The Lynx and Faye Book NOVEL WIP

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE. the narrarator
CHAPTER I. lynx
CHAPTER II. faye
CHAPTER II.V. north
CHAPTER III. lynx
CHAPTER IV. faye

IN THE DYING LIGHT OF the sun, five towers pierce the sky like swords, slicing open the clouds that cover the rising moon. Long shadows etch themselves upon the ground, and above them, there are five dark silhouettes of the towers. Inside this newly built place, four Elvorai stood, facing each other with their faces illuminated by flickering lamps. One spectating the scene could tell that it was serious business.
The Elvorai on the far left spoke first: “To this school, I bestow the Gift of Wisdom. May the grounds turn back those who are untrue, and sweep open its doors for the loyal-hearted. May our descendants know the right path from the wrong and follow it till the end. ” Stepping forwards, he placed a magnificent ice-blue flower with pointed petals on a round table in the middle of the room. When he spoke, the other three Founders felt a chill along their spine; they always did when North spoke.
The second spoke up after North. “To this school, I bestow the Gift of Choice. May our students know that whatever they do is their own choice, their own responsibilities. May they be brave for themselves and shine like stars after us.” With East’s words, they felt a burning courage on their hearts, a strange but wonderful feeling of vision. This time, what East placed on the table was a glass compass rose that seemed to have a glow of its own. She waved her green-sleeved arm towards West.
“To this school, I bestow the Gift of Loyalty. May our people be patient with others and be true to themselves. May they know their allies, foes, and most importantly, themselves.” West placed a laurel wreath with deep red prisms of realgar woven in next to East’s compass. With each Gift from the Founders, a pang of colored light shone around the building, illuminating everything around them.
The last to speak, South, started. “To this school, I bestow the Gift of Ambition. May our descendants be sure-hearted of what they want. When they choose their goals, may they be determined and strong to achieve them. May they fly to the immortals on their own wings of destiny.” She took a small dagger from her side, unsheathed it, and placed it on the table, completing the circle of Artifacts. A final flash of bronze light shone for a moment, and dissipated, leaving the four Founders back in the flickering lamp-light.
With these four gifts, the Academy was created. The stiff aura of the room melted away, and South spoke again.
“Will this be enough to protect the Five?” She asked.
“It is too early to know,” said North. “There will be thousands of generations before they are born.”
South nodded.
“The Five are not all we need to worry about,” put in East. “White-Grass was a close call. The Northern Treasury burnt down there. You would know, North. That was millions of years worth of knowledge, and only of the Northerners. There might be more Fire-Catchers out there, waiting to burn down the Academy as well.”
“It’ll be okay,” said West. “We’ll make sure that doesn't happen, won't we?”
“Yes,” said North curtly. “I am going out for a stroll, so good-bye.” He turned and exited the room, his footfalls making hollow sounds on the floor.
Outside, North looked at the trees and the sky. “They have no idea what awaits them,” he whispered to the stars.

THE FIRST THING LYNX SAW when stepping across the iron gates of the Academy was mist. Mist flowing softly across the grass, mist billowing off the roofs of small sitting areas, and in front of her, a shrouded stone path leading to an ancient-looking castle-type building. Looking up, she saw the five towers that had become a symbol of the Elvorai, each with their own spin but somehow still very alike.
Connecting the Towers of North, East, South, and West were long, domed four-storey buildings, where most classrooms were located. Four flags flanked the grand entrance, each bearing the symbol of a Founder: the Blossom of North, the Compass of East, the Crown of West, and the Dagger of South.
The doors suddenly started opening, startling Lynx, and she squinted past the blinding mist and saw someone around the same age as her, who seemed to be the lucky person who was chosen to introduce her to the school or something.
“HI,” called Mystery Person, walking forwards. “What’s your name?”
“Lynx Redwood,” answered Lynx plainly. “Why isn’t a teacher here to greet me?”
“Because they forced me to come,” said the girl. “And I’m also skipping Rune Deciphering for this, so I didn't get some other innocent person to come instead of me.”
“Oh,” said Lynx. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Faye.” said Faye.
“You’re from the Eastern Territories?” asked Lynx. Faye was a name more commonly used in the Eastern places.
“No, Southern. I’m from White Shore. You?”
“Harbor City, Southern Territories as well.” Lynx.
“That’s cool. Do you have your schedule paper?”
“Uhm, I think so?” Lynx flipped her backpack around and dug around for a bit, then produced a crumpled-up piece of paper. “Why do you want to know?” she added suspiciously, as an afterthought.
