Status: Somewhat Active - updated once a month...?
My Story
FIRST DAYS AND A HIDING PLACE
‘ring.. ring ring.. ring ring ring ring.. ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring..!’
“Oh just shut up.” I stick one lazy arm out of the covers and slam it roughly on that irritating alarm clock on the desk beside me. Or the alarm clock that was supposed to be there, that is.
“OWwW! Why the HELL am I always so lucky?”
I shoot out of bed in an instant and nurse my stinging palm. Apparently the alarm clock is M-I-A. My eyes snap open and momentarily I am bewildered. I wasn’t at home.
I blink my groggy eyes in confusion. Then the previous day rushes up to catch me. No wonder. I climb drowsily out of bed and a soft snore startles me. I glance hurriedly around the grand room, looking for potential burglars.
A lump under the covers of the other bed prompts me to check there. I slowly and hesitantly lift the covers of the bed.
It was a girl.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Just my roommate. I look down at her curiously.
She was really pretty, with shiny jet-black hair, high slanting cheekbones and the longest eyelashes i had ever seen in my entire life. I hoped she wasn't like the other girls. She looked friendly and kind, not like the others, but hey, appearances can be deceiving. Just take Eylan for example. I never thought he would be that sort of person who would call others names that were even worse that Angel's.
And that's saying a lot.
Placing the covers gently back on her sleeping body, I look around the room, having not had the energy to really look at it the day before. Heck, i was literally asleep on my feet then.
I guess it was a good thing my mouth was so dry I couldn’t produce a single sound or else I would have woken everyone in the surrounding mile up with a very-loud-gasp of surprise.
The room was seriously magnificent. As in seriously. There weren't any words in the thesaurus that could adequately describe how the room looked.
It had like this really huge carpet on the floor that looked suspiciously like the pelt of a very dead and very big horned bear. All the horned bears I had ever seen in my entire life were HUGE and this had to be at least two times their size. I know it was most definitely dead, but still. It was still pretty freaky. I mean, how would you feel if you had this humongous bear in the same big room as you and your roommate who could very well turn out like an Angel clone? Even if it was long dead.
Exactly.
And there was this really cool big lamp thingy dangling down from the high and glass windowed ceiling that glowed a thousand different colours in the soft sunlight that streamed gently through the long silk curtains draping the windows. And the feather-down king size beds with the drape canopy were really nice. And then there was the bay windows to the north side of the room and - did i mention the balcony? - and there was a bookshelf crammed with loads of books.
It was a wonder how I didn’t even notice any of it the day before. Apart from the balcony, of course. Who would've missed that? Must have been some sleep.
I glance one last time round the room again.
Hey.. wait a moment..
what’s that piece of paper on the oak table?
Oh.
Timetable.
Today’s.. Day 7. Hmm… I skim over the piece of creamy white paper in my hand. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 - where is it? - Day 5, Day 6.. Aha! Day 7.
First lesson: Social etiquette. What the heck? And it’s at.. 8.15. What time is it now? I glance at the giant clock dangling in the corner. 8.26. and 42 seconds. Oh crud. No wonder it was so quiet.
I slip on that horrid black dress labeled 'uniform' hurriedly and rush to wake up my sound-asleep companion. She groans and turns on her back. I’m panicking. Gee. How surprising.
“You’ve got to wake up!” I shake her shoulder vigorously. She doesn’t budge a single inch.
“Wake up wake up wake up wake up!” I’m really starting to panic now. “we’re LATE!” That does the trick. She shoots upright instantly in her bed and before I can register what is happening, she is up and out of her bed and pulling my arm so hard towards the door I feel it can never resume its original position ever again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We rush down the hallway and up countless flights of steep stairs, while I try to figure out the weird and confusing lines on the dense map.
The class should be just round the corner.
According to the map. Which is most (very) probably inaccurate. Who was that thick-headed numbskull that drew this map anyway? Couldn't they just write "walk forward 10 steps, turn to the right on the third junction and climb up 5 flights of stairs etc." or something like that?
No.
