Tuesday morning both Nia and I managed to sleep through her first alarm, but luckily she'd set a second one and that did the trick.
It still felt like a monumental task to let go of each other and drag ourselves out of bed though. Which meant by the time we'd both had a turn in the shower and gotten dressed and ready to go we were actually a little late. Or we would have been, if we'd had to walk to campus. Fortunately we still had the rental van, and we took full advantage of that.
In fact having the vehicle meant we even had time to pick up breakfast on the way. So rather than rushing straight to class we drove the long way around, so we could visit a coffee shop drive-thru.
I ordered my usual small pumpkin spice latte, along with an egg-and-cheese breakfast wrap. And Nia got a large double-double, and a sausage-and-egg sandwich. Then we quickly ate in the van during the rest of the short drive to campus, where we got stuck at the far end of the parking lot since all the good spots were taken.
"How are you feeling cutie?" Nia asked as we both emerged from the van. "Are you ready for this?"
I got my backpack settled on my left shoulder and held my PSL in my right hand, while my phantom tail stood out straight behind me. Then I looked up at her and grimaced, "Not really? Gotta do it anyways though, I don't want to drop out or give up on my education."
She moved closer and lowered her voice so she could quietly tease, "Even if you could just kick back and just be my full-time cute pet mousegirl instead? No classes, no homework, nothing to do but be adorable and help me with magic?"
My cheeks coloured as we both started heading for the main entrance, "It's tempting. Maybe ask me again later, after we see how it goes today with the profs and everything?"
"I'll keep that in mind," Nia commented with a little smirk.
By the time we reached the doors though her mood seemed a lot more serious. Like she was definitely feeling a bit anxious about things herself, and unfortunately that didn't help my own lack of confidence at all. Then as we passed through the doors I suddenly had another thing to worry about.
Even if my long skinny tail was hidden I could still sort of feel it. And I was immediately worried about people stepping on it or walking into it. Or accidentally getting it caught in a doorway or something. I had no idea how people would react to that, like if they saw me yelp in pain or react to something they couldn't perceive because of my mundane disguise. There'd be no easy way to explain it either, I doubted I could come up with any sort of plausible excuse if people asked me what was wrong.
So I ended up being a little more jumpy than usual, and maybe a bit distracted too as I focused on trying to keep my phantom tail out of trouble. After a few seconds I ended up just wrapping it around my waist, so it wouldn't cause problems as the two of us navigated the busy hallways.
That was another thing, even though I knew exactly where we were going I couldn't really see much due to being so short compared to most of the other students. So Nia put an arm around my shoulders and kept me close to her as she guided me along the way to our first class of the day.
Despite being half-focused on my tail I still paid enough attention to my surroundings to know that nobody we passed in the halls noticed anything amiss about either Nia or myself. No-one was pointing or staring, there were no comments about me being weird or out of place or anything like that.
Unfortunately that changed once we got to class.
As Nia and I made our way to our seats at the back of the room I was very aware of the way a few of the guys were checking me out. For that matter even some of the girls were staring too. That made me feel especially awkward when I tried to get comfortable in my usual spot beside Nia, since I still had to manage my phantom tail. And even though nobody could see my big mousie ears -- at least I hoped no-one could see them -- they made it easy to hear the whispered comments around the class.
"Check out the new girl. She's pretty hot," one guy near the front said to his buddy.
The other guy whispered back, "I wouldn't mind hitting that. Too bad it looks like she's with that frosty dyke."
At the same time a couple girls seated off to the side near the windows were making similar observations. The first one told her friend, "Looks like Nia finally found herself a girlfriend."
"Yeah," the other one responded. "She's cute, but it's weird she brought her to class with her."
Any other whispers were drowned out when the nerdy enby seated to my left leaned closer and introduced themself with a friendly smile, "Hey there! I'm Indigo, or Indie for short, and my pronouns are they and them. I take it you're a new student? Did you just transfer here?"
"Hi there," I replied awkwardly as I scrambled to figure out what to say. "Uh, I'm Kiki. And uh, my pronouns are she and her."
Introducing myself as if I'd never met them before felt weird since I'd known Indie for over a year. They were kind of hard to miss, with the distinctive glasses and brightly coloured hair and all. On the other hand it occurred to me it might be easier to pretend I was a new student than trying to explain how I'd transformed and shrank and changed my name and everything over a single long weekend.
