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There’s a new student on campus.
He is not tall or short, not thin or fat. He looks like anybody else, but there is something… off about him. Maybe it is the smile. Is that a smile? Nobody can say.
He is majoring in journalism, and it seems that it is the only class he really cares about. In any other class, his eyes glaze over, and he constantly fidgets and stretches. Sometimes he stretches his body too much, but since it’s over so quickly, people dismiss it as a trick of the light. Any paper he turns in are filled with conspiracy theories like how mountains don’t exist, and how books are dangerous and inadvisable and should not be kept in private homes. The time he has outside of classes he spends practicing his “Radio show host skills,” as he likes to call them. He set up shop in an old chorus practice room, and made his own makeshift microphone out of a chair leg and a pinecone. For some reason, a circle of bloodstones is kept in there as well. People try to avoid it.
He disregards the Rules in their entirety: He wears no iron, he carries no salt, he throws his True Name around for all to hear, and he frequently flirts with any boy he finds cute, Gentry or not. The students stay away from him, and the teachers just sigh and shake their heads; a boy as foolish as that, he’ll get Taken within a week.
A month into school, he’s sitting in Calculus, when a bright flash of light replaces him. Nobody bats an eye, as this was to be expected. What was completely unexpected though is that exactly a minute later, he is returned, unharmed and seemingly delighted. The classroom falls silent, staring at him in shock and disbelief.
People on campus notice him more after he was Taken. They notice how he has suddenly become quite friendly with Stabby the Roomba, seemingly training it to bring him corn muffins in exchange for dirt and cuddles. They notice how every time he mentions being homesick, the figure of an old woman with no face appears in his dorm room window, and she’ll bring him random paraphernalia: paper clips, coffee mugs, bloodstained feathers, and other items. They notice how he is genuinely afraid of mirrors, and does all he can to avoid looking into one, going so far as to throw a length of cloth he keeps in his neon orange and pink knapsack over it. They notice how every time he tried to approach one of the Gentry, They flee instantaneously, never looking back. They notice how, despite his unending efforts to draw Them out (leaving offerings and gifts, invoking every superstition and good/bad luck charm he can think of) the Gentry still do not approach him (They do take his offerings, though. It would be rude not to. They burn all of them in secret, though.) They notice how every time he is mentioned to one of the Gentry, They start shrieking in pure, utter terror.
Life goes on at Elsewhere University. Students who have managed to anger the Fair Folk befriend the strange boy, and they are instantly protected, no need for iron or salt ever again. The Roomba still follows him, and is adorned with flowers and drawings of runic symbols and eyes. So. Many. Eyes. Teachers automatically give him good grades, regardless if he did any work at all. Their reasoning; if the Gentry fear him, it’s a good sign that they should as well. Do nothing to piss him off.
Spring arrives, and he announces to his friends that he has decided on a trip for spring break. While he misses his friendly desert community, he wants a change of pace, so he tells his friends that he will be backpacking across Europe, and that he’ll be sure to bring them all souvenirs. They all just smile and wave as he sets off on his journey. The Gentry are happy that he’s leaving, if only for a few weeks. As They watch him go, They silently think about how the graduation of Cecil Gershwin Palmer can’t come soon enough.