‘I only had two glasses.’
‘Wha’ for?! It’s a party. You’re suppose’ t’ drink the place dry.’
‘I don’t think it was that sort of party,’ Charlotte said as they arrived at Krystal and Trudy’s room. ‘You all right taking her from here?’
‘I can manage,’ Krystal replied. ‘Thanks for the help.’
‘Huh. Well, I figure us misfits have to stick together.’
‘Is she going to be okay?’ Jesse asked from behind them. ‘She should drink a lot of water. She’s going to feel terrible in the morning.’
Krystal unlocked the door to her room and then shifted Trudy’s weight more onto her shoulders. ‘I’ll take care of her, Jesse.’ Krystal half-carried, half-pushed her roommate into the room, and then over to Trudy’s bed, and then lowered her into a sitting position. ‘Are you okay there for a few minutes while I get water for you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Trudy said. Her face was barely visible in the light coming in through the still-open door, but she looked flushed and not like someone who was going to be fine.
‘I’ll be right back,’ Krystal said. Then she grabbed all the glasses she could find in the room, three of them, and headed back out into the corridor.
The bathrooms were at the far end of the hallway, near the stairs, and it took a little concentration to carry three glasses of water. The truth was that Krystal had stopped drinking the rich, red wine being served at the celebration when she had begun feeling a little lightheaded. The dizziness was gone, but she was pretty sure she was still a little tipsy. Still, she managed to get the water to their room without spilling any. There was still no light in the room, so she did not notice that Trudy had managed to undress in the time she had been getting water.
‘Ancestors!’ Krystal exclaimed. ‘Trudy, the door’s wide open!’
Trudy remained where she was, laid out across her bed in a somewhat lewd posture. ‘So? We’re all girls in here.’
Shaking her head, Krystal moved over to the door, closed it, and then focused her will into magic. She was not drunk enough to fluff a simple light spell and she formed the symbols in her mind, lifting her hand as she did so, and a ball of glowing energy not much brighter than a candle flame appeared in her palm. She pushed it out into the air and it floated, just above head height, providing a bit more light to the room. ‘Now, you should get at least a glass of that water into you before you try to sleep.’
‘Yes, mother,’ Trudy said. She struggled upright and picked up one of the glasses, sipping at it as she watched Krystal begin to undress.
Krystal kicked off her shoes, put her glasses on the bedside table, pulled her T-shirt off over her head, and then she turned as she was unhooking her bra. Trudy was staring at her with half a glass of water in her hand. ‘What?’ Krystal asked, frowning at her tipsy roommate.
Trudy shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Undoing the last hook on her bra strap, Krystal pulled the rather unattractive garment down her arms and tossed it onto the dresser. She heard the bed springs shift in front of her and looked back, and Trudy was on her feet, standing less than an arm’s length away. There was definitely a flush in her cheeks now. ‘Trudy? What are you–’
Looking a lot like she was moving before she could change her mind, Trudy closed the distance and reached for Krystal. One hand snaked around her hips: Krystal felt it close on her buttock through her jeans. Trudy’s other hand reached for Krystal’s right breast as Trudy’s head dipped in the same direction. Krystal bent backward, trying to escape, or thinking she was trying to escape, she was not entirely sure… But the action just pushed her breasts up toward Trudy’s mouth as the blonde girl captured a nipple between her lips.
Krystal gasped. ‘Trudy, I’m not sure…’ She trailed off as Trudy sucked the nub of flesh into her mouth. Krystal felt Trudy’s tongue flicking over the sensitive tip and groaned. ‘Trudy… Trudy, we shouldn’t…’ Trudy showed no signs of stopping what she was doing and Krystal realised with a sudden flash of clarity that she was too tipsy to fight harder. It felt so good. It was not like when Krystal had done things like this to herself: this was so much better. Little electric tingles were spreading from her nipple, out across her breast and then down, down where they caused another tingle to begin between her legs.
