Six: Celestinia Academy and Lame Names
2935 Words
What really happened to Celestinia? I really don't know why I keep thinking about her, she suddenly pops up every once in a while, in random places like when I'm eating dinner or when I'm in the shower. Although I have only showered once so that’s not much of a reference.
I groan and sit up on the bed, arranging the pillows behind me so that I can lean comfortably against the wall while I think about everything that's going on. Just the present, I don't feel like having a heart-to-heart with myself anytime soon about what happened, instead, I focus on what's going to happen soon.
I'm leaving to go to the academy dorm in ten minutes, and god am I nervous. What should I wear? How much makeup should I put on? How should I style my hair? So many freaking questions, I feel so insecure and new to this world, it's like my reality has literally turned upside down
I slap myself, well not literally, I do it mentally retaining my dignity. Snap out of it you're being vain Al, and worrying about their opinions of you, well guess what Al, some of them are gonna hate you no matter how it goes, and some of them will probably ignore you so stop being stupid. Your guardian, best friend, aunt and in some ways mother could be dead for all you know and here I am thinking what some stupid people are gonna think of me, I am an i***t.
What have I become, am I really going to start to pep-talk myself now? I should save it for someone other than me.
"You ready to go Ally?" Demi hollers from downstairs her last word echoes eerily through the empty halls.
"Yeah, I coming down now!" I call back to her. Sighing, I slowly get up from my comfortable position laying on my ex-bed.
I walk down the hall and almost trip down the stairs that I somehow didn’t notice, however, Dalus catches me before I fall completely.
His arm encircles my waist steadying me, "You alright?" He asks huskily, his mouth brushing my ear. I am after all in a really awkward position that somehow leaves his face only inches from mine, I feel the heat in my cheeks flame up strongly.
"Yep, I'm fine." My voice is a bit too high as I try not to blush anymore at his proximity, Dalus is hot there's no denying that. With his seductive midnight eyes and ruffled light brown hair, and soft features with a few sharp edges, and if that’s not enough he is also chivalrous as hell and kind, understanding, Jesus, I sound like I have a crush on him already and I barely know him. I kind of put him in my off-limits zone because he's Demina's half-brother even if Demi did explicitly say we would be a good couple.
He smiles and lets go of me and I walk down the stairs a bit unsteadily to where Demina's waiting for us to leave. I adjust the bag on my back to make it sit more comfortable, I already know that my ears are as red as tomatoes, I can feel them practically on fire, two burning red flags to notify Demi of something suspicious.
"I forgot to ask, how are we getting there?" I ask trying to distract Demi from her gaze that seems to be nearing my tomato-fied ears.
"You know how in Harry Potter how they have the floo network? We do something similar but it's more simple, we only need to write down the name of the place we are going to on a piece of paper then throw it into the fire and wait till the flames go silver then step into the fire.
As long as the flames stay silver you go to where you need to go and if you need to go somewhere different you just write the name of that place and the fire flashes gold when it's changed location." Demina pauses for a second with a thinking face, "Well maybe I lied when you say it like that it sounds a bit more complex than just saying where you want to go and throwing dust into a fire. Even if in Harry Potter you had to add fireplaces to the floo network." a fire portal, interesting, I wonder if how it feels to travel through it, does burn? On second thoughts, I’m not so sure if I trust this fire travelling thing, walking into a fire in any situation doesn’t sound like a safe thing to do.
"Oh, so you have to just write it done with a pen on some paper?" I half-ask-half-state but before I can do anything else Demi shakes her head and laughs.
"No silly, you have to use a stylist," the amusement is obvious in her voice, I feel embarrassed but recover quickly and remember what Mara gave me, I have it in my pocket because it’s something she gave me and I might never see her again.
"You mean one of these?" I question pulling out the stylist Mara gave me.
"Yes," she says taking a quick glance at mine before pulling out a similar object but slightly larger than mine, which is about the size small pencil whereas hers is like one of those bulky pens with those multiple colour ink, from her jean pocket.
Her stylist is mostly black but also has a weird dark green spiralling along its length, I think I prefer mine over hers, it has a simple beauty, and plus it has sentiment, though hers might too.
"What else can a stylist do? other than making runes and activating fire portals," I name it a fire portal without thinking because I started to think of them as such after she mentioned the fire sending you away or something.
