i'll trade my mistakes or they'll fade away [thirteen]

The stress had gotten to her.

Years upon years of experience, and you would have thought that she'd be used to it by now. That wasn't the case. However much experience you had, you could not just keep doing multiple jobs over a long period of time before burning out. Sure, she aged over seven times slower than your average human, but at the core, Aurora was just that: human. And her body still worked on human time, emotions and mental patterns.

Three months away from the school however had done well to reconfigure her mind into a state where she could teach again, or at the very least, manage teachers...or find and direct lost students.

Students popping out on the islands or the school was by and large a semi-common occurrence. The Concierge handled some students, others came through portals, rifts, or simply just appeared out of nowhere. Aurora handled those as they came up. Only, despite all the foresight granted to her, the mage wasn't quite prepared for what she was going to find on the tower.

Aurora walked through the portal, and her heart skipped a beat. She ducked back behind the portal just for a second, and swallowed before going back out. Something was very...off, for lack of a better word. Either she was slightly delusional, or time was about to play a very dirty trick on her.

"I don't generally find students up here this time of night. Can I help you with something?"

Aurora was hoping he'd turn around at least once.

And maybe get a name.

Lost Child of Time - Chrono Cross

Thirteen always hoped. Always hoped that timelines would stay where they were, never cross, and simply flow naturally down diverging paths away from each other. But where one part of the river of time diverged...others met. The strange thing was that two particular timelines had merged more often than not. Pavonine, Adularia, Sender, Arrieta. They had all appeared at the Academy during some point in her tenure here.

That wasn't too bad. Pav was aggressive, but not inherently destructive. Adularia had been in this timeline much longer than herself. To her, Aurora might have seemed like the anomaly. Sender and Arrieta were easy...they were just people caught up in this timeline and looking to make a life.

Possibly like Neil was.

Yes, she knew the name. Frankly, it was difficult to forget. In the timeline that Pavonine had come from, Neil had led an immensely destructive crusade in a video game, one that eventually had consequences outside of that game: Aurora's and Adularia's death in that timeline. Although Aurora would eventually reincarnate sometime in the future, the war would spread until it had engulfed millions of dollars in digital property, and consumed numerous lives both digital and physical.

He was destructive. Maybe he was different here, but the fear was lingering. Enough so that despite all the power she wielded, Aurora found herself swallowing to drive her anxiety back down. The mage waved her hand and shook her head, putting him at the ease that he wasn't in trouble. Yet.

"No no, it's quite alright. Students just don't come up here very often from what I remember. I was surprised to find anyone at all."

He was new? Curious. Aurora was now wondering how he had ended up on the island. By a temporal rift? Or was he naturally brought into the timeline by birth?

"My name is Aurora, I'm a...well, administrator here. What brought you to the academy?"

Honestly, he might not even know himself. Aurum hadn't known what exactly happened, nor Pavonine until her awakening. Chances are maybe he was just as out of the loop as she was.

Awkward situation averted...somewhat at least. Aurora honestly didn't know what to expect. A supervillain perhaps, but the difference in timelines meant that somewhere at sometime, even she was trying to take over the world. Maybe things were still hitting a little too close to home to be comfortable. The mage tightened her cloak slightly and walked onto the tower proper.

"You can skip the 'Miss,' it makes me feel old."

It didn't help that she had already been married and widowed. The time for the first title all ladies get had long passed into history. Aurora leaned against one of the stones on the leading edge of the tower and looked up.

"Most students are either studying or sleeping where they choose to live. I would be doing the same, except it's only my second day back. Things have changed a little and I thought I'd go looking around."

It wasn't quite that simple, but the whole looking thing wasn't a fabrication. She remembered everything that happened with her life. Such an gift however made her poor with rote memorization most of the time. Events were easy, but it was highly embarrassing when a student had learned a piece of music she'd assigned faster than she had learned...or was still learning.

Aurora tapped her fingers on the stone, thinking of how students did come to the school. Some by recruitment of sorts, others via less conventional means.

