1975th Year, 1st Day

I was interrupted from my obsession with my hands when I sensed, someone also glaring at them. I looked up and realized it was our speaker…after a few moments of thought and logical deduction, after all they can’t possibly be confused by my hands for the same reasons as me can they? I came to a reasonable conclusion, they didn’t approve of the fact that I had taken my gloves off.

Embarrassed, in a flash they were back properly on my fingers, and I moved both fingers, hand and gloves back to their correct positon on my thighs. A posture that most of the other children held.

The glare from the woman speaker stopped, and I automatically went back to analyzing my thoughts. ‘Other children?’ I asked myself, why do I feel funny to think of myself as a child? Wasn’t I obviously a child? 

And why do I suddenly feel that wearing my gloves feels uncomfortable? I had thought that I had gotten used to wearing them long ago, they shouldn’t feel so odd to wear.

Soon however my thoughts were interrupted by the sheepish appearance of the last of the other children. Unlike myself? Who my memories tell me was just slightly almost late, they were all most definitely late. One was even accompanied by a guardian, either a young father or an older brother.

That poor fellow looked most shamed of all, and I felt a bit of pity for him. Or to be more truthful I found the probable idea behind his current behavior and motivation interesting and wondered as part of a mental challenge to myself whether being late or possibly accompanying a child to their school was indeed something to be embarrassed about.

He soon left right after the kid he was accompanying sat down, in a group of other kids, mostly boys who I assumed were his friends.

Strangely along with the ‘pity’, I also felt a bit of unaccountable anger…I would note this strange sensation down in my mental notes and decided that I would attempt puzzle out the reason for it later.

Right after I decided this, I had to stop thinking temporarily as my head suddenly felt painfully funny, sort of like it was stuffed with too much…something? I decided to leave off thinking any further until I had more ‘room’ to put things in or at least until I felt like I did.

To my surprise and confusion (?), the speaker just suddenly started to speak a few minutes after all the children had sat down. I don’t know why, but for some reason I was expecting something different. Like maybe an introduction where the speaker gave their name, and an explanation or summary of what they were going to be talking about, but there was no sign of that.

Whats more that expectation itself felt a bit odd as if it didn’t quite suit myself or what I was observing. But anyway, despite my odd expectation there was no prelude or explanation.

One moment the speaker was standing there stonily in silence, in the next they were orating some sort of legend…one that I found familiar enough that it somehow bored me. Though my conflicted mind also insisted that I had never heard it before.

As my attention was not quite as caught as I would have expected, having presumably never heard it before…I once again fell back to looking around while trying to make as little movement as possible.

This place where we were holding school? Well where we children were receiving an education at least, even though the visual did not quite match up with my inner definition of school I could feel in the back of my mind amongst my other set of memories, we were most definitely at least being taught.

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It was a stone room, the walls the floor and even the ceiling were made out of smooth stone material, I am not certain but the effect looks natural rather than manmade. However the entrances and exits were completely obviously created by human interference, being of bricks stacked and cemented in the shape of a square arch.

The room was quite big, it looked like it could fit hundreds of adults, but other than the speaker there were just a few at each of the two entrances, and a few others leaning against the walls. ‘Instructors’ my mind told me when I looked at the later, guards when I looked at the first.

The speaker stood in front of the children who all sat in the middle, including myself who had chosen a seat towards the back. At first I had thought there were 20-30 children, but when I took the time to actually count them all I came up with about 50.

This was probably not because I lacked observation skills but because, not only new children had been constantly entering up and until that point but also considering the fact that, after some consideration I myself was included in that number.

For despite my odd objecting feelings I couldn’t deny that I was also a child.

We children were wearing as mentioned, black pants and gloves, we were also wearing long sleeved black shirts and soft leather pants along with black boots. Though I got a funny ‘exposed’ sort of feeling when I touched my face, none of us were wearing anything on our heads.

However some of the adults including the current speaker were wearing things on their heads. In fact most of them with the exception of the speaker had their faces mostly covered their mouths and noses covered by the wide necks of their shirts, and their eyes overshadowed by hoods, leaving only a small strip of skin and their eyes bare to the air.

There were other things that separated the adults from the kids such as the various weapons I could barely tell was hidden throughout their persons, and which my intuition told me was only the tip of the iceberg in regards to what was hidden, as well as the various large bags and summoning scrolls strapped to several groups of adults.

Something that both the adults and the children had in common were the necklaces.

Yes, everyone including myself were wearing little mirrors on necklaces, most sat proudly in front of their shirts but a few, I predicted judging by the similar chains, and myself as an example, had theirs tucked into their shirts instead.

 Looking at the mirrors or their chains, I started to get a strange feeling that made me realize something else, something hard to describe.

Although I didn’t feel this was strange to me at all, I had the sudden comprehension that this fact was unique to others, and by others I didn’t mean any of these people.

As it wasn’t a very helpful feeling I merely noted it down as an observation that was somewhat new and separate from those I had made before, before dismissing it from my head but as it was one telling of my current situation I will share it with you.

 It was this; all the adults looked almost exactly the same. I mean all of them had the exact same face, and what’s more judging by my eye they were all about the same exact height and all of them had a similar build.

Even the women didn’t really look different from the men or possibly the men were not much more distinguishable then the women. Then there was the tidbit that I was somehow able to identify who was a man and who was a women in the first place, when something told me that most people wouldn’t be able to even somewhat accurately guess.

For example though I am not sure yet how, I realized that I had immediately been able to identify the speaker as female, though she was indistinguishable from her compatriots, from a purely visual standpoint.

This wasn’t because my eye sight was bad, actually far from it. I found my vision to be quite amazing in and of itself, for not only was it quite clear, using it I could detect minute differences between the mostly identical adults and use those differences to distinguish one from the other.

Neither was it because my ears were failing me, for actually my hearing was also quite good, although you must keep in mind that I don’t think I detected the gender based on sound either.

I based that conclusion on the fact that despite making any effort to speak loudly I could easily hear the instructor’s voice. A strange though lovely, the voice was not obviously not male and it was definitely not female either but somehow between the two.

Everything about the adults was androgynous at best, and utterly genderless otherwise.

After really thinking about it, I realized the identifying feature was not quite physical it was something about their…aura maybe? What did that word mean and why did I know it? In any case despite the lack of sex characteristics or maybe partly because of it? Another feature of these cookie-cutter people had was their beauty.