Betula Academy/Ariana

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ARIANA NARRATES -- Was my sister here? I had not seen her since I left Mama's castle in the Elysian Fields and her tribe of sisters who shown in a way that made diamonds look like river rocks. My sister lived with Father in the Realm of Desolation. If she was bringing her evil with her here, I was going to do everything I knew how to stop her.

I glanced over the muddy campus. Snow was melting everywhere, leaving terrible brown, barren, dead earth. I could fix that. I had an amulet around my neck that amplified my energy. It came in handy at times like these. I visualized a campus full of green grass, flowers, and singing birds. I did not get the singing birds, but the grass began to sprout and the sky turned from grey to blue. The sun became brighter too.

With the weather at the new school fixed, I cheerfully strode up the steps of the Administration Building. Someone had tied a poor tired banner over the door. Inside the building a radiator clanked away filling sad offices with stale air. I'd have to do something to fix this place. I glanced around just in time to see a middle aged mortal human or at least that was what she looked like emerge from behind the counter where she gave students their paperwork.

"Don't touch that picture," she said. Her long face on a long neck peered up from a turtleneck sweater with ribs as deep as road ruts. She was growing old like an old skinny bird, poor creature. Nails polished peach pink pointed to a large canvas covered with splotches of paint. "This is my office and I want it left alone. Do you understand?"

"Poor woman," I thought. I wondered what made her so unhappy.

"Let's get you settled," she said. I tried to avoid her angry brown eyes. "I need your name..."

"Ariana Tallon." The unhappy woman in the ribbed sweater's fingers found their way along a keyboard and printed out something. From a board with holes she got out a key and also gave me a swipe card. The Card said Room 401 Greene Hall.

I thanked the poor unhappy lady, and walked across the new grass which smelled sweet. Tiny white, yellow, and pink flowers were pushing their way through the new lawn. I still hadn't seen my sister. She'd be here soon if she wasn't here all ready, and when she got here, she would bring trouble.

Meanwhile, I gathered my pets, my white dove, Felice, my fawn, Faun, and my fluffy white kitten, Alex. I brought all my animals with me to Greene Hall. Soon they would bring their friends. Greene Hall was a hideous four story block of cement cubes. Who had designed this awful campus. Well, I'd fix it up. I'd have to. It was after all, only natural. I gazed hard at the building and began to wish its walls clean and white with dark wood trim and felt something rebuff me. Who had protected the ugliness on this campus?

I knew who, I brought my animal friends in to the dormitory and pressed the button for the elevator. It did not come. I tried to fix it, but again my magic only hit static. I climbed the sairs instead and there on the fourth floor I saw a very tall man in an apple green robe. He had log strawberry blond hair and a big pink face, a long silky pointed beard and a droopy mustache. His eyes were emerald green. His big robe hid wings. He turned to face me and I recognized him as Jude. Jude was one of the strongest, gentlest, and sincerest of my kind in the universe -- and Jude was talking to my sister!

Jetta lounged carelessly in the doorway of her dormitory room which she had redone as a black marble temple with shutters to keep the sunlight out. "You're here," Jetta greeted me.

"Ladies," said Jude. "I expect neither of you to fight. Remember, we run this school."

"Who did Jude mean by 'We?'" I wondered.

I greeted Jude and he accompanied me to my dormitory room. He watched me open it up. Jetta should not have bothered to rework her room, I thought. The room was a prison cell, with beat up unhappy furniture, a long narrow bed with a bare mattress in black and white ticking, half broken Venetian blinds in the window and a few tiles knocked loose among the dust bunnies on the floor. The walls were a dull unhappy yellow and the paint was peeling.

Almost before my eyes though, the room began to transform itself. The walls became a pale shade of dawn pink. The bed grew in to a fluffy double feather bed with a canopy of mosquito netting held from a round device trimmed in cloth flowers. There were perches and beds for all my animals and the furniture repaired itself becoming sleek, white, and modern. On the dresser sat a bunch of pale pink roses in a crystal vase. The room even had its own bathroom with pretty pictures of sea hoses and sunshines on the tiles.

"The rooms in this dormitory respond to their occupants," commented Jude. "Nice huh?"

"Thankyou," I said; for what else could I say. How could I imagine living in the room the way it was given to me? I had never been in such a desolate place except to free the inhabitants.

"This can be a very good place you know," answered Jude. "Or it can be a very bad place. It depends what you make of it."

I listened but that was all Jude said. Then he disappeared. For a few moments that afternoon, my heart sang. Jude ran our school...The one and only Jude.

Just then I sensed evil outside my door. I opened it to reveal Jetta. Her eyes glowed like coals. Her platinum hair was swept back in an angry wind. "This is my big chance sister," she announced.

"Chance for what?" I asked.

"To begin....This is the Earth even if it is North Dakota, and the strong will rule the weak, sister. Do you understand. You can either get out of the way, or I'll show you no mercy. You're not under Mother's protection any more and Papa said I can do whatever I want to you. You're not really his daughter anyway."

Jetta wore black hip hugger jeans that somehow rode up higher on one side than the other, black suede boots with pointy toes encased in silver and a charcoal colored sweater that showed a flat pale belly with a white gold ring with a black onyx in it. On her long left ring finger curled a platinum ring carved in the shape of a serpent with a ruby in its mouth. Her hair was unadorned. Her eyes were heavily mascaraed standing out in her pale face that wore a malicious smirk.

"It's over, Ariana. I've won."

"We'll see about that," I answered.

Just then Jetta's hands glowed with energy and she made a grab for me. I harnessed my own energy and soon we were wrestling and kick boxing up and down the hall. I thought I heard or saw several other girls scatter, but I had to keep my mind on Jetta and not worry about others. That is hard for me; for that is not my nature.

Jetta landed a hard kick to my stomach and I felt myself fall through the stairwell door. I forgot in human form I could not fly and did not get my wings out fast enough. The pain shot through my right leg as I landed upside down near the bottom of the stairs on the landing below the fourth floor.

"It just took a little magic making that fire door disappear and I'm the better fighter," Jetta boasted. "I always beat the shit out of little goody two shoes when we were kids. I need a cigarette. Any one around here want one?"