In fact I realized that would have been a pretty good cover-story, but it was probably way too late now to go that route. As far as I knew all the stuff Mrs. Brennan did with the college computers basically kept all my old records in place but under my new name. So everything would show I'd been a student here all along.
Consequently I had no idea how to answer Indie's question about being a transfer student. Luckily Nia was listening in, and she opted to join the conversation. And apparently she'd been thinking the same thing as me, about the transfer thing being a good cover story.
She leaned in closer from where she was sitting on my right and said, "Hey Indie. Kiki's an old friend of mine. I finally convinced her to move here, and we got her set up in the same classes as me over the weekend."
The enby smiled, "Oh that's really nice! Where did you transfer from?"
Neither Nia or I had a chance to answer that question as Professor McLean entered the room, which meant the class was about to begin. Unfortunately the prof immediately noticed me as an unfamiliar face, and the way she kept her eyes on me as she set her stuff down on her desk left me with a growing sense of dread.
I was almost holding my breath while I waited for her to ask who I was or what I was doing in her class, and I really had no idea how that would pan out. I was positive the 'transfer student' story wouldn't work with McLean since there'd be information in the computer showing this was my second year here. There were even assignments she'd graded herself that now had my new name on them, and I had no idea how we'd even begin to explain that.
"And you are?" Professor McLean finally addressed me.
"Kiki," I replied. I tried not to blush or mumble too much as I elaborated with my full name, "Kiki Muyskens, ma'am."
Nia chimed in at that point, but as she spoke I also felt that sensation of magic deep inside that told me she was dipping into my reservoir of power. "Kiki should already be in your computer ma'am. We got all the registration stuff done over the weekend, so it's all been taken care of."
I had no idea what my mistress was doing with her magic, but I could guess it had to be directed at the prof since that's who she seemed to be focused on when it happened. I did my best not to act surprised though, considering the teacher and half our classmates were all staring at us at the time. And needless to say I wasn't going to ask what sort of magic she was using, not until we were somewhere very private and safe.
The magic only lasted while Nia was speaking, then McLean continued staring at the two of us for another second or two before opening up her laptop to check. She must have been satisfied with what she found there since she nodded once, then she seemed to let the matter completely drop and launched directly into the morning's lesson.
That was interesting enough for me to forget about my own problems and concerns, as we spent the next two hours reviewing then discussing a specific conservation case study. It was about a species of turtle that had become endangered after they built a highway between where the adult turtles liked to live and where the females went to lay their eggs.
It was pretty depressing at first since it involved a lot of turtles getting flattened every year trying to cross the highway. Fortunately people found a solution that involved making turtle tunnels under the road, and so far it seemed to be helping.
Then towards the end of the lesson McLean gave us all some extra material to read on our own time, about an endangered salamander and the ongoing efforts to save it from extinction.
That was it for our morning class, so after finishing up my notes I started stuffing everything back into my pack. We had just over an hour before our next class, which Nia and I would typically spend in the cafeteria or the library. I wasn't sure if we'd be doing either of those things today though.
"So what's the plan?" I asked as we exited the classroom together. "Are we getting lunch? Or do you want to head to the library instead?"
My mistress shrugged, "I'm good with either. I'm not hungry yet but I could go with a snack and something to drink."
It turned out Indigo was right behind us, and they'd obviously overheard what we were talking about as they chimed in, "Do you two mind if I tag along?"
I tried not to cringe too obviously, but I had a feeling the enby had a bunch more awkward questions they wanted to ask us. Like where did I come from and how did I get into the second year program without having a bunch of make-up work or without even meeting the profs first. And how'd I do all that over the course of a single long weekend.
Fortunately Nia was on top of things, she gave them a polite but apologetic look as she replied "Sorry Indie, maybe we can do lunch later this week? Like Thursday, or Friday perhaps? There's still a bunch of things I need to help Kiki with, and I have a feeling the two of us are going to be pretty busy for the next day or two. At least."
"Yeah no worries," they nodded. "Good luck. Nice to meet you Kiki, I'm sure I'll see you around."
