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I thought I'd start today's diary entry with a description of my dorm room. My dorm room is in a building for special exchange students, though normal students can live there too. I've got a bed, far softer than the blanket on a floor or couch I grew up with. I've got a desk with an electric lamp so I don't have to rely on candles. I have two closets, a bathing area I share with others, a set of "dresser drawers" and a place for the lock box the Rukh gave me as a parting gift for school.  

I used to just have some shirts, some shorts, my unitard, a pair of sandles, a pair of shoes and my boots. The Akijutsu gear I just left with the club I rented it from. Of course (it goes without saying) I also had my belt (I never take it off).

Well, now I have shirts and pants and a few long skirts and dresses and swim suits, and socks (and other layered clothing like that) and a few wind suits as well as lots of shoes. I also keep my diary in my box, along with a few misc. things I've picked up.

My diary is different, the lightwalker gave it to me. It is a tablet. Some days it is covered with papyrus, some times with sand, sometimes with a bluish film. I can write on all the surfaces, and I can always "turn back the page" to find what I've written, but it is magical and changes all the time. Today I'm writing on sand.
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Climbing class was different than it had been. I used to just change to my unitard and begin climbing. Of course I had my belt on. Good exercise, I've enough experience climbing that the instructor just let me work out after making sure I knew what I was doing the first class period. I'd break a sweat (ok, horses sweat, men perspire, women glow, but I was shining -- it can really be exercise to climb). Usually I'd climb barefoot, sometimes with my boots or sandles. I'd climb hard and just lose myself for the hour or so class went. Today I wore a windsuit and sports shoes. It is hard not to blush every place I go when I realize I really wasn't as dressed as I should have been. Heck, in Greek class, Talia came up to me and told me that she'd had her doubts about me, but I was turning out to be ok, would I like to split a pizza with them over lunch? I paid for it and they all chipped in. Turns out I came out ahead, so I bought drinks for everyone. But that whole group had been kind of cool before I changed my clothes, except for Talia, she's been a friend. I noticed I was getting a lot less attention from the guys in all of my classes. Makes my face burn to think of it, though I had been kind of puzzled why I wasn't just fading into the background and being ignored by them. At least the real people (other girls) are suddenly warming up to me. Some of the guys looked disappointed, but a couple of the serious climbers, who were working the other side of the ramp have started to warm up. I may be short, but I can really climb. I'm fast, strong and I have good skills (even when I'm not letting my magic speed me). Now that people have started to catch on that I'm there to climb ... I'm getting along a lot better with the people I'd like to get along with. I'm glad I didn't put any pictures into my diary.

Of course now I have to think about things when I get dressed. It never took me this long before, and Talia has promised to teach me about make-up. Unlike home, it isn't for matrons only (matron: a married woman who has born a living child).

In the early afternoon, to take a break from studying, I used the mark I left with Ariel to visit her. Man, that school has some guardians. Good thing I'm attuned to them. Someone used the old kephalos from the blue lodge. Kephalos are kind of like magical golems, a construct, but they are sourced in the blue lodge. I've got to be more careful, had they picked a different guardian base I could have been in for a fight and for sure I would have been caught.

Ari was happy to see me, and she gave me an extra look at the clothes. I could tell she approved.

We got to talking about the whole clothes thing. Now I know why Ducks was keeping me at a distance. I mean he liked me, and we fought really well together, but I was wearing less than the Hetari of Cyndalcos, and she was a great fighter too, though not anyone a young man would want to stay near, though she rules her part of Shattered Norns well, if not wisely.

So he was keeping his distance until he understood me better. No wonder I never got a kiss.

Guess it had done a lot for the way the other girls in my class felt about me to hear that after the movie I'd dropped the guy off without even a handshake, thought they found it funny I'd paid for both of us. Guess that made it fair.

I was going to pay a lot more attention to clothes. A lot. Ari also introduced me to Amber's friend "Pork Chop," a fu dog.

"Pork Chop" speaks fire tongue, elvish and chinese (Chinese is the language a lot of fu dogs speak). Mandrian Chinese. I speak a little of the North American Siddhe version of elvish, his is more classical. He and Amber get a long fine, they speak the rune tongue of fire and enjoy it and he is otherwise at court where they tend to speak classical elvish. He promised to come visit me and to bring letters (so we could write back and forth).

