-Domains-

7:40am.

Sage checked his phone again, 7:40am.

He was...early?

This was new.

He slid down the wall beside his classroom door, binder in hand, and stared into the empty hallway blankly. Deep in a thought only his phone ringing would bring him out of. Sage recognized the number...his teacher for fairy school? At 7:40? Sage picked up.

"Hello?" Sage said, leaning into his phone.

"Sage, dear, hello!! Oh, I hope I'm not interrupting anything." His teacher said

"No, I'm just waiting on a class, got here too early." Sage said, trying not to sound as unsure of his new name as he was.

"That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about."

Oh. This was 'the phone call' she'd been talking about. His teacher always said if assignments were turned in late, or not at all, she would make a phone call home. However this was kind of an empty threat, she wouldn't call his human parents because well...they're human, and if she called him he could easily just not answer. But he did...for some reason.

"Listen sweetie, you have so much potential, but you need to start taking this class more seriously. You have so many lates, and it's becoming really hard to excuse. I understand you're also attending a human school, and this is probably a lot to maintain. The thing is, most fairies by now have been given the chance to go back to their fairy parents or fairy parent, but I can't really send you back to your parents. I found some fairies that are willing to adopt if you'd like to go with them. I highly recommend you do, it will make this all much easier."

Sage thought about his teacher's offer for only a few seconds before giving a definitive answer.

"No." Sage said with confidence,

"No?" His teacher inquired,

"What do you mean? You want to stay with the humans? Why?" His teacher continued

"Because. They're my parents." Sage said with a smile

"Why don't you think about it for a bit?" His teacher tried to reason

"No." Sage said

"Um, call me tomorrow? Sleep on it?" His teacher continued to reason

"I won't." Sage said, and he meant it too.

"Well, sweetie you have to keep your options open..." His teacher argued

"Nah." Said Sage, and he hung up after that. Hanging up on your teacher? Usually not the best plan. But what would he even need this magic school for anyway? He'd been hiding his powers for so long he hardly had any use for them. Maybe it was best to just leave this all behind him. After all, his life of being picked on and only really having one friend was surely much better than magic school and the possibility of meeting another fairy.

He loved his parents, and he'd rather be with the people that raised him than some random fairies he'd never even met before. He stared at the door to his science classroom, just across the hallway. He remembered what happened just the day before, when that weird kid asked him weird questions to see if he could talk. Maybe this was why he was so different, and if he could find more of his kind he'd finally fit in. He had to stay in this school, it was his only shot at being understood by others.

He could do this.

He could keep up a reputation in both schools.

All he had to do was sacrifice all his sleep and sell his soul to fairies.

Seems reasonable.

This time he was gonna make sure to do both his assignment and his homework once he got home.

Sage had the absolute joy of having art class in the morning, and before he knew it all his worries were lost in his ink shading assignment.

"And to create the stipple effect, you use dots to shade this circle." His art teacher said, Sage followed the instructions on the white board. Art was the one class he wasn't failing. Well he shouldn't say 'failing' it's more like 'barely passing'. But he still kept the same confident and chipper attitude he's always had, for better or for worse.

...

The bell ringing was usually a happy sound, but not when it meant leaving his safe place, or 'the art room' as most people called it. Plus, this meant he was going back to science class, which he had with that guy...and his name was...Alexander just told him...oh come on, he swore he wouldn't forget...JACKSON!! Yes, he had no clue why he kept struggling with the name. And once he sat down in his science class he debated reading more of his book or not, but these jerks shouldn't dictate what he does. So he pulled out his favourite book and let his eyes glide the pages. But he was forced to put it down once his science teacher started speaking. "Okay, so I think we all have a good grasp on Bohr Rutherford diagrams, and today we'll be drawing our own in groups of two." Every time any teacher said the words 'groups of two' Sage could practically hear the whole class begging the teacher to let them choose their partners. Sage wouldn't even know who to choose if the teacher said he could, he didn't know anybody, but from over hearing rumours alone he knew most of them were jerks.

"I won't be choosing your partners."

Suddenly the air went calm.

"This wheel of names will."

Suddenly the air was tense again.

The grand wheel of names made a small ticking noise as it sped past Sage's name, and landed on someone else.

"Alyssa and Lily."

The first group was made.

"Audrey and Damien."

The second group was made.

And then the wheel spun very slowly, the tick almost landing on Jake's name, but going one over and landing on Sage's name.

