The kids were filing in now, and the teacher was waiting behind me in the chair. I was pretty interested in the kids and they seemed interested in me as well. They obediently sat behind their desks but I could hear them talking to one another while glancing between me and Mellina.

The majority of the seemed to be elves, aged somewhere between seven to maybe eleven years old. I lost the ability to gauge a kid’s age accurately when I hit my twenties so I wasn’t sure. Plus I didn’t know if elves aged differently as well.

there were twenty two of them, with only three lacking the pointed ears I had seen on most of the people I had met since arriving. None of them had anything like books or study materials and they dressed in simple clothes. As old fashioned as the setting was they chattered and generally behaved like normal kids. It made me feel better, as long as kids act like kids then the world can’t be that different from my old one.

I’ll freely admit that I got maybe half the names that I heard when Mellina did the roll call, and none of them were familiar sounding. As far as I could tell, the names were derived from some sort of latin sounding language even though they spoke in english.

At least I think they are speaking in english…

I might just be getting whatever they are saying auto translated in my head. This makes more sense than a different world somehow developing the same language as my old one. Unless multiverse theory applies of course. Although I am not sure which bothers me more, the idea that Lady Luck tampered with my brain and/or soul like that or that she was apparently nice enough to give me such a convenient ability.

Once roll call was over with the kodo beetle and I got our introductions. The lesson mostly consisted of things I had already read. Although having the kids ask questions helped deepen my understanding I didn’t learn anything new and started to zone out until one kid raised his hand.

“Yes, Gent, what is it?” (Mellina)

“So, mutant beasts are like warriors?” (Gent)

Hmm? Warriors?

“Not quite, Warriors have to train their abilities, while mutant beasts acquire them naturally. Some people have different constitutions that are similar to the effects of mutation, and the process of training as a warrior increases strength and toughness like that of mutation but otherwise it isn’t the same.” (Mellina)

“Oh, so does that make mages like mythic beasts or spirit beasts?” (Mero)

“Spirit beasts, but again, while they are similar, they are not the same.” (Mellina)

They kept talking for a while, asking various questions. After the questions dried up the teacher placed her hand on the cage I was occupying.

“For today’s lesson we got quite lucky, yesterday Anthus brought in this little fellow. Also Brokkr lent the class a kodo beetle so make sure to thank them both alright?” (Mellina)

The kids are nodding while at the edge of their seats, it was obvious that they had all been waiting for this part of the lesson. I’ll have to be careful not to let it swell my ego. Miss Mellina stepped to the side and there was a quick stampede to the front of the desk.

“Wow” “Cool!” “It really is gold!” “it’s pretty”

The kids were crowding exclusively around my cage, ignoring the the beetle in favor of looking at me. Haha take that stupid beetle! It was a weird feeling being complimented so thoroughly yet treated like a bug and a pet but I may as well learn to live with it for now. At the very least it’s better than the way Lady Luck treats me like a toy.

The teacher didn’t let the kids open the cage even though some of them were quite good at puppy dog eyes. I suppose that means she still doesn’t trust me or she is naturally more cautious when it comes to her student’s safety. Normally I would think she was being silly, but we just spent a good hour establishing how dangerous unknown critters are. I certainly wasn’t going to let my guard down around any animal I wasn’t sure about; learning about a catoblepas and its poison breath and discovering a pig headed cow and finding out it has poison breath are two different things after all.

After the students got enough of the gawking Mellina sent them back to their seats, the rest of the day turned out to be basic math and spelling. Thanks to earlier, the kids have gotten the curiosity out of their system so they could pay attention to the lesson.

Of course I was even less interested in this lesson then the students were. So I think I’m just gonna ignore them, unfortunately I am a literal captive audience. Guess I’ll just sit here twiddling my ...claws.

