Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Acola
gazed apathically out the window, put a hand to the white curtains as she
watched the rain fall into the sea. “I thought she might be lost to the
serpents, that one,” she murmured. “Just like her father.”

            Irys nearly fell off her chair onto
the wood floor with crying. Aainer glared at his sister. She was not helping.

            “Well,” he started, “I’m sure – I’m
sure we can get her back.” He fiddled with his braid and took another bite of
celery. It felt wrong to do so in this situation but he was hungry, and besides, Irys had
arrived in the middle of lunch.

            “But the only place Ivelliche could
have gone is into the sea!” she wailed,
her voice dropping to a low shout on the last word.

            Acola, still looking out of the
window, shook her head mournfully. Does a mother have no compassion for her
child? Aainer thought angrily. She could at least try to be helping. He finished his celery and scooted sideways off
the bench, then stood up to get his coat, walking regretfully away from the
warm, crackling fire in the grate.

Acola,
wrapped in muslin and furs on her window seat, paid him no mind.

            “Why don’t you stay here for a
while,” he said in what he hoped was a comforting tone, putting his hand on Irys’s
shoulder. “I can go to the city and fetch your father and Tharsus.”

            “No. I must go,” said Irys, drying
her eyes and standing up. Aainer’s hand went up with her and he grimaced. Slim,
small-boned Aainer was shorter than his niece, indeed shorter than most people
except children.

            “He’s right, daughter,” said Acola
suddenly. “You should stay.”

            “The storm is nearly over – it’s
only rain –“

            “I’m going,” said Aainer, looking
firmly up into her wild violet-blue eyes. Before she could say another word he
pulled on his coat and headed out into the rain, tossing his braid over his
shoulder and raising his hand to the silhouette of Mira, Irys’s sister, that
had appeared in an upper window of the house. Mira would find out soon enough
what was going on. She always did.

            Aainer only wondered, as he strode
up the grassy cliff paths, whether Mira would have any more compassion for
Ivelliche than the rest of them.

            He had never been sure whether he liked
Ivelliche much. He must have seen her – oh, twelve times – she was ten, wasn’t
she? – at the ten annual family gatherings she had been to, and twice, more
recently, when Irys had let her trudge the one and a half miles from their
cottage to Thorlin House to visit.

            Irys was not really a true Thorlin –
that was plain even before she married and changed her name to Hawthorne, and
then to Dusk. She was too sensitive, too tall, too old-fashioned – and she had blue eyes. And though Ivelliche was
certainly not a Thorlin either she knew better how to handle them – the
oval-faced, graceful girl would navigate the intricacy of Thorlin conversation
– which had been compared to a maze of false words in which there are dragons
lurking at every corner and the end is guarded by goblins – with an ease beyond
her years. She made Aainer nervous, for he was as enigmatic as all other
Thorlins and liked his motives as hidden from sight as Ivelliche now was.

Kay...I'm only gonna keep posting this if people say they want me to. :3 Advice would be nice! Peace out yall

Okay.....here is ALL of what I have so far....

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Part One. (Prologue?)

Ivelliche.

It
was a lovely name, Irys thought. Iv-ell-ih-chee. Born of dusky sunbeams and
ice-tinged rain.

            In the days preceding Ivelliche’s
birth she had thought long and hard about a name. And finally, one morning
after a storm, she knew.

            It was the name of Irys’s
grandmother, a whimsical woman she had not known well. Family legend said that
one wild night she had thrown herself off the cliff, just after Aainer, Irys’s
uncle, was born. She had been lost to the meaning of it all, of her life. And
now, lost to the waves.

            Irys had hoped never to lose her Ivelliche. From the day of her
birth, the girl was sweet and impulsive, and the darling of her mother’s heart.

            But one autumn morning...

            Irys opened the cottage door,
breathing in the husky fall scent. A thin path trodden into the grass wandered
down the green hill to the valley; beyond that, the trees fanned out into
flame-edged tangerine and golden colors. On her left the mountains rose, and on
her right the cliffs slanted down into the roaring, sparkling sea.

            Ivelliche had always been an early
riser, and so Irys had not been surprised when she woke and did not see her in
the house. No doubt she was out here somewhere, with the wind playing with her
black swirls of hair and flowers in her hands, watching the birds.

