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| Lily
| Age: 18
| Mythical Creature: Unicorn
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Here she was, finally, the college of her dreams. Lily had basically already been accepted, a huge honor, and now she was just finalizing her application with the traditional interview. When her family had gotten the call that she had been accepted prematurely, there had been tears of joy on her behalf.
Ferland had an incredibly impressive campus, with its beautifully rustic and old-fashioned architecture. Her instructions said to go to room F4 in the Grandler Building to speak directly to two of the deans for her interview. She had come early so as to not be late, but as she began to search for the room, she soon became quite confused. The room was nowhere in the entire building! She went back to the main corridor, where the F rooms were. There was F3, but where F4 should have been, there was nothing, the next door over being the beginning of the G's. She stood next to the spot where F4 should have been, trying to hide her confusion from showing on her face, but her panic rising as the time she was supposed to meet the deans ticked closer. Suddenly, a crack she hadn't before seen appeared on the wall. Confused, she stepped closer, barely avoiding the boy about her age, with green-tinted hair and snake scale tattoos all over the back of his neck, which caught her attention because, although he was dressed professionally, tattoos weren't usually considered professional, and students with visible tattoos almost never accepted, that suddenly swung a portion of the wall open and stepped out. He looked surprised, eyeing her suspiciously as he stood in the doorway, as the other side of the panel of wall really was a door! with the letter-number combination F4 written on the inside in gold flowing script, on a small panel. She pushed down her surprise at the hidden door, mindful of his scrutiny; she asked pretty lamely, "Is this F4? I'm here for an interview."
This seemed to satisfy him though, as he relaxed noticeably, then nodded, standing out of the way and holding the door open for her.
"Thank you," she murmured shyly, then brushed past him to enter the room, a cozy, intellectual study with its own personal library taking the devotion of an entire wall. The door closed behind her with an audible click of finality that was somewhat frightening.
Two men, both likely in their late fifties, turned as one to look at her as she moved inside. The one nearer to her smiled warmly before rising from his seat and stepped around his desk to come shake her hand, "Lily, I presume?"
"Yes," she sighed out in relief, extending her hand to firmly return his proffered shake. When she had broken eye contact with him during their hand shake, her eyes flicked to the other man to give him a small smile, wondering if she should shake his hand as well; he hadn't moved an inch and still examined her with the stern, unyielding expression he'd worn since she came in, and when she looked at him, he scowled just slightly. Unnerved, she turned back to the man who had greeted her; she had planned to comment on the hidden door, but he had already gone back to his seat behind the desk and gestured for her to sit down as well, in the chair beside her, with the same kind smile.
She looked behind her to make sure she didn't miss the seat when she sat down due to her nervousness, then sat, as he began to talk. He welcomed her to Ferland University and went on to recite, word for word, she
swore, the same exact speech she had received in her acceptance letter, all the while with an extremely pleasant and calming expression of complete kindness on his face, as though he were her own father, settling Lily's fears until she found herself smiling back at him. After he'd finished, he leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk, "And now to the meat of our interview." He smiled once before turning to his left slightly, picking up a pair of glasses off the polished wooden top of his desk and setting them on his nose with a practiced motion, pulling forth a manila folder from the underside of his desk which she couldn't see.
In the meantime, she allowed herself to glance back over at the other man, immediately wishing she hadn't; she returned her gaze to the kind man, the other's scowling expression seared into her mind, striking up fear in the pit of her stomach that had only just been calmed.
"Miss Lily, we just have a few questions mostly about your intended career, if you have any roommates preferences, and the limit of your magi," he stopped in the middle of the word as he looked over at his scowling companion, apparently finishing after a pause, "cccc. Henry,
whatever is the matter?" Lily assumed she had misheard him, or he had pronounced the word incorrectly with being interrupted by his glance at 'Henry', so she dismissed her confusion and, apprehensively, brought her gaze back to 'Henry's' scowling features.
For the first time, he spoke, his words scarily akin to a growl, "I don't think this is the right person Grand." Lily jerked back slightly, as though he'd bitten her, fear rising in her throat, not understanding why he would say that, and with that much venom in his voice, a voice which grated on her ears and struck fear into her limbs.
"Don't be ridiculous Henry; I have her picture from her application right here. Let me," he opened the folder, flipping through the papers before triumphantly pulling forth a small, wallet-sized picture, turning it so that Henry could see. Lily could tell even with the angled perspective that it was indeed her senior yearbook picture which she had sent in with her application. "See Henry?"
Henry didn't even glance at the picture, instead bending at the waist to pear closer at her, making her squirm in her seat; although he seemed to be an appealing older man from a distance, there was something in his eyes that made his entire personage absolutely repulsive, as though his very existence was a crime against nature, completely irrational, Lily told herself, but she couldn't get herself from leaning further away from him, incredibly frightened under his scrutiny. She wanted to look away from those terrible eyes, slightly yellowed, as though those of a dead person, but found she could not.