"Hmm... nice name but that's not what they're called," Dalus speaks up smiling amused by my propaganda, "They're called Ignis Portalis which means flame in the ancient tongue.” Also known as Latin, I think, as I remember ignis being the word for fire or something.
"To answer your question..." Demina rolls her eyes at Dalus then continues on with her explaining while facing me, "I can only say that if I was to say all of which a stylist can do it'd take like… maybe two hours? Especially since they're like a phone in the sense they have different brands, magic, uses models and other stuff. Much like the iPhone Mara gave you she got the latest model from a good company." Demina says casually, not really telling me anything at all.
"Can we leave now?" Dalus says rolling his eyes up towards heaven, "We've wasted enough time," I guess I won’t be getting my two-hour explanation then, which I’m half glad about although, I am still curious.
"Yes," Demina proceeds to do what she told me about earlier with some paper and her stylist and starts to write, I don’t get why we don’t need special paper, the tip of mine looks like it would cut paper, not write on it.
She crumples the paper into a ball before chucking it unceremoniously into the fire, sparks fly at her as the paper catches fire. When the paper is completely burned, which takes maybe, three seconds, then the flames suddenly turn into a shiny silver that looks like molten silver but it still acts like fire, flickering and giving off warmth.
Demina smiles at me as she steps into the fire, vanishing milliseconds later. Dalus smiles at me encouragingly and pats my back pushing me forward into the flames, I trip over the grate but I don’t fall into the fire screaming, well I do scream but I don’t like, hit the fire and burn to death.
Waves of sensations wash over me as the fire engulfs my entire body. I feel the warmth of the flames, but no pain, and then I'm falling, just falling. Darkness surrounds me, I try to twist around to see what is happening, why I am falling but I am unable to see anything. Stars appear in front of my eyes as I become dizzy from the sensation of falling endlessly. Just when I think it's about to stop I start to feel as though I'm falling the other way and down I go plummeting down endlessly. I know this is only taking seconds but it feels longer.
A flash of light makes my eyes open and suddenly images are streaming across my eyes, to fast for me to catch what they are.
My eyes open to warm sunlight as I realize that I'm here, here as in here, here as in the Academy, and not just any academy Celestinia's Academy.
I’m laying on the ground, which is dirt with a thick layer of grass softening the feeling of the earth like a think blanket. I feel a warm wind blowing my hair in my face, I look up at the blue sky as the clouds make interesting shapes, one reminding me of a kangaroo.
I sit up, we're just outside the school's entrance and it looks magnificent: Its main colour is aqua and it shines and glitters in the sun, tall spires curl up the building in elegant spirals.
I try taking in every detail from the grassy field to the training Arena which is to the south, well what would be the south end of the school, well south on earth, not sure about here.
There is a large building to my left and it appears to be my new dorm and another that looks to be the males dorm, not that’s there's not much difference, the girls just have a patch of flowers out front and the guys have a few small trees.
"Pretty impressive don't you think?" Demina says from behind me, I look at her, she’s standing her gaze focused on the school..
"Yeah it is pretty amazing, the architecture is so detailed, exquisite..." I trail off turning to face the castle again, examining the details more closely, the gold lining that makes it so defined against the blue sky.
“So what now?" I ask.
"We'd better get to principal Garseth, he's going to assign you your roommate," she answers as she starts to walk toward the castle.
I stay where I am for a moment, then I register what she said and hurry to catch up. "Wait? What? You mean I won't be bunking with you?" I say turning to face her again in horror.
She shakes her head sadly. "No, sorry Ally but I already have a roommate, her name is Cora Parmlo."
"Wait, what? You mean my other best friend who travels around the world with her mum? the girl who gave me this?" I said reaching down the neck of my shirt to grasp the pendant. I bring it out to show them.
"Cora? Cora gave you the Cerindust?" Demina questions.
"Yeah." I smile, then un-smile, why the hell are all my best friends magical?
"Cool, that's really cool, how we know someone in common," Demi says, not sounding at all surprised at the coincidence.
"Ahuh, right," I drag out the I in right, slightly suspicious of how my friends all apparently have magic powers, other than Jack, Kaiden and Willow of course. I really don’t have many friends though, so I don’t really know. Maybe in the human world, people with magic act like magnets and somehow end up knowing each other, though that doesn’t seem plausible, then again, neither was magic a few days ago.
“Hey guys,” Dale says as he comes up behind us.
“Hi, let's go,” Demi says while I ponder on the subject of magic a bit more.