            Irys trudged down to the well,
dipping the wood pail down into the sweet cool water, pulling it up with some
effort, trudging back up the path with the hem of her rough skirt swishing
against her ankles. She did not hear a sound anywhere save of bird, wind, and
sea, but she did not really expect to.

            She set the pail down on the table
in the cottage, then went around the other side. Ivelliche liked to lie in the
meadow there and watch the ground squirrels wake up and start looking for food.
But other than a few of these same squirrels it was still.

            Irys stared out at the forest on
this side, slightly puzzled. Ivelliche rarely went far beyond the tree line,
and she would surely be able to see her from here. She turned and looked down
the hill to the other forest, but it was too far away to tell.

            She smoothed back her wood-brown
curls, thinking. She was sure Ivelliche hadn’t gone very far; and once she got
hungry she always turned up. This had happened before. It was just that today
Tharsus, Irys’s husband, was away in the city, Feirlorn, and it made her
nervous about things like this.

            Tharsus was not Ivelliche’s father.
That had been Rygla, Irys’s husband of five years past; but he had caught the
serpent-sickness on a fishing expedition. Sea serpents had slithered under his
boat, threatening to capsize it, scaring away the fish. Fishermen knew not to
look into the beasts’ eyes. But one had raised its head up out of the water and
latched its teeth on the prow, and he had no choice but to catch its gaze as he
fought it from his boat. The next day, even though he knew better, even though
he shouldn’t have, he had gone out again. And the serpents had pulled him under
the waves.

            The first Ivelliche. Rygla. How many
more might the waves take from their family?

            About a half hour passed, and no
sign of Ivelliche. Irys, who had been making soup, stepped outside and looked
around at the meadows and the pale sky.

            Where could she be?...

            Irys, suddenly panicked, dashed
around behind the house and ran towards the forest, stumbling on the grass,
dull aches shooting through her calves, noticing the clouds of a coming storm.
When she stopped, breathing hard, at the forest’s edge she saw no one among the
shadows.

            She ran up back on to the hill and
over the path.

            “Ivelliche! Ivelliche!” The hawks
echoed her cry. There was no answer.

            Irys stared out at the empty valley
for a minute, then hurtled down the winding path that led to the beach. To
Reiver Cove, to Reiver Cove, surely she’ll be there.

            She landed at last on the “landing”
where she could see both the sea and the sheltered beach and bay. Bare. Empty.
Irys felt as if it must not be true, but it was: Ivelliche was missing.

            Chills shot through her heart.
“Ivelliche!” she cried as the rain and the wind and the lightning began to war
in the sky above.

Part Two.

Every
morning they would call the students from their tower bedrooms to the rocky
shore to greet the sunrise. There they would stand, a line of girls next to a
line of boys, looking out at the dark world and the mountainous silhouettes of
the other islands. The sky would be scattered with stars and gray clouds would
be drifting by; the air was salty and the wind was cold and all was quiet
except for the swishing of the sea.

            Then they might see it, a whisper of
gold or rose on the far horizon, and the priest would chime a bell and the
teachers begin to sing, their voices weak but sincere in the early morning.

            Then the students would watch,
regardless of the slippery stone under their sandals or the cool air. The blush
of dawn would ascend up the sky, making the stars fade and the waters blue and
the clouds violet. Louder now the singing continued, sweet high notes wavering
on the wind. And finally the rose sun would rise up from its watery bed,
burning red. Gulls began to call and the song ceased. The bell was rung again.
Roll call.

            A teacher would step out onto the
rocks with their back to the sea and call out their names, first boys, than
girls.

            “Destroe.”

            “Here.”

            “Axel.”

            “Here.”

            “Tyrvol.”

            “Here.”

And
so it would go....

            “Fenelee.”

            “Here.”

            “Sara.”

            “There.”

            “Sara!” Hushed giggles.

            “Rega.”

            “Here.”

But
at the end the teachers did something none of the students understood.

            “Ivelliche,” they would call into
the morning light. And there would be no answer, only the chime of a far-off
bell. But it was not the priest’s bell.

            Then all would turn and leave. It
was time for a new day, another day without Ivelliche.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Part Three.

