Rising Shards

Maia enjoyed the people watching her spot on the train car offered her. There was an added bonus of getting to maybe see some of the people she’d be going to Rising Shards with.

Undignified Kanibari were already scratching up their chairs. Maia prided herself on being a Kanibari that could actually keep her claws in. At least she liked to tell herself that. The temptation to maybe just scratch up one armrest a little was very tempting.

“There you are,” Iris said. “I went up and down like five train cars.”

Maia turned to see her best friend approaching.

“Oh, my god,” Maia said. “Iris…”

Iris had apparently dyed her hair a deep green.

“What do you think?” Iris asked, waving a hand through her hair and doing a quick twirl before sitting down next to Maia.

“It’s…striking?” Maia said. “I didn’t see if they care about hair dye at the school.”

“I’ll just say it came with my Cani thing if they do!" Iris said. "Plus, Rising Shards is all green stuff, they’ll love it.”

“When did you have time to dye your hair?” Maia asked. “I dropped you off pretty late."

“I had a little burst of energy from that car nap I took on the way back.” Iris said. “And I figured why not?”

Iris jabbed Maia playfully with her shoulder.

“I still have some dye left. You wanna match?”

Maia gestured to her face, then to around her whole body. “I’d need an obscene amount of hair dye. And then I’d keep having to obtain an obscene amount of hair dye.”

“Ah, that’s true,” Iris said. “I guess that’s one bummer about being a Kanibari.” Iris wagged her finger at Maia. “Now don’t claw up the chairs, remember?”

“It is really tempting.”

Iris reached into her backpack and held out a little plush bear.

“Scratch at this instead,” Iris said. “Happy going to new school thing.”

“Aw,” Maia said, looking at the precious bear Iris had gotten. “Thank you. It’s too cute to rip up.”

“Then just knead it, yaknow?” Iris said, mimicking the gesture.

Just as Maia started to relieve her “need to scratch this furniture up” tension, a man came over and flicked Iris on the top of her head.

“Oh good, you found her,” he said. “The whole car ride over little green here was saying how worried she was about if she could find you and sit by you for the ride.”

“Was she now?” Maia said, feeling a lot of mixing emotions at that thought.

“Daaad, go awaaaaaaay,” Iris said. “I’ll see you at school. Why are you even taking the train?”

“Because I don’t wanna bike all the way to Sky Clay.”

“Then use our car! Is the train even gonna be running every day?” Iris asked.

Mr. Arco sighed. “Fine, I’ll head back to the teacher section. You keep an eye on her, alright Maia?”

“Will do, boss.” Maia said.

Iris slumped down in her chair from embarrassment until Mr. Arco was out of sight.

“We don’t have any classes with him, do we?” Maia asked.

“No, our lit teacher is someone else. Dad says he’s a huge weirdo.”

Maia figured that Iris’ dad was probably lucky he taught mostly at Falling Shards instead of Rising Shards. He had a combo of the movie star looks, long surfer hair, and a carefree attitude about everything except for old literature and philosophy. She could picture a good chunk of students spending more time swooning over him than listening to anything he was saying.

“I’m so glad I found you though,” Iris said. “Dad was right that I was freaking out a bit about not seeing you. I might have a fear of trains, I don’t know.”

“I’ll try to keep you occupied,” Maia said.

Iris didn’t need much to get her occupied, she was generally chatty and proved that the entire train ride. Maia didn’t admit it, but she had been worrying a lot about not seeing Iris on the train as well.

Her best friend had brought a lot of joy to her from the moment they first met, and she couldn’t imagine what the last year would have been like without her.