"I would say 90% of everyone coming here for the first time comes by boat. The other 10% pop out of one of the many anomalies that occurs on the island from time to time; temporal rifts, wormholes. Others yet come via their own methods, supernatural or technological. If you don't know how you got here...I would suspect you're in the 10%. It's not school policy to drug or otherwise force anyone into coming here unless they're a danger to themselves or outside society."

That was the job Amelia handled. She was called The Concierge for a reason, but in all honesty, the job had a better title: Acquisitions. Of course, any forced move for a student involved records, and normally, she'd have remembered seeing something of the sort. Maybe it was worth a second look.

"What's the last thing you remember before appearing here?"

Aurora had a bit of a smile on her face. The poor boy obviously had no idea what was going on, and was polite almost to a fault. Frankly, she was finding it very difficult to hold a grudge of any sort against him...even if she did partly blame him for her death at the hands of well, them.

The whole 'miss' thing really wasn't a big deal. She wasn't married anymore, but titles always seemed a little stuffy. For whatever reason, despite having learned not to, Aurora always mentioned that she was a teacher. It was advantageous in avoiding unnecessary teen drama that came with the academic life, but when you wanted kids to be truthful to you, the same concept acted against her quite severely. Very few wanted to divulge anything to a teacher, professor, or any adult really.

"Nobody sleeps the first night. Or the first week. And even then it doesn't get much better. I'm almost certain that if these islands were included on a global census that we'd probably have the most prescriptions for sleeping aids on the planet."

Although Aurora laughed at the thought, there were a disturbing level of truth in those words. Aided sleep was a big deal at the school for both students and teachers. For those that had chosen to come here, or for the natives, there was only slightly less problem.

The story of the kid's parents and waking up here was one she'd heard before. There was however some amount of discrepancy in the story that veered from the normal patterns that Aurora had seen. The name of that stupid game was there too. 'Cyberpolis.'

"You woke up with an ID card? That's a little bit strange. Not unheard of, but most people tend to find their way to the school before getting an ID card and a room."

Unless he was abducted or something. Or something supremely strange had occurred, which again, wasn't unheard of. Aurora leaned and stretched her back somewhat.

"In all honesty, if you weren't forced here by some supernatural means, leaving is usually as easy as telling the school and leaving on the boat. Sometimes however...the stay is more permanent."

For those that weren't human, or couldn't appear it, Manta Carlos was probably the only place on the planet that was safe.

"Is the ID part of the schools? Or the islands in general? You can request your own records of how you got here usually through one of the two entities. They're pretty meticulous about it, what with the weird things that always happen."

"At first it's homesickness. Then its spirits, animals, the cosmos, witches having a late night get together. You know, normal college stuff."

Of all the things that Aurora had said so far, that was actually the farthest from any truth so far. Spirits didn't come into the dorms more or less, and any witchery was done far from the heads of the dorms that inhabited them. More often than not, there was just a strange feeling one got from sleeping on an island filled with supernaturals, and it didn't exactly go away on a whim.

You know what else didn't go away on a whim? Students. They didn't just come here on a whim usually either, but so far, this one seemed to defy every known method of reaching the island...not that it was hard to do.

"Possible, but not guaranteed to go home. You'll have to talk to admissions before I could tell you any more. The fact you have a student ID, and a major apparently means you should have records to look into. Cytus in the admissions office can help with that. That said, I do stress the word 'should.' This place is known for making the strange seem commonplace. I don't have an explanation for it, but I wouldn't be surprised either way if we had records or not on your enrollment here."

Aurora already had the feeling that something was off, but it wasn't enough to warrant an actual time sight spell. If the Nei-- the student was a sleeper, she'd have a headache for some time past the spell that she would need another vacation to work off.

"If you have a tablet or smartphone, there's surprisingly good WiFi up here if you want to check yourself. Your enrollment records are kept on the local intranet."

It would save him a day and a trip to admissions if he was in fact, already enrolled.