The students on the field pressed together, eyes wide with shock as they stared at the eye. Not a single sound dared leave them, lest it summon doom.

  Except doom was running late.

  Above them, the enormous eye pulsed against their faces. Its glow began to ease, but it hovered eerily still.

  “Did the sky just… blink?!” someone finally whispered.

  No eyelid. Try again. Eydis thought.

  “Is this an alien invasion?”

  A fair assumption, if one considered me an ‘alien.’

  “Oh god, it’s the end.”

  What a fascinatingly oxymoronic statement.

  “Quick, check Tweeter!”

  Yes, by all means, consult the…birds?

  Whispers became chatter, pushed along by collective sobbing no one had asked for.

  Utterly pedestrian.

  As if to grant their terror some validation, the eye shed a single, tragic tear.

  Eydis rolled her eyes.

  Just when she was about to leave, a small and warm body slammed into her back, knocking the air from her lungs. She turned and met a grinning redhead with twin braids bouncing.

  "Eydis! You weren’t in class! Did you finally snap and run away mid-midterm?” the stranger said, cheerfully?

  Suppressing a sigh, Eydis straightened. Ow. “And who might you be? Some overly familiar marsupial?”

  The girl gasped, but Eydis didn’t detect any malice coming from her, unlike Tiffany. “Oh, hilarious. Still moping about coming last in PE, huh?” she teased.

  Eydis scoffed. “I do not come last. In anything. And certainly not in… Pee-Ee, whatever that is.”

  “Okaay, you talk funny. Should I be worried?” That sounded like genuine concern. A friend, perhaps.

  Eydis turned away and started walking. “You should be worried about the celestial eyeball currently looming over your world rather than fussing over some bespectacled social outcast.”

  “Worry?” the girl said breezily, following behind. “Why?”

  That stopped Eydis.

  While most students were still panicking and crying, this one seemed awefully, consistently upbeat.

  “You’re not concerned?” she asked.

  “I’m sure the government’s got a whole team of… uhh, government-y people on it.” The redhead waved a hand before pressing a thumb on Eydis’s left cheek. “Now, hold still, something slimy is smeared across your cheek.”

  Eydis took a step back and swiped a finger over the same spot. Black smeared her fingertip and, naturally, her mood. “Ah. Tiffany’s handiwork.”

  “What’s her problem?”

  “Jealousy, insecurity, a tragic combination of both, likely made worse by the lifelong misfortune of being named Tiffany.”

  The girl chuckled, then snorted. “Washroom. Now.”

  Washroom? Right. Because, in the midst of what appeared to be an alien invasion, this girl’s primary concern was Eydis’s lack of personal decorum.

  Eydis was not interested. She was, however, mildly curious. And, fine, intrigued. She tilted her chin. “After you, handmaiden.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “H-handmaiden?!”

  “You’ve yet to offer me a name,” Eydis said, amused.

  "It’s Natalia. You didn’t hit your head or anything, right? You’re acting kind of… weird.” Natalia paused. “Well, weird-er."

  That stopped Eydis, and the shorter girl crashed into her with a yelp.

  Eydis moved her hand to the back of her head and found a fresh, throbbing bump. It must have been courtesy of her bully.

  Tiffany...oh, Tiffany would dearly regret crossing a Queen, even a Queen in exile.

  “A dance with death sharpens the mind,” she lied. Or not.

  Natalia squinted. “That’s a villainess line if I’ve ever heard one.”

  Eydis’s lips curved. “Flattered.”

  Eydis followed silently beside Natalia through what the sign called the Main Hall, one of the campus’s many polished white buildings. She didn’t bother looking up the name, though naming buildings did raise the prestige of the academy. Except there was no sense of reverence, and certainly no hand-carved obsidian spire to justify it.

  It was just… institutional oatmeal.

  Beige walls, floors, and lockers, the latter of which were constantly being slammed by one of those green-clad gremlins. The west wing corridor reeked of sweat after PE had just finished, which someone tried to fight with a strange, overly sweet-smelling mist.

  Left with a humid mix of miasmic scents, Eydis envisioned a cleansing fireball but that option, sadly, was no longer available.

  She caught snippets of locker-side chatter.

  “Oh-em-gee! Is this it? Is Vanya the Oracle’s prediction actually happening?! We are sooo doomed.”

