Along with the nights spent talking much later then we probably should have in the game room, which I found very interesting, with everything from a magic pool table to tables with board games set up.
Some requiring magic to play like a game called, “Maze Keep,” where you used your mind to move a dragon through a maze and fought to see if you or the other player would reach the tower in the middle before the princess escaped and many more that ranged from adventures to puzzles.
Tonight, Zac was going to be late because of a paper he needed to finish. Luckily, I got to ask Alissa more about Keten without another boy around.
“What do you know about him?” I asked moving a little pole into the mountain as I turned it back to Alissa.
She glanced at me and one of her brows raised as the soft clank of pool balls clattered together.
“Worried he’s too good to be true?” She asked with a sly smile.
I let a scoff escape my lips as I shook my head.
Looking at the wall, she held a pole with a blue stripe across it as her color and spoke while deciding where to put it.
“He was here a year before I got accepted.” She said placing the pole.
I felt a knot in my chest at the thought that I had to have been accepted before coming here. Why had my father never told me?
She looked up to me as she turned the wall back to me, the tables swiveled to reach all the players at the table.
“He is always very nice and always has a following of girls. He never really seems interested in anyone from what I’ve seen of him like I’ve told you before.” She said, playing with the group of pegs before her.
Grasping a peg with my red color striped on it, I bit my lip and looked at the wall that felt very harrowing from the way I was losing.
“So, is he just being nice?” I asked, placing my peg on a very obscure stop just to get it out of the way.
Alissa turned the wall to her and shook her head.
“I would have said that the first day but with how he asks to know more about you and even goes out of his way to sit with you at lunch or dinner, I really doubt it.” She said placing a peg, “Checkmate!” She said with a grin.
Looking up, I was about to ask her what she meant, my lips opened but a voice took me off guard.
“Wrong game Lissa.” Zac said as he sat down between the two of us.
That night had kept up with small talk about Zac’s upcoming fencing match and the fact that Alissa was already plotting some sort of date with that boy she had eyed the first day at lunch.
“You really think you can get him to ask you to the end term formal?” Zac asked with a raise of his brows.
I titled my head and looked to them.
“What’s the end term formal?” I asked as Alissa glared at Zac.
Turning from him she smiled brightly.
“It’s a night where the atrium is all lit up with lanterns and everyone is invited to a dance in the meadows with incredible food and lovely music.” Alissa sounded as if she rode clouds with her eyes batting.
Zac rolled his eyes and leaned over to me,
“What she means is it’s just like a prom but held in a big bubble.” He said, batting his eyes making me gasp from trying to hold back giggling.
“Hey, don’t you ruin it for her!” Alissa scolded, as she turned the wall back to Zac.
“Whatever you say Lissa.” he said and with that placed his last peg and beat us easily at the game for the night.
I got to know Zac very well from his style of playing that was very thought out for a boy who often missed some of what Alissa and I were talking about during lunch.
After I had gone to bed that night all I could do was think about the end term formal. It sounded so grand, even if I would never dance in front of another person, just seeing the atrium lit up from within would be enough to entice me to dress up. The fact I had no gown created a slight dilemma. If anything, I had one formal dress that was a light grey-shirt dress, that’s hem went just passed my knees.
Keten had crossed my mind. After the last few days being absent of even a passing glance at him I wondered if I had scared him away. Though our plans for that SkyJumping competition had finally been set in stone for today after classes.
The past month had gone by so quickly when I received my grade from Mr. Deplen about my page on the regal horned lizard. I nearly fell over when he actually smiled at me and said I had done an excellent job on the writing and the research in my paper.
Hesitantly, after class and feeling slightly guilty about having help, I went and told Mr. Deplen that Keten had suggested it and when I was sure he would mark me for something like that, he had nodded and said it was alright to have help with the paper as long as I wrote the words on it.
I answered that it was my work and he said again that it was well written and that it took skill to write what was learned into something worth reading.
After that, I felt unstoppable, it was Friday and I was sure I could make it through the rest of the day in a breeze! That was, until Mr. Sheplar.
In his class I was still climbing those stupid boxes. Now, only I climbed, after it seemed the twin, Derrick, was doing well enough he could move on to the rest of the assignment. I got to the last box and would try to think of every way possible to either do what the boy had done or try another way, but I kept failing.
I had fallen more than a few times now and had many bruises to show for it and still heard some other teens laugh or scoff about me under their breath. Now, I was so focused on proving that a dumb block could not stop me, their words or laughing did nothing but make me want all the more to climb and prove I could make it.
After falling for the tenth time, just today, Mr. Sheplar called us in after a lovely little speech about finding our strengths. I was one hundred percent sure he either hated me or was really trying to teach me some obscure lesson I had yet to understand, but the day was nearly over and we would be having a private SkyJumping contest later so it was something to hold out for.
