Ooooh
I literally just finished my last bit of school work I had to do this spring, so now I am free to (study some biology and work) begin our summer vacation story. I'm a little nervous. But here we go...
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"Your favourite drink?"
We do this sometimes, me and Tauria. We met about exactly a year back, when we both came to the academy. We became friends really fast, both being a little younger than the average first-term academy student. Not unusually young, but still younger than most. And when I say friends, I mean friends. All our other friends keep teasing us about it, saying we would make such a beautiful couple. But that's not it at all, and we both know it. So we let them tease, and smile quietly to each other. I've been actually wondering if there is something going on between her and this girl Laelia, who came in a term later than us, and who is even younger than we were when we got here. But she's a girl, so... where we live, Tauria wouldn't tell even me, even if I asked.
"Juice. Orange juice," I say. We like doing this, just asking each other questions we don't know the answers to. Our fourth term, our second summer term, starts tomorrow, and we can still find things to ask.
"Orange juice?" she looks at me with a raised eyebrow, "Knute, you know I haven't ever even seen an orange. They don't exactly grow around here."
I smile, "Yeah, I know. But I've tasted it once, and it really was the best thing I've ever tasted."
For a moment she looks like she doesn't believe me, but then I can see from her face she waves it off in her mind and rolls onto her back, so she sees me upside down over the foot of her bunk. She waves her head a little and her hair almost sweeps the floor. I look at her for a moment in the dim light.
"Why are your eyes purple?"
"Why are my eyes purple?" she repeats. I nod. "Why are your eyes so stunningly green? How would I know why my eyes are purple?"
I shrug.
"Maybe there's a story to it."
"Well, there isn't," she rolls back onto her stomach. "What's the first thing you remember from when you were a child?"
"Hmm..." I say. I need to think about this one. She can see it from my face. I turn to look at the flame dancing on the candle next to me.
Suddenly I remember something. Something from deep in my childhood. I can see it in my eyes, clear as it had happened yesterday. I'm maybe three years old, and playing with a branch on a forest clearing. My parents are some distance away, eating and drinking. They're laughing, I can hear their voices. It's early spring, the leaves of the trees just about to break out and color the whole world green. The grass I'm sitting on is already green, and soft. I look at the branch and think how beautiful it would be if the leaves were out already, and I wouldn't have to wait for the pretty green any more. I can feel my hand get warm. The leaves in the branch slowly push out of they're little hiding buds. The whole branch becomes green with leaves. I laugh out loud and wave the branch. It tickles. I laugh louder, stand up unsteadily and run to my parents.
"Mommy, mommy look, the first leaves came out! I got the first leaves come out! Now it's all green and pretty and smells good," I say, and I show my branch to my mother proud.
But mom looks shocked. She's not even looking at my beautiful branch, she's just staring at me like I had done something very, very bad. I pull my hand back and look to the ground.
"You, you got the leaves to come out?" mom asks, and I nod. She sounds really mad, and like she's trying not to. I can feel tears flooding my eyes. She grabs the branch from my hand, roughly. Dad picks me up. Mom swings the branch in his face, and they talk fast. So fast I can't keep up with what they're saying. But they don't sound happy. They don't sound happy at all. I must've done something really bad. I...
"Knute!"
I snap out of the memory. Tauria is looking at me, a little worried.
"Uh," I say, and add after a moment, "What?"
"What just happened to you?"
"I... remembered something. I need to go."
"You remembered what? From the look on your face it was something really bad."
It was. But I can't tell her. I can't tell anyone. In some of the neighbour countries, maybe. But not here.
"Uh... I remembered I forgot to sign up for this one class that starts tomorrow," I can see she doesn't believe me, but she doesn't say anything, "I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow, ok?"
She nods. I get up, almost stumble on my way to the door. I pull it open, and shut it behind me a little too fast. I walk fast. I break into a run when I get out of the building. I run, it doesn't even matter where. I'm not going to get away from this. I stop and lean against a wall, out of breath. I'm behind one of the academy buildings, no one can see me, so I slide to the ground, my back against the stone wall, cold in the late spring evening.
I can feel panic trying to take over.
I have magic.
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I realise all our stories have been first-person narrators, and for a moment I was going to do something else with this, but it just comes out naturally. I can't help it. I fell in love with first-person narration years ago. I mean, seriously, I'm currently trying to write a book with multiple first-person narrators.
It' just gives a level of intimacy to the text than your typical more-or-less omniscient narrator.
Protagonist-narrator is just my way of telling a story, even though I've heard some author give advice saying (writing, probably), that you should never use a first-person narrator unless there is a voice in the story who's call is simply irresistible. Or maybe I just write characters with such voices. I have no idea.
Anyway.
You want a topic for tomorrow, right? History.
Also, are we going to not use the same topics we've used so far? Cause I think we should. But I'm noticing I keep coming back to the same ones. Even though there are so many things in the world.
Also, I hope you don't hate the names. Cause I really like them.
I'll hear from you on Friday.
~matu
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