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Jade often wished she’d been born absolutely anywhere but Earth.
It wasn’t like she hated it here. Her grandpa was pretty well off, so she’s had a comfortable life. Earth was also home to her three best friends in the entire universe. The humongous garden she owned back at home was a testament to how much she cared for Earth creatures. Hell, over the 20 long years of Jade’s life, she’s voraciously consumed all the information she possibly could about Earth; its people, its life, its history.
But that was exactly it. She’s seen just about everything there was to see about humanity and its homeplanet, and it was getting SO! BORING!
She wanted to get off of this giant rock and visit the whole rest of the universe! Being stuck just reading about alien worlds in books simply wouldn’t cut it.
Of course, interstellar travel wasn’t cheap, but that wasn’t the problem. Like she’d mentioned before, her grandfather had amassed a small fortune from his many endeavors, business and otherwise. If he wanted to, he could pay for Jade’s ticket and not even bat an eye. But noo, he wanted her to graduate University first. On Earth. So here she was stuck. She couldn’t even resent Grandpa for it, because she understood where he was coming from, she really did.
But it’s just so frustrating! she thought to herself as she sat on the park bench, legs pumping back and forth unconsciously. She took an angry bite out of her sandwich. It tasted pretty great. She had to admit the University life was not without its perks.
The park was another one of those perks. It was probably her favorite place in the entire building, a lush garden on the very top floor of the singular building that composed her college. A humongous glass dome, tall enough to accommodate the park’s trees with space to spare, separated the area from the sometimes unpredictable climate outside. Humanity hasn’t always been as careful with Earth as it was now.
Under the dome, it was pleasantly warm, and the air smelled like leaves and rain and flowers. Jade already felt herself being distracted from her earlier thoughts as she breathed in this little pocket of nature. Then she pulled out her tablet.
TT: I won’t spoil it in case you have not watched it yet, but the most recent episode of The Squiddles was absolutely riveting. I was almost moved to tears.
TT: Are you in class right now? My apologies if now isn’t the time. I’m sure your busy schedule at your fancy University leaves you no free time to keep up with the latest cephalopodan dramas.
GG: no! im not in class :P
GG: im just eating lunch rn but ill have to go in 20 minutes
GG: lol you know im not actually that busy i actually have tons of free time
GG: and i did see the new episode it was sooooo good!!!
TT: So I take it your studies are going well?
GG: theyre like
GG: super easy
GG: im not sure what i was expecting though i mean its interesting
GG: idk i thought i wouldve gotten something more out of it by now
TT: Have you made any “Cool Nerd Friends”, as I believe you said you would?
GG: i guueessss ive met SOME cool people
GG: but a lot of people here are kinda boring like stuck up
TT: As expected of such a prestigious school.
GG: anyway! how are things going with you???
TT: It’s been going well. I’ve been making great strides towards my goal of becoming a therapist-cum-novelist. Complacency of the Learned will be getting published within the year.
TT: Dave’s been doing well, too. I’m still not quite adjusted to living in such close quarters with my brother, though. He talks to himself near constantly.
GG: rose thats great!!! and hehehe that sure sounds like dave
GG: thats basically like how he is online too
Jade was happy she could catch up with Rose like this. One of her worries when transitioning to University was that all of them would be too occupied being adults to stay in contact. Especially Rose, her oldest and dearest friend. Though they’ve only met face to face a small handful of times, they’ve spent countless hours over the years talking about anything and everything. They had first bonded over their shared interest in the Squiddles franchise at age 11, but they quickly grew to become one another’s most trusted confidantes. In middle school, Jade got to read the earliest drafts of Rose’s books when nobody else even knew she was writing them. In high school, Rose let Jade design her a fursona and draw it together with Jade’s. John and Dave were extremely important to Jade, too, but Rose was practically her best friend ever (and there have been times when Jade was certain that she liked Rose in a more-than-friends kinda way, though it’s not something she’d ever voice aloud).
They chatted a bit more, updating the other on the details of their respective lives. A glance to the small clock displayed in the corner of her tablet’s screen, though, alerted Jade that her Bioengineering class started in 4 minutes. Shit.
GG: aw man sorry i gotta run!!! hopefully well get to talk again soon?
TT: I hope so.
TT: See you later.
Jade closed out of the messaging app and all but ran to class, making it just on time.
"Before today's lecture, I've got an announcement to make," started the professor, a tall woman with greying hair tied back in a ponytail. Jade liked her. "Starting today, we have an alien transfer student joining us in class. I hope everyone will be respectful of your new classmate."
The classroom exploded with muttered conversation. People craned their necks to find the mentioned transfer student. It wasn't very common to get transfer students from other planets that weren't human for a multitude of reasons. Travel costs, interplanetary politics, language and culture barriers, Earth's ridiculously rigorous vetting policy. The University, as big as it was, only had a handful of extraterrestrial students.
The murmurs quieted as somebody approached the front of the classroom. Bristly black hair, striped horns, grey skin. A troll. By far the most humanlike alien in terms of anatomy (almost uncanny), which is how the transfer student must have escaped her notice before the start of the class.
