I smile. This white-haired guy is hiding something. A bird, really? "Well, If you ever need something, you can come get me. No need for the stuffy secretary." I look at this guy again. Marble. Is that a scale? "I hope you do not mind me asking, be what species are you? You do not need to ansewer if you do not want to."

I look I'm curiously. dragon shifter? Is dragon doesn't look like right. But you don't say that out loud. "I'm a werewolf shifter mix. My mother was a werewolf, my father was a wolf shifter." Marble seems uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn't let him be. He probably wants a nap after the road trip. I don't blame them. "I should be unpacking. I'll leave you to your 'bird.'" I say, clearly not buying that lie.

The driver quickly pulled Elijah into the large zone in front of his dorm area. He huffed as he slid from the seat, quietly thanking the driver before fully exiting the vehicle. Unlike his father, he did have manners when it came to the omegas of the pack. "Make sure to call your father tonight to let him know of your safe arrival and settling, will you?" The man called from the driver's seat. Eli nodded, "I got it, Max." He said softly, before fully exiting. He'd grabbed his suitcase, the rest of his belongings undoubtedly already in the room he'd been in since first coming here years ago. One last nod to Max, and he was off to the office for his schedule before he went to his room.

"Mr. O'Brian, a pleasure as always!" Secretary Marjorie smiled from behind her desk. She was a lovely witch, working beside her husband, the Headmaster, for as long as any of his family could remember. "Ah, please, Mrs. Coin, that's my dad." He smiled, watching her as she twisted in a small giggle. The printer had his schedule in seconds, and he'd taken it as soon as it was offered. "Thank you. I'm sure I'll see you around." He nodded one last time and waved as he headed out and to the Fire dorm.

The outside of the fire dorm hadn't changed. Ornate siding caused the building to look as ancient as it was, with hedges and flowering plants that made up each zodiac sign in design on the front lawn. As soon as he walked in, the cinnamon and maple scents hugged him in a warm welcome. The craggy rock in the foyer of the building boasted its normal fireplace. A hum left Elijah's throat as he walked down the hall. His room was always on the ground floor. Quick work of the lock as he got there, and he was in his room. The large room came equip with his bed, dresser, hammock, and his desk, and computer. The hammock was his own doing, wanting a suspended place to relax or read. The plush, crimson carpet sunk under his weight, his eyes scanning to ensure the room was as secure as it always was. It was a habit for him to check the perimeters. "Here's to another year..."

Kaida Dracona | F | Dragon Shifter | Mentions: Open

A chance to stretch her wings was exactly what Kaida had needed, in her own expert opinion. The trip to the academy was a long one, and she was thankful to have set out earlier than intended. It had taken just about a day with little breaks. Her dragon was a rather large one, able to block the sun if she'd flown correctly. She had stayed hidden among the clouds for most of the journey until she'd finally sighted the academy. One dip and a powerful beat of her wings and she descended low, causing her shadow to loom over the entrance of the office.

Landing was made easy by the overly large road and clearing in front of the buildings. It's like they knew they would be accommodating large shifters or other creatures that may go bump in the night. Dark oil slick colored scale glistened in the light as she made her landing, before shifting back to her much smaller human self. She sighed, missing the height already. She made quick work of getting her schedule, the secretary was polite as ever. Maybe they were all like that here? So lovely and welcoming? One could hope. The water dorm building would be her new home as she was informed. She supposed it did make sense, sorting students by zodiac.

The water dorm's scent wrapped around Kaida, making her smile without consent. She loved honeysuckle. The pool had given her a note to keep, she'd visit that in her free time, if she had any. Going from nothing to everything without even getting to her room yet, caused Kaida's emotions to waiver. It was all so much, and the school only asked for them to attend it all.

