Josh tumbled to the floor, a little dizzy and a little nauseous. That was… definitely… a way to travel. Maybe if he’d been in control it wouldn’t have been quite so nauseating.

Ulisa was messing with a strange panel on the wall, grumbling to herself as she did. She slid a little spinny thing across, then pressed a couple buttons. At her touch, the strange green scribbles on the panel morphed into... different strange green scribbles. And the eldritch girl continued to grumble.

“I-I’m sorry, Ulisa,” Josh said. “For... how that went. I guess there wasn’t really anything I could’ve done, but still... I... yeah. Hey, at least you got your extra credit, right?”

She didn’t respond, just staring at the panel for a moment.

Finally... quietly, hesitantly, he asked, “Why did you bring me—”

“Shut up,” she suddenly snapped, leaving the panel to stomp over and glare down at him… And then, a moment later, up at him, as she picked him up with her tentacles, pressing him up against the wall. “Pathetic little thing. You’re beneath me. Unimportant. I do what I do for power, anything more is chance, or... fleeting fancy,” she mused. “You’re right, I have my extra credit. You have lost your purpose, extraplanar.”

Josh stared down at her, his tummy doing flips, his face warm. He couldn’t help but feel like she wasn’t telling the truth... it just didn’t make sense for her to drag him along if she thought so low of him. Everything she was saying kinda just sounded like posturing to him, an obvious attempt to obscure the truth. 

But... thinking about it... If it made her feel better, he didn’t really mind the way she was acting, the way she was treating him. She could be as mean as she wanted if it made her hurt less.

Hmm. Maybe there was another way he could help, another way he could make her hurt less. Something more than just allowing her to be mean to him. It’s what the Violet Witch would’ve done, right? She always did her best to help the people around her, even if they didn’t appreciate her for it. And in this case... Josh was going through similar stuff, wasn’t he? With his mother. So if he could relate to Ulisa... maybe she could relate to him, too?

“I-I have family that has expectations of me, too...” he started, quietly. “Unreasonable expectations. You’re not alone, Ul—”

“I said  s h u t   u p !” she growled, before dropping him back down onto the floor and retreating to the panel. “You could never understand me, extraplanar. Don’t even try.”

Finished at the panel, she spared only one fleeting, disgusted glance at him, and then stalked through the doorway, leaving him sitting there, wondering if there was anything he could’ve done differently.

Josh continued staring after her for more than a moment. Good lord, she really was very upset. But... well. He’d tried.

Eventually, the extraplanar did get back up, walking over to the door and peeking his head in to see if he could see where she’d gone. It was a massive room, and it smelled very good in there. Like... food. 

Was he finally going to get to eat again? He was hungry. 

Actually, no, saying he was only hungry was an understatement, considering the last thing he’d eaten was some stolen Halloween candy the night before. What kinds of interesting foods could he steal in there?

“What are you doing, extraplanar?” someone laughed from behind him.

“Oh, Ludi!” Josh gasped, spinning around to see her numerous sharp teeth in another grin. “This room smells like food!”

“Y-yes, it would,” she said, chuckling at him. “Considering it’s a canteen. Are you hungry?”

“I’m so hungry,” he whined. 

“What do you want, then?” she asked. “A melt and noodles?” she suggested with a wink.

He ignored her terrible humour and said, “I’m so hungry that I legitimately do not care. I assume everything will be alien to me, anyway... I’ll try anything and everything!”

“Very well,” she said, smirking as she turned to the panel. “I shall get you… anything and everything.”

“Uhh… wait,” he started, suddenly panicking. “Does that mean—”

“You know what it means, extraplanar. Now, patience.”

Josh was surprised to find he was more afraid of Ludi’s threat than Ulisa’s, and backed away into the canteen, letting the door swing shut behind him.

He felt sort of exposed as he walked through the huge room. It was actually a pretty place; there were abundant plants (alien plants that he didn’t understand, obviously,) short walls for people to sit on, a fountain of ink that was moving in reverse… and tables of all shapes and sizes were placed all around the room. Where was Ulisa, though? It didn’t look like she was at any of those.

