As I walk through the door to the science classroom, I literally get blindsided. It turns out my feathery best friend does not, in fact, know how to take it easy.

“Lily~, I missed you so much! How come we have to be in different classes?” Ava whines.

“You know why, Ava. I can’t exactly take flight class with you, and there’s about one out of every fifty harpies that’s talented enough to do magic. So even if we had every class possible together, there’d still be two classes we wouldn’t have together. Come on, let’s sit down.”

The mention of seats causes Ava’s face to immediately change from crestfallen to shining. “Oo, oo, perfect! I actually came here as fast as I could so I could get us the best seats!” She then proceeds to drag me by the claw toward the front. 

I groan internally when I realize where she’s pulling me. Of course Ava would be the type to sit up front. Still, I can’t help but ask.

“Ava, why are we sitting at the front?” I whine.

“Huh? Well, I figured it would be the best spot for you, considering everyone else’s mana would get in the way of seeing the board if you sat in the back,” my friend explains. That surprises me. Was my best friend actually really smart and thoughtful?

“Anyway, come on come on, let’s sit down!” she squeals, regaining her energy that had been toned down a moment earlier.

I allow my impetuous friend to drag me up to the rightmost seats in the row of six, and coil my tail below the chair before leaning into it. Technically, my tail makes a fine chair by itself, but between having a chair back and common courtesy, using an actual chair is fine by me.

The rest of the students filter in over the course of the next few minutes, and the very real bell rings just as the last girl, a kobold, makes her way to the empty seat in the second row.

The teacher, a hakutaku, stands up from her desk and claps twice. “Alright class, time to begin. Of course, that means roll call.” She begins listing off names, to which the students respond with the standard “here.” After she finishes, she writes her name on the board: Mrs. Min Niu. Underneath, she writes Cycles of the Moons. Then she just stands there with her arms folded beneath her rather generous bust, waiting for the class to quiet. Once we do, she begins her lesson. 

“Alright, first, who can tell me the names of the three moons and how long their cycles are?” Mrs. Niu asks. A few hands shoot up, and others join more slowly, but I’m one of the few that don’t, since I don’t know. She calls on the almost-late kobold girl whose hand was one of the first ones reaching eagerly into the air.

“The largest moon, which is pink, is called Luna, and it has a full moon every thirty-six days,” the dog-girl begins in a rush, “the second largest, which is pale yellow, is called Selene and is full every four hundred thirty-two days, and the smallest, green moon is named Ceres and takes six days to reach full again.” She then sits back down after her excitement from being called on caused her to stand up.

From what I could smell, our teacher is a bit surprised at the canine’s energy, but to her credit, she seems to regain her train of thought very quickly. “Excellently put, Miss Kirby. One important thing to note is that each of the shorter cycles fits neatly into the ones longer than it. In fact, this is why we base our calendar on it. There are four hundred thirty-two days in a year, beginning every full moon of Selene; thirty-six days in a month, corresponding with Luna; and six days a week, matching Ceres’s cycle. Because of this, the new moons never line up, but the full moons line up every year on New Year’s Day.”

After that, she begins explaining the waxing and waning phases, and I tune out a bit. They all orbited Eos, the planet I’m now living on, in the opposite direction the moon orbited Earth, so the phases filled, then waned, from left to right instead of right to left. Not that I really paid much attention to it before.

Now that I think about it, Earth years are a different length. How many Earth years old am I, then? Days are the same length, at least.

I decide I want to figure it out, and my old habit of mumbling my work slips out right away. “So I’m eleven years and about three months old… 11 times 432 plus 3 times 36… that many days, divided by… equals… point three- one-five times twelve equals… Done!” I murmur.

I couldn’t be exact since I used 365 days per year because I don’t have a calculator and long division is a bitch. With that said, in Earth time, I’m about 13 years and 4 months old! Also, I’ll be 18 in Earth years by high school! Fufu. Take that, age of consent laws! I’ll have nothing to worry about!

I’m startled out of my quiet musings by the still very real bell, signaling that I had been lost in my head for nearly the entire class period, and that it’s now time for the most hectic class of the day: lunch.