"Henry, don't frighten the students," Grand said sternly, his silky smooth voice the most beautiful thing in the world compared to Henry's; he continued, insistent, "What objection do you have to her?"
Henry turned his gaze to Grand, releasing her from his stare and she averted her gaze back to 'Grand', swallowing hard, her voice coming out in a frightened croak, "Is something wrong?"
Henry glanced back to Lily, which she felt as though a wave of chill had hit her the way the sun expels heat to everything it touches, but horribly, utterly wrong, in every single way, before addressing Grand, "I can't sense any magic in her."
Grand frowned, even that attractive on him, "What do you mean? She couldn't have even seen this room, nor her application gone to the magic department without her being magical; certainly she simply has a well-done concealment spell over her magical presence."
Henry shook his slowly head in disagreement, "No, I can see through even the best concealments. I can't understand it at all," he continued speaking to Grand, "I can't sense any sort of magic on her, no spells, no enchantments, no items, nothing at all that could explain how she bypassed our defenses. I have never seen that complete of a concealment spell for at least a thousand years."
Grand turned back to Lily, smiling kindly, "Lily, would mind telling us what kind of creature you are?"
Lily's mind had been reeling throughout their conversation, numbly searching for a possible, rational explanation for this completely crazy turn of events.
Maybe this is a test to see how well I do under pressure? Is this part of the interview? To see how creatively I can roll with a situation? That must be it. She looked down at the ground, searching through all the mythical creatures and beings she'd ever read or heard of, searching for something she could relate to engineering. She stuttered as she spoke, but worked the words in her mind from her lips, "I-I'm Hephaestus's daughter." Hephaestus was the Greek god of metal-working, brilliantly creative and could be easily defended for engineering. As soon as she had finished her sentence, a little paperweight armored knight on his horse charging into battle began to vibrate violently, startling her; she looked to the object, wondering how the creator of the object had been able to make the paper weight look so completely solid, yet have the insides have a battery of some kind to make it vibrate.
Grand frowned, and glancing at Henry, waving his hand at the object, and, miraculously, it stopped its vibrating, "That was a lie." He said quietly, a bit sadly.
Henry added, "And I would definitely sense the magic a demi-god had, under even the spells of concealment of the old days. You can't disguise that much power."
Lily saw Grand's sadness and her heart just broke; she suddenly felt terribly ashamed of herself, needing him to be happy with her again, she sought vainly to defend herself, spewing all the truth of what she was thinking at the moment, as though a child again who had gotten in trouble for stealing a cookie from the kitchen after she had been told not to.
"I-I'm very sorry, but I have no idea what's going on. What are you talking about? I have no idea what you mean by asking what creature I am. I don't know what you want me to say; I don't believe in magic really, though I believe there is a God and that He has the spiritual ability to complete miracles, which I suppose could be considered magic, but I don't think I'm magical." She caught her breath, pleading him with her eyes to stop this game. Grand looked to the little paperweight expectantly, but when it didn't do anything, his mouth opened in utter shock.
He spun in his chair to Henry, "She doesn't know she's magical."
Henry nodded slowly, "I can see that." He paused a moment, thinking heavily. "Her not knowing, unaware of any magical ability, and thus never having used it," he looked to Grand to finish his thoughts, "could dampen her magic aura a great deal. Plus, if her ancestors were magical, but mostly human looking, this could be close to her true form and she just have watered down blood. Her parents might not have known themselves if they were magical in order to tell her, or if they had, had thought it best to refrain from telling her, casting a spell to keep magic hidden from her as it is to humans, and just let her live her life." Henry smiled a bit with the result of his pondering, his proud smile a disgusting thing to behold.
Grand sighed, "It makes sense..." he glanced about his office thinking; his eyes rested on an object on one of his bookshelves and he suddenly grinned, which made Lily relax, a bit happier, despite how completely,
beyond confused she was. He stood suddenly, endowed with energy and a joyful happiness that was contagious, before rounding his desk to pluck the object off the shelf, a star-shaped, heavy-looking, purple stone with smoothed edges that seemed to reflect hidden light in an explosion of sparkles across its surface; when he touched it, it seemed to begin to glow from the inside, like a miniature sun.
"We'll use this; would you mind standing my dear?" He smiled kindly at her and she mirrored his smile slightly, rising to her feet as requested.
Henry started forward, his tone urgent and warning, "Grand are you really sure that's the best idea? She could be something too large for this room or dangerous."