Of course they just had to draw an utterly intelligible map on which 'courtyard' looks like 'chicken'. And we are now heading towards the 'stinky evidence casserole' that does not seem to be anywhere on this face of the world. Not that my map-reading skills were any much reliable anyway. Worse, probably.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
We skid round a dimly-lit corner.. and i run slap bang straight into a stern looking Headmistress Ikyricl.
Then my roommate comes flying round the corner, banging blindly into me, who in turn bangs back at the headmistress so we all fall down into a heap on the ground. Oh this day just gets better and better.
“Uh.. hi there.” I swallowed nervously and scramble off the ground as I dusted myself best as I could, giving her the world's worst curtsy. Her expression doesn’t change. Not one single bit. Well. I never said my curtsies were good. Quite the opposite, in fact. I gulp loudly as she opens her mouth. She’s gonna scold us, I bet. Why in the world am i always right?
“Miss Sofia Alyson Pellowmere-Kirkpatrick, what– “I flinch visibly. Nothing like a good old full name to give one the spooks. Ah, the power of a name. The only one other person in my life who ever called me by my full name was dad in his ‘very pissed you-are-in-so-much-deep-water parent’ mode. And I didn’t like it either. Wow. How surprising.
“–no morals at all. “Princess” indeed. Even my wild niece would be a better princess than you.—“
What the heck?
She’s still yakking away?
She does know no one's listening to her right?
“– and you too Miss Harriet McFellon. Fancy waking up so late in the morning. All the other girls are up and ready already yet you– bla bla bla bla bla bla -”
Eeww! she spits when she talks! And she was talking about ‘etiquette’ and all that too. Ironic. I surreptitiously wipe my spittled hand on the hem of my dress as she rambles obliviously on.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
The rest of the day isn’t much better.
On and on we moved, class to class, taking utterly useless and boring lessons on etiquette and ‘the best way to bow to your elders’ and ‘the proper way to hold a dinner fork’ and "how to talk to the lower classes' and 'which cutlery to use' and what-crap. What a great first day I’m having. Note the sarcasm.
I mean, who wants to know what fork to use for what or whether a soup spoon or a ladle would be better for drinking broth. Aren't they the same thing?
It's pretty simple actually. Spoon: Scoop up mushy stuff to place into mouth. Fork: Skewer hard stuff that the spoon is unable to pick up and place into mouth. Knife: Cut large unrecognizable lumps of food into smaller unrecognizable lumps of food to place into mouth. How hard is that?
Of course the royals had to have everything for everything.
There are meat forks, vegetable forks, fruit forks, pick-up-whatever's-left forks and dessert forks.
Then there are soup spoons, fruit spoons, meat spoons, rice spoons, noodle spoons, veggie spoons and egg spoons.
And that's not even half of it.
There are still pick-up-leftovers spoons, pass-around-for-everyone-to-use spoons, pudding spoons, dessert spoons, sauce spoons - don't get me started.
And who needs to learn how to 'talk regally to your lower subjects like farmers'? I mean, there's no way i'll become the princess and even then everyone here's a descendant of a 'lower subject like a farmer' some way or another. Seriously. Who wants a stuck-up pompous woman as their queen-to-be?
Not for the first time, I wonder if everyone’s overreacting about the ‘princess’ part. If the prince’s from a royal family, I don’t think he’ll be that shallow. I mean, not only girls who are prim and pretty and proper and can sew brilliant works of embroidery to show off to others and curtsy perfectly and can tell the difference from a cabbage fork and a lettuce fork and speaks meekly and always listens to others and have absolutedly no mind of their own are the perfect epitome of a queen. Right? Right?
Though to say the truth I don’t really trust any lowlanders anymore.
Even a prince.
I never wanted to come to this place anyway.
The other girls, apart from my roommate Harriet who seems as bored as me - thank god- seem to enjoy it perfectly fine though, taking every new thing in with delighted squeals of excitement. I knew she was different. Seems like i have brilliant intuition. -cue self-satisfied evil laughter-
Sometimes they are just so pathetic and shallow. Not all of them, i mean. Some of them are really nice and shy and gentle, and would make a great queen, who just want to try and hey, a girl's allowed to dream; but still. Some of them are simply - lets just say i want to strangle some sense into them. A pretty, nasty, blond girl whose name starts with A and ends with L and is 5 letters and 2 syllables long, in particular.
