Rising Shards

I grumbled to myself as I looked through the clubs. Stamp collecting club, laundry club, coin collecting club, diagonal lines club…none of them looked like stuff I wanted to spend my time doing even for just an hour after class.

“This should be called a tormentament.” I mumbled as I found a nice little area with no clubs around, just some benches with a few girls texting nearby that I figured wouldn’t bother me.

“It’s the little things I enjoy about you, Zeta Faleur,” a girl behind me said, stopping me mid bench sit.

“Huh?” I said. “Oh, hi Iris.”

Iris was a girl in my grade that had dyed green hair. We hadn’t talked much more than casually before this, mostly in group assignments in class.

“I just like that you’re very quiet in class but it’s a thin veil for the anger brewing beneath you. It’s a treat when it erupts.”

“Well, I don’t think that’s entirely right, but—”

“Just ignore her,” Maia said. “She’s in a mood where she’s unrepentantly annoying.”

Maia Oloro, a tall and lanky Kanibari cat girl with long dark hair was usually hanging out with Iris. Not like, her fur was long, her fur and was mostly tan with black splotches on her face, ears, and hands. Kanibari are hard to describe.

“Hey, we should ask Zeta!” Iris said.

“Why do you think we’re over here?” Maia said.

“Oh I don’t know, I thought maybe you found an interesting rock or spot of sand over here.” Iris said.

“What did you want to ask me?”

“So Maia and me were like thinking that every club sucks and that we don’t want to join a club, so we were wandering around not signing up for clubs.” Iris said. “So we were waltzing around and we found this spot and it seemed pretty cool, and the breeze wasn’t bad here, and—"

“She doesn’t have eight hours to hear the whole story,” We’re starting a club and are recruiting,” Maia said. “We need eight members before they’ll even consider a new club. And we only have til before the sandwich making robot starts making sandwiches to get registered.”

This felt like a lead. I didn’t know Iris or Maia well, but I liked their attitude about clubs. But it did seem like it might be more work than just joining a club.

“What’s your club about?” I asked.

“So that’s what we’re calling a work in progress,” Iris said. “I wanted to do pop culture, but the R.S.R.S.N. is saying general pop culture is their thing now even though they’re just school news. And I’m not joining a club with her.”

“Who?” I asked. “Ovie?” I asked a bit more hopefully.

“Who else would it be?” Maia asked.

“More like bitch princess,” Iris said, causing me to burst out laughing because I was not prepared to hear that. “Oops, did I say that out loud?”

“Ovie hates me too so that one’s out.” I said once I composed myself.

“Seriously, does anyone like her?” Maia asked. “I assume Chellsi and Mikeila-Keila would drop her if they had more than five brain cells shared between them.”

Jeans liked Ovie, apparently. Maybe they were a perfect fit for each other.

“We’ll keep brainstorming as we go.” Iris said. “Wait hey, that puts us at three then! Progress!”

“You wanna help us get to eight, then?” Maia asked as Iris held her hands up for us to high five her.

“Sure, yeah!”

“We might as well check out the other clubs too as a backup,” Maia said. “And to make sure any ideas we come up with aren’t taken already.”

Our quick scouting of the nearby clubs added more fuel to the “I don’t want to join any of these clubs” fire.

The book club was led by Theta Garfi, a third year with big glasses. The club members were busy trying to keep all the piles of books safe on their table as the wind blew them all open, knocking paperbacks around.

“So, what is your opinion on Raina Starlight?” I asked, leaning a hand down on the table.

A few unnecessarily coarse words about my favorite author later, Iris and Maia had to extract me from the situation, each of them grabbing an arm and pulling me a few booths over.

“See, what did I say? Unbridled rage beneath that shy surface.” Iris said.

“I thought she’d get me,” I said. “Theta rhymes with Zeta, it’s logical.”

“She probably won’t get you after you knocked those stacks of books over.” Maia said.

“That part was an accident,” I said. “I just wanted to grab one of their dumb books and prove Raina’s writing is better.”

“What else is around here?” Iris asked. “Alchemy club, crumbs…club? That’s weird. Uh, what else, robotics, extreme sports club…”

“Well, I’m not joining that last one.” Maia said. “None of those sound good.”

“I did enter a skate competition once.” I said.

“No way,” Iris said.

“Emphasis on once.”

“Maia was in a pageant when she was really little.” Iris said.

“I believe I said we were never to speak of those days.” Maia said.

“…Boys club?” I said, reading a sign on a table near us. Unfortunately, I was loud enough for that club’s leader, Gamma Lamtel, to hear. I noticed immediately she had an absurd number of pins of boy band singers on her jacket, and even more spread around on the table atop pictures of more boy band singers, actors, and general pop stars.

“We specialize in the interest of boys,” Gamma said. “Our favorite boys, what boys like, drawing boys…” She coughed, and muttered, “Coming up with plans to sneak into Falling Shards to look at boys in their natural environment…”

“What was that last one?” Iris asked.

“Drawing boys?” Gamma said.

“Add another one to the no list,” Maia said as we moved on.

“Wait, here’s someone,” Iris said, pointing to a blue dragon Kanibari absorbed in her phone. Iris waved to her. “Elisa! Join our club!”

Elisa came over to us but continued to scroll on her phone for a minute.

“Huh?”

I didn’t know Elisa very well, but when I’d look her way in class or in the halls, I’d always notice she had a yellow hoodie with her uniform. Seeing her up close allowed me to confirm that it was a hood that had a bear’s face on it.

“Are you wearing…pajamas under your uniform?” I asked.

“Pfft, no,” Elisa said, then leaned close to me. “Say one more word about them and you’re dead.”

I felt a bit of quaking in my shoes and decided I didn’t want to cross Elisa.

“Elisa, we want you to join—” Iris started.

“That reminds me. Hang on,” Elisa said. She finagled with her bear hood, making sure her horns went through the holes cut in the top. “Just…gimme a sec, it takes a bit sometimes.”

After a few more seconds of movement, Elisa got her horns successfully threaded through her bear hood.

“Teachers don’t want me having the hood up but it’s an officially licensed Osiris hood.”

“I almost don’t want to ask, but…Osiris?” Maia said.

“Osiris is that singer,” I said. “Osiris and his speed...uh…”

“Osiris and his speed chunk! How are you all this dense! What did you even call me over for? Every second I spend talking is a second I am missing Osiris updates.” Elisa held up her phone, which had an Osiris fan page up that she refreshed three times in a row.

“We want to start a club, are you in?” Iris asked.

“I’m joining the boys club, sorry,” Elisa said. “Because Osiris is a boy, and my life is literally Osiris. And you know what they say about Osiris…he…when he…goes to…”

Elisa trailed off and wandered away as she stared at a picture of Osiris on her phone.

“I think we dodged a bullet there,” Maia said.

“If the boys club can get enough members to be certified we definitely can…for whatever our club is.” Iris said.

“We could just name our club the girls club.” I said.

“Nah, the Girls Club is a scout group around here, so they have that locked down already.” Maia said.