Welcome to Gaia! ::

So I've been a very bad person and have not posted in here for forever... for that, I apologize.

Anyway, college (and all the work involved with it) has arrived, and naturally I've become inspired to enter a number of contests during this time. I figured that once judging has been completed for the contests I've entered, I can post them here and put what place they got in the contest (if any). Each story will have a separate post.

If you'd like, you're welcome to put your own results in here as well. I will begin with my next post.

Cool, Parari!

Well, the results for one of my Gaia contests have just come in:

User who ran it: serpenteyes
Judger(s): serpenteyes
Placing: 1st
Concept: Write something about a psyonicist.
Story:

A Normal Day
If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time..

"I said stop that, Miss Aya."

I grinned, and turned my mind back to my homework.

A few of my fellow female classmates sighed and rolled their eyes at our instructor; the rest of the class, however, looked relieved.

Hey, I couldn't help it if I wound up projecting whatever music I was thinking about! And I couldn't help that everyone around me- even those who didn't have any psyonic abilities- could hear what I had to think about. Like that one time where I blasted the overture to the Phantom of the Opera in my-

Duuuuuun! Duun dun dun dun duuuuuun!

"Aya Mithian!" my instructor shouted, clapping her hands to her head in a feeble attempt to block the noise out.

"I'm sorry, ma'am!" I said sheepishly, cutting off the sounds sharply.

"If you do that again, you're off to detention, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now get back to your classwork."

I nodded, and looked down at the pot on my table while the kids about me either snickered or grinned at me.

It was both a gift and a curse to be able to project music out of one's head. On the plus side, once I had a song memorized, I didn't need a CD Player or an iPod; thus, I had plenty more money to spend on other stuff. I could also be the "boombox" at parties, where everyone could hear the music just as well as though they were in the room where the music was playing- and no neighbors could complain because my music didn't reach quite that far.

But on the down side, I had a tendency to associate music with certain people. So whenever my best friend entered a classroom, I would blast the overture to that Phantom play, because she's so obsessed over the silly play. Or for a guy I liked, I would play softer music in my head.

Not to mention that playing music in my head was the only "psychic" ability I had in me. Sure, I was good at it, but I couldn?t pick a thought out of someone else's head to save my life.

Which was why I was here, sitting in front of a little clay pot, trying to make it levitate above the table with my mind instead. Even though my abilities concerning moving objects with my mind were only slightly better than my psychic ones.

But that's what I got for having two parents who were determined that I become well-known for my mind magic instead of anything useful. Like, I dunno, making pottery instead of moving it around on my desk?

I glared at the little thing, and mentally ordered it to move.

It quivered a little, but otherwise ignored me.

"Damn stupid pot," I grumbled.

Someone chuckled, and my pot was suddenly two feet above the desk.

I frowned. "Put it back down, Damian."

The pot stayed where it was.

"Damian!" I said sharply, turning in my seat.

One of my classmates- a young man - sat there chuckling and shaking his head at me. I glared at him, saying, "Get your messed up mind off my pot."

"My mind's not messed up."

"Well, you are," I said stubbornly.

He laughed. "See if you get your pot back now," was all he said.

Now let me explain: by messy, I meant his hair was always mussed, or his shirt was never tucked in like the teachers demanded from us during school hours, or his shoes were scuffed and the laces left untied. You know, little things like that. Not that it really mattered to me. I just, you know, thought you might be interested.

But anyway.

I tried to reach out with my mind to take control over the pot, but when I attempted to move it down towards the desk, it only shot up farther into the air. I let out an annoyed growl.

"Damian, you're going to make me angry if you don?t put that down. Do you want to go mentally deaf for three days?"

The pot was back on the table before I could blink.

I smirked and sat back, crossing my arms. That threat was quite a real one; I had no qualms about using it. It didn't really hurt my victims; it just made them "deaf" so they couldn't use their psychic abilities for a while. So I could never get expelled for stuff like that. Just a load of extra homework.

Which reminded me that I still hadn't managed to pick the pot off the table by myself yet. I sneaked a peek at the instructor, hoping she'd think that its lifting a moment ago was my doing, but she had apparently been ignoring us all, writing something on the board.

I glanced left and right, then went back to glaring at the pot. It wobbled again, but didn't lift.

Damn it, if it didn't listen to me, I'd have extra homework with this stupid pot for the rest of my life.

And seeing as I'm only sixteen, that's a rather horrid thought, if you ask me.

"You're not doing it right," Damian commented.

"Shut up," I grunted, clenching my hands together to keep them from smashing the pot to pieces.

"Fine, fail the class. Get stuck in another basic class. See if I care."

"Why would you care anyway?" I muttered.

"You're my friend, you idiot. Of course I care."

"Sure as hell never seems that way."

He grunted. "Anyway, you're trying to pick it up by wrapping your mind entirely around the thing. You don't have to do that for this; for an object this light, you're more likely to squeeze the thing to pieces that way. Just lift it from the bottom; spread out a little "table" so if it tips over it'll still stay up."

"Fine, we'll try it your way," I muttered, and changed my way of trying to lift the pot.

