An Introduction To The Unseen School

My grandfather told me that when he was a lad like me, and talking to his grandfather, about his studies alongside the ancient ones (the ancient haberdasher and his washer woman, the masher, are two such examples). He said that he heard from a quite peculiar pigeon, that a seagull truly can be observed, meowing on many video storage websites. Even their barking at a man, who himself is barking. What he was never told, was what any of it meant. A meow without lips is quite impressive, isn't it?

I grew up near Merlin, and a particularly mean and dim-witted giant, who's toenails were higher than my head. To say he was just big was to proclaim Merlin to be just a wizard, pah!

You wouldn't say it to their faces, but I grew up in a time far predating any, and all of your times - I am far older than a rock in the deepest abyssal plane, to the furthest and coldest planetoid in the oort cloud combined, so, you'll not have the chance to either.

I believe that I have a face, and I know that I came into this blasted stock roo- ah! fireflies, on a leaf! You're here! For the students in future milleniums, know that I have done my fair share of chores, in fact, you might say I was materially quasi-physical then, and instrumental with every invention and innovation that there ever was to be.

Here at least.

I take a deep breath in, nasally, at the most inopportune moment it seems, the rafflesia arnoldii has fragranced the warming, humid room. Although egg salad does sound delicious for lunch.

I tap the intercom.

"Margot? I'd like an egg salad, the arnoldii has made me hungry all of a sudden, go on now - carrion!" I silently laughed as she huffed down the headset, I could feel her quills from here, so, like many of her kind, prone to offence and projection!)

Reaching my throne behind my desk, I pull my robe hood over my head.

"Margot?"

"Yes?" she replied.

"Turn the light off."

And she did, a few moments of silence later.

***

When I woke up around 28,800 seconds of billions of quantum frames later (that's quite a few) I was still hungry, but, the sun was at least starting to come up. I am still sat behind my desk, and while the intercom isn't on, the office is close enough to be heard, to be in a thither already.

"Cybil, what have I told you?" Margot, the prickly hedgehog receptionist stood in the doorway, looking angry with her front paws crossed. Her nightgown failed to hide her quills getting angrier by the second, tearing through the fabric. The foam hair curlers being used to frame her face with her effector hairs really finished the look she was going for perfectly.

Cybil was slipping and rolling around with a mass of photocopies that had already slipped from the pile when she last tried to grab them. "I know, I know!" She wailed as she slipped right past Margot, now pursing her lips.

Inhaling briskly, and pulling her nose slightly upwards "Order on the outside -" she lifted her furred eyebrows, waiting for Cybil to reply.

"Does wonders to keep the chaos, safely on the insi-de!" Slumping forward onto the photocopier, Cybil screamed to herself, and moreso as she realised she was now the star of the photocopier's latest drama, caught on film.

You'd be forgiven for not knowing an armadillo can behave in this way, but the office staff of many realm are prickly, or they scramble about, here, it just so happens to be a hedgehog called Margot, and an armadillo, called Cybil.

The not-literal camera pans back a little, and through the wall on the periphery of both the classroom with the professor, and the office with the two frantic friends.

A cockeral is giving a treatise to some hens (about corn quality being the prerequisite for all luxury poultry) who are idly pecking the ground. There is a Litlotl and Shrimpett in the edges of the forest, and a path we are being drawn towards.

Something is happening - we are going on a journey together, of that, I have no doubt. It is not going to be the easiest to explain back at home, but, I don't think Dorothy is in Kansas any more, Toto.

I can hear a train pulling into a station nearby, when I arrive there, I feel a strange rushing sensation, and I am stood elsewhere, in an instant.

And, I step off the train, next to you.

#fiction #writing #education #fantasy #dream