It was a brisk late autumn day and the young cabbit and part-time troublemaker Isaac was sitting in his chair in homeroom waiting for the day to officially begin. His arm is on his desk propping up his head and he looks like he's fighting off sleep. His eyes dart between the clock, showing that his torture will only continue two more minutes, and the door watching the stragglers roll in.
He mentally counts down the seconds, and at 45 seconds left, he takes note of a girl that he's never seen before running up to the door and coming to a stop under the door frame. Immediately he noticed her long red hair and wool mane of matching color and quantity, with more red puffs of wool around the cuffs of her arms and legs. A sheep girl with bright red highlights, Isaac had to catch himself and not let his jaw drop from surprise since he found her so surprisingly beautiful so quickly. She was holding herself up, catching her breath and stretching her arms and legs out. The bell rings finally and she walks over to the teacher's desk and starts talking to him directly. The teacher points over to an empty seat which the sheep girl walks over and sits at.
The teacher stands and addresses the class and begins with a hearty "good morning, good morning!" as he usually does. "Today we have a new addition to our class, perhaps you've noticed her already. Lily, my dear, if you could kindly stand and tell us in ten seconds your name, where you're from, and something interesting about you, please."
She excitedly bounces out of her chair, and turns to face the rest of the class. "Hello, my name is Lily, I'm a fire sheep from a nearby town. I have but one sibling, and I can breathe fire!" She smiles really big at the class who in turn look a little apprehensive about the newfound revelation. The teacher chuckles deeply and responds "Well as long as you keep that outside of class, we'll get along famously!" Lily sits herself down and the teacher begins homeroom.
Isaac didn't hear a lick of the introduction, he was too busy taking in the new girl's beauty and tuned himself out once the teacher started talking. A minute into homeroom, he feels a sharp prod at his back, and he snaps up quickly and looks back to see his little brother Oliver, sitting right behind him with a pencil outstretched.
"Distracted, bro?" Oliver giggles a bit and smiles as he watches his twin brother get all flustered at the sight of a girl, something he's not known Isaac to do. Isaac scoffs at him and looks back at the front of the class. He hardly noticed it himself, but throughout the morning he frequently caught himself looking at the sheep girl and blocking out the rest of the world. He couldn't help it, something about her appearance had completely taken his attention hostage. He vowed to himself that he'd introduce himself to her right after class, lest he wouldn't get over her all day.
Not having to wait very long by that point, the bell rang for homeroom within five minutes and the class vacated, some quicker than others. Isaac watched Lily stand up and join the quicker-to-leaves wielding a map and schedule and attempted to follow her out, but she ended up going in the opposite direction of his next class. "Oh well," he thought, "I'll find her at recess then." He started off for the rest of his class to enjoy an expanded attention span until recess. Of course, "enjoy" is a strong word, considering he spent most of his time tapping his foot, playing with his pencils and simply waiting for the opportunity to move again.
After another painstaking hour of waiting, he gets his chance: the recess bell rang and the school was figuratively lit up with happiness as their break for the morning finally started. He was ready, having packed up several minutes early. He springs for his chair and nearly runs toward the door, not to waste any second looking for Lily. He goes into the hall and starts sweeping the halls, taking note of his dwindling time limit every time he passed a clock. The seconds turned into minutes and despite all of the other kids he mentally filtered out, after half of recess was over he was so far unable to find his goal. He figured he'd need to start heading toward his next class, which of course was Math. Down the hallway from his class, he spots Lily. Wasting no time, he starts walking in her direction, then taps her on the shoulder when he gets right behind her. "Excuse me" he begins.
Lily turns around to see the cabbit boy behind her and smiles. "Oh, hello there!" she happily answers. A couple seconds pass as Isaac thinks about how to continue.
"U-uh, I'm Isaac, I'm in your homeroom class," he introduces. By this point, he's already nervously blushing and finding it difficult to produce his ideas.