And now the spin that would decide his fate.

The wheel spun, and every name the tick scrolled past Sage could only imagine the disappointed look on their face when they realized they'd have to work with him.

Would it be Sarah? Would it be Jesse? Would it be Clara? Would it be Jackson?

And then the wheel stopped.

Oh no.

Out of all the people Sage didn't wanna be in a group with...

"Mylo and Jackson."

This was the worst of them all.

Everyone walked to their partners and started the usual small talk and 'so what do you wanna do?' everyone was so familiar with by now. Jackson wasn't walking towards him so Sage walked towards him. Whatever happened next was now his fault.

This time Sage lingered over Jackson's desk, he considered asking him why he was so weird, but he thought back to homemade countdown till summer break he made, the sticky note he switched just this morning, the sticky note read '12 days'. Less than a week. And it made Sage smile every he thought of it. But this also meant he can't start anything.

"So you wanna start with oxygen? It's pretty easy to draw."

Sage said, drawing out the circles, writing out the protons and neutrons, and sliding the paper to Jackson.

"You wanna try one? You can do, ah, sodium or something." Sage said

Jackson eyed him suspiciously, but took the pencil and started drawing out the circles.

He seemed oddly quiet, Sage felt safe from his weird remarks until...

"How did you do that trick where you make your pencils look like they're flying?"

Oh.

Oh no.

Sage instantly felt his heart beating faster than it ever had, he was getting cold sweats at a single sentence. There were very few rules you had to follow to be in fairy school:

1. don't tell any humans you're a fairy.

That's it. That's the rules. And Sage had somehow broken the one simple rule, all because he wanted more practice, all because he kept living stubbornly in this life of both being a human and a fairy. That's why his heart dropped, but he couldn't let it show now, now he had to act like this dude was crazy.

"Oh, you mean like this?" Sage said, throwing his pencil in the air and catching it in his hand.

"No, you had like some kind of string or something..." Jackson said, continuing to eye Sage suspiciously.

Out of all the people that could have found out... this guy? Really?

"Oh yeah, I um...like to pretend I have telekinesis?" Sage said, oh god, did he really have to make himself seem like an even bigger weirdo than before??

"It's really weird, you know?" Jackson said, passing the paper back to Sage.

"Yeah, I know." Sage said looking at the floor now. Right then, he swore he'd have no more eye contact with this guy for as long as he lives.

The rest of the project was done in silence, he preferred it that way anyway. He half-expected Jackson to break the silence by asking him how he could fly, but he never did. Sage had to be more sneaky because that was a close one, no more magic at school, from now on.

...

He was spent by the time he got home but he's got to keep on top of this fairy school work now.

He checked his computer for today's assignment...

'Domains and rulers' oh fun, more stuff for him to read. But reading is easier than learning spells anyway. And so he scrolled through the paragraph.

"Humans separate our land in a different way than fairies do. Fairies have Domains instead of countries, separating the world by different regions. And inside those domains are fairy villages, which we've learned to hide in big forests or places where humans won't be.

There are the seven domains:

1. Fox domain

-Where mostly frost fairies live in very cold climates humans can't live in.

2.Cloud domain

-Used to be a huge domain full of fairies but it was under vicious attack that left it with only one village and none of it's original rulers.

3.Mushroom domain

-A small area with a good amount of hidden villages, not under vicious attack but definitely still under attack, after the death of it's rulers it was taken over by hunters. All villages hide deep in forests.

4.Daisy domain

- Fairies have made an underground living space to hide from the many hunters on the surface.

5. Diamond domain

-Where I live, the only place without any hunters, a safe place for fairies to set up schools like this.

6. River domain

-Water fairies live hidden underwater in lakes and rivers, lots of hunters and hunter traps on the surface but very safe underwater.

7. Blood domain

-Home of the hunters, this is where you send fairies if you want them never to return.

Every domain is named after the last name of it's ruler, despite the fact that most our rulers are gone now, we still call them this out of respect to our once great leaders. I am aired to throne for the diamond domain, that's why my name is Brooklyn Diamond."

Oh woah no way, his teacher was royalty! He didn't even notice. How could he have?

Oh.

He noticed something at the bottom of the page, a world map, but instead of the human countries, it had all the fairy domains. He recognized his country fast, Canada has all those little islands so it's easy to see, Canada had a couple domains spilt across it, and where he lived was...

The Mushroom domain.