Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oh. Their teacher was the skull? Jericho wondered where the rest of the body was. Odd. In any case, he was soon feeling a little horrified as he realized everyone was to come up to tell a little bit of what they knew of the world and whatnot. Six months ago, this might not have been an issue. But, right now? Having to speak before an audience was not something he wanted to do at all. What if they'd find out? There were a lot of students here! Could there be any undercover boogeymen too?

The dragon shifted in his seat uncomfortably, looking towards the door. Maybe he could sneak out. No. The dragon was a horrible sneak. That would never work out.

Maybe.. he should go up soon. Get it over with. Perhaps people would forget about him quickly with all the others that had to come up as well. Even so, he was a little nervous to be going up. Gritting his teeth, he stared at the podium. There was more light there too. What if his cloak somehow slipped away? While he was fussing over this, he ended up not paying a whole lot of attention to the other speakers so far.

After some thought, he slowly got up and made his way to the podium, clutching onto his cloak as he did so. Why was he doing this again?

Once there, he took in a deep breath, gritting his teeth for a moment while looking out at the students that were now watching. Would they know?

"..Er... Our home is a large mountain range far from here. Lots of trees and not too many other people around. No other dragons from our family too.. Not in our territory at least. They need to let us know they're coming ahead of time if they want to visit. There's.. plenty of prey and the terrain isn't easy to trek.. it helps keep adventurous halloweeners from trying to steal our treasures," he said while eyeing a few warily with that last statement.

Possibly Astra.

Not wanting to linger up there any longer, he quickly retreated to his seat.

And suddenly the skull was speaking, the bird was squaking and pooping. Although the way the skull spoke made Mei giggle. She knew she was going to enjoy this class for sure.

But now they were being instructed in a sort of show and tell. Oh great! Mei loved sharing stories about things. With each student who went up before her, she listened closely. No matter how long or short their story was. Once it seemed that others were still mulling about and the podium was open for a second the ghoul excused herself from her present company and nearly skipped up in front of everyone.

The small ghoul had no problems with public speaking. She gave a small wave to Leo who she noticed was in this class as well before she began. "I come from one of many Jiang Shi families. And every few years all the families come together to have celebrations and catch up with each other. Where these congregations are held differs each year, usually at the house of one of the families. Each family puts on performances and entertainment. Sometimes with songs and sometimes with dance. But I remember the one dance that I always loved seeing the most was the Song of Enduring Sorrow."

Closing her eyes momentarily, she remembered how awe struck she had been when she had first seen that dance. "Some will also refer to it as the Feather Dress Dance. Because the dresses the dancers wear are generally made of feathers to suggest light weight and flight. The story behind the dance is about an emperor who dreams that he travels to the moon and there in a palace sees a group of beautiful, heavenly virgins dressed in feathers and rosy clouds dancing in the skies. When the emperor awakens from this dream and recounts it to his concubine, the concubine recreates the dance for the emperor. Its a very lovely dance." Mei sighed whistfully.

"And...ummm that's it." She laughed lightly before hopping back to her seat, pulling her knees up against her chest once more.

Mitsu was rather relieved to know that nothing was wrong with her ears but at the same time was rather impressed with Shun. "You did a very good job. When did you learn to walk so quietly?" Normally with her hearing even when he was quiet she could detect him coming. This time she had no idea.

When the bell rung and the class settled in Mitsu turned her attention to the eagle and the skull up front. So the skull was the teacher. She listened to him ramble on about this and that, a rather interesting story she had a hard time imagining because...well....he was a skull. Did someone carry him around the entire time or could he float? Oh well.

But now they all had to tell a story and show off something. What was she going to talk about? The most adventurous things she had done all ended in tragedy at best and she really didn't want to talk about her home. Not that it was all that exciting anyway, she lived by the city and was often kept inside.

She was just starting to fidget with worry when an idea struck her of an adventure she had taken with Mot and Hel last year. Mitsu was fairly certain she still had the little pin they had been given and frantically started to search her bag. It was nearly her turn when she finally found it at the very bottom of her messenger bag and held onto it for a moment before she realized...it was her turn.

"O..Oh," Standing from her seat Mitsu made her way nervously to the podium and stared out at the class. She wasn't much of a public speaker and her eyes focused on anything but the people in front of her. "I..I uh...went to this place last year with Hel and Mot. It was kind of a western adventure game. W-We had to pretend to be sheriffs and take down the robbers that were taking over the town. We even rescued a lady!" Mitsu smiled at the idea for a moment before her expression turned sheepish again. "I-In the end Mot shot down the bad guy and the Major gave us these." She held up the shiny sheriff badge they all had been given. It still didn't sink in that this adventure game she had played was more for scarelings but it had still been fun and enjoyable.

Once she was done Mitsu quickly retreated to her seat, heart erratically racing like she had just faced a fear.

"Keep your mouth shut unless you want us to rip your head from your neck," Snarled Jericho.