The ball of light Krystal had made flickered and went out, plunging them into near-darkness, and Trudy seemed to take that as a signal. She pushed, directing Krystal back toward the bed behind her, Krystal’s bed. Krystal’s legs hit the frame and she tumbled back, and the loss of Trudy’s lips tore a cry from Krystal’s throat. The loss was short-lived: Trudy was over her in the dark, leaning down to lick, languidly, across Krystal’s left breast while Trudy’s hands went to work on Krystal’s belt and jeans. Trudy had to give up on the tongue bath to finally pull Krystal’s jeans and panties off her hips and down her legs, and then Krystal was naked, lying across her own bed in the dark and not really knowing what would happen next, but hoping…
Trudy’s hands found Krystal’s knees, pushing them apart. Krystal could hear her own breathing, more like panting, anticipation quickening it. What would Trudy do now? How would it feel? The answer came as Trudy’s fingers found Krystal’s labia, parting them, found the sensitive bud within, teasing it with a thumb until Krystal’s back arched and she let out a frustrated groan. A finger slid into Krystal, testing the wetness it found there before a second finger joined it. Trudy seemed to know what she was doing: the pair of fingers pushed in and up, searching for their target, and the thumb strumming at Krystal’s clitoris quickened. The fingers inside Krystal found the place they were looking for and began to push and circle. Krystal’s fists gripped the bedspread as her body tightened under the onslaught of pleasure welling up through her. There was a moment where she hung on the edge of the precipice, looking out over the edge and wondering whether she should really allow herself to fall…
2nd Day of Autumngate.
Luckily, the first day of the year started late for the new intake. They had to pick up their lesson schedules and go through a day of induction before the classes started properly on the second day. It was lucky, because Krystal and Trudy were a little late getting up, and getting to breakfast, and getting to the main hall which had been cleared and converted into the sign-in room.
There were a lot of long tables and everyone had to head for the table matching the first letter of their family name. There they could pick up their class schedule after checking that they met the requirements for the courses and were actually assigned to the right ones.
And, for the first time, everyone was in school uniform. Krystal had expected this to bring everyone together since everyone would be wearing the same clothes. Somehow, things were not working out quite like that. Everyone was in the same outfit: a white blouse, blue-and-white plaid pleated skirt, white stockings, and white shoes with an instep strap and an inch or two of heel designed to keep you out of the mud in the rainy seasons. All good so far. But then the quality of the clothes tended to demonstrate how much money a student’s parents had, and the way they wore the uniform tended to show off their personalities. Even something as simple as the number of buttons done up on the blouse varied by girl. Krystal and Trudy had only the top two buttons undone. Charlotte’s shirt was open one button lower, while Felicia’s was almost open to her navel and, surprisingly, Jesse’s was done up the same as Felicia’s. Krystal was sure Felicia’s skirt was shorter than hers too, but maybe that was just something about leg length.
Krystal’s mild disquiet over the failure of the uniform to create equality was just sugar on top of her greater disquiet about what had happened the night before or, more specifically, the fact that Trudy had been rushing to get ready and they had had no chance to talk about it. It was not that Krystal was regretting it exactly. She had concerns she felt they should address. That was it, concerns, and they were going to get almost no time at all to discuss them at the rate things were going. Jesse, Ch
arlotte, and Glinda had been with them since they had left their rooms, all through breakfast, all the way to the hall, and then they had all split up to go to their sign-in tables. But they had all met up again for the lunch break that came after sign-in.
‘So, what classes do you have first?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Me and Glinda have General Magical Theory Eleven.’
‘That’s one one,’ Krystal said, ‘not eleven. You do the one one course first, then one two, then one three, and so on. I’m in one three.’
‘Oh,’ Jesse said, brightening. ‘I’m in one three too.’
Charlotte smirked. ‘One three two? That must be a pretty advanced class.’
‘No, I’m also in–’ Jesse flashed Charlotte a frown. ‘That was a joke. I’m not good with jokes.’ She turned her attention back to Krystal. ‘We can go to classes together.’
‘Sure,’ Krystal said.
‘Well, I’m in one one,’ Trudy said. ‘I guess I’ll be with Charley and Glinda.’