Acola
gazed apathically out the window, put a hand to the white curtains as she
watched the rain fall into the sea. “I thought she might be lost to the
serpents, that one,” she murmured. “Just like her father.”

            Irys nearly fell off her chair onto
the wood floor with crying. Aainer glared at his sister. She was not helping.

            “Well,” he started, “I’m sure – I’m
sure we can get her back.” He fiddled with his braid and took another bite of
celery. It felt wrong to do so in this situation but he was hungry, and besides, Irys had
arrived in the middle of lunch.

            “But the only place Ivelliche could
have gone is into the sea!” she
wailed, her voice dropping to a low shout on the last word.

            Acola, still looking out of the
window, shook her head mournfully. Does a mother have no compassion for her
child? Aainer thought angrily. She could at least try to be helping. He finished his celery and scooted sideways off
the bench, then stood up to get his coat, walking regretfully away from the
warm, crackling fire in the grate.

Acola,
wrapped in muslin and furs on her window seat, paid him no mind.

            “Why don’t you stay here for a
while,” he said in what he hoped was a comforting tone, putting his hand on Irys’s
shoulder. “I can go to the city and fetch your father and Tharsus.”

            “No. I must go,” said Irys, drying
her eyes and standing up. Aainer’s hand went up with her and he grimaced. Slim,
small-boned Aainer was shorter than his niece, indeed shorter than most people
except children.

            “He’s right, daughter,” said Acola
suddenly. “You should stay.”

            “The storm is nearly over – it’s
only rain –“

            “I’m going,” said Aainer, looking
firmly up into her wild violet-blue eyes. Before she could say another word he
pulled on his coat and headed out into the rain, tossing his braid over his
shoulder and raising his hand to the silhouette of Mira, Irys’s sister, that
had appeared in an upper window of the house. Mira would find out soon enough
what was going on. She always did.

            Aainer only wondered, as he strode
up the grassy cliff paths, whether Mira would have any more compassion for
Ivelliche than the rest of them.

            He had never been sure whether he
liked Ivelliche much. He must have seen her – oh, twelve times – she was ten,
wasn’t she? – at the ten annual family gatherings she had been to, and twice,
more recently, when Irys had let her trudge the one and a half miles from their
cottage to Thorlin House to visit.

            Irys was not really a true Thorlin –
that was plain even before she married and changed her name to Hawthorne, and
then to Dusk. She was too sensitive, too tall, too old-fashioned – and she had blue eyes. And though Ivelliche was
certainly not a Thorlin either she knew better how to handle them – the
oval-faced, graceful girl would navigate the intricacy of Thorlin conversation
– which had been compared to a maze of false words in which there are dragons
lurking at every corner and the end is guarded by goblins – with an ease beyond
her years. She made Aainer nervous, for he was as enigmatic as all other
Thorlins and liked his motives as hidden from sight as Ivelliche now was.

            Aainer now saw that Irys had been
wrong about the storm. It was steadily getting worse. He glanced back – he
could still see the lighted windows of Thorlin House.

            The city was four miles away. Three and
a quarter, now, but still....

            “Keep going, Aainer,” he muttered to
himself. “Have a heart.”

            Thorlins didn’t really have hearts.

            Aainer stopped and glanced back
again, on the upward slope of a small hill. Five yellow windows still shone
over the trees. He continued on.

Part Four.

Every
morning she had felt it, that irresistible pull to the sea.

            She’d brush her hair and pull it
back over her shoulders, dress herself and head out into the wide world as Irys
and Tharsus still slept. Along the path she’d dart, to the well for a drink,
and then down the cliff to Reiver Cove. The sun would just be coming up over
the blue mountains, and Ivelliche would watch as the line of the sea grew
clearer and the waves brighter as the sun’s light bloomed across the morning
sky. Mornings were her favorite time of day – the gulls’ first wild calls, the
fresh new breezes from the west rippling the waves, and the air softening from
sharp chill to sunny warmth all seemed just meant for her, saluting her, Queen
Ivelliche of Reiver Cove.

            Always, as she stepped down onto the
sand and the high walls surrounding the cove rose up around her, her eyes
flickered towards the southwest horizon, and she would find herself going down
the beach to the cliff that faced that way, in order to climb it and see out over
the sea. Reiver Cove was not at all very large, and it only took her a few
minutes to stroll across to the foot of the cliff. As she went she would watch
the lacy foam of the tides lapping against the brown sand, and her footsteps,
small and well shaped, slowly being swallowed up by the sand as she left them.

