to ask how long she’s been here and another to ask for her name. The other students in the circle are tittering, sharing glances out of the corner of their eyes and avoiding hers. Most of them think she’s one of them and shouldn’t be acknowledged. The ones who know better are waiting for her answer with something close to hunger.

“It’s on my essay,” she says. Her voice is hoarse from disuse. She wonders how long ago she last spoke. She doesn’t bother answering how long she’s been here. The answer is a lot longer than anyone else.

“You’re not an anthropology major,” the TA says confidently. “You aren’t on the list.”

“Geology,” she says shortly.

The TA is relieved. “That explains it.” Nobody remembers Geology majors.

She is careful to avoid sitting too close to the TA during future discussions.

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She follows the glimmering blue lights at night, not caring that they lead her deep, deep into the forest. She’s so curious to see where they lead all the time, like an ever-present ache in her bones. Ever since the first night, waking in her bed to them hovering above her, she’s followed them. It’s always somewhere different, somewhere dangerous, somewhere special.

She has seen the birth of river gentry, following these lights, has seen the death of nymphs and has seen the becoming of Royalty. Following the lights is the only way to truly know.

On nights like this, it’s not compulsion that drags her out of bed, though it might as well be. She simply can’t resist knowing.

Tonight, the lights weave through the campus like tour guides, touching this tree and that crumbling brick wall. She hides herself like she learned from the boy in her shadow, slinking just at the edge of their glow, quiet, quiet, quiet.

Tonight, the lights are heading to the forest on the west side of campus. She follows them into the green without any hesitation. She learned how to step quietly from a girl with foxes drawn on her arms and she learned her way home from a creature with stars streaming down its back. She knows her way and she knows it quietly thanks to them.

The moon is full overhead and, when the clouds part, she can make out dark silhouettes moving through the trees with her. Some are too tall and curved, eyes gleaming in the darkness like wolves’. Others make too much noise and are only driven forward by sheer will and a very human hunger to know.

(She used to be with them, tripping over twigs, barely suppressing glee as they ran with things they should not be running with. Then her words crumbled in her chest and her notebooks began to grow and she started looking different in the few mirrors she keeps.)

The ones who make noise grin when they catch each other’s eyes. They are breaking the rules right now. She is too. They’ve been breaking the rules for years (the ones lucky enough to have years.)

She pushes herself forward, grinning to herself, heart pounding in her chest. Here, on the chase, it hardly matters all the words she’s lost to this forest, to these beings, to these years. Here, on the chase, there is only her muscles burning, her face aching, her blood roaring.

Here, on the chase, the rules are clear.

Don’t be seen.

Don’t be caught.

If you are caught, say nothing.

If you are caught, know nothing.

You can only know if they don’t.

She is the oldest in her major to still be following the lights.

She has been the oldest for quite some time.

That’s okay, her mother whispers in her mind and, she thinks, it is.