‘Do you have an elective, Krys?’ Jesse asked.
Krystal nodded. ‘Meta-magic. I don’t know it as well as I’d like.’
Jesse sagged a little: it looked like she had been hoping hers was the same. ‘I’m in plant corpus. I-it’s what I really came here to learn.’
‘How come we didn’t get to pick electives?’ Glinda asked, frowning.
‘Because they want you focusing on basic magical theory before you specialise,’ Krystal replied. ‘You can’t go learning magical specialities if you don’t understand the underlying mechanics.’
‘I guess that makes sense. So, they won’t let us learn the corpuses we need for weather magic until…’
‘Probably the spring term.’
‘Oh. That sucks.’
Krystal shrugged. ‘It really is needed. Sorry.’
Glinda grinned. ‘It’s not your fault the world works the way it does.’
Krystal grinned back. ‘Sorry for being the bearer of bad news.’
‘Have you ever heard of this Theodore Marin?’ Jesse asked. ‘I was expecting a female lecturer, but that sounds like a man.’
‘If it’s a woman,’ Charlotte said, ‘her parents had a really weird sense of humour.’
‘Says the girl called Charley,’ Glinda said.
‘Ha ha, but my parents don’t call me Charley.’
‘No matter how many times you ask them to.’
‘Too right.’
‘He’s new,’ Krystal said before the comedy act could continue. ‘Theodore Marin is new this year. The old lecturer was a woman, Alissa Coventon, but she died during the summer. A heart attack, I think.’
‘Oh,’ Charlotte said. ‘That’s a bit of a downer. Well, I hope this new guy is up to the challenge.’
‘I’m sure he will be. Dean Scintilla Rainshadow wouldn’t have taken him on otherwise.’
‘Probably. So, what’s next?’
Krystal took her notebook from her satchel and checked. ‘After lunch it’s… practical lab safety. All the things we’re not supposed to do when we’re doing practical lessons. Like I haven’t already heard it all before, but I suppose they have to go through it all again so they can definitely say everyone’s been taught the rules.’
‘I probably need to be taught the rules,’ Jesse said. ‘I just practise in the forest. If something went wrong while I was doing that, it was pretty much my problem. There was usually no one within a mile to worry about.’
‘And we’d just go out into the mountains,’ Glinda said.
‘Oh,’ Krystal said. ‘I guess there is a good reason to go over it all again, but I am going to be so bored.’
~~~
The lecture was boring. Krystal learned nothing she had not encountered before or was basic common sense. Oh, she could see why they stated the blindingly obvious for the benefit of all: she did not really want to be near anyone who thought that casting area-effect combat spells in a confined space was a good idea.
Then there had been the tour of the school, to be sure that everyone knew where all the lecture theatres, labs, and other facilities were. There were basically six large theatres, holding up to one hundred students, and a further ten smaller theatres for twenty-five students. Then there were three practical labs for spellcasting and a further one for alchemy. Charlotte perked up when they got to the sports facilities which featured a large, open field with a few outbuildings, and a three-storey-high hall for when the weather was too bad. Physical education was not mandatory at the school, but it was encouraged. Krystal was sure that Charlotte would need no encouragement, while Krystal herself would need a lot. There was also a small theatre meant for drama and music, a workshop for arts and crafts, and a few other rooms for extracurricular activities. Since Krystal’s idea of extracurricular was reading books that were not, directly, about magic, she was not too interested in most of it. There was a library and she was interested in that, but nothing much else.
And all the time she was going around the school, making a mental note of where everything was, she was still worrying over Trudy and the extracurricular activities they had got up to the night before. When the tour was done, Krystal thought they might get some free time to talk, but the older students had been organised to hold another sign-up session in the main hall, this time for the various clubs the students ran out of hours. Charlotte, obviously, wanted to check out the sports clubs. Trudy decided that it would be a good idea to see what was available, so Krystal followed along. Glinda went with Charlotte, of course, and Jesse figured she could look, even if she doubted there would be anything for her… Except that there was a gardening club and plants were about the only thing Jesse opened up about.