            Climbing the cliff may not have been
easy for most ten-year-olds, but she was stronger than most. She could remember
the first time she had climbed it. It was a long time ago, though she was not
sure when.

            The waves had been roaring
especially loud that day. Young Ivelliche had woken knowing in her heart of
hearts that she would climb that cliff, even if she died when she reached the
top. For a while she had tried, and fallen, and failed. But she was stronger
now. Surely she would conquer it.

            Ages had seemed to pass as she
half-ran across the beach, feeling colder than usual, small raindrops pattering
on her upturned face that gazed up towards the cliff, to the southwest. When
she was within about ten or twenty yards she had cast off her shawl and began
to truly run, her breath wild and scattered, her hair blowing around her face
in the increasing wind. With a strength she didn’t know she had she swung
herself up onto the cliff face, pale fingers grabbing tight onto the slippery
stone.

            It had only been harder from there.
The rocks pushed sharp and rough into her hands sometimes, and were slimy and
smooth, too smooth, other times. Her legs dangled, threatening to pull her
down, and her knees knocked hard against the cliff. Her breath seemed barely to
squeeze in and out of her lungs. The wind tossed her locks into her face and by
the time she was a quarter of the way up it was only pushing on blindly, no
longer caring for life or death, or sight or feel, only Going Up.

            And at last Ivelliche had reached
the top. The dark stone changed to short grass – a miracle, it seemed, that
such a thing could exist, as grass, soft, green, fresh grass with flowers in it
– and then her eyes were shot by a clear white light from a star on the
southwest horizon, a star outlasting all the others, brighter than the others:
the Morning Star.

            She had clambered up onto the
ground, every bone and muscle in her body tired out, her breath snatched in
large gasps. But then as she stood up unsteadily and faced the star and heard
the rushing of the wind in her ears, her body filled from heart to all the
rest, with a soaring, strong surge of adrenaline and triumph that carried up
into the sky in a bright cry of dazzling laughter.

            That was a while ago, and now
climbing the cliff was second nature, but Ivelliche never lost the yearning for
it, or the urge to laugh. Today when she reached the top she thought proudly to
herself that her laugh was what truly called the day into existence – that, and
the Morning Star.

            “If stars had a sound,” she thought
to herself as she flopped down on the grass, “the Morning Star’s would be my
laugh.”

            That day must have been a day for
profound (in her mind) thoughts, for her next one was, “I wonder why I always
feel such an appeal to the southwest?”

            She knew it was not just the Morning
Star. It was what drew her there at first light but she always wanted to be up
on that cliff, to be looking out at that section of sea. The city was in that
direction, she knew, and Thorlin House, where Irys’s family lived, but she did
not like the city, so that could not be it.

            But was the appeal? Ivelliche thought sometimes it was simply habit,
something she had started entirely randomly when small and continued. But other
times, on cloudy afternoons when the shadows of storms threatened to flash
across the sky, she felt as if something out there was lost, something that
belonged to her, in a place she needed to be – and that only when she found it
would she be able to live in peace.

            But what could it be?

            Every morning she had felt it, that irresistible
pull to the sea...

Note: most of the parts I previously posted have a few small revisions, which is why I'm posting them again.

Normal
0

false
false
false

EN-US
JA
X-NONE

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}

Part Five.

She
was pretty sure that there was a spare boat. Tharsus had his fishing boat,
which she was not allowed to touch, but wasn’t there also a pretty little blue
boat? Quite small, left over from the days before Tharsus which she did not
remember...

            The boats were kept in a sheltered
corner of the cove, where rocks stooped low over the lapping water. Ivelliche
waded in, bypassing Tharsus’ large fishing boat with the dancing dolphins
painted on its green sides and splashed to where the paddles and fishing
equipment were kept – and there, beneath a mess of nets and driftwood, she
found it. Very small compared to Tharsus’ boat, very compact, just right for
her – and paddles to go with it.

            As has been said, Ivelliche was
strong for her age. She lugged the boat out from under the other things and
managed to get it out on the edge of the bay, with the tide making it rock
slightly as she stared at it. She was not certain where to go from here. She
had never rowed except once, in the lake near Thorlin House, and there weren’t any
tides to fight against there.