Come to think of it, it’s perfect. Shallow little girls for a shallow little lowlander prince.
At least the royals had enough sense to include the normal syllables.
Like mathematics and world science and literature and history and all that. Or else I think I would never have made it through the first day.
And I’m not exaggerating.
Not one bit.
Maybe the prince isn't so stupid after all. Shallow, but not stupid.
Not that the girls could understand the lesson. Heck, even I was lost half the time during the maths lesson. Even Harriet was wrinkling her brow in confusion during a particularly difficult bout of maths problem sums. I mean, who knows what's the answer to (sin25.432 + cos68.2319 x pi1934.21878) rounded to 5 decimals place?
Exactly.
I bet even Mr Oggle the math teacher doesn't know the answer anyway. He gave us till the bell rang to do that particular problem and then practically ran off once it did.
Though i guess the teachers that didn’t teach the stupid stuff were pretty nice. With the exception of Mr. O of course. He's a bald fat man who looks down on everyone and won't answer any questions and goes 'sniff' every ten seconds. Like Ms Elsie, our history teacher. She's this 20-something year-old teacher that has a brilliant smile and the brightest, most cheerful personality ever.
Who said all history teachers were boring?
And then there was Mrs Gade our world science teacher, who might seem strict at first with her severe bun and squinty grey eyes but she's pretty friendly once you get to know her.
And of course there's Mr Lucas, the literature teacher, who is so obviously in love with Ms Elsie. He cracks the funniest jokes and keeps us all laughing our heads off with his absurb little-known facts. Who knew Michad had a missing appendix and a horrible flatulence problem that lasted him 40 years?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Hey, want a toff?”
Harriet nudges me and sneaks a piece of candy into my hands as we listen to a boring half-deaf guy ramble nonstop on the effects of the royal family on the people of the kingdom. Like I care.
I grab the candy eagerly and stuff the banned food secretly in my mouth as Angel glares venomously as me from the front row. I smile sweetly back and chew at the candy loudly for good measure, then turn out the window like I don’t care a fig what she thinks. A thick forest of trees lines the academy. I smile. Forests technically equals to privacy. Eylan doesn’t count.
Perhaps this place might not be so bad after all.
“Oh just shut up.” I stick one lazy arm out of the covers and slam it roughly on that irritating alarm clock on the desk beside me. Or the alarm clock that was supposed to be there, that is.
“OWwW! Why the HELL am I always so lucky?”
I shoot out of bed in an instant and nurse my stinging palm. Apparently the alarm clock is M-I-A. My eyes snap open and momentarily I am bewildered. I wasn’t at home.
I blink my groggy eyes in confusion. Then the previous day rushes up to catch me. No wonder. I climb drowsily out of bed and a soft snore startles me. I glance hurriedly around the grand room, looking for potential burglars.
A lump under the covers of the other bed prompts me to check there. I slowly and hesitantly lift the covers of the bed.
It was a girl.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Just my roommate. I look down at her curiously.
She was really pretty, with shiny jet-black hair, high slanting cheekbones and the longest eyelashes i had ever seen in my entire life. I hoped she wasn't like the other girls. She looked friendly and kind, not like the others, but hey, appearances can be deceiving. Just take Eylan for example. I never thought he would be that sort of person who would call others names that were even worse that Angel's.
And that's saying a lot.
Placing the covers gently back on her sleeping body, I look around the room, having not had the energy to really look at it the day before. Heck, i was literally asleep on my feet then.
I guess it was a good thing my mouth was so dry I couldn’t produce a single sound or else I would have woken everyone in the surrounding mile up with a very-loud-gasp of surprise.
The room was seriously magnificent. As in seriously. There weren't any words in the thesaurus that could adequately describe how the room looked.
It had like this really huge carpet on the floor that looked suspiciously like the pelt of a very dead and very big horned bear. All the horned bears I had ever seen in my entire life were HUGE and this had to be at least two times their size. I know it was most definitely dead, but still. It was still pretty freaky. I mean, how would you feel if you had this humongous bear in the same big room as you and your roommate who could very well turn out like an Angel clone? Even if it was long dead.
Exactly.
