Chatoyant College Book 7: Upon What Soil

Chapter 18: Antlers

As Corrie chatted with Wendy and Gareth, catching up on their lives and those of people she hadn't spoken to since her big fight with Byron, she glanced around the room. The conversation didn't hold much of her attention, and she was amused to see someone standing surrounded by a ring of onlookers, juggling brightly colored balls, someone filling the broad pockets of a painting apron with candy, and someone else intently focused on what (Corrie took a minute to realize) was another person's bared back, painting an intricate dark-green design.

Remembering Dawn's comment about lots of faeries being in the art department, she slipped her hand into her pocket, where she'd been careful to secrete a four-leaf clover. The change gave her a shock; where a slender blonde woman had been standing, there appeared a young man, naked except for a leather loincloth, with branching deer's antlers emerging from his long, black hair. Corrie glanced away quickly and willed herself not to blush. He was very handsome. It was too bad she couldn't tell him that, or even talk to him as though he was a man.

She answered Wendy's question about her biology class and continued to look around. There was a faerie only three feet tall, but with several sets of rainbow-colored wings that she was using to hover at the height of her conversation partners. Corrie released the clover and saw that she was glamoured as a human girl who looked fairly similar to the faerie, but much taller and missing the wings. She touched the clover again and glanced over at the juggler. One of his enthralled audience members was a boy with brilliantly blue skin, looking as though he had been painted all over.

And there was Tom, looking very much like his glamour but with sharper features, pointed ears, and instead of what she had taken earlier to be a sort of tunic patterned with leaves, his clothing was unmistakably actual leaves, somehow stitched or glued together. He was talking intently to a slightly taller man whose mouth was hanging open as he watched Tom. The slight smile hovering at the edges of Tom's lips made Corrie suspect that he was either seducing the other man or telling him a highly improbable story. Possibly both.

Seeing Tom as he was, a faerie, made anxiety twist in her stomach. Her thoughts went to Edie. Where was she now? Why did she always have to be separate from them? But Leila was taking care of her. Probably. She was sure Leila cared about Edie—the problem was, she didn't know exactly what caring meant for a faerie.

She sighed to herself. She had come to this party to have fun, and she wasn't. It did beat sitting in her room worrying about Edie, anyway, which is what she would have been doing if she wasn't here. Maybe she should go find Dawn. "That's cool," she said, nodding at whatever Gareth had just told her. She'd heard the words at the time but forgotten them already. "I'd better go find my friend now, though."

"Oh, your friend Edie that you brought to the other party?" Wendy exclaimed.

Corrie shook her head and forced herself to smile. "No, that was even more successful than I anticipated. She and Leila really hit it off. They're out together tonight." She tried to project her usual cheerful self, though she itched with impatience now to locate Dawn.

Wendy laughed. "That's great! Wow, good for Leila. No wonder we haven't seen her around much lately."

"Yeah. Hey, don't lose touch, okay? We should have lunch together or something sometime." Corrie waved to them as she moved away, not really caring about how abrupt she sounded. She hated having to fake politeness, anyway.

She located the antlered faerie and decided to start looking for Dawn in the opposite direction from him so she wouldn't start staring. She should probably warn Dawn about him, too—not that Dawn was likely to flirt with him, but she should know he seemed even less what he was than most faeries.

Corrie started to frown when she made it all the way to the other end of the room and hadn't found Dawn. She wouldn't have gone somewhere else, would she? Corrie started to make a circuit of the large room, looking carefully through the crowd. She released the clover in her pocket, deciding it would be easier to find Dawn if she didn't keep getting distracted by faeries with antlers and sparkly wings.

A few minutes later, she spotted her—or her hair, anyway. She was sitting backwards in a chair, her arms folded on the back of the chair and her head resting on her arms. Corrie worked her way through the crowd toward Dawn. Her surprise grew as she realized what was going on. Dawn was the one having her back painted in an abstract pattern. Reaching her, Corrie touched her gently on the elbow. "Dawn?"

Dawn looked up quickly, her hair swinging back out of her face. She grinned widely. "Hi, Corrie!" Her eyes were unfocused and glassy. "Are you having as much fun as I am?"