11. Aurora
AURORA
The Commissary was a broad stone archway with a counter that ran the length of it.
Because it was so long, there was room for five lines of cadets and the process moved quickly.
Though we started at the back of the line, Jorn-o, Toady, Bugs, Leaper and I soon came to the counter, which was being manned by five bored-looking upperclassmen.
“Let’s see now,” said the upperclassman who was leaning on the broad stone counter said as I stepped up. “Extra-extra small, without a doubt. Do you know your shoe size?”
I lifted my chin, determined not to let him look down on me—even though that was literally what he was doing from his greater height.
“Size four,” I said.
“Four?” His eyebrows shot up. “Really? That’s tiny.”
“That’s my size,” I said, looking him in the eye and trying my best not to sound ashamed. In my previous life, my dainty feet and hands had been a point of pride for me. It seemed strange to be in a world where they were shameful instead, for being too small.
The upperclassman shook his head.
“Don’t even know if we carry sizes that low. Give me a minute, newbie.”
Then he went behind a partition, leaving me to stand there, wondering if he would be able to find me anything to wear. I hoped my diminutive stature wasn’t going to be a problem here at the Academy, but I very much feared that it would be.
As I was musing on how to make everyone think I was masculine despite my size, the upperclassman finally came back. He had a stack of clothing in his hands with a small pair of black boots balanced on top.
“Here you go—two size extra-extra small uniforms, including shirts and underclothes,” he said to me.
“Two size extra-small night shirts—we didn’t have extra-extra small in those.
And one pair of size four boots, that I think must have been made for Professor’s Horlick’s son when he was little and wanted to dress up like a cadet. ”
I ignored the implied jab and took the bundle with a nod.
“Thank you for finding my size,” I said, determined to keep my dignity no matter what.
The upperclassmen looked surprised but only shrugged.
“Hope it fits,” he said. Next!”
From the Commissary—which was also the place to buy things like sweets between meals and razors if you needed a shave, according to Jorn-o—we went straight to what he called “The Great Dorm.”
“They used this more when there were more First-years,” he said as we stepped into the large, echoing chamber lined with cots. “Now they usually only put twenty to twenty-five cadets to a room. But this is kind of tradition—every cadet in the Academy spends his first night in The Great Dorm.”
I was glad we only had to spend one night here. The room was so big it made me feel like an ant and the rows of folding cots didn’t look very comfortable at all.
Still, it was only for one night, I comforted myself.
Maybe I had done well enough on the exams that I would be in a smaller room with only one roommate by tomorrow night.
Though I had to confess, I would miss Jorn-o and the rest of my new friends if that happened, it would still be better for privacy.
Speaking of privacy—or the lack thereof—no sooner had I picked a cot, right beside Jorn-o’s, than I heard another deep, tolling bell.
All around me, boys started stripping.
“Bath time!” I heard one of them whoop. “Last one to the Cook-pot is a rotten dragon egg!”
“The Cook-pot?” I raised my eyebrows at Jorn-o, who was already tugging his shirt over his head.
“Oh, that’s what we call the big hollow where all the cadets bathe,” he explained. “Hurry up and get undressed and I’ll show you.”
“Why don’t you just tell me how to get there,” I said, frowning. “I, er, need to visit the necessary room before I go.”
“The necessary room?” Bugs, who was in the cot on the other side of me, asked, laughing.
“Runt means he has to take a dump, Bugs,” Toady said, rolling his eyes. “Not surprising considering how much he ate at dinner.”
He was pushing down his trousers as he spoke and I looked away hastily, not wanting to see whatever was between his legs.
As a matter of fact, I was feeling the call of nature, and it seemed as good an excuse as any to skip the communal bath.
“Oh, well—the toilets are that way—at the end of the dorm,” Jorn-o told me. “When you’re finished, leave The Great Dorm and take the corridor on the left. That leads right to the Cook-pot.”
“Thanks.” I nodded, trying not to notice how he was completely naked now.