Novalynn Harris | 17 | Female | Witch | M: Open

Nova was eating a bunch of things that she had never had the experience of eating in the Bayou. Like right now she was chewing down some twizzlers. What were they? Why were they named twizzlers? Why were they so sweet, but so hard to chew? The airplane was also a whole new experience for her. As soon as she found she was accepted under her recognition of even applying. She was told to pack her suitcase and to get on a flight to Europe. Nova felt like her world was turned upside down since then and she had no reins of what she was doing. She already had two panic attacks since she left. Once was on the plane when the big thing took off at incredible speeds that her magic made the air thingies pop out and the light flickered over her and the passengers. Then the second was being in so many enclosed spaces at a time that she could not even breath. Now she was in this carriage with some man that she has never met. If Nova knew better, he could go out to kill her.. Though he was more annoyed at her for constantly asking questions about this place and well if we are there yet. That reminded her as she tapped the guy's shoulder.

“Are we there yet? Goly, sweetheart, it's like it's been a day already… And well this is no longer fun to sit here and act like you ain’t some serial killer looking for pretty witches..”

The male scoffed “Sweetheart? You are sure from the southern state, love. And well we are actually almost there.. Since you’ve asked about 5 dang times already.. Look, see that up over that hill? The Tenebris Academy is just over that.”

Nova’s green eyes looked to where the male was pointing. She could see the top of it. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull as she watched the carriage draw nearer. Though she would have her own room and be around different supernaturals. She was more worried about her home. The Bayou Coven was waging war against some other coven. Though she was supposed to be worried about getting all her powers matched out and control her powers.. She could not help thinking about what was going on at home… Her 18th birthday was around the corner and well that was one of the most important birthdays in her coven. A new power would be revealed that a witch would display. And it was full of celebrations and all that jazz in the bayou of Louisiana.

The carriage pulled to a stop as her mind was so cloudy from the memory and her non wishful thinking of the future. The place was extravagant and beautiful, but it was not home. A weird concept of living in her opinion. Why sleep in a building? WHen the world of nature was around, you could take your bed anywhere you wish. In a tree, in the flower beds, or just on the soft pile of grass to tickle you when you wake up. She grabbed her suitcases and her memoir was floating behind her as she casted the spell earlier to follow her anywhere. She plopped on the stone ground as her barefeet touched the rocks and off the steady ride.

She exclaimed “Thanks sir for the ride. See ya around fella.”

She nearly took off running as her curiosity was more set to her bedroom. Yes, she was secretly excited about a room, just for her. Her own place to relish and be herself and cast her spells as much as she wanted to. She did not wish to speak to anyone or the secretary that sat welcoming her. It may have been quite rude for her, but Nova was budding in excitement and curiosity. The world was so much bigger than the Bayou. Her bare feet were thumping against the hallway floors and finding the Air corridor. The way in the mountainous theme setting of a room, that she could take in the beauty at the second. She rushed hurriedly to find her room that was almost picked for her.

She was a Bayou witch. The coven made sure to make it seem like she was not away from home and her nature ways. Her room was beautiful and filled with stuff for her. A window that was closed that Nova instantly opened as soon as she realized. Her room was decorated with air and clouds and mountains. She threw her belongings on her bed and sat on that windowsill watching nature be without as her curly brown hair blew in the wind. Her baggy jeans blowing with her knitted crop top staying still. She sat reading her memoir of spells with her bedroom door wide open for anyone to speak to her at will.

Clove | 17 | Female | Half-shanshen | Mentions: Open

Clove dropped her belongings in her rooms with a loud sigh of relief.

She was here. She made it. She had a home now.

Without even look around her room or unpack her luggage, Clove walked over to the bed and belly flopped onto the mattress. Closing her eyes, she simply took a moment to enjoy the feeling of a bed that she could finally call hers.

She didn’t know how long her eyes stayed closed, or what time it was, or even whether she fell asleep or not, but when she finally decided to crawl out of bed, the only thing she could even think about was just how hungry she was.

Clove lumbered over to her scattered belongings and looked around the room. The floor was made of smooth, light colored, slightly rounded large chunks of stone, and a tree bough with lights hanging from the branches stretched across the ceiling, illuminating the room. There was one large window with a plant - a clove, of course. One of the walls was covered in shanshui paintings of various blue and green mountains, while the other wall had a built-in desk, countertop and stove, multiple cabinets, and a seasoning rack, as well as a pot and a… saucepan? Wok?