            By this time Irys would surely be up
and looking for her. She had to act quickly.

            But how?

            “Ivelliche!” A call from above.

            Ivelliche threw herself into the
boat. She was not usually one to run from her mother, but she felt today that
Irys would not appreciate what she was trying to do.

            A mighty wave pushed the boat
backwards onto the sand, and she flailed wildly with the paddle.

            Suddenly a black shape reared up
from the waves, and Ivelliche’s boat seemed to soar along a length of black
purple scales that had curled under her boat and was now drawing her out to sea.

            The serpents had come for her,
carrying her away to where blue met blue...and as the wind filled the sky and
the Morning Star faded she could not help but feel free at last.

Part Six.

Axel
propped his head on his hands as Professor Machere droned on and on and on and
on...the boy had never been able to stand history class.

            His quick gray eyes darted around
the classroom, taking in the gray stone walls, the neat rows of desks aligned
on the dirt floor, the way the breeze coming through the window behind him
ruffled his classmates’ hair.

            He glanced back through the window
to the open sea.

            “AXEL! Pay attention!” Professor
Machere glared at Axel sharply with his ice blue eyes. Some of Axel’s
classmates snickered.

            “All right,” Axel mumbled. More laughter.

            Professor Machere tossed his head of
wild white hair and continued to pace the front of the classroom, looking at
the ceiling, occasionally glancing down over his nose to the worn yellow book
he held in his hands. It told the history of Raeth Archipelago, countless
stories slipping down through the generations, changing with time, so that none
of the students of Reluva Academy could be sure if what they were learning was
accurate. They never learned the history of other countries. To do so would have
been considered absurd.

            What Axel really wanted to learn
about was Ivelliche. Who was she, or who had she been? Why did the teachers
call out to her every morning, and that distant bell – where was it from? He
had asked a teacher once, kind Professor Ailen, but she had not answered, only
swept by without seeming to hear him. Axel did not press a point, but he still
had so much curiosity.

            He had daydreamed about what she
might look like: about his age, so fourteen or so, golden hair wavy like the
sea, soft purple-blue eyes. Axel told no one of his fantasies, not even his
friends. They would only laugh.

            And her purpose? When he was younger
he thought that maybe it was to rescue the students from this wreck of a school,
but now he thought it must be something nobler than that. Something that might
possibly have to do with the Sunrise Boat.

            The Sunrise Boat was a large fishing
boat that had washed up on the shores of the island about five years ago,
painted with the colors of the sunrise. One student – her name was Airadel,
Axel remembered – had found it first, skipped down the rocks to where it lay on
the slim sandy beach. When she flipped it over, with the help of a few others,
it was found to be filled with pearls, of all sizes, some pure white, others gray,
some with a blue tint. A few were black like a starless black sky.

            Axel had been at the back of the
crowd and had had no time to snatch some before the teachers shouted for the
students to come back up to the school building. That evening there had been an
announcement that that section of the beach was off limits.

            At the closing of the year, Airadel
had fallen ill and died.

            Now the Curse of the Pearls was a
famous school story. Everyone was dared to go down and sneak pearls from the
boat, and if you completed the dare everyone was sure you would die, or at
least leave the school. Axel didn’t go in for dares but he had stolen pearls,
on his own time – one black one and one light blue one. And he was not dead
yet.

            Anyway there was a rumor that the pearls
belonged to someone – presumably whoever owned the fishing boat, and presumably
someone from the mainland – and that until he or she returned for their
treasure the pearls were lost. Some even said there was a prophecy, though Axel
knew this was nonsense. Things didn’t happen according to what people said most
of the time. And who would the prophet be, anyway? There were never prophets or
that kind of people in Raeth.

            But he didn’t remember that the
teachers had called “Ivelliche” before the fishing boat arrived. And how would
rumors like that start anyway? Surely she must be the one who would come to
claim her pearls.

            And yet. Pearls? Maybe it was
something even more important than that. No one knew if anything else was maybe
buried under the pearls, something even more important. Gold, perhaps. Pearls
were common in Raeth, if still valuable, but gold...that was a treasure far
greater. If the school had gold, they could move off this rotting island and
afford better books and new blankets for the students. If the school had gold
they would be richer and wouldn’t need so many students, and some of them could
go home. And maybe one of them would be Axel.

