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Of Weres & Transformation

Chapter Two

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Roland Latore Speed

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Devi rather liked mathematics, though many would not have said the same. For all things considered, she’d only gotten lost on her first week of classes at Belgrave university a couple of times. The campus could be something of a maze, even though it was one of the older and more established ones in the country, with lots of smaller buildings adding onto the campus so that it sprawled out and out and out. It did, however, offer plenty of opportunities to explore and socialise, with a big open area for students to relax in outside too. That was something that Devi was pretty grateful for, despite missing the open spaces of home too.

It would be a big change for her, being in the city, yet she was settling in well even with there being a lot of people around. She had seen so many new people and faces, one after the other, and she wasn’t sure how on earth she was going to remember the names of so many of them. But that would, hopefully, be okay as she got to make firm friends and hang out with the others in her dorm too.

In a way, it felt like the place where she’d always been meant to end up. But she’d had, in fact, her sights set on Belgrave for a long time.

Maybe she was so relaxed because she had been able to take a dip in her were python form earlier that morning, even if she had had to be exceptionally careful. A python slithering around as if they belonged there would surely raise suspicion and she most certainly didn’t want anyone to think that there was an escaped pet around. There would be questions most certainly asked if she was spotted around campus, for she already had something of an idea of just how the minds of others worked. And students loved a drama.

Devi did too. She just didn’t want to be involved in it.

She would be moving on to the medical and science-focused courses the next day, on Friday, though Devi looked forward to the weekend too. There had not been quite as much time as she had anticipated to meet and chat with the other students at the university, even if Devi had never been all that much of a “party animal.” It was hard to want to go out and surround herself with noise and attention when her kind, her family and were pythons too, were more reclusive and quieter by nature.

But she could settle down a bit more in the mathematics class, set up like a classroom with an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room. They were like giant tablets those days, a computer on the wall with touch-screen sensitivity, but her father had told her about when there had still been a chalkboard in common use and then, when she’d been in school, they’d been on wipe-clean whiteboards.

Things changed quickly, but she didn’t mind that. One thing Devi was good at was adapting and evolving to go with the flow of things.

Not every chair in the room was filled, set up for about sixteen students. That was good: she wouldn’t have wanted to be in an overflowing classroom, though the mathematics subsection of her course had been split up. Most likely, those taking full mathematics (financial, accountancy and more) courses would be in the bigger lecture halls, but the cosier feel of the group that she had been set in suited Devi just fine.

In the fifth row from the front, she made notes on her laptop, her fingers skimming over the keys lightly. But there was someone there that caught her attention and gave her pause, her mind slipping from the material and the introduction to the course that she was supposed to be noting down – especially the assessment criteria.

Hm…

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He looked kind of familiar, though it was hard to say quite how that was from the back. Devi tilted her head a little to the side to get a slightly better look at him, the man in the second row.

She was not directly behind him, so she could see the black curve of the arm of his glasses lying lightly over his left year. His hair, however, was dark brown with a little bit of a curl to it – but not in the way that looked like it hadn’t been brushed, no. It just had that casual, soft, messy sort of look to it.

It was kind of cute, though that wasn’t why Devi was looking at him.

Where do I know him from? I must know him from somewhere…

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Light streamed in through the window, the small lecture room set so that it let in a good amount of light, which she liked. When it came to the interior lecture halls that didn’t have windows or any natural light, she would surely struggle more with that.

But her eyes kept going back to the guy, running her gaze down over his dark green pullover as he kept his eyes on the lecturer. That was interesting, for there were plenty of others in the room who were spacing out, though he seemed to be perfectly attentive.

She should have been more attentive than she was, though it was getting on in the afternoon, already past two o’clock. Damn. Perhaps she had one more class left before calling it quits for the day and heading back to the dorm rooms, but she didn’t want to drag her syllabus out right there and then to check. That would have felt rude, even if it wasn’t.