"Oh, I think I remember seeing you actually, you're just a couple of seats away from me!" Her expression lights up as she remembers his face, being new she hasn't had a lot of time to learn many faces yet.
Isaac reels a little, not expecting her to have remembered him at all, but he decides to continue. "O-oh, that's good then, hehe!" Another second of processing, then the recess bell rings and the halls are soon once again flooded with students shambling towards their next class. "Oop, looks like that was the bell. Do you need help finding your next class? I saw you were a bit confused before and after homeroom."
Without even looking around the hall or at her schedule, she shakes her head. "I already found it actually, it's right here." She points over to a nearby classroom, and Isaac's face lights up a bit.
"Oh wow, that's my math class too!" The blushing on his face intensifies a bit, realizing that this meant he'd be with her a lot more than just homeroom. "G-good, so we have a couple minutes then~" Lily responds with a nod and an enthusiastic "mmhm!"
"So uh... I'm sorry for asking, but what was your name again?" He couldn't believe he had to ask that question, but having daydreamed through her introduction, had no choice. Luckily, being new at the school, she was expecting to have to repeat that several times.
"My name's Lily. I'm a fire sheep!" She stands up straight and smiles even bigger at him.
"What's a fire sheep? Like a regular sheep but... with fire?" Isaac had genuinely not encountered a fire sheep before, hence his original surprise and fascination with her appearance.
Lily giggled at the question, another one she seems to get frequently. "Uh huh, that's pretty much exactly it. My wool is immune to hot temperatures, and I can even breathe fire too!" She put on a very proud face, knowing that there was very little of those particular qualities around the school.
Isaac's eyes go a little big hearing that, then he replies "I guess that makes you quite a _hot_ girl, huh?" They both giggle at the pun for a bit, then Isaac continues "Hehe, that was a joke, but seriously, you are really pretty." Admitting that was almost enough to kill Isaac from embarrassment and he visibly slumped forward a bit, his face as red as a tomato. Lily knew what he was trying to say right away though, so she put a hand on his shoulder. "Heh, thank you Isaac, you're such a sweetheart~"
As the other kids started to filter into the room, indicating that their passing period was coming to an end, he picks himself back up and says "we should probably be getting inside." She nods and comments to him that she'd lost a necklace of hers sometime during the recess. "I'll see if I can find it during lunch, maybe check the lost and found," she remarked before starting the walk to the classroom. "It was a gift from my grandmother, I really need to get it back."
"I can help you find it if you wanted," Isaac proposed. Anything to let him spend some time with her was good in his eyes. Lily smiled at him and gave him a big hug. "Let's do it during lunch then, I'm sure with our efforts combined we can find it!" The strength of her voice indicated her excitement and gratitude towards, to her, a complete stranger. Isaac was determined to change that notion though.
As they walk in the door together, Isaac gets one last word in. "Oh, Lily, if you want, you can call my 'Izzy', I usually prefer that amongst my friends."
"Aww, okay then Izzy. I'm glad you consider me a friend so quickly~" Lily enthusiastically replied. They both get inside just as the bell rings. Isaac takes his usual seat and Lily goes up to the teacher to talk for a brief second, then is pointed to the empty desk right next to Isaac. She sits down and turns to him saying "looks like we're gonna get to know each other a little better the next few days~" She smiles and winks at him, sending Isaac's heart aflutter. Obviously he had no problem with this new development, and it served to make future homerooms a little more bearable since it wasn't his only chance to see her throughout the day.
The math class proceeds a lot better than earlier for Isaac, now that he had at least talked to Lily he felt a lot more at ease and less distracted by his own fantasies. He stole a glance at her every now and then, but remained attentive to the lesson at hand. When the bell finally rang to dismiss them, they both got up and went for the door, Lily reading her schedule over again.
"So where to next?" Isaac inquired, hoping to be in another class with her. She looks over her schedule and recites "PE, over in the gym." Isaac's smile goes down a little bit, realizing it didn't match his schedule, and responded "ah, okay, I'm not too far from there if you wanted to walk over there together? I could show you where it is." He starts to lead the way and Lily begins to follow, but clarifies that "I already know where it is, I saw it coming in first thing in the morning."
