Part 9: how opposites meet - a Shadilver story
``Waaaah!'' Silver yelled and sat up straight on their mattress. It was always that same haunting dream, but this time it was a bit different, the emerald hedgehog was added to the crowd, but there was also a weird flash of light, a bright blueish one. Silver rubbed their eyes and still looked tired. Their cats were looking over at the ivory hedgehog still a bit startled from the yelp.
``Please you guys, don't be afraid, it was just a bad dream.'' Princess Piddle Paws was the first one to come back on the mattress. Nibbles and Ms Prume quickly followed. ``Hmmm Meowrits still hasn't come back home.'' Silver sighed and started to worry a bit. ``It's probably nothing, this isn't the first time he's been wandering around on the streets for multiple nights.'' Silver looked at their phone, it was hard to read the time because of all the cracks in the screen.
Silver sighed ``Ugh, it's already 7.30 am, it's no use going back to sleep now.'' The ivory hedgehog yawned while stretching and dragged their backpack towards them. They took out a sandwich the youngster had snatched from the cafeteria yesterday. Silver opened the sandwich and took the meat out, ``Here you go guys, it isn't much but it's food.'' Silver gave the meat to their cats and started to nibble the sandwich. Silver looked over at the river and saw the sun rise. The early sunlight stroked their face, as if a loved one held their head caringly saying everything will be alright. Silver closed their eyes for a moment just enjoying the warmth, but it didn't take long before they felt a warm wet tear rolling down their cheek. Silver took bunny bun and used one of its long ears to wipe away their tear. They sighed and put away the sandwich as the youngster didn't feel hungry anymore.
Nibbles was done with his breakfast and curled up against Silver, Silver smiled softly and stroked him. ``I'm so happy I have you guys.''
After freshening up, Silver took all their stuff and made their way to school. Even a day later there where so many questions running around in their head. `It's a shame Tails won't be at school today, but well, how could I ever tell him about yesterday. I don't want to startle him, or maybe he would tell it to their teachers. That is the last thing I want.'
`I should feel more excited about today, today's my first art class! That should be fun!' Silver thought for a moment, `Would Shadow be at school today?' the youngster wondered, not knowing if they wanted him to be at school or not. `Would he even wanted to speak to me, or just pretend like nothing happened. It's all just so weird, I've so many questions!?
Silver reached the school building and went in. There were many students in the hallways, but far less than normally. Apparently most students used Wednesday as a day for home study or to use the workshops and library. But Silver's day was fully booked with a period of arts and a period Philosophy.
Silver went to the art class and took a seat in the back. It was still early and there were no students or teachers in the classroom yet, but there were easels all over the place. Silver took an art book from a shelf. It was a book about colour theory by Johannes Itten. Starting to flip through the pages Silver just felt the urge of just creating something and trying out some of these theories. Especially the complementary colour composition looked interesting.
The bell rang and just a handful of students and Mrs Rose entered the classroom. ``Oh good morning Silver, you're already here.'' The students all looked over to Silver which made their cheeks turn slightly pink.
``Oh so this is the new student?'' A girl came over and shook Silver's hand, ``Nice to meet you, I'm Marine.'' Silver smiled shyly, ``Nice to meet you too.''
Soon all the other students came over to meet Silver, Silver noticed there were only girls in the art class. They really made the youngster feel welcome.
``So let's get started. Today we will be studying and practicing composition,'' Mrs Rose took out a crate with random objects.
Silver felt really comfortable during this class and really enjoyed theirself. They tried out so many things and Mrs Rose taught them all about the rule of thirds for the composition theory. All the students needed to make a composition with all the random object Mrs Rose had brought with her. And when I say random, I really mean `random' form real stuffed animals, to a frying pan and from a pitchfork to a Furby, just all kinds of weird stuff. All the students needed to sketch out everyone's composition and look at it from every angle to just find the right spot.
``I hope you all liked today's lesson as much as I did, looking at all of your results was also very inspiring. It's just great to see when you play around with random objects, the composition, the angle and the lightning how all of a sudden a composition can start to tell a story.'' Mrs Rose's words made Silver feel more excited already.
The bell rang and the students grunted as everybody was disappointed the class was over already.
They all packed their bags and started walking towards the cafeteria. ``Oh Silver could you please stay for a bit?'' Mrs Rose asked. Silver walked over to Mrs Rose while all the others students left. ``How are you doing, are you enjoying college so far?"
``Yeah, kind of,'' Silver replied, Mrs Rose looked a bit questionable. ``Oh no, I mean I do, but I'm just still getting use to everything.''
``I can understand. But I have to say I am very impressed with your efforts during today's lesson.'' Silver smiled shyly, but also a bit proud. ``You really did a good job and I could see your fellow classmates treated you as an equal.''
``Yeah they are really nice.''