I only hoped that Keten was still somewhere in the building from the way he recently seemed to have disappeared.
“You excited for SkyJumping and seeing who will win the bet?” Zac asked as we walked along the tables in the cafeteria trying to decide between salmon or roast chicken breast.
Taking the rotisserie chicken, I nodded my head as Alissa got a piece of salmon and Zac picked up two of each. I had no idea how that boy kept his slim figure.
“Anything is better than Mr. Sheplar’s class.” I said with a sigh.
Zac glanced over at me,
“Is he still keeping you on the blocks? By this time last year I had done about a million different drills.” He said, shaking his head.
Alissa nodded to me and shrugged her shoulders,
“Out of everyone in the class Quil is the only one still on the same thing he started her on a month ago. I had to switch from SkyJumping to the rope tunnel four times today.” She said.
Finding our table, I sat down clasping my bottle of chocolate milk.
“I just don’t get how a stupid block could be so hard to climb!” I said, frustrated.
Zac tilted his head as he took a large bite of salmon,
“You don’t even climb those blocks in the test. Unless you do now?” He asked, I shook my head with vigor.
“Nope, but for some reason he wants me to climb them.” I said, taking a deep breath as if the only way to clear my mind.
Alissa sat up, slapping her hand to the table making both Zac and I look to her,
“Well, tonight we are going to have fun and that is that.” She said straight faced.
Zac and I both looked at one another and his eyes widened as he shrugged and mouthed,
“O-okay…”
My lips pursed into a smile as I controlled my giggling while Alissa glared over at him and took a hard bite of her fish like a bear might.
“So, you two still hanging around the reject?”
I had no need to turn to know who the voice was as I shook my head slightly.
“Lucy, just leave.” Alissa said calmly, though her voice had a hard line she rarely let edge in.
I glanced to the side to see Lucy glower at me and then stick her nose in the air.
“Fine, rejects.” and with that, she was off, walking away though I wished desperately to go after her as a Skyjump beast and trample her overused eye shadowed face.
“Sorry guys.” I said as I looked back to them and Alissa waved a hand to me.
“Quil, we were rejects to her before we started here. Only her and Jack seem to be the ones worth much time and the girls who are around her are just looking for a leader to follow who they think is cool.” She said, motioning with her fingers again.
Nodding, I looked after Lucy, still wondering what she had against me. Had I come out and said I was a SkyJump and made everyone look at me like some rare bird they worried would fade away, I could maybe see the reason but she simply hated me.
After lunch, we all headed to our last two classes, English went well with Ms. Lapten, even saying I was on track for a scholarly good year. I assumed it meant I was doing well. With English teachers, especially this one, it seemed slightly hard to tell if it was a compliment or a double meaning.
I was also starting to realize I thought slightly too much like my over protective father. I was always looking for what people’s intent might be when they were just being themselves.
In my short time at La’ket I had not yet been kidnapped, stabbed, or anything more than falling from both a rope and a block; neither of which intentionally wanted to give me a bruise. Okay, save Mr. Sheplar, who I still could not figure out.
Walking back from Math to my room in the girl’s wing to drop off my bag before our competition, I felt calm about how I would act. I knew I would have fun, but I still would hold back.
“Equila!” My head swiveled to the left to look down the hall and find Jean waving from the main hall to the doors of the outside world.
Tilting my head and feeling slightly embarrassed as some teens glanced my way I started down the hall to her as she met me halfway.
“Yes, Jean?” I asked kindly with a smile as she nodded to me.
“I’m sorry to have startled you but this just came and you happened to be walking past and I thought I might as well give it to you.” She said with a kind smile as she handed me a dark blue letter with my father’s sloppy writing on the front.
My eyes lit up as I took the letter, it felt like ages since he last wrote and it was such a short time I felt ashamed the thought dared enter but it did not take away from the warmth in my chest just seeing it.
“So, how are your classes?” Jean asked.
I nearly missed what she said as I looked up and shook my head slightly.
“I’m really enjoying them.” Most of them, I thought as the pain in my head still thrummed from falling in Mr. Sheplar’s class on the freaking blocks.
Jean nodded satisfied.
“I’m glad, and remember if you ever need anything just let me know.” She said and I felt she might know more than she was letting on.
We parted with quaint goodbyes. I felt a gnawing question about if Keten might have told his cousin about Lucy and her threats.
Thinking of him, I glanced around hoping to see him somehow magically coming my way, yet, unlike fairy tales and sappy love stories, he did not appear the moment I thought of him. Though a few times he had lived up to the fairytale.
Making my way back to my room, problem free from Lucy and her minions, I slipped into my room that still felt slightly unlike home. I had put a lovely painting on my wall that my father had given me of a band of Skyjumps as beasts racing over a field. I always assumed it was a rendering of what the battle would have been like. Just imagining the pounding thunder of hooves crossing the ground sent a shiver down my spine as I laid my bag on the floor and again, felt a startling pain in my chest about the fact that I could not run free.