Krystal found a book-reading club which she thought she could join. They had special access to the library, which was a major selling point. She signed up for that and then followed Trudy as she hunted for something she was interested in. It seemed like the blonde was trying to avoid going back to their room, however, since nothing seemed to pique her interest in the slightest.
Finally, Krystal snapped. She moved in right beside Trudy as they walked between two rows of tables and leaned closer. ‘Are you trying to avoid talking to me?’ Krystal asked in a whisper.
‘About what?’ Trudy replied.
‘About last night.’ As if she did not know!
‘I didn’t think we needed to talk about it.’ Trudy stopped and Krystal almost bumped into her. Turning, Trudy gave Krystal a rather lascivious smile. ‘If you want to talk about it, we’ll talk. After dinner. We won’t be disturbed after dinner.’
Getting the feeling that this was a really bad idea, Krystal nodded. ‘Okay. After dinner.’
~~~
Trudy locked the door behind her as Krystal sat down on her bed. Trudy had been dropping hints earlier about getting an early night before lessons in the morning; no one would be disturbing them, but the locked door was a further hint. And that was the only reason the door was locked…
‘So, what did you want to talk about?’ Trudy asked, walking over to sit on her own bed. She was all cool, calm, and confident. Nothing wrong here. Just a little friendly chat…
‘Well, what we did last night.’
‘What about it? We had some fun…’ Trudy’s face dropped and a hint of insecurity crept into her voice. ‘You did enjoy it, didn’t you?’
‘Yes!’ Krystal replied quickly. ‘It was– I’ve never felt like that before.’
‘Good. Good. So, we both had a good time and that’s what counts. No one got hurt, right?’
‘Yes. I mean, no. I mean, no one got hurt, but… Trudy, that was the first time I’ve ever done that. With someone else. That someone else has done that to me. I–’
‘Well, me too,’ Trudy interrupted.
Krystal stalled. ‘You too? I thought you’d… I was sure you’d–’
Trudy frowned. ‘What? You thought I was a grey-scaled minx who’d spread her legs for anyone?’
‘No! No, that’s not what I mean
t at all! I just… You started it, and you seemed to know what you were doing. Ancestors, you really seemed to know what you were doing.’
Giggling suddenly, Trudy bounced up off the bed and over to drop down beside Krystal. ‘All I did was what I’d have done to myself. The first time, anyway. A-and I didn’t think you would do anything, so I got drunk enough that I wouldn’t chicken out–’
‘That’s why you drank so much?’
‘I’m not usually that stupid, no. But I really wasn’t used to the wine so I nearly didn’t do anything because I thought I might mess it up, but then you took your bra off and… I just went for it.’
‘I thought you liked boys,’ Krystal said, trying to work things out in her head.
‘I like looking at boys. I’ve never let one… Boys are high-maintenance. You let one do that kind of thing to you, they start having expectations. And those expectations don’t have anything to do with what I want out of life. I’ve kissed a few, and I let one get me out of my bra, but that was as far as he got.’
‘Oh. Okay. Uh, okay. I mean, I’d never done any of that. To be honest, I didn’t know I wanted to until you had your lips around my nipple.’ That got a giggle out of Trudy. ‘The kissing was… I’m not sure I was doing it right, but it felt good.’
‘I’m not sure there’s a right way to do it. It’s not like a spell you have to learn precisely or it doesn’t work.’
‘No,’ Krystal replied. ‘I guess it’s not. But, um, well, maybe we could practise some more anyway. If you wanted to, of course…’
Reaching out, Trudy began to undo the buttons on Krystal’s blouse. ‘I thought you’d never ask. We did say we were going to bed early.’
Krystal giggled. ‘There is one thing.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I’d never call you a minx.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘No. The sisters would never have used a word like that. You’re a shameless hussy.’
‘Oh, that’s so much better.’
Krystal reached out around Trudy’s arms and began undoing the buttons on her friend’s blouse. ‘It’s okay. I’m a shameless hussy too.’
Misfit Magic (Misfits Book 1) Page 5