“There she goes again,” said classmate Elinor Annasi, wincing through the deafening cacophony of pops and snaps emanating from Fesner’s neck as if it were the ethereal hum of the ancient spirits beckoning forth The Great One from its multigenerational slumber. “She must have been waiting all week for that one.”

“That just can’t be good for your joints,” Annasi continued as Fesner squeezed her eyes shut and clung to the back of her chair, contorting her torso as if she were The Great One exercising the beings of sleep from its body and adjusting to its new human form, determined to fulfill the prophecy. “It’s like, now she’s just trying to make a show of it.”

At press time Fesner was loudly picking at her fingernails in the dining hall like an alchemist preparing the last ingredient to an elixir strong enough to sever his soul from his mortal flesh and rejoin the elders in the dark corridors of forever.