“Would you want to get lost a million times just to get to your dorm?”
“No, not really,” admitted Lynx.
Later, Faye was leading Lynx up a flight of stairs, one so long that she couldn’t even see the next floor when she stood at the bottom. She was so caught up in trying to crane her neck to see the top that she didn’t notice when her foot caught on a stair and tripped, resulting in having to grab onto the railing for dear life. Very conveniently for her, a girl with exceptionally short dark hair was walking down the stairs at that time, wearing the same uniform as Faye, who seemed to know her, judging by the way she gave Faye a questioning look.
“Hey, Jay,” Faye said to her with a tip of her gold-rimmed apple-shaped glasses. The Jay in question tipped her own gold-rimmed glasses back at Faye.
“What brings you here? Aren’t you supposed to be in Alchemy right now?” Faye asked.
“I have my ways, Faye,” said Jay in a pretend-mysterious way.
“Definitely,” piped up Lynx, quite sarcastically. She was more than 50% sure that that ‘way’ was asking to go to the bathroom then ending up wandering around school aimlessly.
“She speaks!” cried Jay.
Faye raised an eyebrow. “You’re being weird, Jay. Are you high or something? Did you drink too much of that juice at breakfast? Or was it that rum flavored ice cream from yesterday night?”
“I’m not high!” insisted Jay.
“That’s what they all say,” said Lynx, again very skeptically.
“She speaks again!” Jay said.
“Alright, you’re definitely high. Drink less orange juice,” advised Faye.
“What are you, a therapist?” demanded Jay.
“How does this make you feel?” Lynx blurted, unable to stop herself.
“HAHAHAHAHA,” bellowed Faye. “You’re hilarious, Lynx. Jay, you should learn from her.”
“No! I shan't! My humor is fine!” defended Jay. “And you say I’m loud!”
The three continued up the flight of stairs, with Jay joining them just to skip more class time.
Finally, they reached the dormitory floor of the South Tower where Lynx was to live, where a domed sitting area was enclosed in the middle of a ring of dormitories. There was a big mural on the wall and dome that depicted South wielding her dagger, soft-looking couches and armchairs surrounding multiple tables, and a white grand piano stood in the middle of the plaza-like common space. Quite conveniently, Faye and Jay also were located in the South Tower, so close that Lynx could bang on the floor to get Jay’s attention and kick the wall for Faye and speak through a convenient hole in the wall that was used as an emergency light.
After being fed this information, Faye led Lynx to her dorm, room S4210. Faye inserted Lynx’s key into the keyhole and once it was unlocked, Jay kicked open the door.
“Jay!,” hissed Faye. “That is not your door! People are gonna live behind that!”
“I know, Faye, but what fun is it if doors aren’t kicked open once in a while?”
“Wow, Jay. You’ll turn into Ezra if it goes on like this!” remarked Faye.
“Who is Ezra?” inquired Lynx.
“He finds Nemos,” answered Jay at the same time Faye said, “A dude who randomly breakdances.”
“Interesting,” said Lynx, though it wasn’t all that interesting.
“Sure,” agreed Jay.
They stepped across the door frame into a well-furnished room. There was an artificial fireplace installed into the wall, across from a couch and coffee table. Behind that was a long table that seemed to be a mix between a study desk and a dinner table. An open window looked out on the faraway green mass of the Forest, letting in a soft draft. On the far side of the room, a row of cubby-like storage holes stood, some already filled with what Lynx suspected to be her new roommates’ stuff. Faye and Jay entered after her, and turning a corner, Lynx saw that there was a small spiral staircase leading up to a second floor of the dorm. Stepping onto the stairs, she saw a banner on the ceiling declaring ‘Welcome, Willow, Lynx, Anya, and Claire!’ and a sort of balcony thing where people could throw things from the first floor to the second, and folded sets of uniform lay neatly on Lynx’s bottom bunk.
“We shouldn’t be hanging around for too long,” said Faye, snapping Lynx out of her mental narration.
“Yeah,” agreed Jay. “But Alchemy is boring and I’ll be a walking skeleton by the end of it.”
“So will I, after Rune Deciphering,” complained Faye. “I guess we can walk Lynx to her class and take the long way?”
“Good idea,” said Lynx. “Taking the long way to class is fun.”
“My idea,” said Faye with a smirk.