I started following Nia away down the hall as I replied, "Same, it was nice to meet you too. See you later!"
"Where are we going?" I added to my mistress as we made our way through the corridors together.
She slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me right up against her side as she replied quietly, "Out to the mini-van. So we can talk in private."
"Oh ok," I mumbled.
A couple minutes later we were both back in the rental van again, and as soon as the doors were closed Nia let out a sigh. "We should have cooked up the transfer student idea right from the start."
I grimaced, "Yeah. I thought that too, as soon as Indie asked."
"I felt you do something with magic this morning," I added as I turned to look at her. "Did you enspell our prof? What did you do to her?"
Nia cringed as she admitted, "Yeah. I normally wouldn't have done that, it's the sort of thing mother drilled into me as a last-resort kind of thing? But I felt like the situation warranted it."
I nodded slowly, "Ok. What was it though, what did you do?"
"It was kind of like a low-level charm spell," she explained quietly. "Like from a TTRPG or whatever? Mom taught me how to do it incase I needed to get out of any potential danger or avoid exposure as a fae."
That left me with a thoughtful frown as I tried to remember what was happening at the exact moment I felt the magic, "You convinced McLean I was a transfer student, like we told Indie?"
"Not exactly," Nia shook her head. "I told her you'd already be in her computer, that all the registration stuff was already taken care of. That's all. So she'd accept that things were already dealt with, and she didn't have to worry about it anymore."
I nodded again, "Which she didn't. Like as soon as you did that she looked at her computer then got on with the lesson. No more questions asked."
Unlike our prof I had another question though, "Do you do that sort of thing a lot? Like is it a normal fae thing, to avoid getting found out?"
"Oh hell no," she shook her head. "I've never done it before. Like I said, mother made sure I knew it was for emergencies only. And honestly, I doubt it'd have worked if I did try and do that sort of thing on my own. I'm positive it only worked this morning because I had your raw magic power to draw on."
That left me with a little smile on my face. Even if the situation was stressful, it was kind of nice knowing that I was doing my job and being a good familiar for my mistress.
Then she suggested, "Since we're already in the van anyways, how about we go hit up a drive-thru? I'm not dying for lunch, but I could use a snack or something."
"Back to the coffee shop?" I suggested with a smile. "I could go for another pumpkin spice latte. And maybe a muffin, or a donut."
Nia grinned as she started the motor, "What are you doing to do when they stop selling those next month?"
"I'm going to be sad for nine months, until next autumn comes around and they start making them again," I mumbled.
That made my best friend laugh, which was always nice to hear. She teased me a bit more on the short drive, but I didn't mind. And it didn't stop me from ordering another small PSL. I also got a pumpkin spice donut to go with it. And she got another large double-double, and a chocolate chip muffin to tide her over until dinner.
We ended up eating in the van again, although this time we weren't in any hurry. So we took our time, and while we ate we talked about a bunch of random stuff. Including what we'd covered in McLean's class this morning, and what we'd be up to this afternoon. We also reviewed our plans to go and get me a desk and bookcase after class.
When the time came the two of us headed back inside then made our way to the chemistry lab where our next class was being held. When we got there we went through the same sort of thing as this morning, with people staring at me and asking questions and stuff. We went with the same story too, and even embellished it a bit more by claiming I'd transferred from a college near Ottawa.
That fit with Nia's ongoing story about visiting her folks in the capital every now and then, like we could say that's how the two of us met. Although it did mean she had to do the same sort of charm spell to keep things from getting too awkward with Professor Cohen.
Then once all that was out of the way we spent the next two hours doing water chemistry analyses, while Cohen monitored everyone's methods and processes. It was mostly routine stuff, we had to sort our ten unknown samples into which ones came from ecosystems that were clean and safe for fish and invertebrates, versus which ones contained pollutants or other contaminants.
He even tried to trip us up a bit with a couple of the samples. Like the crystal clear tap water was actually 'contaminated' since the treatment process added chloramine. And the stinky discoloured swampy sample was considered clean since it only contained natural biological matter, including a few living bacteria swimming around.
When the lab was finally over we got everything cleaned up and put away, then Cohen gave us some reading assignments so we'd be ready for next time. And that was it for my first day of college as Kiki.