Thankfully, he wrapped a towel around his waist—we had all been issued two towels, two washcloths, a bar of soap, and a tooth-cleaner and tooth powder along with our clothes and boots—and I didn’t have to avert my eyes anymore.
“Is everybody ready?” Leaper asked. “Okay. See you at the Cook-pot, Runt,” he said to me and the four of them trooped off, following the crowd of rowdy, shouting boys on their way to bathe.
I hung back, digging through my stack of clothes until I found one of the nightshirts I had been given. We had all been given a clothing-marker too and I spent some time putting my initials—"A.L.”—in the backs of all my clothes until at last, The Great Dorm was completely empty.
Then, clutching the nightshirt to my chest, I made my way down the middle of the two long rows of beds. Turning a corner at the end of the rows, I found myself in another loud, echoing room, this one lined with wooden stalls on one wall and rows of sinks and mirrors on the other.
Thankfully, the stalls all had tall wooden doors that went up to the stone ceiling and down to the floor, offering plenty of privacy.
I locked myself in one of them and breathed a sigh of relief.
This was the quietest place I had been since entering the echoing halls of the Academy—though I could well imagine it would become one of the noisiest once it filled with the rowdy First-year cadets.
Still, for now at least, I had the place to myself, and I could finally relax.
I sank down on the toilet seat and spent a moment just rubbing my temples.
I could make this work, I told myself. I could hide during bathing time and just take little cat-baths in the sink when no one was looking.
And I could change my clothes in one of the stalls every morning and every night. Everything would be all right.
At least I didn’t have to worry about getting my period while I was here.
My monthly courses had stopped flowing months ago, after my father killed himself and Auren got sick.
I figured it was grief that had stopped them, and I was grateful to be done with the messy business, which had always been extremely painful for me.
No more cramps or blood meant much less chance of being found out and exposed.
As long as I had passed the entrance exam—and I was pretty sure I had—I could hide my identity as a female for as long as I had to.
I could Impress a dragon and graduate with honors and even become one of the Professors—or maybe a long-range scout, like my father had been.
He’d gone out scouting for Madlings every month—even though everyone knew they’d been eradicated for over a hundred years.
That way I’d have plenty of privacy and no one need ever know that I wasn’t a male.
As long as you really can Impress a dragon egg, a little voice whispered in my brain. Are you sure any dragon will want a female rider? They’ll probably be able to tell, you know—didn’t Jorn-o say they could smell your blood and your bloodlines?
Well, I would cross that bridge when I came to it. For now, I was going to concentrate on hiding my identity and living as normal a life as I could, as a boy here in the Old Drake, I told myself.
I slipped out of my brother’s clothes and into the nightshirt I’d been given. It was a little too large—which was good, because it was also a little too thin.
I tried taking off the bandages around my breasts…but had to put them right back on again. Though my breasts were small, my nipples were large and they stuck out too prominently through the worn white fabric which felt as though it had been washed and worn a hundred times before it came to me.
I wasn’t sure about the view between my legs either. My white-blonde pubic hair didn’t show through, but the night shirt was thin enough to expose the fact that I didn’t have any manhood to speak of.
I solved the problem by putting on a pair of the underdrawers I’d been given. That hid the view of my crotch enough that I hoped no one would notice I didn’t have a manly bulge.
Then, hoping I was covered enough, I left the privy closet with my pile of clothes and went to the sink.
I had bathed that morning before getting dressed and hadn’t done anything more strenuous than taking the entrance exam, so I didn’t feel the need for a cat-bath.
But I rolled up the long sleeves of the night shirt and washed my hands and face thoroughly, blotting my skin dry on the rough towel I’d been issued.
For a moment I just stood there in front of the mirror, looking at myself. Did I see a stunted lad with spiky hair or was it a girl staring back at me?
I touched the Dragon Glass pendant at my throat and thought with all my might,
“I’m a boy. Everyone who looks at me sees a boy—no, a man of the Academy. I’m a strong, brave, confident man.”