Devi stifled a chuckle. Yeah, she was still just a little bit nervous about things there, being in a new location, and it was setting her on edge, like she thought that she had to be extra aware of things around her. But it was okay and that was something that would settle down in time, a part of the were python’s instincts coming through. She didn’t quite know how she was going to deal with being sensitive, even in her human form, to vibrations running through the ground.

Even in human form, what she bore more regularly, there were instincts and differences in her, even wanting to flicker her tongue out. But Devi could control that. She’d been doing it her whole life, toying back and forth with the two sides of her that she was aware of, twisting and turning everything sinuously into her life. For she would never just be one or the other, even if being a were python, quite often, felt more like home.

Maybe that was why she thought that there was something off about the guy in her class. No one else caught her attention like that and Devi wondered if she would scent something on the air if she was in her were python form, tasting it with her tongue.

But she was not in her were python body and had to think about other things at that time.

“And if you turn to page five, we will begin…”

Shoot! She jerked back to reality, giving herself a little shake. Damn it, she’d been so focused on the guy that she hadn’t been paying attention to the lecture. It had been such a long week already that it only made sense that she was overwhelmed by everything, that she was struggling to focus, even then.

But she had to focus, returning to adding her notes on the laptop. The guy with brown hair and glasses was using a pencil to take notes and she cocked her head a little, trying to scoot her chair to the side to get a slightly better look at him. It scraped across the ground, though her curiosity still got the better of her.

It was a good thing that they didn’t notice her being more interested in someone else in the class than the lecture, as much as Devi tried to concentrate on taking notes. She flicked her gaze between the teacher and the laptop screen, though she had more than enough there already. It was going to be a moderately challenging course for her, but she was sure that she could pull through it while she found her feet at Belgrave.

She’d just have to put the guy from her head for the time being, though maybe all would become clear if she just had a little chat with him and got to know him a bit. She’d only seen half his face and the back of his head, though she already thought that there was something about him that pulled her to him.

Some people were just like that. She concentrated, the best she could with her failing attention, on the rest of the class, though there was, thankfully, not all that much left for her to jot down. The teacher was friendly enough and she exhaled a sigh of relief when they were finally released. Unlike school, there was no bell to signal the end of a session, which pleased her too. Sometimes, sharp noises like that could really claw at her ears when she wanted to be on her best form.

The guy, whose name she still didn’t know, left the class ahead of her, the late afternoon sunshine casting long shadows across the ground, though there were still a good few hours of daylight left. She didn’t have the nerve to approach him right then – not when she had one more class to get to – but she did catch a glimpse of a moderate jaw and brown eyes, his glasses sliding down his nose a little too much as he pushed them back up into place.

But she let him go as he shrugged his backpack up into place, more comfortably across his shoulders. Maybe they’d talk another time.

Either way, she walked down the corridor softly, lightly, as if she was in her were python form and moving sinuously and smoothly through the leaf litter and undergrowth of the forest. It was comfortable there and she moved instinctively around others in the hallway with a soft smile and a grazing of their gazes.

Who would end up being close to her? She didn’t know, though she was keen to find out. It had been a long time since she had had close friends, simply as they had drifted away back home, everyone seeming to go in different directions. It was easy enough to hide her were python nature, of course, but it had always felt like she was cutting off a part of herself from the world, which could make it more difficult still to connect with friends.

Maybe it would be different at Belgrave, now that she was older and perhaps just a little bit wiser too. She knew better what she could reveal to people and who knew… Maybe there would even be someone like her at the university too, though she didn’t know how the hell she would ever find out if they were a were also. The thing that she did know, however, was that there were more weres in the world. She and her family were not the only ones, not by far, and she would find a way, one day, to connect with more weres.

For they had more in common with one another than, perhaps, with the people around them. There could be common ground to be had with being a were with other weres, though she ached for more, to learn more about people too.

But that was exactly why she was there – not solely to study. No… But to connect and engage, to fill in a bit more of her life. There were a few spread around the world that she stayed in touch with, but Devi didn’t want to miss out on anything too.

Checking the map before heading to her final class of the day, Devi paused in the sunshine, a smile tugging at her lips.

Everything was definitely going to be okay.

Even better than okay.