Faye tossed Lynx the keys to her dorm, and Lynx had to fumble around with them midair to prevent them from slipping from her grasp. They took a flight of stairs down from the South Tower, and headed towards Literature, which was all the way on the other side of the massive school, in a classroom on the fourth floor of the North-West building.
Minutes later, after Jay had left them for Alchemy, Lynx was led to a random door in a random hallway that she was bound to forget the way to.
Knocking a few times, Faye pushed open the door and dragged Lynx in. The teacher, who was in the middle of walking around the desks, looked up exasperatedly and asked, “Why are you late?”
“Sir, I’m not in this class-” began Faye, but was cut off with the wave of a hand.
“I know,” snapped the teacher, who was supposedly called Sander Morriey. “I’m not so old my brains have started rotting, unlike a few of you idiots. I am asking you.”
“I’m Lynx?” tried Lynx. “And I’m new? And Faye here was showing me to the classroom?” Lynx felt the stares of the other students all on her now, and she could almost feel the hostility among some of them.
He stared at them for a few minutes longer, then gruffly said, “Come in, grab a notebook, and sit there.” He pointed to the empty seat at a square table near the back of the room, where three other people sat.
Faye backed up out of the classroom, and mouthed, “Good luck, hope you don’t die.” to Lynx.
“Not likely,” mouthed Lynx back with a dreadful feeling.
“Stop dwaddling!” snapped Professor Morriey.
Lynx quickly shuffled over to where she was to sit, refusing to say a hi to the others at her table, since it wasn’t her job to go around greeting people. She set her stuff on the table, at a space sandwiched between two people.
“Hi,” said the girl on her left. Lynx was glad someone else spoke first, so that the table didn’t have to sit in awkward silence the whole class. “I’m Claire, what about you?”
“Uhm, I’m Lynx,” said Lynx.
“Didya forget your own name or something?” cut in the boy sitting on the farthest end of the table, leaning towards where Lynx was sitting.
“No,” insisted Lynx.
“Hmmm. Fine,” spoke the other girl. “I’m Iris, and this here is Noah.”
“Hello,” said Noah.
“Hi,” said Lynx, getting quite tired of the boring introductions. “I think we can stop saying hi now.”
“Sure,” agreed Iris. She pushed a black notebook and a pen to Lynx.
“We’re writing what we’re looking forward to most in the school year,” she explained to her. Lynx looked around at Clair, Noah, and Iris’s long entries, realized that she had a lot of work to do, and quickly got to writing.

IT WAS THE END of the day, and Faye was in her dorm, just next to the new kid, Lynx’s. She had an essay coming up, and she had barely started, so she decided to officially pull her first all nighter, since before, a) she had less work, and b) she hadn’t discovered the miracles of coffee.
Then, right after she decided she would work, Faye got carried away by the idea of throwing stuff down from the balcony on her roommates’ heads once they walked in the dorm. It was concerningly hilarious for Faye; she had even almost fallen down the stairs while laughing, while Octavia Elasian, one of her roommates, stared in confusion and concern from below.
After that episode of whatever-that-was, Faye decided she had enough and settled down to work. However, not long after, she stood up again to go bother her roommates. It was quite a fun hobby of hers. This time, Faye's idea was to throw torn up toilet paper soaked in water on Iris Rosenfeld, another poor innocent roommate’s head.
She slunk off to the bathroom to soak some tp, and crept back up to Iris’s bottom bunk, and saw that Iris was cluelessly scrolling through her phone, unaware of the doom that would be in her near future.
Wet tp in hand, Faye snuck up to the still-oblivious Iris, and just as she was going to smack that paper in Iris’s poor face-
“Faye, why are you crawling around like a slug with wet toilet paper in your hand?” asked Emery Rainwood, Faye’s last roommate and arguably the one with the best mental sanity.
Faye quickly stood up. “I-, nothing! I mean, no reason! Just wanted to- uhm, nevermind!”
A great idea came into her mind.
“THINK FAST, CATCH!” she roared at her, and threw the wet tp in her face instead. In the time it took for Emery to react, Faye sprinted down the stairs to run away from an enraged Emery while cackling maniacally. “THANK ME LATER, ROSENFELD!” she yelled at Iris. “I HAVE SPARED YOUR PITIFUL FACE!”
“MY FACE IS NOT PITIFUL,” shouted Iris. “MY FACE IS AMAZING!”
“NO ONE CARES.”