Mandy pouted as the teacher spoke up, her chance at getting anything out of Astra ruined (for now). With a sigh she swung her feet off Astra's lap and slumped in her seat, listening first to the skulls ramblings and then to everyone as they got up and talked about her homes. Honestly when they were first asked to speak about their adventures her mind had gone to their trip to Christmas town as it was now one of the least traumatic field trips she'd been on with this school and she was quite fond of the memories now but with everyone setting precedence of talking about their homes...

...ugh. She hated talking about where she came from but she may as well. Half of these guys already knew about the Christmas story anyway. Glancing around and seeing no one else was hoping up for the moment Mandy reluctantly dragged herself up onto the stage.

"My people live in a mountainous place we call the Exploding Forest." she stared at them dully for a moment as though she was going to leave it there before sighing and continuing, "The trees as you could probably guess tend to randomly explode. A lot. It keeps you on your toes growing up."

She tapped her fingers against the podium before finally concluding, "We mainly live nomadic because of that. It's hard to settle somewhere permanently when your place may get blown up. Don't ask me why we don't just move off the mountain."

Her final sentence included all the teenager derision of adults being stupid that she could fit in it. Stomping slightly she flopped back into her seat. This class didn't look like it was going to be half as fun as she first thought it was.

Leo nervously fiddled with the podíum, trying to focus her eyes somewhere far over the heads of the the students assembled. "Um, well, I kinda went to Dragonfell awhile ago and found this old sword hilt on a skeleton there." She drew the broken hilt out of her pocket, carefully showing it off. The part where the blade was broken off had been covered with taped on tissues so she didn't accidentally cut herself on the rusty old thing.

"Er, and the skeleton was dead that is." She threw a look at the talking skull-teacher-thing. "Proper dead, that is. Not undead. Er." She shuffled out from behind the podium, not meeting anyone's eyes as she walked back to her seat. Why had no one ever told her that talking in front of an audience was so awkward?

Taima was late to class. The mere concept would have worried anyone who knew her, might even have sent them running for the nurse--but Taima wasn't sick. She was exhausted, as was evident in every line of her body, from her sagging shoulders to the slight droop of her wings. Even her feathers, usually impeccably groomed, were looking a little ruffled and unkempt. She would have cared more if she wasn't so tired; the endless cycle of homework and classes plus weird things getting turned into a minipet had started to take their toll.

Despite all of that, she was in relatively good spirits about all of it. If the cost of success was a few hours less sleep a night, she'd gladly pay it--this is what she'd come here for, after all. Oversleeping one time ever wasn't going to kill her, she told herself as she quietly slipped into the classroom and took a seat in the back. She had missed the teacher's introduction, but caught on quick to what the current task was. Life stories! Taima loved hearing about other peoples' experiences; it seemed this class would be worth waking up for after all. She brightened a little, listening attentively to a few of her classmates' stories before walking down to the podium to tell her own.

"Soooo," she started, uncertain how to begin now that she was actually up there, "my flock lives in a mountain range surrounding a pretty big town, but it's difficult for other people to get there because the winds are really strong above a certain elevation. It's hard for us to get down there by ourselves, too, when we're fledgelings. My parents used to take my siblings and I into town sometimes, and I loved it there, because as much as I love my flock, it's so boring just seeing the same people and places day in, day out. So the first time I was able to descend by myself, I hid in town for, like, a week. It was a lot of fun--I got to meet a lot of new people and experience some interesting stuff--until my parents found me. I was grounded for a while after that." Her wings twitched closer to her body at the memory. "Literally." Her story imparted, Taima went to take her seat.

Alex had shuffled his way into the classroom, late, as usual. He hadn't actually caught all of what the teacher said they were meant to be doing (he assumed there had been some kind of instruction, just judging by the way everyone was taking turns to go up and speak.) So he slowly found himself an empty seat and slid into it, deciding to listen first to try and get a sense for what it was they were supposed to be talking about.

For the most part, from the few students he had heard, it seemed like they were supposed to talk about where they came from...maybe. That was generally what the other students were discussing so it was what he would first assume at least. Waiting for a lull inbetween students, he somewhat nervously rose from his chair to make his way up to the podium, hoping he was doing what he was meant to.

"My family, my horde, lives in a large house in the middle of a forested area. It's not actually all that far from Halloweentown, only a couple of hours by train. It's pretty nice, lots of space for all of us when everyone comes over for a visit, which is...practically every day, really. The forest is teeming with mini wildlife which we prefer since many in the horde do like to hunt, and even if we don't have to eat, we enjoy it too much not to." He smiled at that, reaching up to brush hair that had fallen into his eyes back out of the way before shuffling his way back to his desk.

Really, Alex had never really traveled anywhere, except for during the trials and the exchange program with the horsemen isles, so even if he had known what they were supposed to be talking about, discussing where he grew up was probably what he would have spoken about anyways.