Isaac nods and then decides to ask to see her schedule to see what else she had. She hands him over the schedule while she took another look at the map. Sadly, none of the other classes matched up with Isaac's, but at least they still had homeroom and math together. "Darn, only two classes," he mutters to himself. Lily catches his words, but didn't get the meaning. "Hm, what's that?" she asked.
"Ah, nothing, just that you only have two classes with me." Isaac giggles softly and scratches at the back of his head. Lily smirks a bit hearing that. "Oh, you wished you had more classes with me, huh?" she teased. The slight blush in his cheeks flared up a bit as he got defensive. "A-ah, I mean... Hehe," babbled the frazzled cabbit. They got to a break in the hall finally and turned to go down the fork, pointing down the other path and explaining "the gym's just down there, you'll have to talk to the coach to get PE clothes. If you don't already have them, that is."
She nods and thanks him, and right before he leaves she comes in to hug him, making him even redder in the cheeks. "Thank you, Izzy, I appreciate the help today~" she gleefully adds. "I-it's no problem Lily, always hard to be the new kid," Izzy reassures. "Maybe we'll see each other during lunch?"
"I'll make that more likely to happen~" claims Lily. Isaac nods and waves as she turns to go to the gym lockers, while himself walking over to his shop class. "Least now I get to make stuff out of wood."
As he approached the door, he noticed Oliver again, standing in the door frame watching the last of that exchange, smirking at his brother's apparent embarrassment. "Oh my god, you see something in this girl don't you?" Oliver chuckles to himself as Isaac walks through the door anyway.
"Oh cool it, you're the one that's dating a literal demon," Isaac retorts. Oliver recoils a bit for effect, but ultimately didn't see the exact point of the insult. He ultimately followed Isaac into class and sits down next to him with hardly another word. Half the class passes as the kids work on their projects for the month and Isaac stood up to excuse himself to use the bathroom. He leaves the classroom and walks over to the nearest bathroom, but as he went to push open the door, he noticed something shiny out of the corner of his eye. He bent down to pick it up, and realized it was a necklace. Immediately excited that he may have found what Lily was looking for, he pockets the necklace and returns to attending to the reason he was there in the first place, then walks back to the classroom.
As he sits back down, Oliver was busy sawing several pieces of wood to proper size at the cutting area, so Isaac waited for him to come back. Oliver returns with his stack of planks and sits down, noticing the necklace hanging out of Isaac's pocket.
"What'cha got there, bro? You thinking about wearing chains or something?" he joked, pointing at the necklace. Isaac looks down and pulls it out of his pocket, not realizing until then it was hanging out, and showed it to Oliver. "No, no, it's a necklace, I found it when I went to take a leak," Isaac replied. Oliver smirks a bit and pokes at his brother a little more.
"You gonna gift it to your giiiiirlfriend?" he teased with an obvious grin. Isaac starts reddening a bit and attempts to clarify. "No, it's already hers."
"You stole it then?" Oliver puts his paws up to his muzzle as if in shock, but he was smiling underneath it and Isaac could see. "I found it while I was going to the bathroom, it was just on the ground!" he nearly shouted. A couple of the other kids looked over at them, but quickly returned to their work. "Just shush, little brother, she told me earlier that she lost it and I'm just bringing it back." To which Oliver shrugs and goes back to his woodwork, and soon enough, the bell rang. One more class until lunch, and he was anticipating it heavily.
Once that fated lunch bell finally rang, Isaac starts scouring the school to find Lily. Remembering her schedule from recess, he had a good idea where to start looking. He walks over toward the building she was in, making sure to walk down the path one would follow going to the lunch tables. Sure enough, within a minute, she appeared from behind a corner amongst a large group of other kids, all on their way to lunch. Slowly wading through the crowd, Isaac makes his way towards Lily, who waves at him once they were both in eyesight of each other.