Keeping his eyes peeled as he walked, he— thump.

“Height is a disease,” a familiar voice grumbled.

Terisse! Josh had completely missed her because he was looking above her and to the side, and as a result had somehow managed to walk directly into her. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

“I am fine,” she said, that familiar glare returning.

“S-sorry,” he said again, realising too late that even ‘are you alright’ was a question, and since she was riddleriddled, she may not have been able to help answering.

“Whatever,” she sighed, shaking her head at him and beginning to walk away. Josh followed, hoping that she’d been sitting with Ulisa and she was on her way back. Luckily, his hopes were met, and when they arrived at a dim table tucked into a wall, just out of sight, they found Ulisa with her face pressed flat against the tabletop, her arms splayed.

“That is quite the way to sit, Ulisa,” Terisse hummed. “Let me guess: Astia.”

Ulisa just moaned.

“I see,” said Terisse, hopping on the bench and sliding into the inner seat at the table.

“Can I—” Josh started, before quickly stopping, and restarting. “I... am going to... sit down next to you. Unless you object.”

Terisse gave him a look like he’d grown a second head. Which, honestly, you never knew in Oculum. It could’ve happened. Or at the very least he could’ve grown a third eye. “Do what you want, extraplanar,” she said, turning away and somehow pulling a thick book out of thin air and beginning to page through it.

Josh sat down, and then looked over at Ulisa, who quickly shifted, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been watching him. Maybe with one of the eyes on her shoulders?

It was quiet then, quiet and calm for maybe the first time since he’d arrived in Oculum. He spent those first few moments looking around; taking in the finer details of the eldritch girls, and of the canteen. 

At first, things had seemed so strange and otherworldly here. Everything was utterly unlike back home, after all. But not even half a day had gone by, and it had already all begun to sink in.  He couldn’t help but make connection after connection between the world here and the world back home.

And the eldritch girls, the girls that were all kind of mean to him, the girls with way too many eyes... they all just... Well, they all were just mean girls with too many eyes. He’d kind of stopped seeing them as anything else, now.

Oculum was definitely a place toeing the line between the familiar and the obscure. And when a place is just familiar enough like that — just enough that you can understand it, but not enough that you can predict it — the place is just... interesting. 

Seeing how things are unique... Finding new opportunities... Making new connections.

“It’s going to be weird when I’m back home,” Josh murmured, mostly to himself.

“Hmm. I think things will be back to normal, actually,” Terisse mused, and Josh gave her a glance. She hadn’t even looked up from her book.

“You’re right,” he said. “And that’s what’ll be weird.” Going back home... Back to where things were normal... Back to where the meanest kind of thing anyone ever said to him was his mother not believing in him. Back when the most interesting thing that could happen to him was finding a lost coin on the ground, or winning a school raffle that gave him a pack of gum.

Back to a place where he struggled to even feel alive.

Josh Holliday wasn’t even sure what he was feeling, anymore.

👁👁👁👁👁👁👁

“This is way too much food.”

Ludi snorted. “I only got one of everything this time, this isn’t even a fourteenth as ridiculous as I’ve gone before.”

Josh Holliday was completely and totally flabbergasted. Apparently “anything and everything” covered five tables! Let alone fourteen times that much... 

Like he’d said... Even this was way, way, way too much food. There was no way they’d eat it all, let alone just Ludi and him eating it by themselves. And if they didn’t eat it all… what would they even do with it? Wouldn’t it all go to waste?

“Well? What looks good, extraplanar?” 

“I… well… I guess… ummm…” Josh stammered, looking at everything. His eyes settling on what appeared to be a slightly pale dinner roll, he asked, “Is this… bread?”

“Of a sort, yes,” Ludi grinned.