Wait… how did they know she enjoyed cooking? And how did they know how nostalgic shanshui mountain paintings were for her? And how… what… what the heck…?

Nevermind whatever wizardry occurred. She was comfortable. She loved the room that was all that mattered.

She slowly started to unpack her luggage. Slowly, very tediously slowly, the room didn’t look so empty anymore. Then, as she was unpacking, she decided to boil two pots of water for some noodles and edamame, because she’d somehow forgotten just how hungry she was to begin with. Listening to the sound of the water sizzling, she surveyed the room and - despite not having actually spent that much effort - felt a little proud of herself for once.

She waited for the water to boil, then added some salt and her classic star anise before deciding to throw in some chili powder as well. Once she’d finished choosing what seasonings to add, she dumped the frozen package of edamame she'd purchased, trying to avoid splashing water on herself in the process. She then moved on to the second pot of boiling water to add in some shirataki noodles and waited impatiently for both to boil - her ravenous stomach was calling, and she needed to hurry. After straining both the edamame and the noodles, she poured the noodles into a bowl and added the soup base that came with the package, before also scooping the edamame into a separate bowl.

Clove sat down, took out her chopsticks, and ate, washing everything down with the now-lukewarm leftover sweet tea she’d prepared for herself earlier that morning.

Mmm. Good stuff.

~

Professor Lantian Yu | Female | Rabbit spirit | Mentions: Clove, Professor Astrid Clover

A new school year, a new batch of students.

Brilliant. Here we go again.

And these first few days were either going to go super well, or turn into a catastrophic failure like it had seven years ago. That last particular incident had been so horrific that the school had to implement the rule “Do NOT fire explosives and fireworks at the air dorm. The hunting grounds are fine. The open areas of the campus are fine. NOT BENEATH THE AIR DORM”. And a few days later, they had to amend the rule to add “No fireworks in the water dorm, either! The fireworks are not so easily extinguished by the water”. And then a week later, “No. Fireworks. On. Campus. Anywhere. Please. For the last time.”

But then again, maybe the Great Garlic Disaster could compare. Or maybe it couldn’t. It depended on which was a more peaceful way to die - food poisoning or explosions.

Since the two incidents, Lantian had gained the odd habit of flipping a coin to determine the success of the first few weeks of school. Heads, everything was going to be fine. Tails, perhaps not so much.

She flipped the coin. It rolled for a little while, even bouncing off her desk, and then -

Tails.

Lantian sighed. Hopefully the coin was incorrect this time.

Suddenly, her ears picked up the sound of… footsteps… in the distance…? She immediately stood up, alerted, only to realize it was just students heading to the Secretary’s office for check-in. Lantian cursed her rabbit ears and sat back down, letting her long ears fall back down and droop. Sometimes she’d forget just how tiring it was to keep those darn ears standing upright for hours on end. Perhaps they needed cleaning, too… yes, cleaning. That would work well, considering that she wanted her ears to be lovely and shiny when meeting the students.

Lantian got up and fetched the cleaning solution that she'd been using for years now - it worked wonderfully well - and stood up in front of the mirror. She held her right ear upright to prevent herself from impulsively shaking her ears, and then gently placed a cotton ball in the entrance to the ear canal. She took a deep breath and poured in the liquid.

The sensation was odd to her, even though she’d been cleaning her ears for ages. She massaged the base of her ears for around half a minute, trying to resist the urge to shake her ear, and felt the solution sloshing around inside it. Then, after barely managing to tolerate the thirty long seconds, she started to use a gargantuan amount of cotton balls to gently clean the liquid out of her ear, getting rid of any excess earwax in the process. And then she shook her ears out. That feeling of finally getting the liquid out of her ears was heavenly.