To my astonishment, it lifted and hovered properly about three inches above my desk.

"Hey! It worked!" I said, surprised.

"Of course it did," Damian said, sounding smug.

I turned to shoot him a look, then blinked as a thought occurred to me. "How do you know what I'm doing wrong anyhow?" I asked suspiciously.

He grinned and tapped his head.

"You- how dare you! You call yourself a friend and then come into my head like that?!"

"It's not like you're blocking it, Aya. In fact, you project just about anything and everything that seems to come to your mind."

"I do not."

"You do too. I'd know; unlike you, I'm in both schools of thought." He smirked at his own joke.

"Then block off my thoughts."

"Nah, I like listening to you babble."

Everything suddenly had a red tint to it. "Babble?" I murmured dangerously, sifting through my memories for the loudest, most obnoxious song I could think of.

The grin disappeared. "Aw, come on, Aya. You take things too seriously," he complained. "Aren't friends allowed to tease?"

"You think it's funny to tease me about powers that I don't have any control over?!" I demanded, standing up.

Something shattered behind me.

With a cry of "s**t!" I whirled around to see my pot smashed against the floor, utterly destroyed.

"Miss Mithian!" a voice thundered from the front of the class. "What are you doing?!"

I glanced up. "Instructor, I got distracted, and-"

"You're disrupting class and you've destroyed your practice piece. I'd like to invite you to your own private meeting with the headmaster. Now. And feel free to stay away for the rest of the day."

The urge to blast the entire classroom with some hard rock music was suddenly very tempting. I only barely managed to keep it down, and nodded, turning on my heel and leaving.

I did my best to ignore Damian's beseeching look, jerking my arm out of his grasp when he reached for me.

~*~

"Hey, Aya! Wait up!"

Instead of slowing down, I sped up my pace, looking directly ahead at my dorm room.

"Ayyyaaaa!"

With an exasperated "Ugh!", I turned and said, "I am not in the mood for this, Damian!" The tune to "One Winged Angel"- a song from a video game I used to play obsessively when I was younger- played warningly in my mind.

My annoying classmate ignored that, continuing to approach me. When he was about three feet away, he stopped and bent over. "Yeesh, you walk fast, don't you?" he asked.

"You're just out of shape," I said sharply. "If you don't mind, I'm not allowed out of the dorms after five for the next month, and it's four-fifty."

"Look," he said as I began to turn, "I'm sorry, all right? I didn?t mean to push you like that. And... I didn't mean to make fun about your abilities."

"You mean lack thereof?"

"That," he agreed. "But really, you shouldn't take it so seriously."

"I can't help that," I replied, looking away.

"Yes, you can. Especially when it's coming from me. I'm Damian, remember? The least serious guy on the planet?" he asked, grinning.

I didn't answer that. I let go of the music in my mind, though, and he seemed to relax.

"Besides, I'm not trying to get you so mad," he said. "It's... not what I intended to do."

"Well, you do a splendid job of doing what you don't intend to do," I snapped. Four fifty-three. I had seven minutes to get up to my room before I would probably be punished with making my own practice piece as well as extra practice every day for a month.

"Damn it, Aya, will you just stand there and listen to me for once?" he said, smacking his fist against his own leg.

I bit my lip.

He paused for a moment, making sure I didn't have anything to say. Then, "I just wanted to know if you wanted help with your homework. I figured I could help you out and try to make things easier on you," he said quietly.

I thought for a moment. Then, I said, "Sure. I'd like that."

"Cool."

Slowly, I smiled at him.

And softly, gentle music started playing.

The serious expression on his face disappeared. "And what's that?" he teased.

"What's what?" I asked defensively.

"Thaaat," he sang, wiggling his fingers as though he was playing an instrument.

I blushed. "Shut up."

"I think it means-"

"Do you want to get blasted or do you want to help me with my friggin' homework?"

"Sure. First lesson; the weight of an object determines how you should pick it up. Something light like a pot would crush it if you tried to surround it completely. People, however..." He smirked.

I shrieked as my body lifted off the ground and hovered there. "Damian! Put me down!"

"Nothing doing."

"Damian!"

"Nup. You figure out how to get yourself down." He looked at his watch, then grinned again. "You'd better do it quick. You've got two minutes to get to your dorm."

"DAMIAN!"

"All right, I'll carry you there. Yeesh."

"Damian, you've got three seconds before-"

For a moment, I was too overwhelmed at the feeling of floating through the air while Darian led the way to say anything else.

Then,

"OW!"

"OWWW!"

I hit the ground like a rock after a long fall while Damian collapsed, clutching his head.

"I told you to stop," I muttered, face down in the dirt.

"That hurt," he complained.

"Don't use your powers on me, then."

"Hey! Miss Mithian?" someone called from across the lawn.

I looked up to see my instructor. "s**t."

"The time is 5:03, young lady. I don't see you in your dorm."

I groaned. "Damian?"

"What?" he muttered, rubbing his scalp.

"When I get out of trouble, I am going to kill you."

"Glad to know I?m loved around here."

Have I mentioned yet that this was considered a normal day at school for me?

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