The following morning, Faye awoke at her study table with an imprint of the edge of a page on her face, since she had fallen asleep while writing. Nonetheless, her paper was still not finished and Faye was glad she had woken up before her roommates, since she was sure she would start *cough* procrastinating *cough* again. She took a bottle of premade Starbucks coffee out of the fridge and started to work again.
Aaaaand after ten minutes, Faye ran away again to go do hell-knows-what. It was a fun life.
When she got back, Faye told herself she would focus and study, but a tapping noise coming from the direction of the dorm next door was seriously butchering her brain’s braining skills, so she did the natural thing: she stood up and kicked the wall. A crashing noise was heard on the other side. Maybe someone had their ear to the wall when she was kicking it.
Faye bent over and spoke through the hole in the wall (aka emergency light): “What the heck are you idiots doing at this time?”
“Nothing of interest,” a cold voice responded. Faye's heart sank as she recognized the voice.
“Then stop that infernal tapping, Riverson,” Faye snapped back. She kicked the wall again for good measure and stomped back to her table. S2414 really held the worst people, with a grand total of four idiots: Evane Riverson (Faye only called her by Riverson, since she thought she didn’t deserve a first name) , Firona Grayson (aka Fish Grease), Leonora Rihan (aka Shorty), and Aimere Ashbel (aka Ashy).
Evane Riverson, from Faye's expert perspective, could win the prize for Most Annoying in any competition. Born from a high-status, prominent clan, Evane grew up in a mansion of a hellhole, with everything fed on a silver spoon to her. She was the definition of ‘rich spoiled girl’, with everything you could ever want, except for her brains. Evane sucked at math and literature, and everything in between. If not for Mr. Riverson’s money, Evane would probably be shipped off to farm crops.
“Can you stop kicking the wall?” asked a voice from the second floor of Faye’s dorm. She looked up and found Iris staring skeptically down at her.
“No.” Faye grabbed the nearest available projectile, a packet of hard candy, and flung it at Iris’s face.
After Faye and her friends had breakfast of the regular Academy food at the Dining Hall, they bid each other goodbye and each went to their first period classes, Faye and Lynx both going to Alchemy first, which, unfortunately, was all the way across campus.
When they reached the classroom, they found that most of the seats had not been filled yet, so they sat at a table near the back, with another seat empty at it. Soon, it was filled by none other than Kaori Sakoto, who took a seat on the other side of Lynx.
“Hi,” Kaori said to Lynx. “You must be new. I’m Kaori. Kaori Sakoto. And you are?”
“Um, I’m Lynx,” said Lynx.
“That’s an interesting name,” remarked Kaori. “I haven’t heard it before, it’s cool.”
“Thanks,” responded Lynx.
The rest of the class went most uneventfully, with them starting the unit about famous potioneers and assassins who specialized in potions. The real fun stuff started near the end of the class.
Faye was going to start packing up to leave when she noticed Winston, a short emo boy crouching in the corner with his hood over his head. Faye gave him a look of confusion.
“Keep walking,” said Kaori behind her, who hadn’t yet noticed Winston and was preoccupied on picking at something in her nails. Then she looked up.
“What…?”
“Cole kissed me Cole kissed me Cole kissed me,” he said in a shocked and horrified way, but when Faye got a close look at his face, he was actually grinning and almost laughing.
“WHAT?” exclaimed Kaori. “TELL ME EVERYTHING.” By now, there was an interested crowd around them, so Faye backed out; she’d get the story out of Kaori or one of her friends. It’d become the new hot topic for sure.
Just then, Professor Irren spoke: “Everyone, why are you huddling around Winston? Is he hurt?”
“I’m not,” piped Winston.
“Then everyone, stand up and get to your second periods. Class starts in five.” Irren motioned for everyone to stand up and shooed them out. Faye was already waiting by the door, and walked out with Lynx and Kaori.
“What did I just witness?” asked Lynx in a concerned way after a while. “Is Winston x Cole even a confirmed ship?”
“Not yet,” said Kaori with mock-sadness.
“But it may become canon very soon,” added Faye. “What’s your next class? I’ve got Literature.”
“Rune Deciphering,” sighed Kaori.
“Uhm, let’s see…,” read Lynx from her schedule paper, which she had dug out of her bag. “I’ve got Rune Deciphering too. Guess we’d better get going?”
“Yep. See you guys at lunch!” Faye bid them goodbye, turned on her heel, and continued down the corridor until she took the main staircase up to the classroom she had showed Lynx to just yesterday for a session of torture with Professor Morriey.