I could live without running in my Skyjump form as I had once when we lived in the city of Darkrest for a year, the longest we have ever stayed in one place, yet even then we got out and my father let me run.
He never ran in his SkyJump beast form anymore. I only remember once, when I was very little, he turned when I asked him to give me a ride before I could turn. I sat on the broad back of a white stallion that had a coat of thick fur laced with coffee brown, with white a mane and tail as his antlers rose into the air.
That was the day I realized I was proud to be a Skyjump.
Thinking of my father, I glanced at the clock and risked taking a few minutes to read his letter as my fingers numbed. A part of me did not want to open it feeling like it would lose its luster.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the letter breaking the top of it with less than fine precision as it made a jagged opening like monster’s teeth, a letter opener was still on my list of things to buy at the market room as I pulled the letter from the envelope.
Opening it, a photo fell from the page and it nearly hit the ground before my fingers could grasp it as I bent over the letter in one hand. My hair started to come undone from the high pony tail caught on my cheek. Blowing at the few strands before my eyes I turned the four by five picture over to the side that held a photo; a landscape as lovely as the valleys here, though with a slight glow to it that was stunning.
The field was the deepest color of green touched only by soft patches of clouds that could not be seen save their shadows that made the grass seem light in comparison.
If my legs had before felt cramped in the school they now felt miserable as I wished to run in that field and feel the sun caress my skin as kindly as it made aglow the grass beneath its touch.
It made my heart slightly sink realizing this photo was the first I had never seen in person beside the one photo I had of my mother that I never displayed for the fact I never wanted it to be ruined.
Sitting up, I looked from the picture to the letter and opened the folded page where my father’s writing poignantly started,
‘Quil,
I hope you’re doing well and enjoying yourself even with the tiny room. I know this is nothing as good as speaking to one another but I find letters much more secure than glass phones. I’m sorry to send a picture of somewhere you’ve never seen but I thought you might like to see this valley I visited before I left to a large city to help clear some things up.
I miss you and hope your report you’re still waiting to hear back on went well.
Sending you my love until the next moon rises,
-Dad’
Before this moment I never would have let tears catch on my cheeks, but with a roll of my eyes at my own stupid emotion I wiped away tears. Had I been worried or was the fact I could hear him saying this letter in my head better than I could read the words on the page?
I reread the last line, until the next moon rises was so comforting.
My father never told me the whole meaning simply that, it was a saying that, all was as okay as the moon was sure to rise. If ever a SkyJump said when the dawn ends, it meant trouble and that it was bad enough that tomorrow may never come. That one I did know all about. It was said the day the SkyJump’s went against the Earthen Brethren. I hoped I would never read or hear those words uttered.
A knocking rapped on my crystal door, I spun around as the banging continued nearly scaring me out of my chair as a voice called through,
“QUIL, ARE YOU COMING OR NOT!” Alissa called.
With a smile, I put down my father’s letter carefully on my desk and grabbed my bag as I raced to the door.
If my father was going to send pictures then I was going to send some back. Going for the door I tried again, stupidly, for more than the hundredth time to grab a handle that was not there as the door instinctively swayed open.
I was met with wide eyed Alissa who had her hand up ready to pummel my door once again.
“Goodness, we a
re going to be late and I set it all up!” She said and grabbed my arm before I had even pulled the door closed as it slightly cooed behind us as we ran.
Skidding around the corner out of the room we had nearly crashed into a group of girls as I huffed, stopping for a moment to collect my breath.
“Sorry, I was reading a letter and got caught up in it.” I said as I stood up, though my lungs still felt slightly compressed.
Starting into a jog Alissa shook her head at me,
“Really, a letter?” She asked skeptically.
I laughed slightly at how stupid it sounded as I kept my bag from banging into the cement walls, the last thing I needed was my camera broken.
“A letter from my dad.” I said and a recognition lit in her eyes though it seemed slightly grimaced at the mention of his name.
Turning again, we stopped before Mr. Sheplar’s room, panting.
“There you two are!” Zac called from within the room and Alissa nearly pushed me from behind into the room as I laughed and was still completely out of breath.
Coming into the room I looked up to find Keten smiling over at me as he stood by Zac who folded his arms abrasively.
It felt strange seeing the room empty save the four of us.
“Thought you two were wimping out on the bet.” Zac said with a smirk.
Alissa waved him off as she walked up to him.
“You boys are going to be sadly disappointed when we win.” She said, putting a finger to Zac’s chest as Keten stepped forward.
“Are you poking me?” Was the last words I heard from Zac and Alissa as Keten stepped over to me.
I wanted to somehow manage a ‘hi’ or ‘hey,’ but I felt very shy suddenly from some time not seeing him.
“How are you?” Keten asked kindly.
Sky Jump Page 18
