After running extension cords out of the pocket to power the beast and waking him from his slumber, Lisbeth didn’t really have much to do. It was five and a half hours till the floor meeting, and there were no events scheduled until orientation week officially started on Monday. Lisbeth didn’t know any humans on campus, the one dwarf she knew wasn’t scheduled to arrive till the evening. Fortunately she got lucky; a girl with short blue hair who identified herself as “Krista” was in the lounge attempting to gather people to go to the cafeteria. Krista had already managed to rope in a girl named Amy to join her.
Between the three of them they only got lost twice trying to find the cafeteria. It was located on the opposite side of the campus close to the other human residence halls. Mind Hall had been deliberately placed next to the Dwarf and Elven halls. It was notoriously difficult for a human telepath to read the mind of other races so the arrangement kept everyone calm. When they eventually did find the cafeteria it was mostly empty, most people would be busy moving in and/or trying to get one last good meal out of their parents.
Krista turned out to be one of those nauseatingly cheerful girls who were impossible to dislike. She was also an empath who had apparently made it her life goal to make everyone else happy as well. The problem with empaths is that they generally got their powers very young, which meant they never learned to read body language. Since Amy was keeping her mental shields up and Lisbeth was naturally resistant, they were unreadable to an inexperienced empath. Krista was doing her best to remain cheerful, but Lisbeth could see her getting increasingly anxious since she couldn’t read her companions. Amy was a general telepath, they generally didn’t get their powers till they hit puberty and were generally better adjusted to social situations even without reading people. So she was doing slightly better than Krista, but only slightly.
Lisbeth watched with a certain fascination as the two gained increasingly forced smiles and got rather jumpy. No wonder group and individual therapy were mandatory for Mind Hall residents. Well not for herself, all she had were mandatory ethics and law classes, the other residents had those on top of the therapy. They were going to need the therapy if Krista and Amy were any indication of how the rest of the freshman telepaths could cope in an environment without their powers. Lots of telepaths ended up in government positions, usually to block other telepaths, which led to a lot of situations where everyone in a room was shielded in some way.
Eventually Krista and Amy just kind of shut down, they stopped trying to hold a conversation and just focused on the food. Lisbeth was kind of worried about the floormates, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. She got the feeling that the residents of Mind hall were not going to be socializing much. Not that she’d expect them to want to hang out so much anyways, once they found out what she was. It wouldn’t matter much in the end; she had more important things to worry about than the badly adjusted telepaths.
Lisbeth, Krista and Amy slowly returned to their dorm after lunch, if anything it had gotten busier more families having arrived. Lisbeth received her own surprise upon returning to her room; standing outside her door was an elf. Even by elf standards he was breathtaking, he had the body of the dancer, a really good one. His dark hair clearly had been cut by someone expensive and it perfectly framed his hazel eyes. His simple white tee-shirt hugged his body, leaving no imagination necessary on just how perfect his abs were. At 180cm or so he towered over Lisbeth, but she walked right up to him without a care.
“Hello Devon.”
Raising Angels & Defection 