I follow Demi and Dale to the castle-like building to find the principal.
“Scissors, paper, rock,” we say together, I do paper, the other two do scissors, I sigh and I knock on the door to the principal's office and a deep calm voice answers me.
"Come on in, ladies and gentleman, I'm assuming you want your schedules and your roommate assignment?"
"Yes," Demi says as we entered the room.
The principal sits behind a high wooden desk in one corner of the room, the walls are painted white and accented with grey, the floor is dark wood and there are a few chairs throughout the room, one in another corner, and another two in front of his desk.
I avoided looking at the principal until I’d examined the room, when finally I had no excuses not to look at him I finally let my gaze travel across his face. He has dark brown hair, bright glowing blue eyes, dark tanned skin and obvious smile lines, which is a relief as it means he smiles a lot, not like some of my old principals who had frown lines.
"First things first, I need you to put your fingerprint on this," he says holding out a black sheet, I press my finger on it and he smiles.
"Good, now, can all three of you eat these," he asks us.
"Yay! I love these!" Demi squeals as she takes an icy-pole-thingy out of his hand and opens it quickly, popping it into her mouth with a small groan of pleasure.
I slowly inch forward, slightly nervous as to what the things are. I grab one and at the same time as Dale and our hands' brush, he surprisingly flinches. I take one of the icy poles trying not to show my reaction of disappointment.
Stop it, Al, you need to concentrate on what's happening now not what could happen if... If, nope not going there Al, shut it.
I suck on it slowly my tongue twirling around it, it has a delicious taste of lemon and apple combined, it is ice-cold, obviously, it's an icy-pole Al, and it's turning my tongue blue.
I poke my colourful tongue out at Demi showing off my blueness she stifles a laugh or more accurately tries to stifle a laugh but she fails and bursts out laughing like a maniac. The principal chuckles along with Demi’s maniacal laughter, and soon we are all laughing.
"Hmm, they really are delicious," I sigh as the laughter quiets down.
I glance at Dale, he looks away but not before I notice where his gaze was lingering, in my mouth that is currently preoccupied with an icy-pole. I grin to myself and make an effort to put on a show…
"They're not bad but I prefer lollipops, even in summer. They don't give you a brain freeze," Dalus says.
Demi and I just look at him wide-eyed, "I could never choose a lollipop over one of these, even in winter!" Demi says, and I shrug noncommittally.
Then I say, "What are they called anyway?" as I turn back to the principle.
"These are called ITSPC, short for Icicle testing for student potential classes. Which is for this," He gestures at a strange green machine, "It is called SPCPS, student potential classes printer and scanner."
We finally finish our tasty ITSPC's and hand him the sticks, he puts them in the strange green machine that looks a bit like a photocopier.
"They're lame names, don't you think Demi?" I say.
"I just call them blue popsicles," she answers not looking at me instead she seems to be sending a silent glare to her brother. I wonder what that's about.
A beep comes from the machine a few moments later and a light flashes. The sound of a printer printing comes from the machine, and three pieces of paper pop out.
He then passes us a sheet of paper each from out of the strange machine, on mine, it has my name and some other stuff:
Alya Meriana Goldain's potential results:
Art - Betta
Camouflage - Geanus
Chemistry - Elpics
Combat - Delta
English - Betta
Flying lessons - not qualified until wings have been revealed
Magical History - Geanus
Maths - Betta
Night Class - Geanus
PE - Betta
Riding lessons - Delta
Spells - Betta
You are put into the grade classes that you have the potential to get to that level. These names are the equivalent of these grades:
Grande - E
Elpics - D
Geanus - C
Betta - B
Delta - A
These results show what you could do, not what you can do.
Try your hardest and you'll get your best result. Your schedule will arrive at the welcome breakfast tomorrow morning.
"And here is your room number Ms Goldain," Principle Garseth says, holding out a post-it note. It's bright pink for some strange reason:
Alya Meriana Goldain
Dorm-wing: Sapphire
Floor: 3
Dorm number: 267
"Thank you," I say smiling gratefully at the man.
"No problem Ms Goldain," he says grinning widely.
We walk out of the office comparing our results:
"We all have History together, and I have Camo and Chem with you," Demina says comparing our three results.
"We have Maths and English class together," Dalus says looking over Demi's shoulder at mine.
"And we have Day Class together bro! As usual." Demi says with fake excitement.
"Yay," Dale drawls rolling his eyes.
- Writer
