A cute duckling in an ugly world

Chapter 2: The friend

Two months into school and Alcid still didn't make any friends. Everyone she met just made fun of her. She talked with Shaosi a few times about it but Shaosi couldn't help her. Shaosi couldn't stop all the demons picking on and making fun of Alcid because she was different. Even Astera, Alcid's roommate, asked that they moved her to another room because Alcid was damaging her reputation. Soon enough, one of the demonesses wasn't careful in chemistry class and blew herself up so Astera moved to her room. Alcid was now all alone, but at least she now had a sanctuary where no one insulted her and made fun of her.

In two weeks Halloween vacation will start. Halloween was the most celebrated day of the year. Halloween was the time of the year you spend with your family celebrating, giving each other gifts and eating so much food until you burst. Halloween was special for one more reason. With the red blood moon in the sky, the barrier between the demon world and the mortal world was the thinnest on that day so the student demons, who usually couldn't cross to the mortal world, each year made a bet on who can scare a mortal to death. Others treated the winner of the bet like a king for the rest of the school year. The teachers knew about the beat, and that they were going to the mortal world without permission, but it was a good exercise for the students, so they let them do it.

Alcid left the school and returned to her village for the Halloween vacation. Her mother had so many questions about the school, other demons, friends she made, but Alcid wasn't in the mood to talk about school. She dodged the questions telling her mother that everything was fine and asking her how she and her father were. Most of her vacation she spent visiting her friends from the village and in her room.

One day Alcid looked around her room thinking that she could take something with her to school to remind her of home when one of her bone ornaments fell under her bed. She kneeled on the floor and looked under her bed to see where it went. It stopped at the wall, as far away as it could have, of course. Alcid lay down on the floor to retrieve it and when she was under the bed, she looked up. She saw a big piece of paper on the bed under the mattress. She retrieved the bone ornament, stood next to the bed and lifted the mattress. The paper she saw had a symbol similar to the symbols Astera had on her paper scrolls. But how, her family wasn't one of the old families. Alcid took the paper scroll and rolled it into a tube. She wanted to find out what it meant before she confronted her parents.

With Halloween vacation almost over Alcid went back to school. She got some nice new dresses, jackets and boots for Halloween. Her mother always knew what she liked. As she entered her dorm room, she saw two suitcases and a white demoness with two black horns, with ridges, on her head unpacking.

The demoness saw her and said. "Hi, I'm Kheba. I'm your new roommate." Kheba said. She was white like Alcid with two small black horns on her, long sharp claws and a tail.

"Hi, I'm Alcid. How come you arrived just now?" Alcid asked.

"My family moves around a lot and there's a whole bunch of us. This is my second high school and I told my dad that this time I'm staying here because this school has dorms." Kheba said. "So what kind of a demon are you? What's your power?" she asked.

Alcid realized that she never told anyone what her power was because no one asked her. She stood in the room for a few seconds and then said. "Well... It's nothing special. Do you see this flower on my head? It produces an acid that can dissolve anything in seconds."

"That's amazing." Kheba said. "Can you show me?"

"Yes. Do you have anything that you don't want to see ever again?" Alcid asked.

"Yeah, just a sec." Kheba rummaged through one of her suitcases and took out a framed picture of her as a small child.

"You sure you want to get rid of that? You look so adorable in that picture." Alcid said.