``Sure are, it's nice to catch up with you, now go enjoy your lunch break.'' Silver thanked Mrs Rose and went outside to enjoy the rest of their breakfast.
``Hey there you are, we looked all over for you in the cafeteria,'' The girls from art class came over and sat with the youngster on the picknick bench. Silver looked surprised, as they expected to be alone for the whole break, but this was actually very nice. The girls took out all kind of snacks they just bought at the cafeteria.
``You want some?'' Sally asked holding up a bag of cookies. ``Life is too short to eat such a boring sandwich every lunchbreak,'' she said with a heart-warming smile.
``Oh no thank you, I haven't brought anything with me to share.''
``Oh come on, who cares here,'' She took a handful of cookies and gave them to Silver.
``Just take what you want,'' Nicole said, they all nodded and offered their food.
``You're all just too kind,'' Silver smiled shyly and took a bite of the cookie.
Never ever, had Silver had so much fun during lunchbreak. For years Silver always had lunch with Tails but Tails always had more friends than Silver and those other friends weren't very fond of the ivory hedgehog. Silver felt happy in this moment, for the first time it felt like they had friends of their own. It was just nice sitting with them and listening to them gossip, talking about boys and the new clothes they had bought, looking at the pictures they took of their pets and so on. It felt like Silver had nothing to worry about.
_______________________________
For the first time Silver felt disappointed when the bell rang to let students know lunchbreak was over. It was such a shame all the girls didn't take philosophy as well. Silver head towards the lecture hall. It looked just like a big cinema, but it had a lectern in front of the screen. Not all the seats were taken, maybe only forty percent. In front of every seat was a little table you could slider out to use for books or a laptop. Silver put their backpack on the seat next to them and pulled out their books, a notebook and a pen to take notes.
``Can I sit there?'' A female badger asked, as she pointed at the seat where Silver had put their bag. The ivory hedgehog looked around a bit questionable since there were so many empty seats, `why did she want to sit directly next to me?' But Silver didn't want to seem rude and took their backpack off the seat and put it on their other side. ``Thank you,'' the badger said.
The class started with a big lecture on Plato. The badger sat down and put her feet on top of the foldable table and her arms over the back of her seat. Silver looked a bit annoyed, as she wasn't wearing any shoes, and her feet were pretty close to their face while taking notes. Silver looked at her, ``Excuse me, do you mind?'' they asked while nodding at her feet.
``Oh excuse me,'' she said rolling her eyes and put her feet back on the ground.
After a few minutes she laid her arms on the table and placed her head on top off them while looking at the screen. She started to make bored noises with her mouth, which annoyed Silver even more as they were trying to concentrate on the lecture. She started to look over at Silver. But they were trying to avoid her stare.
After a while of staring she asked, ``Whatcha doing?''
``Well,'' Silver answered annoyed ``I'm `trying' to concentrate and take notes,'' replying with an emphasis on the word `trying'.
``And how's that working out for you?''
``Well it was going pretty well, until you started to take away my concentration,'' they answered a bit snappy.
``How am I taking away your concentration?''
Silver sighed, ``Could you just please be quiet?''
``Why?''
``Because I'm trying to concentrate.''
``Why are you trying to concentrate?''
``Why are you asking so many annoying questions?''
``Isn?t that the point of philosophy?''
Silver went quiet for a moment, ``Yes it is but...''
``But you would rather write down old theories of old philosophers instead of doing the philosophy part yourself?'' Silver looked a bit questionable, she raised an eyebrow waiting for an answer.
``But doesn't knowing about philosophy theories of the past help us with the philosophy of the present and the future?"
The badger lifted her hands, ``How should I know, I'm not even a student.''
``What? Then why are you here?''
``I don't know, it just happens every Wednesday,'' She smiled over at Silver. Who smiled a bit awkwardly back. `This girl is crazy' the youngster thought, `but also challenging, I like that.'
``I'm Silver by the way,'' as Silver felt it would be a good point to get to know each other.
``Are you Silver? Or are you named Silver?''
Silver planted their hand on their face as a facepalm, ``Both.''
``Interesting,'' She said as she thought about their answer. ``Well, I'm named Sticks, but I ain't no Sticks.''
``I can see that.'' Silver said laughing a bit. She smiled back.
``Can you two tell me what's so funny?'' The lecturer asked and the whole class turned to face Silver and Sticks. Silver froze but Sticks answered.
``Well it's just the point of view of Plato how according to him "Ideas" or "Forms", are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are merely imitations,'' Sticks replied in a way to say, `Isn't that obvious.'
The lecturer raised an eyebrow and a smile formed on his lips, ``And to think, I thought you weren't paying attention.'' And he continued. Silver looked blown away at Sticks.
``What?''
``How did you do that?'' Silver asked.
``Just repeat the last thing the lecturer said and sound smart,'' Silver smiled and turned to their notes.