Lantian took a towel and dried the area around the ear, fluffing up the fur a bit in the process, and then repeated the same steps for the other side. When she was finally finished, she looked at her ivory white ears in the pristine mirror and proudly flicked them a bit before allowing them to droop down. Gosh, they were so tense all the time. She massaged them a bit again, just to feel the fur beneath her fingers.

After finishing her slightly tedious ear-cleaning session, Lantian turned to her schedule, full of things she was supposed to prioritize hours ago. Thank the heavens she hadn’t been too groggy when waking up in the morning, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten so much done earlier. Or, actually, it was only a few tasks, and only some of them were actually necessary, but of course organizing her essential oils was so important that it should be done first.

She set off to setting aside every genuinely important task and organizing her oils, only to realize, upon opening her essential oils collection, that they’d been organized hours ago. Huh. Interesting. This memory loss was really giving her some surprises.

She decided to move on to marking the maps of the hunting grounds - the recent trails of the prey, the locations of the sightings of any abnormal creatures you wouldn’t find in the human world, the odd landmarks scattered across the grounds, any new herbs for her oils - only to find that those had mostly been done as well, except for a small portion by the dorms. Whatever. That area had never been good for prey, anyway. That could be put off until much later.

Weird. It wasn’t usual for so much of her to-do list to be completed without her remembering any of it. Of course, her memory loss liked to act up sometimes, but today was strange. Polish the nail-claws? Check. Contact Professor Clover for any new herbs for her to turn into oils? Check (Astrid was probably too busy to respond, she presumed). Clean the office? Lantian looked around. Check. Perhaps go one meal today without eating meat and having to deal with her allergic reactions? Check. Survey the incoming students for any trespassers trying to sneak into the school? …Oh, wait. She hadn’t done that yet.

Lantian stepped outside of her office and - making sure no one could see her - turned into her rabbit spirit form. Everything seemed so oddly tall when she was in this form, yet… she sort of enjoyed it. She languidly hopped around a bit, watching a variety of students, both new and returning, walking into the Secretary’s office. Nothing smelled off so far. Earlier, she thought she’d smelled a student whose scent didn’t match any species she had ever smelled before, so… perhaps she ought to go check that out? Or maybe not. The Headmaster was adding new species to the school’s list every year, so it wasn’t abnormal for some surprises to emerge from the student body every now and then. But this one… hmm. It smelled so foreign yet so familiar…

Lantian followed the scent trail past the Secretary’s office, and then realized that if this student had made it past the secretary, then chances are they weren’t hiding any malicious intent. Secretary Marjorie wasn’t easily fooled, after all. Nevermind, then. Time to head into the woods that she hadn’t marked on the hunting maps yet.

On the way to the hunting grounds, Lantian seized the opportunity to pass by the earth dorm - her favorite dorm. After all, there was technically no rule against teachers briefly passing by the dorms, and certainly none against rabbits. The earthy scent mixed with petrichor and the pine fragrance was soothing enough already, not to mention the natural decorations on the walls, and she couldn’t skip the visit. Except, as she walked into the dorm… she smelled something else.

Noodles? Edamame?

Was someone cooking in here?

She sniffed again, and then caught whiff of another scent - the one that had puzzled her back at the Secretary’s office. Perhaps… it was that same odd student cooking in here?

Anyway. It probably wasn’t good for her to linger in the dorms for too long when she was supposed to be surveying the woods. Lantian decided to move on for now -

“Why… is there a rabbit outside of my room?”

Lantian jolted at the voice of the student and bolted, before coming to a halt and stopping. She turned around and saw the curious student - a girl, no older than seventeen, poking her head out of the dorm in curiosity, as the smell of noodles and edamame wafted into the hallway. And suddenly she could see why it was this girl who carried the abnormal scent - her brown hair flowed in the air like clouds, and the strands radiated a minty viridian color under the light. She could smell a whiff of human blood, yet… she also smelled like something else. Something she was sure her past self had encountered before, but had forgotten it by now thanks to that oblivion potion.