When the lesson was over Mellina called the kid named Mero over and had him wait till after everyone else headed home. He did so with the reluctance that any kid has when singled out by a teacher. Mellina seemed to ignore his reluctance and scribbled out a quick note. I didn’t have a chance to read it before she sealed it and placed it atop my cage.

“Mero, I need you to bring this little fellow and this letter to your father. Also, tell your mother I said ‘hi’ for me okay?” (Mellina)

The kid agreed and scuttled off, carrying my cage and the letter in his arms. It was afternoon so I got to go sightseeing as I was carried through Honeywood city. The city seemed to have two types of buildings: ground and tree.

Most of the city was covered in beautiful gardens and massive trees. Almost every tree above a certain size had a brick building at its base. The real amazing buildings were the ones suspended in the branches. From what I could tell the stores and civic buildings were on the ground while people’s homes were stuck in the trees like elaborate treehouses. Must be some cultural thing.

The tree houses were made of light wood and weren’t too big. The least populated trees had only a few but the more heavily developed ones reminded me of those sociable weaver nests in africa. It’s neat alright, but I have to wonder about the plumbing…

One thing that I had noticed was that the bees that had been omnipresent in the forest seemed to have made their homes here as well. They certainly helped the people’s gardens but I couldn’t help but wonder how wise it was to have nests of thumb sized honeybees outside their bedroom windows.

I really can’t help but think that this city was built for looks rather than practicality. I could be misunderstanding something; they might have some sort of solution for the problems of plumbing and avoiding getting stung to death by bees.

We passed the only building I had seen that wasn’t attached to some part of a tree. It seemed to be an inn. Tables in front of the building held a small crowd of people relaxing in the sun. This was the largest group of non elves I had seen since before I kissed a truck’s front bumper. It was mostly humans, but there were a couple that were unmistakably dwarves and a couple that were firmly placed in the ‘other’ category.

As Mero passed the inn I noticed that most of the people were merchant types. It made sense to me; you probably don’t get much sightseeing in a medieval society. It’s weird how a merchant is somehow recognizable even by me, they somehow have that sort of bearing I guess.

The remainder seemed to be locals or craftsmen with three exceptions. At one of the tables near the edges was a group of two men and one woman dressed in merchant clothes, but somehow my instincts told me they weren’t merchants. They were also staring waaaay more than I was comfortable with.

Most of the other people in front of the inn were watching either Mero or me, but they were mostly looking at the kid with a gold bug in a cage trap. Those three weren’t looking with curiosity or appraising me from the perspective of a merchant or a craftsman, they were staring like predators. I wonder if they were bandits, that would explain why their clothes didn’t seem to fit.

Well, there’s not much I can do right now, and I shouldn’t make assumptions without proof anyways. I am a bug, not a policeman after all.

No matter how nefarious those three actually were Mero passed the inn without incident. He crossed that lengthy bridge to the other side of town and headed for a particularly large and heavily developed tree.

The buildings at the base of this tree were mostly stables and other buildings for holding and raising animals. The large asymmetrical buildings gave the feeling of having a tree growing from within the center. This was a bit different from the other trees in town which gave the feeling of having a building built at the base of the tree.

I could smell or taste the scent of different animals with my antennae. One of the things that weirded me out about my body was the fact that it all came so naturally. Detecting things with antennae is crazy, it’s tasting, smelling, hearing, touching and even feeling air currents, all in one great amalgam of sensation. Somehow I managed it with ease, like I had been at it my whole life.

Well, I guess if we’re going to get technical about it…

Mantis super senses aside, Mero was headed towards a veritable zoo of critters. I have a bad feeling about this…

The kid carried me through a bunch of winding hallways and up a couple flights of stairs. He was greeted by a couple elves in hard wearing worker’s clothes and one dressed up in a stereotypical butler’s uniform. We soon arrived at a door which he knocked at after stuffing my cage under one arm.

“Come in.” (???)