"Izzy!" she shouted as she waved. Isaac waved shyly back as she approached, but kept the necklace from earlier hidden in his pocket. He offers his hand to her, offering to lead her to the lunch area, to which she obviously agrees, taking his hand and starting to follow excitedly. Once they got to the lunch area, Isaac reached into his pocket and produces the necklace he found earlier, and holds it out for her to see. Her eyes light up immediately, but before she could say anything, Isaac asked her "Would this happen to be yours?" in as smooth of a voice as he could muster. She immediately springs herself forward and wraps her arms tightly around him and squeezes him tightly in a big enthusiastic hug. "Izzy, you found it! Oh my god I thought I might have lost this for good!" She proceeds to kiss Isaac right on the cheek, turning the previously smooth cabbit into a big blushy mess. Isaac squeezes her back after realizing what was going on and found himself unable to speak for a minute. She lets him go finally, and he finally manages to reply] "I-it's no big deal, I spotted it when I was going to the bathroom earlier, you must have dropped it there at some point."
"Must have been, I was in a hurry there. I had to find my class at the time, so I had to move as fast as I could," she explained. She takes the necklace from Isaac and unfastens it, then presents him with it, the ends between her thumbs and index fingers. "Would you like to put it on me~?" she suggested with a flirtatous tone to her voice. Isaac smiles a bit and nods, still pink in the cheeks, taking the tips of the necklace from her and bringing them around her neck to meet in the back. It takes a few seconds for him to get the ends connected, but he clicks the latch closed and steps back to admire Lily in her newly returned necklace and smiles even more. "Looks beautiful, Lily. A lot more beautiful now than when I found it~" Lily put her paws on her cheeks and started giggling, the reaches over and ruffles Isaac's hair.
"Awww, you're silly, Izzy~ Thank you for finding my necklace," says Lily, smiling back at the cabbit as big as he was. After a few more seconds, Lily reaches out and grab's Isaac's hand and starts leading him over to an empty table. They sit down and they both pull out lunches from their respective bags. Isaac was carrying a sandwich with an ample assortment of cheese, lettuce and ham, while Lily sat there with an apple and a small bowl of mixed veggies. They start to eat their food when Isaac got a little curious. "So where did you go to school before this?" he inquired.
"There was a smaller school over by the farm that I live at that I used to go to, but my mom and dad decided I should go somewhere in town," she explained. "There are a lot more kinds of furs here, very different than my old school~"
Isaac's eyes grew slightly, not knowing anything about that old school or what it might have been like. "Was it really strict, like some of the religious schools a few of us attend?" he pressed, trying to draw a line between her experience and something he knew.
"No, it was just... small," she continues. "There aren't many kids that attend that school, so we all know each other. I've seen way more kids here than I would have ever thought possible at my old school!" Isaac chuckles, the bigger crowds being so normal to him he could see why she was excited, even maybe a bit intimidated. She didn't seem to be intimidated though, but he wanted to make sure.
"You know, coming from a smaller place, you probably haven't run into many people that want trouble with you, huh?" he quizzed. She didn't take long to think. "We have our disagreements sometimes, but generally everyone's pretty nice to each other."
"Mmm, you should probably be careful your first few days here, some of the more aggressive kids will sometimes pick on the smaller ones, and not to be judgy, but you technically are 'prey'" he explains, doing the finger-quotes gesture when he said "prey". Lily's initial response was simply to smirk, then she clarified her expression. "Prey or not, I know how to fight back~ I can breathe fire, you know?"
Isaac stares at her as he again tries to comprehend the possibility that she can breathe fire, still in a bit of disbelief from the first time. "R-really, like... How can you breathe fire exactly?"
"I'm a fire sheep, silly~ I'm practically made of fire inside!" she belts excitedly. She decides to take her paw and make a tube with her thumb and fingers, then blows through one end, causing a small set of flames to shoot out the other end.