FLAMES WERE ENGULFING THE building of the Academy. Some parts of the floor and walls, which were wooden, were starting to blacken and fall to the ground as ash, and the air around North was already getting too stuffy and hot to breath. He crouched down as close as he could to the floor and tried to think clearly through the frenzied thoughts spinning around his head. It was clearly an attack of the fire-catchers; the woods around the Academy could somehow never catch on fire. It was one of the reasons he and the others had decided to build the main campus there. They had even taken a few risks, like throwing lit candles into the treetops; it didn’t work, so clearly, it was the fault of those monstrous beasts.
North was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice the flames were creeping closer to him until his hands had become engulfed in fire. He snatched his hands back and fanned them violently, now knowing he had to act fast to save his and his students. Rising to his feet, he dashed to the door of the room he was in, the hot flames dancing around his moving figure. Coming across a hallway, he noticed that it was eerily quiet; as quiet as a flaming school about to go down could be. There were no screams and cries of pain, which was very odd. He ran to the nearest window and peered out to the grounds. As suspected, five hulking shapes stood below, and at the instant he leaned out the window, five heads snapped straight in his direction.
“Begone!” North yelled at the creatures. “Or I shall smite you and throw your souls to hell!”
“Never,” rumbled the one with a sound-projecting ability, the sound seeming to split straight through North’s skull.
“Hold up, I’m coming down to end this,” muttered North as he ran down the flight of stairs that were still standing. Out on the field, six, not five fire-catchers stood. Despite their sunken, dead look, North was shocked he could still see the traces of Elvorai in them. The leader, whom he recognized as Vatra, ex-general of the Elvoraien Army, still had the posture of a commander.
“Why have you come here, beasts?” he sneered. “I remember I banished you to the Forest back twenty years ago!”
“When have I been the one to listen to silly little Elvorai?” spat Vatra. “You forget yourself.” His fiery cronies roared in agreement behind their leader. “We will burn all four Territories to dust, starting with your precious school, and you know what? There’s nothing you can do.” More screaming and pounding from the lackeys.
“It seems your brain has melted from all that heat. Can’t blame it. If I were your brain, I would melt too, since it probably sucks being in your head. If you did have a brain, however, you would remember that last time we met like this, I snapped off your horns and you ran off like a baby,” snapped North, getting irritated. South, West, and East would be here soon, so his job for now was to stall for as long as possible.
“Shut. Your. Trap,” hissed Vatra, stalking forwards. North had clearly poked a sore wound.
“Oh, what are you going to do? I’m so terribly horribly scared. Please spare my poor soul!” mocked North, fanning his fingers outwards and shot a beam of flaring purple electricity straight at Vatra’s temple. North had a rare double-Ability; he could command lightning and see visions occasionally. Similar to most double-Ability Elvorai, one was more powerful than the other. In North’s case, his electricity was dominant over his unreliable visions.
Just at last second, Vatra dodged, and the spear of lighting shot into the side of his charred forehead. Vatra blinked a few times, then laughed.
Uh oh, thought North. The shot had gone off target- not his fault, but Vatra’s- why couldn’t he just stand still and die? The lightning wouldn’t be fatal now, just a concussion, a light one if Vatra was unfortunately lucky, but there was always a chance he would just faint over and die.
“Oh, North, you think you can get me with a few tricks of light-” his eyes promptly rolled backwards in his head, and collapsed into two of his friends. A roar erupted from the rest.
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” North was about to be tramped into North-y mush- until the edges of his vision went black and he felt like he was falling as well. He blinked open his eyes a few moments later, and realized, feeling stupid, that it was a silly vision; he knew from the splitting headache after. Then he realized.
Wait- a vision…? That usually means danger is near. I must tell the others! He pushed himself up from his desk to a standing position, and raced to South’s office, while yelling for West and East to come. He found South dozing as well, head on her folded arms.
“Wake up,” he hissed. “You’re going to need to hear this.”

LYNX HAD SPENT SEVERAL MONTHS AT her new school before she heard the news.
It was a letter–a letter from her parents. Lynx hoped and hoped and hoped that the letter’s news wasn’t true–how could it be true? Of all people… of all schools… of all times…
Her old enemy from her past school was looking to join the Academy.
Their story started a while ago and hadn’t stopped since then. It started so long ago… years and years. All the way in kindergarten. Maybe it started on the first day of kindergarten, or maybe even earlier. Who knows? The important part was that their story was long and complicated and Lynx had thought that once she joined the Academy, she’d never have to see that girl’s face ever again.
