novelzi Ch 2.14: Departure
Ch 2.14: Departure
Ch 2.14: Departure
Elaina thought about asking whether or not there was time to go back and find a change of clothes, but a carriage cresting over the hill quashed that desire, obviously too late for that now. She shrugged to herself, wondering if she’d be able to borrow anything from one of the other girls. Shirts from Tira and Flora were out for obvious reasons, and pants from Carline would likely be too short.
Does Carline even wear pants? It was a question Elaina hadn’t thought about before, but thinking on it now she wasn’t sure what Carline would wear outside of school. Shirt and pants made sense for Tira, and the sundress certainly fit Flora, but she could see Carline wearing just about anything, from long dresses to pants to skirts. Anything would make sense really, so long as it was somewhat modest. Though immodest would be better...
“Elaina, I think she’s pointing at you,” Tira said, looking off in the distance.
Elaina looked back up, breaking up her thoughts of a less-dressed Carline and trying to find who Tira was talking about. There was only one person, the carriage driver, with dark brown skin, long and flowing curly hair. “Wait, that’s Char!”
Elaina took off in a run, barely remembering that she needed to go slower than she could to not make Char suspicious. “Hey, girl,” the carriage driver said as she pulled up, slowing the carriage and climbing out of the driver’s seat. “Didn’t expect you were the one I’d be ferrying today.”
Elaina crashed into her, perhaps a little too hard, but she grabbed onto the woman and made sure she didn’t get knocked over. “Char!”
“Damn, Elaina, what’re they feeding you?” the woman said as she hugged back. “Or is that just what an Awakening does to you?”
“No, just excited to see you again,” Elaina said as she let go.
“Well,” Tira said, walking up from behind, “this isn’t how you greeted me the first time we met, so I’m assuming you two know each other?”
“I don’t know, she was pretty friendly to me when we were formally introduced for the first time,” Flora said, smirking at Elaina with her eyes.
Elaina did her best to ignore Flora’s comment as she answered Tira. “She drove me here all the way from back home. She’s practically family.”
Char laughed, waving Elaina off. “I’m not that important, just a hired cart.”
Elaina shook her head, still beaming at Char. “You helped a lot, even if it was only for a week. What’re you doing here though? I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”
“What am I doing here? I live here, girl. In town, anyway. I normally just do local stuff like this, but I’ll take the long haul trips when they come up.”
“Sweetie, klutz is when you nudge the table when you’re getting up, not when you lose your pants when you’re standing up at breakfast. And yes girls, that actually happened on the trip here.”
They all laughed again, and Elaina was even pretty sure they all believed that was a genuine accident when she told them she’d forgotten her belt that morning. Conversation moved along to less humiliating topics thought, and continued until they finally crested the hill between school and the town.
“Wait,” Elaina said as she looked out the window, “is that...”
“Oh, right,” Char said. “You didn’t get a good view of it when we came in, did you? Well welcome to Castletown!”
A town? This has to be what a city is, right? It wasn’t like Elaina had a great frame of reference being from what she understood to be a small village, but the sprawling expanse of buildings in the valley below was certainly larger than anything she would call a town. She’d seen the tops of some of these buildings as they rode in on the other side of the hills, but she didn’t realize how low those hills went on this side, how the roofs she was looking at weren’t just those of normal buildings, but giant wooden towers, surrounded by a whole valley’s worth of smaller buildings, more buildings than she could even count.
“It’s enormous,” she said, mystified.
“Eh,” Char said, “it’s a town. Nothing like the capital or even the smaller cities.”
Elaina couldn’t even imagine a bigger place. The tallest parts of the castle were still bigger than the tallest towers in Castletown, but overall the school looked tiny in comparison. “I can’t believe this has just been tucked away here the whole time and I didn’t even know.”
“Yeah, I kinda always hated that,” Tira said. “It’s not defensible at all.
“That’s the point though, right?” Carline said. “So it can’t threaten the castle.”
“Pfft! Like anyone would ever try attacking you all,” Char said. “Most people can’t even get through your gate, afterall.”
“I mean, last week—” Elaina started before Tira stepped on her foot, shaking her head.
“Not now,” Tira mouthed.
Elaina was confused, but she did as she was told. What did I do wrong though? She glanced out the window as the rolled down the hill, her mind being overtaken again by thoughts of the countless dwellings below her. She was so enthralled that she almost didn’t notice the sound of singing coming from Flora. She really does have a nice voice, Elaina thought right before her eyes widened in realization.
She’d heard Flora sing that tune before, and from the look of horror on her face Carline knew what the song meant as well. Only Tira was oblivious to the meaning, a look of bewilderment on her face as Flora’s nymph-grin grew, her singing still carrying on as blue sparkles of crystal started to form around her body.