Cuteness Errupts Part 1.

Terry:
 
Elise generally took forms that were small and cute, and to her 'cute' meant 
'covered in fur, feathers or scales, long and slender, with a long tail, 
short legs, and pointy teeth'. Her colors tended to vary between drab grays 
and browns, and random patchy pastels, depending on her mood - the more 
depressed and perturbed she was, the brighter her colors got, and when she 
was *angry* her fur (or feathers, or scales) would arrange itself into jagged 
stripes of brilliant orange and purple. Her symbol, to the eyes of the 
spirit, was a triangle, not quite equilateral, with odd distortions near each 
point.
 
In class, the students were supposed to take humanoid form, and required to 
take a form that could speak, sit in or on a chair, and hold a pen. Elise 
usually fulfilled these requirements as a largish squirrel, with a mouth 
modified to be able to speak properly and paws that were a bit more like 
hands than the average squirrel's, although she often practiced minimizing 
both alterations. She'd come as a squirrel to the first dance, acting as one 
of Lisa's accessories, but since then the formal dress code for section 
seventy six had been refined to specify a minimum height, a maximum percentage-
 of skin covered by fur, a lack of a tail, a length of muzzle, and so on, 
that forced her to be more or less human - more human than she liked, but 
less human than anyone else in attendance.
 
Vassily:
 
She suspected they were changing the chairs around, to force an adjustment 
during longer classes. The size of the seat itself, the space between it and 
the desk. Even the height and angle of the back. Each chair seemd slightly 
different from every other chair, even if you sat in what you though of as 
the same one each day.
 
Lately, she'd been forced to adjust other things as well. The size and shape 
of her eyes. The response to different parts of the spectrum. Her ears to 
short out the high pitched buzzing noise that seemed to permeate the hall 
after the first hour. There were strange smells, the edge of a lingering 
scent, sometimes foul and sometimes sweet, but never the same one twice. From 
the faint odor of almonds to traces of the stench of rotting fish.  She 
thought to blame the otter, but there weren't any there.
 
Terry:
 
She used to have friends, she was almost certain of that. She remembered 
hanging around with them after class and just talking, comparing notes, 
cheating off each other's homework, or whining about the classroom conditions.-
 She hadn't seen them for a while, though, which made her nervous -- had she 
missed some vital adjustment? Or had they never even been real in the first 
place?
 
There were other students, to be sure, but their symbols were strange and she 
couldn't even recall them from minute to minute, and they certainly never let 
her cheat off their papers. So what use were they?
 
And the teachers... she glanced nervously at the door, through which one was 
certain to appear, eventually. Although the intervals kept changing, too.
 
Vassily:
 
At some time in the past, all the clocks had disappeared from the school. At 
least all the ones on the walls leaving a palimpsest of cleaner paint in 
their absence. Somehow, she suspected that it was towards the end of summer, 
the days seemed long and bright. But even outside, the temperature seemed to 
stay the same. It was always the same.
 
She tried to pass the time waiting for the instructor to appear by counting 
the beats of her heart. It seemed like an enternity, but it always does when 
you wait. Time creeps by and you imagine all the impacts over the years 
required to make the pattern of scratches on the desktop. The faint outlines 
of initials that promised eternal love encircled in a heart. What had 
happened to them?
 
She sat up straight in the desk suddenly, prompted by some barely sensed 
change in the pressure of them room. The door nearest the lectern was 
swinging slowly open. It swung silently on well oiled hinges and cast tiny 
whirlwinds of chalk dust in its wake. The instructor had arrived, shuffling 
in an unhurried way.
 
Terry:
 
Her gaze was fixed on the floor near the door, where the creature's fuzzy 
shadow, indistinct from the flourescent lights in the hallway, grew in front 
of the door -- everyone else in the room was looking at the very same spot. 
With excruciating slowness, the shadow expanded, and she refocused her eyes 
as if the blurriness was something she could correct for. Was that the 
outline of a wing? A set of horns? Was that complicated refraction pattern 
caused by a shock of transluscent fur, or some sort of crystalline aspect?
 
And the sounds... shuffling, chuffing, and something wet, like a tongue 
slurping across the floor. Her neck ached and her eyes watered as the shadow 
grew larger and larger, promising with each passing second that *this* would 
be the instant that the creature finally came into view.
 
Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. Shifting to a small, dextrous form 
with strong legs (and a bushy tail, and rather brightly colored fur, although 
that was done on reflex) and sharp eyes, she leapt from her desk to bounce 
off the greenish hair of the student in front of her, making her way towards 
the teacher's desk, where she'd be able to see what was approaching.
 
Vassily:
 
She let her eye slowly shift into the shorter wavelengths. Something was 
there. Something large, moving steadily to the desk, its outline shifting 
constantly as the light bent around it.
 
"Return to your seat." A voice rumbled from the tenuous form. She stopped and 
watched a tiny cloud of chalk dust land on a foot. It had large thick toes, 
with even heavier claws. "If Miss... will return to her seat, I will begin 
today's lecture on the subject of opacity."
 
Terry:
 
"I'm tired of this," Elise replied, "Your motives are transparent. You're 
messing with our minds... to keep us confused until you can eat us!"
 
"There is to be no... food in class," the thing responded, taking another 
step, and scraping some sharp appendage against the chalkboard with a 
defeaning screech. "Miss... must sit... or she will be detained... after."
 
The class covered (or in some cases, shifted away) their ears, and stared at 
Elise in horror as she perched on the desk. The desk where they'd put all 
their old assignments for as long as they could remember. Elise suddenly 
remembered her last assignment, as her paw started to tingle, and slowly 
turned her head to look at what was causing it, afraid of what she might see.
 
Vassily:
 
The tiny specks of dust began to dance on the surface of the desk. Slowly 
forming a pattern around Elise. A faint spiral of chalk residue against the 
dark wood of the desk. "I would like to begin." The voice was nearer, Elise 
felt the hot breath stirring her fur and he felt the heavy impact of a paw 
upon the desktop.
 
Terry:
 
"I -- I --" Elise stuttered, trying to dance back away from the swirls, but 
finding them a solid barrier. A sort of squishy, slimy barrier, completely 
surrounding her, and now oozing under her paws. The classroom around her 
seemed to fuzz out and grow blurry, as if seen through frosted glass, but she 
could still tell when she was lifted up and flung towards the chalkboard.
 
Tossed around inside her fleshy prison, she found herself staring at a piece 
of chalk, as it slowly began to write letters she couldn't see on the 
chalkboard outside the barrier. All around her, the teacher's voice rumbled, 
as it began the lesson.
 
She screamed in terror, and clawed frantically at what had to be the inside 
of the teacher's hand, but no one seemed to notice either activity.
 
Vassily:
 
Brian couldn't remember how long he'd been attending classes. He adjusted his 
form to something more comfortable with a little fur to take the edge off the 
chill. He sat with the other students in their uncomfortable desks and waited 
for the instructor to arrive.
 
Tarka:
 
Sandy steeped into the elevader and glared at the hundreads of buttons on the 
panel next to the door. Why did she have to travel all the way up to the 50th 
floor. She thumpped her tail against the side of the lift and waited as a 
pudgy looking wallaby got into the elevader with him. "Good day mate."