"The name's Terezi Pyrope," the troll announced. She barely had an accent to speak of, though the raspy, chirping quality to her voice gave away its owner’s non-humanness. Her too-wide smile revealed two rows of sharp, triangular teeth. Her horns were also rather sharp and triangular, sticking straight outwards. Bright red shades obscured her eyes. "It's a pleasure to meet you all."
All eyes followed Terezi as she sat back down in her seat, way in the corner of the room.
"Now, on to today's lecture…" the professor began.
Jade hardly paid attention, busy as she was trying to stop herself from looking back at the troll every three seconds.
A troll! There was an alien in her class!
Jade wanted to talk to Terezi very badly. Trolls were among the most common extraterrestrial visitors on Earth, but Jade’s contact with them has been limited to seeing them in passing in public and in videos online. This was her first time sharing a class with anything but your general run-of-the-mill Earth human. Jade’s body was but a container for her all-consuming curiosity, and currently all of her focus was spent on trying to keep still.
Once the class ended, however, it turned out that she wasn’t the only interested party. In fact, Terezi ended up quickly getting swarmed by chattering humans asking her questions. If that were Jade, she’d get uncomfortable and overwhelmed fairly quickly, but the alien seemed to be enjoying the attention, laughing raucously every couple seconds as she kept up that uncomfortable-looking sharp toothed grin.
Jade sighed and shouldered her bag when she realized that she’d have to wait until next time, heading out the classroom door dejectedly. She heard another loud troll-laugh through the door as she walked away, this one edging on hysterical-sounding, and a human yelp.
Two days later, Jade was sitting in the auditorium, idly playing a game on her tablet. She was waiting for the presentation to start; an optional talk about Alternian wildlife. Jade wasn’t really expecting to learn anything she didn’t already know, since she kept up on this kind of stuff, but it wasn’t like she had much else better to do.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed somebody sit down in the seat next to her.
“Hello there, human! You were in one of my classes, were you not? Fancy meeting you here!” said a voice that struck Jade as distinctly not human. She looked up from her game and was greeted with the grinning face of the alien transfer student from just the other day.
Oh. “Hey there. Terezi.” She mentally fumbled for something else to say.
“Wow, you even remembered my name! Maybe you aren’t as stupid as the rest of these Earthlings. You wouldn’t believe the ways people manage to mispronounce it, too.”
Jade was starting to recover from the abruptness of it all. There was an alien. Talking to her. "What are you doing here? Are you not from Alternia?" Oh god Jade really hoped that she wouldn't say anything to offend Terezi or leave a bad first impression. She so badly didn't want to fuck this up.
"Oh, I am. I'm here to see how inaccurate it is and laugh at everything they get blatantly wrong."
Jade opened her mouth to ask a question, but just then the speaker walked in and the auditorium quieted. And Jade, being a polite person, kept silent through the entire presentation, listening to the speaker, a human man in his early thirties. He talked extensively about the difficulties of researching a planet without having legal permission to set foot on it (though the trolls now abstained from conquering and enslaving foreign species, they were not the friendliest towards outsiders), and presented the data he had so far. Terezi didn't seem to be able to stop herself from keeping a running commentary of what exactly she thought of the presentation.
Finally, it was over, and students began getting up from their seats and filing out of the room. Jade stood up as well.
"Huh. I guess that wasn't toooo bad," was Terezi's final verdict. "But he totally got the lusus thing wrong! They're not pets, they're caretakers."
To Jade’s joy, Terezi walked with her as she headed towards the cafeteria for lunch.
"What species was your lusus?" Jade asked. What Jade knew from her readings was that every troll was given a lusus in their youth, and that each one was blood-caste specific. Terezi had a small teal logo that Jade assumed designated hers stitched into her shirt.
“Basilisk Rubicundis. I believe the name in English is ‘dragon.’”
“So what you’re saying is that you were raised by a dragon? Holy shit.” Jade’s voice pitched upwards as she tried to keep from raising her voice in excitement.
“Indeed I was!” Terezi seemed pleased by Jade’s interest. “I have objectively the best lusus ever. But she hasn’t reached full size yet. See, she was barely out of the egg when she chose me in the Brooding Caverns as her charge.”
“That’s like, so incredibly cool!”
“Alternia is a much different place from Earth. Any one of you squishy humans wouldn’t last a day before getting eaten by somebody’s lusus!” Terezi cackled.
Jade widened her eyes. “It’s that bad?”
“Bad? You humans’ preconceived notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and ‘just’ and ‘unfair’ aren’t universal, you know.”
“That’s not what I-” Jade tried to backtrack.
Terezi ignored her. “If you live on Alternia, you live by its rules. Those who are not strong enough to survive are destined to die. It’s a necessary reality, as the number of eggs the Mother Grub lays is much more than the planet can sustain.”
“Still… that sounds like a hard life, doesn’t it? If you can be killed any day.” Specifics on Alternia could be a little hard to come by, but it seemed like a brutal place to grow up on.
“We do have laws, you know! For example, a troll cannot kill another troll if they haven’t done anything to deserve it. I don’t know what humans have against good old fashioned revenge.”
The two arrived at the cafeteria without Jade even noticing. Terezi joined her in the food line, picking and choosing foods that her body could digest (with some whining about how Earthlings had no sense of flavor). The conversation shifted to the topic of troll biology, and, still talking, they both sat down to eat at a table across from one another, already becoming fast friends.