And as I looked in the mirror, I saw a change. Nothing startling—my hair didn’t change color, and I didn’t grow six inches all at once. But my jaw looked firmer, and my eyelashes were a little shorter. My shoulders seemed just a touch broader. In short, I really did look more manly.
I leaned forward, feeling myself tingle all over. Was it true? Or was I just imagining it? I was almost certain the changes I was seeing were being made by the pendant. Just as my father had said, it showed the wearer the way he (or in my case, she) wanted others to see them.
I hadn’t seen these changes when I first put the Dragon Glass pendant on, back at my own home.
But I had been all by myself there. Maybe it was working better here at the Academy because there were more people to see me.
Maybe its subtle magic was enhanced by the attention of those around me—those I wanted to see me as a boy.
Also, they expected to see just another male cadet when they looked at me—the pendant fed their expectations and made them real.
“It’s working,” I whispered, touching the Dragon Glass at my throat. “You’re actually working!”
I felt a tingling in my fingertips, as though the pendant was agreeing with me. Maybe I would be all right after all.
Feeling a bit more hopeful, I went back to The Great Dorm and climbed into my cot.
“Hey—where were you? I never saw you at the Cook-pot,” Jorn-o said, when he and the others came back in the room, their skin red from steam and their hair slicked back.
I made a show of groaning as I rolled over onto my back.
“Wasn’t feeling very good,” I told him, hoping he would accept my excuse. “I think I ate too much at dinner.”
“Well, you did eat a lot.” He looked concerned. “Want me to show you to the Infirmary?”
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “Just need to get some rest. I’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Okay, well. Let me know if you change your mind.” He toweled himself off vigorously as he spoke and I kept my eyes on his face and avoided looking at his body.
Honestly, this was going to take the most getting used to, I thought as all around me the other First-years were doing the same.
Seeing naked men surrounding me several times a day was going to be a trying situation.
We had been a very private family back home and I had never even seen my brother or my father with their shirts off.
Of course if anyone had found out my secret, they would have accused me of immersing myself in sinful temptation, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. The male bodies around me were scrawny for the most part and the way the cadets acted wasn’t exactly fodder for any kind of fantasy.
They were laughing and running around The Great Dorm naked, snapping each other with towels with their male bits dangling and bobbing in a most ridiculous way.
I had often wondered what I might see on my wedding night if I got married—well, here was my answer and it was frankly off-putting.
Not that I didn’t like males—it was just that they seemed to be very silly creatures when you left them to their own devices.
And they say women are too thoughtless and emotional to fly a dragon, I thought, rolling my eyes mentally. But look at these fools, running around acting like little boys.
But soon enough the bell tolled again—I wondered where it was located and how we could hear it all over the Academy.
Was the sound conducted through the vents that kept the whole place supplied with outside air?
I didn’t know but I was relieved when an older man who must be one of the professors came to stand at the end of the rows of beds and shouted loudly that everyone needed to get to sleep.
“Enough rough-housing now, boys!” he ordered, looking sternly at two cadets who were wrestling—one had the other in a headlock and they were both grunting like animals.
“I know you’re excited to be here, but you need your sleep.
We get an early start here at the Academy and you want to wake up bright and early to see the Rankings posted in the Mess Hall. ”
His words caused more chatter among the cadets, not less, but at least everyone started making their way to their cots. As soon as everyone was sitting on the edge of their bed, the professor turned a switch and the glowing lamps far above our heads dimmed to blackness.
I snuggled deeper into my cot. The sheets and coverlet I’d been given were thin and despite the volcanic warmth that radiated from the inner walls of the mountain, it was cold in the huge, echoing dorm.
I hoped that the smaller dorms would be warmer—or that I wouldn’t be in a dorm at all but in a two-person room soon.
It would all depend on how I did on the exam.
I’ll do my best to make you proud, Auren, I promised my brother as I drifted off to sleep. I’ll live the life you wanted, and I’ll ride the dragon you should have had…if the dragon will have me, that is.
With that troubling thought in my head, I finally drifted off to sleep.
I had no idea how much trouble I was going to be in when I woke up the next morning.