Work Text:
FIRST DAY OF THE SCHOOL YEAR
The subject matter, what I am about to discuss, is highly confidential.
This was the first sentence we ever heard in the lecture hall. Being one who was fascinated by mythical creatures the whole life, I was someone who graduated top of my class in every subject and then enrolled first in the University of Foreign Organisms. What I didn't expect was that all other kinds of species turned up here, all the créme de la créme - I was put in a group with a female Dwarf, a male Goblin, a male Elf, and a male Orc. What I also didn't expect was that they were, contrary to what the stereotypes were, they were quite pleasant. The Orc was the biggest surprise: I have never expected that we could hold a conversation about the philosophies of Kant and to pivot effortlessly to quantum mechanics, in which he absolutely stumped me with his understanding. I got their names, too, and how they write them in their respective languages: the male Elf is named Eltoris, the female Dwarf is Bryltyn, the Orc is called Grabrakk Zamval, and the Goblin introduced himself as Dagruk.
What followed the initial lessons was a community get-together, in which we all shared drinks and told a bit about ourselves and our plans. Dagruk told me that he wants to establish a Goblin-human trading facility on the university grounds, but that is only a short-term plan - he wants to be a marine biologist and document Earth's aquatic lifeforms. Bryltyn would like to make connections with the Pedagogy degree she earned at home before coming to Earth and teach high schoolers Dwarven and Programming. Grabrakk, following his late great-grandfather, wants to establish a library, and study xenobiology before retiring to his wife and teaching kids how to write and talk. Eltoris has no immediate plans for the time after university, but he would like to eventually join up with a Centaur girl he met before coming to Earth to study at UFO, and take her to the British Isles. The five of us immediately made a group on Lite and began posting about it to the whole community, which got the first-years to join the chat. At the end of the day, we had all but the Ghost guy and the Cat-kin girl joined, the two of them couldn't because the Ghost had no way of interacting with technology, and the Cat-kin had a phone that wasn't compatible with Lite.
The five of us, Dagruk, Bryltyn, Grabrakk, Eltorin, and I, went back to the dorms, only to find that Eltorin was placed with the Centaur girl he promised to visit, and the other four of us were sharing one block.