“Oh, sorry, sorry!” the girl whispers. “I didn’t meant to scare you away!” Then she softly adds, “I didn’t know there were rabbits in here…”

Well, not anymore, Lantian thought as she bounded away. Even though there’s no rule against teachers being in the dorms, the Headmaster certainly won’t be happy when that girl mentions seeing me here.

Silas Plunckett | Male | Demonic Entity | M: Open

Silas was sitting on the carriage watching the world go past him. He had a suit all nice and smooth on his body. He played with his cross in between his fingers watching the late August Breeze hit the trees. The path was bumpy and caused the carriage to rock on the rocks from below. Though Silas did not have a fuss about the whole situation of the rocky carriage even after his corsage kept apologizing. It’s not like Silas could feel it, even if he wanted to. He was not really alive, or in other words dead. He took the class schedule out of his jacket pocket staring at his class schedule with disgust. What in the world was he gonna do with combat? He was dead and it was not like anyone could touch or feel him. That was idiotic and honestly not right. Silas shook his head at the classes that he was taking. Like Care for Magical Creatures.. He has been dead for 1,000 years and he has not even cared for other supernatural creatures. If anything, the only ones that he actually liked, the witches.. The ones that help him and do his bidding, but he has not found a witch to help him in one way. The resurrection spell.. All the other ones were just too confusing to keep up with and he rather just terrorized them from the dead.

His thoughts were pulled away from the man asking him “So, what is it like being… y’know”

Silas chuckled at the older male's awkwardness and said “Dead? Like watching television and being the audience, having no control over a thing..”

The guy said “Oh.. I heard about you. Silas am I right? The kid that went on that year long murdering spree. Why aren’t you in the bad place for what you did?”

Silas laid his head on the cushion of the carriage and wiped the curls out of his eyes and sighs “Yup. Silas Plunckett, the kid that murdered 113 people or well more.. Over 1,000 years ago.. It’s actually weird what you guys read on the internet. That they have a section of my crimes in the Medieval Time period about how I’m the “Angel of Demons” and blah blah.. Oh well I have not really found out why and I just know that I am a demon..”

Silas heard the guy have a nervous chuckle that he found amusing. That was always a conversation killer for him. Even if Silas thought it was quite entertaining watching their enthusiasm drain to worry and fear. Though he was caught off guard when the guard asked him another question.

“Umm… So why did you do it?”

Silas was almost frozen of the reasoning of why he did. It was not like anyone asked him this question just because. He has not been asked this question since he was caught and before his death. He shook his head rolling with laughter of disbelief. He still would not feel the need to share his secret. Especially to this peasant that was being his transportation for a school.

Silar sneered “If I tell you.. Then it would give my whole motive for you to tell your pals. If I tell you, then it would resort to me doing something that you would not enjoy. You would have to welcome death..”

The guy was silent until the carriage stopped at school. He mutters “Y-You’re here, sir.”

Silas nods and exits out of the carriage looking up at the school. It was going to be a fun and exciting year for him. Maybe not for the others. But definitely him. He was going to make this school his world. His home. He will be King of this supernatural academy.

The curriculum that Astrid had planned for the school year had taken up most of her time preparing for it. Tending to the plants that had been needed for dried herbs, oils, and everything in between had taken up the rest of it. She could practically feel students new and returning students. Thankfully, her classroom was flawless in preparation.

Checking over everything once more, and finding all well, Astrid huffed out and checked on her messages. Ah, Professor Lantain was looking to see if she had any new herbs for oils. Indeed she did. She smiled, replying to her fellow teacher to let her know that she would have them at the ready for her, since she'd discovered eight new herbs over the summer.

In Astrid's free time, she explored the forests around them. New plants and creatures would often be found, newly discovered. It was odd, after being here for so long that there would be new things to find, but there always was.

The discovery of her room and all it held was nice and all, but Kaida did realize she hadn't gone shopping for her own food, and didn't quite know the rules of cooking in a dorm room. She sighed, making her way back to the main extention of the school, noting the pouring in of more students. She kept her distance from them, though, as she made her way back to the office to ask the secretary about food.