"Woah! Th-that's amazing!" He still could hardly believe it, but for what it's worth, she was indeed telling the truth. "J-just don't go getting yourself in trouble with that, the teachers don't appreciate it when you hurt other students."
She tilts her head to the opposite side it was tilted, and articulates her real plan. "Not to worry, anyone decides to give me trouble, I just show them that. Nine times out of ten, nobody wants to play with fire, especially when they think I know how to use it~"
"So you're still not... a master at it yet then?" He wanted to clarify, especially since the "think" phrasing threw him off a bit.
"I'm good _enough,_ there's still a lot more I could learn, but what's important is that I look like I do. And trust me, when I first showed you that, you were sure I looked the part too, weren't you?"
Isaac ponders for a second, and she was completely right. Not only did she look like she knew what she was doing, he also took note that there weren't many firebreathers wandering around this school. Lily had the charisma of someone who has things under control. "Okay, fair enough, I think you'll be fine here," he finally admits. Lily perks up a bit and smiles at him very innocently, contrasting starkly with the collected firebreather he just came to terms with. Once they had both eaten their food, the lunch bell finally rang, prompting students to walk to their next class. They both stand up and throw away their trash, and start walking back towards the classrooms.
"That was a great lunch, Izzy, hope you have a good rest of your day!" Lily calls out as their paths start to separate. "Hey, did you want to meet out at the bike racks after school? I have to get my bike there," Lily invites. She points out that her last class was gym, the furthest part of the school from the bike racks, but not too much further than Isaac's science class. "Yeah, that sounds fine, I'll see you there Lily!" He walks back over to her and hugs her one last time before they separated, Isaac sporting a big confident smile for the rest of the day.
After what seemed like an eternity of a day and a rollercoaster of unprecedented events, the final bell rang to dismiss the students from school. Isaac grabs his backpack which he had cleverly packed five minutes early and bounds towards the classroom door nearly throwing himself outside. He had a place to be for sure. Darting down the halls, he made his way to the bike racks as agreed, swiftly stepping through crowds of people taking care to not run into anyone. Finally, he could see the bike racks in the distance, and as he approached, a bright red figure emerged from the other nearby enterance. He recognized it immediately as Lily, and was simultaneously joyed to see her, and surprised that she had beaten him to their meeting spot. He brings himself to a stop right in front of her and wastes no time getting to the point. "How did you get here so fast? I thought your last class was further away than mine!" he questioned.
"Just fast, I guess~" he cheerily answered. "Oh, and a one minute headstart doesn't hurt either!" She sticks her tongue out at him and giggles a bit, then walks over to her bike and starts to unlock it. Isaac meanders over and watches, trying to figure out the right phrasing for what he wanted to say.
"I-uh... I'm really happy I met you today Lily~" His voice rang sincere, and he was smiling at her unusually big, reflecting on the day that they had. Lily smiles back at him and replies "I'm happy I met you too Izzy! I didn't think I'd be so lucky to make a good friend on my first day in a school like this~"
She skillfully undoes the 4-number combination lock without looking at it, using the raised portions to figure out where each part was, then pulls the lock apart and stands back up. "I live decently far away, a little hard to get there on foot, but maybe you could visit sometime? Or I, you maybe?" Isaac doesn't need much time to ponder the offer before responding "Of course, maybe Konnor would have you over for dinner later this week," he suggested. Lily nods to that, and puts on her helmet. "That sounds great, I can't wait to meet your family~" She leans in towards Isaac and gives him one last surprise kiss on the cheek, enflaming the cabbit's cheeks one more time for the day.
She climbs on her bike and waves to Isaac as she starts to ride towards the street. "Bye bye Izzy, it was lovely meeting you, I'll see you tomorrow!" Isaac waves back and smiles, calling back "see you then Lily!" as she rode further and further, just watching her as she shrunk into the distance. He takes a few more seconds to collect himself, and then starts walking in the opposite direction to get home.