  “Dude, they predict that every year.”

  “Yeah, but… did you see that eye?”

  “What’s up, losers?” A greeting as tired as the brain cells powering it. “Why the long face?”

  “Don’t worry, y’all, I’m sure the Council—”

  Eydis’s view vanished behind a tall redhead who confidently strode past. His expression suggested either deep philosophical thought or mild constipation. He caught her eye and winked.

  A bold choice, given the face he was working with.

  In return, Eydis offered him a wicked smile that suggested she was already picturing how to ruin him.

  He lifted an eyebrow and wisely retreated.

  "Ignore Joseph,” Natalia said. “He’s got a thing for anyone who can breathe.”

  Flattered. Eydis kept walking until she saw a bulletin board.

  “ST. KEVIN’S GIFTED PERFORMANCE 2050!”

  Bold. Pink. In glitter.

  She stared. “Is that a scheduled massacre? Charming.”

  “Just a competition, Eydis.” Natalia puffed out her cheek.

  Eydis hummed. St. Kevin’s—a name that promised a personalised kind of torment for her. Maybe this was still hell, except for the year of 2050.

  So… time travel?

  They finally reached the restroom, its plain door as uninspiring as everything else they’d seen so far, but what lay beyond managed, against all odds, to sink below her expectations.

  Unacceptable.

  The reflection in the mirror was undeniably hers, with the same jawline and the same high cheekbones, but younger. The eyes behind the spectacles were warm amber instead of gold. A poorly cut side fringe hung across her forehead, and her skin—

  Her skin… had blemishes.

  “Absolutely not,” Eydis muttered, rubbing at her face. She half expected the illusion to smear away. It didn’t. The resemblance was uncanny.

  She stretched her fingers to test the feel of skin that was not entirely hers. Nothing in her library or any legend had prepared her for what she was seeing.

  “Natalia, enlighten me. Who, precisely, am I?”

  Natalia stared at her. “Are you for real? You never talk about yourself.”

  “Am I not entitled to an identity crisis?”

  “You’re usually spacing out while I go off about boys and drama.”

  “Delightful. Shall we leave and solve the mystery of my existence?” Eydis pinched the bridge of her nose, then sneaked a peek at the mirror again. “Preferably over tea.”

  “So, like, ditch class, sip tea, and have a heart-to-heart convo?”

  “If you insist on phrasing it so quaintly,” Eydis said, lifting her chin.

  Natalia fold her arms. “Who even says quaint? Seriously, who are you?”

  Eydis smiled. “Oh, darling. If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Natalia blinked at Eydis. “We can skip class, but…”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Over coffee. Tea is… well, tea.” Natalia made a face.

  Rude.

  Eydis considered this odd drink, then nodded curtly. However, she made no move to follow Natalia.

  "What are you doing, Eydis? Your face isn't gonna wash itself, you know?"

  "Precisely," Eydis leaned in. "Wash my face for me, would you be so kind, handmaiden?"

  Natalia leaned back like an inch, totally caught off guard. “C-can’t you just do it yourself?”

  Eydis blinked innocently. "I've never had to before."

  “You are absolutely messing with me.”

  “Am I?”

  “Fine.” Natalia let out a dramatic sigh. “But if you call me ‘handmaiden’ again, I swear...”

  Eydis smiled as she gracefully took off her glasses and brushed her bangs aside, her amber eyes locking onto Natalia’s.

  Natalia went red.

  Squinting through her mostly blurred vision, Eydis, oblivious, lifted a hand toward Natalia’s smeary forehead. "Why are you panting like that? Feeling unwell?”

  Natalia stepped backward so quickly she almost lost her footing, but Eydis’s reflex was faster and she caught her by the fingers.

  “L-let’s just get this over with,” Natalia’s voice went off-pitch as she snatched her hand back.

  “Indeed. But unless you’ve had telekinesis, you will need to be closer.”

  Natalia blew out a puff, grabbed a tissue from the box on the wall and awkwardly dabbed Eydis’s cheek.

  “These blemishes…” Eydis murmured thoughtfully. “They’ll need to be handled. Strategically.”

  “I see why Tiffany hates you.”

  Eydis smirked. “And here I thought we were bonding.”

  Natalia grumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “bonding my a—” before she had the decency to censor herself.

  How considerate.

  Maybe this world had its moments.