            He did not hate school. But he loved
home, his home in Tarentia, the city that now lay many leagues over the sea, in
the west of Raeth, far out to sea. Axel would have gladly returned there even
if it meant he did not get an education.

            But Reluva Academy was really the
only “good” school for a family as poor as his, and it was a boarding school.

            Axel dragged his thoughts back to
the classroom just as it was time to leave. Now it was time for lunch.

            Thankfully he packed up his things,
including his empty notebook, and headed out the door to the dim narrow passage
outside, still more or less in his dream world. He needed a plan. If Ivelliche
really did need to be here, she would need help. And what if he was the only
one who could help her?

            The only one who could help her, and
she was so grateful to him that she would love him forever. Axel admitted to himself
that he was really quite in love with this fantasy vision of the girl that he
had. Don’t let yourself get too caught up
in it, he told himself as he strolled out into the open air of the
courtyard. For all you know the teachers
calling out to Ivelliche might be just some stupid tradition with no meaning
and no connection to the Sunrise Boat – for all you know, Ivelliche might be
real but if she does come won’t want my help, or my love. For all you know you
might be a complete idiot, a lazy dreamer.

            Professor Machere called Axel a lazy dreamer. He
said that dreamers should save their dreams for when they were rich and old and
wise enough to have time for them, and that if Axel dreamed now he would have
no time for the important things of life. But Axel knew there were many dreams
out there to be dreamed, and he wanted to dream as many as possible in the time
that he had. He wanted to be one who had thought about everything, come up with
infinite stories and ideas. Forever.

            He tossed his books and pens and
inkwell onto his bed in the boys’ dorms, then headed down the stairs to lunch,
careful to skip over the parts of the steps that had holes and rotten places. This school is really falling apart, he
thought with disgust, and not for the first time.

            Suddenly a girl thudded onto the landing
in front of him, having fallen down the stairs leading from the girls’ dorms.
She was slightly plump, with long brown hair and blue eyes. He was pretty sure
he had seen her before, though her name...he knew he knew her name....

            “Sorry. Sorry,” she panted as she
got up. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

            “It’s okay.” As Axel looked her over
he realized that she was not, in fact, a student he knew. He regarded her with
a little interest now. “Are you, um, new here?”

            “Yes.” She smoothed back her
chestnut waves of hair and smiled at him. “My name is Eldarye.”

            “Nice to meet you. I’m Axel,” said
Axel, pushing past her. There were many brunette girls in the world of average
height and with blue eyes. It was no wonder he thought he had seen her before.

            She turned around in a flash.
“That’s a cool name. Axel. I mean...I like that name.”

            He stared at her blankly. “Thank
you?”

            Eldarye shrugged and tossed her hair
over her shoulders. “Better head to lunch, hadn’t we?”

            So,
now she’s the haughty one? thought Axel as she stalked serenely past, her
hair blowing in the faint breeze that crept through the cracks in the stones. Well...we’ll see what comes of this.

            But he couldn’t think of a proper
comeback. He didn’t know how to deal with girls, their sudden changes in
direction and mood. He could barely manage Sara, and she was a tomboy for sure.

            He now saw Sara as he entered the
kitchen, getting into line for his meal of thick soup, cooked from squash that
barely managed to get by in the windswept garden of Reluva Academy. She was
easy to recognize – tall, auburn-haired, bronze-skinned, dangerously beautiful
and always with mischief simmering under the calm hazel cover of her eyes. Now
she was surrounded by her usual group of girls.

So....I would REALLY REALLY REALLY appreciate advice/criticsm! Or just any helpful comments. LIke REALLY REALLY appreciate. Thank you so much if you read, pplz!!!!!!!  And thx so much to those who have!

Another Note: this last part you see here is not finished. So. Jsyk.

:) 

I hope people are reading this. It deserves to be read. No, more than deserves. It's got good words, good descriptions, good dialogue, good plot, good everything, really.

One quick thing-- I had a little trouble remembering who was who in Part Four. At least, I think it was part four. To be fair, names are not exactly my strong suit, so take my feedback with a grain of salt.