And there was this really cool big lamp thingy dangling down from the high and glass windowed ceiling that glowed a thousand different colours in the soft sunlight that streamed gently through the long silk curtains draping the windows. And the feather-down king size beds with the drape canopy were really nice. And then there was the bay windows to the north side of the room and - did i mention the balcony? - and there was a bookshelf crammed with loads of books.
It was a wonder how I didn’t even notice any of it the day before. Apart from the balcony, of course. Who would've missed that? Must have been some sleep.
I glance one last time round the room again.
Hey.. wait a moment..
what’s that piece of paper on the oak table?
Oh.
Timetable.
Today’s.. Day 7. Hmm… I skim over the piece of creamy white paper in my hand. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 - where is it? - Day 5, Day 6.. Aha! Day 7.
First lesson: Social etiquette. What the heck? And it’s at.. 8.15. What time is it now? I glance at the giant clock dangling in the corner. 8.26. and 42 seconds. Oh crud. No wonder it was so quiet.
I slip on that horrid black dress labeled 'uniform' hurriedly and rush to wake up my sound-asleep companion. She groans and turns on her back. I’m panicking. Gee. How surprising.
“You’ve got to wake up!” I shake her shoulder vigorously. She doesn’t budge a single inch.
“Wake up wake up wake up wake up!” I’m really starting to panic now. “we’re LATE!” That does the trick. She shoots upright instantly in her bed and before I can register what is happening, she is up and out of her bed and pulling my arm so hard towards the door I feel it can never resume its original position ever again.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We rush down the hallway and up countless flights of steep stairs, while I try to figure out the weird and confusing lines on the dense map.
The class should be just round the corner.
According to the map. Which is most (very) probably inaccurate. Who was that thick-headed numbskull that drew this map anyway? Couldn't they just write "walk forward 10 steps, turn to the right on the third junction and climb up 5 flights of stairs etc." or something like that?
No.
Of course they just had to draw an utterly intelligible map on which 'courtyard' looks like 'chicken'. And we are now heading towards the 'stinky evidence casserole' that does not seem to be anywhere on this face of the world. Not that my map-reading skills were any much reliable anyway. Worse, probably.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
We skid round a dimly-lit corner.. and i run slap bang straight into a stern looking Headmistress Ikyricl.
Then my roommate comes flying round the corner, banging blindly into me, who in turn bangs back at the headmistress so we all fall down into a heap on the ground. Oh this day just gets better and better.
“Uh.. hi there.” I swallowed nervously and scramble off the ground as I dusted myself best as I could, giving her the world's worst curtsy. Her expression doesn’t change. Not one single bit. Well. I never said my curtsies were good. Quite the opposite, in fact. I gulp loudly as she opens her mouth. She’s gonna scold us, I bet. Why in the world am i always right?
“Miss Sofia Alyson Pellowmere-Kirkpatrick, what– “I flinch visibly. Nothing like a good old full name to give one the spooks. Ah, the power of a name. The only one other person in my life who ever called me by my full name was dad in his ‘very pissed you-are-in-so-much-deep-water parent’ mode. And I didn’t like it either. Wow. How surprising.
“–no morals at all. “Princess” indeed. Even my wild niece would be a better princess than you.—“
What the heck?
She’s still yakking away?
She does know no one's listening to her right?
“– and you too Miss Harriet McFellon. Fancy waking up so late in the morning. All the other girls are up and ready already yet you– bla bla bla bla bla bla -”
Eeww! she spits when she talks! And she was talking about ‘etiquette’ and all that too. Ironic. I surreptitiously wipe my spittled hand on the hem of my dress as she rambles obliviously on.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
The rest of the day isn’t much better.
On and on we moved, class to class, taking utterly useless and boring lessons on etiquette and ‘the best way to bow to your elders’ and ‘the proper way to hold a dinner fork’ and "how to talk to the lower classes' and 'which cutlery to use' and what-crap. What a great first day I’m having. Note the sarcasm.
I mean, who wants to know what fork to use for what or whether a soup spoon or a ladle would be better for drinking broth. Aren't they the same thing?
It's pretty simple actually. Spoon: Scoop up mushy stuff to place into mouth. Fork: Skewer hard stuff that the spoon is unable to pick up and place into mouth. Knife: Cut large unrecognizable lumps of food into smaller unrecognizable lumps of food to place into mouth. How hard is that?