Shaking his head, he hesitantly grabbed it, and sniffed it. It… smelled like bread. Then he took a nibble. It tasted like bread, too! And it was just the slightest bit sweet, with a fruity aftertaste. It was good, actually! Really good. Feeling less afraid, he took a bigger bite, and then a different texture and much more vibrant taste hit his tongue. It had some kind of fruit filling! It was like a slightly less sweet version of a jelly donut, and now that he was in the centre it was even a little tart. It was actually really good, and made even better by how long it’d been since he’d eaten.

Josh Holliday practically inhaled that not-donut, and had to take a couple minutes afterward drinking water and letting it sit before he could go back for something more.

This time he was feeling much more adventurous, and he began looking for some kind of meat. He eventually found some strange, purple bacon, and it did taste like bacon, but with a little bit more spicy heat. It was great.

“It looks like it was hungry,” Terisse mused. “Maybe we should’ve fed it sooner?”

“Tsk tsk, Ulisa,” Ludi laughed. “Mistreating your pet.”

“It’s not my pet,” Ulisa grumbled, a few of her eyes landing on him as he nibbled on a banana the size of his arm. They narrowed into a glare and he stopped eating, a little embarrassed.

...But not for long, and eventually Josh Holliday was sitting at the table next to Terisse, slowly working away at a plate of strange and surprisingly good dishes. It was like an alien buffet! 

And it was actually kind of companionable, too, sitting there in silence with Terisse. Perhaps partially because on the other side of the table, Ulisa and Ludi had gotten embroiled in an argument with each other about food-related magicks. Josh couldn’t claim to understand most of what they were talking about, but Ulisa seemed to be arguing completely seriously, with Ludi saying absolute nonsense with a grin, and sneakily tangenting off to slightly different topics so that Ulisa was always on the back foot. They both seemed to be enjoying themselves, though, and he was glad to see Ulisa having recovered from the... uhh... Astia stuff.

“So, umm... Terisse...” Josh said, eventually, setting down a bowl of... something.

“Mm,” she acknowledged.

He’d taken his time to figure out the best way to phrase his question as a statement, so that it was entirely up to her whether she wanted to respond. “I was wondering where you were earlier, since you weren’t in class with us.”

She looked away from her book for the first time since they’d sat down, staring at him over her shoulder. The goth girl held that gaze with him for a while, just long enough that he’d started to become uncomfortable.

“I do not attend many classes with those two,” she then finally said, gesturing to Ulisa, then Ludi in turn. “For a few reasons. Firstly, while they have nine and five eyes, respectively, I only have three. I don’t know if you’re aware yet, but the magicks someone can do are based partially on their understanding of it, partially on the amount of practice and experience they have, and partially on the raw power they have access to. And the raw power someone has access to... That is based solely on the number of eyes they’ve attained.”

“So basically, you’re all on different levels in different aspects, it sounds like,” Josh said, idly stirring his bowl of... something with a spoon.

“Exactly,” Terisse nodded. “I have the greatest understanding of Odd Magicks in the group,” she said, then gestured to her book; the pages filled with tight, unreadable text; strange, curvy symbols that for some reason his brain kept seeing as Comic Sans, but whenever he tried to read them, they became incomprehensible, non-latin gibberish. “...But, coincidentally, also the least amount of raw power.”

He nodded. “Right, gotcha.”

“I don’t want to eat a pleep burger! I’m not even hungry!” Ulisa yelled suddenly, and the two of them looked over at the other side of the table to see her and Ludi wrestling, Ludi trying to force a blue, dripping sandwich into her face. “You will get what you deserve! And you deserve pleep!” 

How in the world did their conversation devolve into that?

“...As for where I was instead,” the goth girl to his side said, forcing Josh to tear his eyes away from the strange sight. “Well... Let’s just say that... Oculum has a very large library.”

“All in that unreadable script I assume,” he said, gesturing at her book again.

She gave him a smile as she shook her head. Wait, a smile? She was smiling at him? Was it because he was specifically trying to respect her by not asking questions around her? “Oh, no,” she said, in an enigmatic tone of voice. “There are many different unreadable scripts, not just this one.”

And then, looking between the text, and her face, and back, and forth... Josh finally burst into a fit of giggles, and... so too did Terisse.