Anyway, we had a good talk about clothes. Amber walked in on us and I told the story from the beginning and by the end of it we were all laughing. I still feel foolish, but not as stupid. I have a lot to learn. Also, Ari showed me the Star Shrine Ianthe at the far end of the school. It is part of the school's keep or last resort. While neither she nor Amber (or most of the kids) are ready to take on another set of geas and such, it does provide some protection. I recognized Ianthe from an assassin who strayed (at least from our lodge's perspective), and who at the end was a great master of the undead, in many ways becoming what she had fought. This shrine is tied to her earlier self, when she buried bodies instead of raising them, and I honored what her best had been.

As I got ready to leave, they reminded me that Thanksgiving was coming up. The second festival. We were all going to stay away from any of the courts. Though they told me that no one was going home either. My guardians, Amber's parents, are off at a war. Now that was a story I missed. I was already at orientation. I got sucked into the conflict when it happened, but didn't realize what it meant (you get involved with the heroic and strange things happen sometimes). I'd just pulled myself back to my room and my marks, didn't realize that the rest of them had stayed around and talked and that was why the crew had been sent off to school.

What did I know, I'd just assumed it was normal (I've never raised any kids).

So they were going to get caught up on homework, but it isn't the same festival I was used to (nothing like some of the fall harvest festivals) and even less in Switzerland where they are. I decided that I'd send a mark with Tindalasse to give to his father, but probably wouldn't use it, I'll probably take some time to visit that place I saw on the other side of the crack between the worlds. That should be fun.

Before I left, Ari gave me a pillow. I've never had a pillow before. This one was filled with rice hulls and had a light scent of aniseseed -- a smell from home. I just hugged it for a while. She is so kind.

Might even find some more manticores.
..

Funny, the teachers are really warming up to me more as the school year goes on. I'm amazed what a difference clothes can make. Especially now that I'm wearing all the clothes I should be wearing. I think I might burn those shorts. It is just that back home I would have been overdressed in shorts, without the shirt. I've got to quit thinking that way. I'll never be back home. It doesn't exist and I can't go back, ever. Not Minos. Not Crete. Not Mycenae. Not even the home lodge beyond the stars. None of the people of the belts. I spent the night huddled up with the Bull around me and my blanket. It is a fleece blanket the lightwalker gave me, and it has some of his spirit in it. But I miss my parents so much some times. I was an only child and we were so close. Now I'm just a foolish, "bouncy bit," who doesn't have a home. I'm glad I got the clothes and stuff figured out before too many people wrote me off as an hetari like tramp. I'm still so embarrassed by that. It tells me just how alone, how different, how lost I really am. But I still have the Red Bull and I have my Greek Bible to read (it is the focus of my Greek class). It gives me comfort.

.A week's worth of classes and another week. I've been pretty subdued. I've faded right in, just as if I was alone on a mission. Except I don't have a target. Robert-Etienne has started taking me running. We run for exercise and then walk. His dog runs with us.

We don't talk much, but we are both alone and he is someone who can run with me without getting left behind. We spar some, but it is really different, it is like fighting with the spirit of the lion gate at Mycenae to fight with him. Raw power, though I like his weapon, it is so similar to mine in some ways.

I'm looking forward to the break so I can go explore. I've only told Amber and Ari about my plans, I don't think Ducks would be interested, he is spending too much time with the lawacores, though I do see him at the Akijutsu workouts. He focuses on the sword in his workouts, I'm more interested in the movement and evading.
..

Ducks just suggested that I might want to join some Japanese students in a Naginata club and quit Akijutsu. I watched a work-out, and a demonstration where a second degree black belt in Naginata really handled a fifth degree in Kendo very well. It is a good idea, but it means I'll see Ducks even less. He did give me a gift of some indigo hakima pants. Said he'd been looking for something I'd like in return for the blood ruby the Rukh had given him from me. I've started Naginata, it goes well with the rigid manifestation of the scythe and chain, but I'm even lonelier. The Japanese girls are nice, but they chatter in Japanese all the time and no one really speaks much English in the workouts. The did tell me that they pronounce it hakama, but I didn't say anything to Ducks. I feel even more lost now. At least Akijutsu was like the Pan Cretan. This is useful, but it is so far from home.

I'm just so lonely.