Of course the royals had to have everything for everything.
There are meat forks, vegetable forks, fruit forks, pick-up-whatever's-left forks and dessert forks.
Then there are soup spoons, fruit spoons, meat spoons, rice spoons, noodle spoons, veggie spoons and egg spoons.
And that's not even half of it.
There are still pick-up-leftovers spoons, pass-around-for-everyone-to-use spoons, pudding spoons, dessert spoons, sauce spoons - don't get me started.
And who needs to learn how to 'talk regally to your lower subjects like farmers'? I mean, there's no way i'll become the princess and even then everyone here's a descendant of a 'lower subject like a farmer' some way or another. Seriously. Who wants a stuck-up pompous woman as their queen-to-be?
Not for the first time, I wonder if everyone’s overreacting about the ‘princess’ part. If the prince’s from a royal family, I don’t think he’ll be that shallow. I mean, not only girls who are prim and pretty and proper and can sew brilliant works of embroidery to show off to others and curtsy perfectly and can tell the difference from a cabbage fork and a lettuce fork and speaks meekly and always listens to others and have absolutedly no mind of their own are the perfect epitome of a queen. Right? Right?
Though to say the truth I don’t really trust any lowlanders anymore.
Even a prince.
I never wanted to come to this place anyway.
The other girls, apart from my roommate Harriet who seems as bored as me - thank god- seem to enjoy it perfectly fine though, taking every new thing in with delighted squeals of excitement. I knew she was different. Seems like i have brilliant intuition. -cue self-satisfied evil laughter-
Sometimes they are just so pathetic and shallow. Not all of them, i mean. Some of them are really nice and shy and gentle, and would make a great queen, who just want to try and hey, a girl's allowed to dream; but still. Some of them are simply - lets just say i want to strangle some sense into them. A pretty, nasty, blond girl whose name starts with A and ends with L and is 5 letters and 2 syllables long, in particular.
Come to think of it, it’s perfect. Shallow little girls for a shallow little lowlander prince.
At least the royals had enough sense to include the normal syllables.
Like mathematics and world science and literature and history and all that. Or else I think I would never have made it through the first day.
And I’m not exaggerating.
Not one bit.
Maybe the prince isn't so stupid after all. Shallow, but not stupid.
Not that the girls could understand the lesson. Heck, even I was lost half the time during the maths lesson. Even Harriet was wrinkling her brow in confusion during a particularly difficult bout of maths problem sums. I mean, who knows what's the answer to (sin25.432 + cos68.2319 x pi1934.21878) rounded to 5 decimals place?
Exactly.
I bet even Mr Oggle the math teacher doesn't know the answer anyway. He gave us till the bell rang to do that particular problem and then practically ran off once it did.
Though i guess the teachers that didn’t teach the stupid stuff were pretty nice. With the exception of Mr. O of course. He's a bald fat man who looks down on everyone and won't answer any questions and goes 'sniff' every ten seconds. Like Ms Elsie, our history teacher. She's this 20-something year-old teacher that has a brilliant smile and the brightest, most cheerful personality ever.
Who said all history teachers were boring?
And then there was Mrs Gade our world science teacher, who might seem strict at first with her severe bun and squinty grey eyes but she's pretty friendly once you get to know her.
And of course there's Mr Lucas, the literature teacher, who is so obviously in love with Ms Elsie. He cracks the funniest jokes and keeps us all laughing our heads off with his absurb little-known facts. Who knew Michad had a missing appendix and a horrible flatulence problem that lasted him 40 years?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Hey, want a toff?”
Harriet nudges me and sneaks a piece of candy into my hands as we listen to a boring half-deaf guy ramble nonstop on the effects of the royal family on the people of the kingdom. Like I care.
I grab the candy eagerly and stuff the banned food secretly in my mouth as Angel glares venomously as me from the front row. I smile sweetly back and chew at the candy loudly for good measure, then turn out the window like I don’t care a fig what she thinks. A thick forest of trees lines the academy. I smile. Forests technically equals to privacy. Eylan doesn’t count.
Perhaps this place might not be so bad after all.