Tales of a Mage

Regine's Flashback (or how she nearly died in a lake because girls are stupid)

Regine stared at the fire, scorching hot flames obstructing her view. She wanted to reach out, feel her flesh burn as the flames devour her, no longer being able to sense the water that drenched her. However, before she could think about doing that, Ilham raised their head. Their dark brown short hair surrounding their face, their green and blue eyes searching her face inquisitively. She tried to keep it as impassive as possible, making it impossible for them to be aware of the churning of her stomach, or the taste of metal in her mouth. She swallowed the lump on her throat.

"Do we have anything to eat?"

If looks could kill, she would be dead.

"Yeah, luckily, the food was outside during the explosion,."

She watched as Ilham rummaged through their remaining bag, a wave of guilt trickling through her as she thought about the temple, but she couldn't bring herself to open her mouth and apologise. Maybe it was because she was scared about what they would think, maybe it was because she didn't feel like she could repeat that experience, not in any way.

Finally, Ilham produced two tiny boxes from the bag and handed one to her.

"Thanks,"

She opened it, inside was a serving of rice, cold, but good enough to eat. Regine played with her food for a while, moving the rice from one side of the box to another, but soon enough started eating it, realising she should cherish that moment, since it would probably be the last full meal she would eat in a while, especially after nearly blowing the Prime Minister's head off and becoming literal criminals.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Ilham sighed, a resigned look crossing their face.

"Okay, look, I get it that you don't want to talk about it, but we can't work together if you don't tell me exactly what happened there," their already sullen face turned even more severe, and Regine knew they wouldn't let it go as easily as the other times.

Taking a deep breath and promising herself not to cry, she shifted, arranging her position and turned to face Ilham completely.

"Fine, but you need to promise me that you won't tell anyone this, not even your alien friends or whatever," they nodded, "I- well, the thing? It-it happened when I was eleven..."

♦♦♦

Camp Silver Lake was an all girls campament. It had twelve cabins, each of them housing between six and eight girls, all in the ages between seven to sixteen. It wasn't a posh camp in any manner, but it did teach the campers many things other camps wouldn't (and there were certainly a few posh girls there - or so Regine thought). Its name came from the giant lake in the middle of the camp, which was surrounded by the former mentioned twelve cabins and two larger cabins or main houses, each one facing the north and south sides of the lake.

The first main house, situated at the north side - which was also referred to as the Flood Place after an incident with one mischievous camper in 1987 - was where the canteen was, along with (on the second floor) the camp counsellors' rooms. However, no one had dared cross that back door and climb those whining wooden stairs, which led to the unknown (everyone knew it wasn't that scary, but they unanimously decided to play along for their own good).

On the south, the other main house - also with it's own 'nickname': Crikey, due to the crickets that created so much havoc when released there once (over a hundred crickets) which happened in the same year of the other incident caused by the same person - was the common area, where most of the equipment was found and where campers would spend their day if the weather wasn't good enough to be outside. This one was cleaner than the former one and definitely more colourful.