"Henry you said yourself that her blood was likely watered down so that her real form wasn't much different from a human," Grand chided happily, holding out the stone to her. Lily found the stone absolutely beautiful and traced over its shape with her eyes, wondering what it was made out of that made it reflect light where there was none like that. The side facing her was especially bright, as though a flashlight shone on it that she was holding; she giggled just a little despite herself, hearing Henry say something in reluctant agreement behind her which she didn't really pay attention to.
Grand nodded at her triumphantly and she eagerly took the stone from him. It felt so soft, as though of wood not stone and seemed to glow even brighter in her hands. After a bit it became obvious that the stone really was glowing, and increasingly so until the light flared up so bright she had to squint her eyes, a deep humming beginning to throb from it, growing in intensity, vibrating through her hands and throughout her entire body, so that her body tingled with the sensation. From a mile away, she heard Henry exclaim something, panic in his voice and from the corner of her eye, she saw him run faster than any person she'd ever seen to grab Grand and pull the eager man away from her. Vaguely, she wondered why Henry would do such a thing before a strange sensation rippled through her body and she
felt herself growing bigger, stretching out, shifting, changing, her torso elongating, her nose and mouth furthering themselves from her eyes and forehead, and suddenly she had to drop the stone as her fingers disappeared to be replaced with a hard shell that slammed on floor as her own weight forced her to all fours, and she bumped into chairs and the desk and the bookshelves around her which moments before she couldn't even touch if she had stretched out both arms; her arms grew longer, a new appendage grew from somewhere over her bottom, hair sprouted from the back of neck, which was considerably longer, then the other hairs on her body multiplied until she felt them all over; her hips and the muscles in them more solidly bent down, and after a moment in which she finally thought the change was over, a single pain, the first real pain she'd felt from the transformation if one didn't consider the dull, highly uncomfortable ache of the entire process painful, was felt on her forehead, growing stronger and more intense until she was yelling, although a yell didn't escape her strange mouth, but a braying, which she could only vaguely register as sounding somewhat like a donkey, and she screaming, begging, for a release of the pain, which came shortly afterward with a disgusting sensation of a giant needle pushing through the skin from underneath on her forehead, outward; the skin sealed up around the long circular object on her forehead, as a wave of relief washed over her entire body. The hum which had vibrated from the stone slowly faded until she could hear other things, like the breathing of the two humans.
She flicked her ears in their direction, only slightly surprising her numbed emotions and brain that she could do so, hearing Grand's voice, so full of magic she could almost see it in the air as the sound waves passed by her, laughing joyously, wonderfully excited. She turned her head toward the sound, shocked to discover that turning her nose toward him actually overshot the man for where the reaches of her sight was, she moved her head back, so that the side of her face faced him and Henry, in the corner near the door, Henry protectively holding Grand over the shoulder and around the waist to flee at a moment's notice.
Grand were smiling, 'were', as there were two of the being which was him, one was the human mask she had seen before, the second a face the hovered underneath the mask, a being so beautiful he couldn't possibly be human, though he mostly looked it. Henry had become two as well, and his second form was so appalling to look at, she pranced in place at the displeasure it caused her, her feet and hands clicking on the floor where they held her body up. While Grand continued to laugh in response to the merriment he took from seeing her and Henry continued to have a shocked expression on his real form, but a scowl on his mask, Lily swung her head to eye her own back, seeing, with veiled shock, since her mind was beyond surprise at this point, the back and hindquarters of what could only be a horse, a white coat of fur covered her entire equine body; she twirled the new appendage she felt she could control that was above the part of her that was her bottom and saw a tail swing in response, but not a horse's tail, as it was shaved of hair until the very end, where a fuzzy ball of silky hairs originated, reminiscent of a lion's. She shook the hair along her neck, feeling the heavy weight of it move flip reluctantly back and forth over her raised neck. Desperate to see what she looked like from the outside world, she searched the room for a mirror, awkwardly prancing in a circle in the too-small room, extra strange since she had to stay on at least three of her legs at once to successfully stay upright. She found one way in the back of the room, behind the desk. She pushed the desk aside, just a tad surprised at how easily she moved the heavy, wooden piece of furniture. She stuck her head in front of the fairly large mirror, confirming her dread; a dainty-looking white horse head stared back at her, pink-nosed and more beautiful than any other horse she'd ever seen, to her own secret pleasure, to more surprise. Then she saw it. A curving, spirling, cone-shaped horn emerging from her forehead, the source of the pain she had felt while it grew. She looked at the whole of her head, slowly, despite how hard she tried to push the truth away, she realized that she was a unicorn. A unicorn. And that magic was real. No exclamations grand enough to encompass the entire situation came to mind, so she just nickered; it came naturally and the emotion in it seemed to sum up her feelings well enough, so she nodded her big head in agreement with herself once before the trauma took its toll on her and she lurched to the side; her equinian body hit the floor with a huge thud, but she was already unconscious.