As Mero opened the door I saw in a rather interesting room. Whoever built it seemed to have wanted to make an office, but wanted it as open as possible. The room’s back wall was almost nonexistent; elaborate wooden grilles were the only thing separating the office from a large balcony. A couple of them were open and the wind would have long blown away the paper strewn across the desk if they weren’t pinned down by large chunks of bones being used as impromptu paperweights. A bit macabre isn’t it?

Despite the grim mess atop the desk the rest of the room was quite bright and stylish. The man behind the desk sat in a large swivel chair. He was relatively short and thin, but it was the wiry sinewy thinness that I had seen on Anthus. Elves in general seemed to be thinner. I wonder if it’s all the time spent going up and down stairs or are elves just naturally slender like that?

“Hey dad, teacher told me to give these to you.” (Mero)

Mero’s father gaze dropped from Mero’s face and settled on me. His eyes widened for second and he slid the paper he had been reading under a chunk of some animal’s femur and leaned forward. The letter was ignored at first as he took the cage from his son and slowly turned it. His stares were making me a bit uncomfortable, he had a look of childlike wonder that would be nicer if it wasn’t about me. Yeah, the gold may not have been the best idea in the world.

Eventually he stopped staring at me like a fat man at a steaming hot pizza and opened the letter. Mero didn’t seem to mind, he just headed for the open door to the balcony and whistled. I was a little curious about what he was doing but I think the letter might be more important. His father read through the note, mouthing the words as he read.

C’mon man, read it out loud, I’m curious too.

Despite my mental urging the man kept muttering inaudibly, the cage was at the wrong angle to read the note as well. In the end I still had to await my verdict. Considering the smell of the building as well as the note I had a bad premonition as to my fate.

Mero’s father had finished the note and was fiddling with it while staring at me speculatively. After looking between me and the letter a couple times he seemed to come to a decision. He leaned forward and unlatched the door to the cage. He carefully tipped the cage and shook it hesitantly. He is trying to get me out but I’m not sure I want to leave my nice safe cage for this boneyard of a desk. The letter was folded and he tried to use it to gently scrape me out. I better crawl out before he starts getting insistent.

When I left the cage I made my way for one of the bigger bone chunks. It looked like a piece of some four legged animal’s shoulder bone, or maybe a section of it’s pelvis, it was hard to tell with the pieces themselves in pieces. One thing I did notice was that the bone was fresh; it was almost juicy. Okay, that is creepy.

My paranoia was interrupted by him reaching for me. He knew what he was doing from a certain perspective; he kept his hand low and moved slowly to prevent me from being startled. That was the right choice for dealing with an animal. However, I wasn’t an animal dependant on my instincts, I was intelligent. At the very least I was intelligent enough to not want a man who keeps dead animal parts on his desk touching me.

Wow this guy is really patient.

I was busy playing a game of avoid the scary man’s hands when I heard the sound of something cutting through the air outside.

*Ssssshh*

*Wvvff*

*Wvff*

*Viff*

A colorful vulture swept over and landed on the balcony. The bird had a brown wings, tail and back with a pale orange head, chest and legs. There were black markings on its white face that stretched around its eyes and flowed down into a wispy beard of feathers below its beak. It was a beautiful bird. It was also huge.

That thing is nearly as tall as the kid is! Mero wasn’t exactly short for a kid in his early teens, but it was looking pretty likely that he was going to take after his father in the height department. As the bird walked its way into the office I could tell that it probably came up to the kid’s chin. That was far larger than any bird on earth.

“Hey Phene, how you doing girl?” (Mero)

The vulture crooned in response and stretched her neck to rub her beak against his cheek. Mero began to pet her enthusiastically, smoothing her crest and running his fingers through her feathers.

After a few seconds of them cuddling and his father trying to scoop me up Mero ran over to the desk. He grabbed one of the fresh bone paperweights and tossed it to Phene who snapped it out of the air and swallowed it whole. Oh, I guess that’s what the bones are for, Now I feel bad for assuming this dude was some kind of bone obsessed psychopath.