Sahara. That was her name.
It’d been so long, Lynx had almost forgotten about her. But of course, Sahara came back. She always did. She was almost like a cockroach–small and annoying and sneaky and basically invincible. No matter what you do to a cockroach, it somehow always has a way of returning.
Lynx’s life had been actually decent at the Academy–she’d made some new friends, gotten used to the environment, and overall felt pretty decent about switching schools. And now Sahara was going to come and mess everything up? Lynx closed her eyes and imagined having to walk around and see Sahara’s irritating face everywhere. It made her clench her fists in rage.
Stop. Stop thinking about this when you’re supposed to be focusing on homework, Lynx. Lynx’s mental voice of reason popped into her head, and she sighed. She was slouched in her desk’s chair, staring blankly at the sheets of homework spread out before her. It was hard to focus when she kept remembering the fact that Sahara might join her Academy.
That’s exactly it; she might join. It’s not confirmed. It’s fine. I’m fine. None of that helped her anxiety, though. There was a solid chance that Sahara would join the Academy, because both Lynx and her friend Willow were there. Willow had also gone to their school, and she and Lynx had become friends in second grade. Willow had also mostly been on good terms with Sahara, though she had had many ups and downs with her and left on a rather negative note.
Oh, and there was the fact that Sahara had claimed that she was friends with Cole. Cole, of all people! However, he hadn’t ever openly said that he was friends with her or even knew her…
Focus, Lynx. Focus. Focus. Focus. With each focus, Lynx banged her head on her desk.
“Lynx! Lynx! You won’t believe what I just found out,” exclaimed the voice of Lynx’s roommate and friend since second grade, Willow. Willow was a rather weird and out-of-ordinary girl, quirky and kind, caring and sympathetic. She came from a pretty rich family, and lived a very sheltered life before joining the Academy.
Lynx immediately rubbed her eyes and adjusted her glasses. She spun around in her chair to face Willow. “What?”
“Sahara might join our Academy,” Willow said, as if she were the only one who knew anything.
This made Lynx’s head hurt even more. She was in no mood to even think about Sahara’s existence right now. She simply nodded and said coldly, “Yes, I know. I heard.” Unfortunately.
Willow looked away nervously. “I don’t know what to do. She used to be kind of nice to me but then she started being really mean. Do you think she’s going to try to brainwash me into being her friend again?”
“Of course she will,” Lynx said in a rather you-are-so-doomed-and-the-world-will-crumble-and-fall voice. “That’s basically her entire purpose in life: act nice, backstab, act nice again once her plan fails, backstab again. Oh, plus some bullying and gatekeeping and manipulating and acting like she’s really smart along the way.”
Of course, this didn’t seem to make Willow any less nervous. Willow fiddled with a strand of her long brown hair and stayed silent for a while.
Finally, she spoke again. “It’s Monday night, Lynx. We have a lot of homework, you know. Are you working on our project about the history of worshiping cats? We’re going to have to present that in front of the entire class, you know.”
“I know. I’m working on it. Everyone will have to present their project too, remember. Ours is simply different because everyone else did something about boring history. Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control.” Lynx squinted for absolutely no reason. “Where is Claire, by the way? Weren’t you guys supposed to be hanging out together all the time?” She let a tiny amount of bitterness seep into her voice. Claire was one of their roommates and probably Willow’s new best friend. Claire was a very kind, welcoming person but with a sassy and sometimes ruthless streak. She was one of the nicest people to Lynx and Willow on their first day at the Academy.
“Oh, Claire,” sighed Willow. “She’s also busy working on her Alchemy stuff. Honestly, I don’t get what’s so important about Alchemy. You combine some stuff and get something different. Big deal.”
“Lynx,” came the startled voice of Anya, the other roommate of Lynx. Lynx looked behind Willow to the entryway where Anya stood, blinking in bewilderment.
Lynx let out her breath. “Anya.” Anya was usually a reasonable person. She was the only good roommate for Lynx to go to for help on homework.
“What is going on here?” Anya asked. She looked around curiously and narrowed her eyes at Willow. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” She spun around and left.
Lynx thought about banging her head on her desk again, but decided it wouldn’t be very orderly in front of easily worried Willow. Anya and Willow never were very good friends; in fact, their interactions were usually very polite and dry.
Sahara might be joining this Academy. There it was again–the one sentence that basically ruined Lynx’s entire day, and perhaps even her life.