Among the Stars Part 1 Revised with a bit of addition
Rain was falling down in torrents outside, where students padded up and down the sidewalk as hastily as they forseeably could, against the chill autumn wind that made the windows shake and howled like a hellish, tormented demon. However it wasn't the howling of the wind, nor the rattling of the windows that kept Zain from concentrating on his studies, nor any of the myriad other sounds that a strong Autumn gale can produce. He looked across the rain-soaked lawn outside his window, sipped his coffee (still a bit too hot to drink quickly), and thought about his first week of classes. They were interesting, definitely. The bright young fox had a voracious appetite for learning and especially Astronomy. He had enjoyed the animated Proffesor Yangston's lectures, rife with enthusiasm and vigour, made all the more memorable due to the Deer's seemingly boundless energy that led him to pace about the room, gesturing to the sky that so captured his imagination. Zain smiled as he
remembered the Deer nearly squashing a late-comer flat as he paced to and fro at a pace that made many of the bemused freshman a bit dizzy. Intriguing though his classes were, they quickly receded to the background of his musings as he came upon the real reason for his temporary lack of interest in his studies. For all of his enthusiasm for science (he normally adored being in class), and despite the capering about of his new favorite teacher, he had still found himself distracted. There he was, sitting in his first class on his first day of college, full of nervous excitement for what was to come, but through the door had walked something-someone- that had sent his heart racing and still made his fur tingle.
"Zain!" shouted his roomate, Matt from down the hall. "Zain! What are you sleep- The tiger rounded the corner, and poked his head through the doorway to find Zain staring out the window with a somewhat glazed look in his eyes, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his muzzle. "Hey, dude, Earth to Z!" "Huh? Oh... sorry Matt... I guess I zoned there for second, what's up?" Zain said with a sheepish grin, trying to regain some semblance of composure. He took his hand off of his face, sat up a bit straighter, and turned to face his roomate, who was starting to look a bit embarrased, as if he had walked in on him in the middle of changing. "That's okay" he said with a small laugh. "I know how you science guys are, got your heads in the clouds... or the black holes or whatever. The guys and I are going into town for a while, you want to go?" The tiger's tail was whipped to and fro behind him, echoing the excited grin on his face, and just missing the sides of the doorframe. Zain's thoughts went back to his neglected homework for a moment, but seeing the tiger's earnestness, he decided a few hours of relaxing might do some good. "Mhmm, sure, just let me change." was his reply. He looked about his rather untidy dorm room (what would his mother say if she were here?) and spotted his favorite purple and black sweatshirt, and pulled on a pair of jeans. Deep-set jade green eyes, as green as summer, stared back at him from the mirror on the back of his door. He was pretty tall, (for a fox) about five foot eleven, he had a feminine frame- as "skinny as toothpick on a diet", as his mother used to tell him, and as black as a jar of ink from ear to paw. 'Man, I look tired.' he thought to himself as he closed the door behind him and went to join his roomates at the door.
His thoughts continued to wander as he padded over the marble floor of the local mall, sipping yet another caffeine-laced concoction (soy cappacino, no sugar) from Pawbucks, taking in noseful after noseful of the various scents and smells of the many restaurants and stands that lined the walls of the food court. His more refined vulpine nose could pick out freshly baked cinammon rolls, pepperoni pizza, brewing coffee, and many other delicious scents that made his mouth water and his stomach rumble. His new roomates jabbered on for short while about their new classes (better than highschool at least), but they quickly turned (as eighteen and nineteen year old boys' thoughts and conversations usually do) to the various girls they had encountered. No one seemed to notice that Zain was hardly paying attention, so caught up were they with the prospect of dorm dating life. "By the time you're all done with this class, Mr Yangston had said, you will hopefully all be able to appreciate our position in this vast and beautiful comos. We are all tinier than grains of sand compared to the sweeping grandour that surrounds us, spanning the lightyears." Wonderful though his introductory speech was, one student had completely stopped listening. As Proffessor Yangston had uttered the word 'beautiful'- he had walked in the room. It was like a sign from the heavens, although Zain seemed to be the only one who noticed. Two eyes of the deepest, piercing azure blue had met his, eyes that made his fur stand on end, his heart stand still. His mouth seemed to have forgotten how to produce saliva. He felt like his soul was being drained from his body to merge with those eyes, they contained the placid serenity of a quiet arctic morning, as the sun rises and it's rays play and dance upon the crystals of pure ice. He longed right there to hide himself in all of that quiet beauty and splendour, to curl up and get lost for a while in those eyes. "Probably not too many hot ones in quantum-mechanics 101 huh, Z?" Mikee asked. For the second time that day, Zain found himself dumfoundedly staring at someone talking to him, having completely missed what was said.