The first day of college smelled like rain on pavement and ambition in cheap coffee cups.
The world called it a new beginning. Elara called it a continuation of a very long joke.
If you were listening closely—really listening—you'd hear her voice narrating over the chatter of hundreds of students flooding the courtyard, her words stretching lazily across the morning like sunbeams. She spoke in third person because it made the story feel like it belonged to someone else, and sometimes that was easier.
"College," she said softly, tying her hair into a half-hearted braid that didn't cooperate. "The great equalizer, where everyone pretends they've never been scared before."
Mara arrived first, naturally.
There was something about Mara that made people part around her in slow, invisible ripples—like she carried her own gravity, and everyone else's instincts just aligned themselves accordingly. She had the kind of smile that made professors forget what they were about to say and the kind of confidence that made even cynics pause to take notes.
Leather jacket, headphones hanging around her neck, one boot unlaced for aesthetic rebellion—it was all so perfectly casual that Elara was certain it was rehearsed.
But that was Mara: all natural performance.
By the time she hit the courtyard, two different student groups had already tried to recruit her, three people had offered to show her around campus, and one overeager barista had upgraded her coffee "on the house."
She took it all with a smirk.
"It's not my fault," Mara said later, tossing her bag over her shoulder. "People just like me."
"They like the way you pretend not to notice," Elara had replied. "It's part of your mystique. You're like caffeine that's learned how to flirt."
"And you're still the weird poet with the card deck," Mara teased.
They'd laughed. But Elara had felt the truth sting a little.
Elara, meanwhile, was a ghost in daylight.
She walked the same halls but felt them differently—like the world was a party she'd been invited to by mistake. Her clothes didn't match the effortless aesthetic of youth around her; her eyes were too knowing, her smile a little too sharp. She wasn't mean. She just read as wrong to people who hadn't lived past a century yet.
Her deck of cards poked out of her coat pocket like an old habit refusing to die. Most students carried laptops, styluses, or energy drinks. Elara carried symbols of power, history, and a bad reputation disguised as cheap paper.
The professors didn't know what to make of her either. She'd sit near the back, taking notes in looping handwriting that looked more like spells than sentences. When she answered questions, she did so with precision and that infuriating air of having seen this all before.
It wasn't arrogance—though some called it that—it was fatigue. Imagine sitting in class, hearing someone explain a concept you'd already taught to the man who invented it.
So she kept her head down.
She walked from class to class alone, always a beat behind the crowd, her footsteps a quiet metronome against the chaos. Every once in a while, she'd hum under her breath—a habit from centuries of keeping rhythm while waiting for worlds to end.
And sometimes, if you caught her reflection just right in a window, you'd see something shimmering beneath her surface. A flicker of the mask. The tiniest trace of Eclipse.
The Philosophy of Metaphysical Ethics class was full by the time Elara arrived. Students were already scrolling through slides, pretending to be interested.
Mara was in the front row, of course—legs crossed, smirk in place, attention divided equally between the lecture and the small fan club that had already formed around her.
Elara took the seat in the far back corner, pulling her hoodie tighter, trying to vanish.
"And so," the professor was saying, "we must ask ourselves—what separates morality from power?"
A few students typed furiously. Others stared blankly. Elara tapped her pen against her notebook.
"Perspective," she muttered under her breath.
The professor froze mid-sentence, as though the air itself had whispered. "Sorry?"
Elara blinked. "I said… perspective, sir. Power doesn't change morality. It just reveals whose morality matters."
A long silence. A few students looked up from their laptops, eyebrows raised.
Mara smirked knowingly in the front row. She'd seen that look before—the professor trying to decide whether Elara was brilliant or insufferable.
"Ah," the professor finally said, clearing his throat. "Yes. Quite… right. Perspective."
As he fumbled to regain his train of thought, Mara turned just enough to catch Elara's eye. She mouthed, Show-off.
Elara responded with a slight shrug, pretending not to smile.
Lunch was where social hierarchies went to breathe fire.
Mara sat with a group of friends she'd acquired by sheer gravitational force—music students, athletes, one art major who couldn't stop sketching her. She laughed easily, leaning back against the grass, sunglasses tilted just enough to be dangerous.
Elara sat nearby, not close enough to be included but not far enough to disappear completely. She picked at a sandwich, occasionally scribbling something in her notebook.
"You could sit with us, you know," Mara said one afternoon, tossing a grape at her.
"And ruin your aesthetic?" Elara smirked. "I'm allergic to social ecosystems."
"You're allergic to trying," Mara countered.
"I tried once. The results were catastrophic."
"You summoned a hurricane."
"Exactly."
They shared a quiet laugh, but Mara's eyes softened for a moment. She saw the exhaustion behind Elara's jokes—the quiet loneliness wrapped in silk sarcasm.
"You don't have to hide all the time," Mara said.
"I'm not hiding," Elara said, looking up at the sky. "I'm observing."
"From where?"
"Somewhere safe."
The library after dusk was where Elara came alive.
Rows of old paper and dust motes felt like home. The world outside quieted, and the campus lights turned golden and forgiving. Here, no one stared. No one whispered.
She sat by the window, a spread of tarot cards laid out beside her laptop. To the casual observer, she looked like an eccentric art student. To anyone who knew, it was an ongoing dialogue with fate.
Mara found her there one night.
"You missed dinner again," she said, sliding into the seat opposite her.
"Dinner is a mortal construct."
"So is starvation."
Elara smiled faintly, flipping a card. The Moon.
"Still reading futures?"
"Just reminding myself the universe is bigger than homework."
Mara leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Do you ever regret giving it up? The mask?"
Elara's eyes flickered, just once. "Every day. But regret is… survivable."
There was silence. Outside, the campus clock chimed midnight.
"You know," Mara said gently, "you don't have to be the outcast forever."
"And what would I be instead?"
"Human."
Elara looked at her for a long moment, the candlelight of the library catching in her eyes like tiny stars trying to remember how to shine.
"I'll think about it," she said finally.
6. Epilogue of the Day
Later, in her dorm, Elara sat at her desk, watching the rain crawl down the windowpane. She held the deck of cards in her hands, thumb brushing the edge of The Fool.
Her voice slipped back into narration, quiet and contemplative.
"They say college is where you find yourself. I've found myself a thousand times. I keep misplacing the instructions."
On her nightstand was a photo—grainy, sunlit—of her and Mara laughing during orientation.
Two girls. One pretending to belong. The other pretending not to care.
Elara smiled faintly, tucking the card back into its case.
"Tomorrow," she whispered, "maybe I'll try again."
And somewhere across campus, Mara looked up at the same rain, feeling that strange pull in her chest she could never explain—the one that always led her back to Elara.