“So, what’s with the tree monk? Teacher didn’t tell me why she had me bring it to you. She told us in class it was a mutant beast.” (Mero)

The kid was grabbing his father’s paperweights on after the other and feeding them to Phene, who was very pleased at the attention. Mero’s dad on the other hand, still hadn’t looked away from me. He was still cautiously trying to grab me, although he was using one hand to shift the loose papers under bones his son hadn’t yet fed to the vulture.

“I’m not sure that it is a mutant beast, it might be a spirit beast. She thinks it might be a good magic beast for Astera, Mellina know she is getting to be the right age for contracting and thought we might want more options.” (Mero’s dad)

Yup, they are beastmasters, not sure how I feel about this. I could make a run for it, but I feel like escaping would be harder than it seems, this guy seems pretty slow right now, but I can tell he’s ready for me to pull anything. There’s no way these lazy grabs are fastest he’s got and if I go back to full size there is now way I will be able to stay in town.

One thing I learned in class is that people are wary of magic beasts. I have gotten a pass so far thanks to my small size and the fact that I have been acting docile. It sounded like when a magic beast appears people like to make sure it isn’t going to be dangerous to people. I can understand; maneaters are a problem on earth even though they can’t shoot lightning or smash tanks. So for now my best bet is to look nonthreatening. I don’t need a bounty on my head because I can’t wait until grabby here leaves the room to make my escape.

“Are you sure you want to use a tree monk? They don’t live long and it doesn’t seem that strong. ...Is it a boy or girl?” (Mero)

!!!

That is a very good question. I never thought to check. How would I even know? I mean, it doesn’t really matter so much considering I am a bug. The book said that mutant and spirit beasts don’t pass down their powers but either way I’m not sure I want a romantic relationship with another bug… I’m not a fan of bestiality going either way. I would also prefer not to die right away again, at least there aren’t any trucks around here.

“It’s a male, you can tell by the number of sections in its abdomen. Also you need to remember that it’s a magic beast so it is going to live a lot longer than a normal tree monk. As for powers… it’s best if your sister doesn’t get anything too dangerous quite yet.” (Mero’s dad)

That’s reassuring.

“Why not? You got Phene when you were a kid and mom got Periphas for her first beast.” (Mero)

“Your mother was an exception, she contracted Periphas by accident. Not to mention he got her in a lot of trouble till your grandpa took her in and taught her the ropes. As for me, my first magic beast was Papi, and he has always been pretty easygoing even for a jackalope. Even you contracted with Tartary first didn’t you?” (Mero’s dad)

The kid nodded and stared at me as if considering me more than a useless shiny, He also stopped tossing Phene bone chunks. The papers on the desk had now been consolidated into three messy piles. Phene seemed disappointed that she didn’t get anymore snacks, she walked towards the desk and began staring at me as I continued to dodge the father’s grasp.

Phene had amazing and terrifying eyes. The sclera was a deep bloody red instead of the usual white. If that wasn’t bad enough the iris was an almost glowing silver color. The result was mesmerizing; I could almost feel myself being sucked into the black hole in the silver disk floating on a red sea.

Nope nope nope, I am not going to be bird food after working so hard to avoid it. I quickly jumped over the man’s reaching hand, climbed back in the cage and latched the door behind me.

The cage wasn’t going to stop the bird if it was determined, but I knew that. The point was preventing it from casually snapping me up like a fun sized candy bar. Hopefully it would buy me enough time for the man to save me.

The man looked at the vulture then back at me. He seemed to come to a decision; standing up and sending Mero and Phene away. As they went their respective ways he carried me downstairs.

The whole ‘making a contract’ thing sounds like a big deal, hopefully it won’t happen right away. I really would prefer avoiding any sort of slavery. I wanted to try communicating with people somehow but I’m not sure how safe that would be anymore.