Hidden Allure

Part 8

The classroom was quiet. Every student was trying to listen to the reader, following along in their five hundred page history textbook. On the cover was, Avenine: How it came to be.

The next reader, Hans, was having some issues reading sentence he was on, but nobody blamed him. That textbook was every kid’s nightmare, full of ten letter words and incomprehensible, verbose paragraphs. Just thinking about it made my hands sweat. Hans got past the difficult word and continued reading.

“From the Creator’s mind did the idea of the Forest spring forth,” he read. Looking up at the teacher quizzically, he asked, “What’s the Forest?”.

Suddenly, all the students were alert and perked up, ready for a break from the abominable book (the sentence Hans read was really easy).

Everyone watched as the poor teacher (Mrs. Meldrick) as a sickly pallor came over her. She visibly shuddered, as if the thought was too painful to describe. Finally, she spoke.

“D-don’t ever, ever mention that place again. It is forbidden. Don’t you ever go exploring there! If you do.. well, let’s hope you live to talk about it.”

Everybody shifted uncomfortably in their seats, tension in the air. Hans looked guiltily at his shoes.

Nobody had expected that. I think the last sentence was what really struck the class. I mean, that’s scary, especially to a bunch of fifth graders.

The rest of class went by uneventfully, but nervous queasiness still linger in the air like a reluctant cloud.

~~~~~

Back at Iopen, everything was so... perfect. All the houses exactly lined up, not a strand of grass out of place. The weather was extremely predictable, hot when it was summer, cold in the winter, just right in the spring. No bizarre weather phenomenons. No hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes. Those are all just things I’ve read in history books.

Out here in the Forest, everything is so IMperfect. Even though it everything is very spontaneous, I kind of like the suspense of never knowing what tomorrow will bring. It keeps me on my toes so I try to be prepared for any possible thing.

We were always taught to strictly follow the rules. Follow your schedule, don’t go outside the boundaries of school, only visit others on Sunday. We weren’t supposed to do anything that we weren’t told to.

But that didn’t stop Caleb and I. Ever since the day we met... when he came up to me while I was sitting in the Learning Chair... we always were seen as the “dynamic duo” in the class. We always broke the rules whenever we knew the consequences weren’t serious.

At first, it would be unintentional; we didn’t know that what we were doing was wrong, but soon it became a habit for us. When the teachers noticed that we were repetitively doing the same wrongdoings, they decided that the best thing to do was to ignore us. It’s not like we were causing any harm.

Besides, Caleb’s mother was a teacher there, so we were almost always let off the hook. The rest of the kids were jealous of us. Ha.

Sometimes during recess, we would sneak off to the absolute edge of the field and peer over the edge of the gate, trying to catch a glimpse of something interesting. We did this everyday.

One day, our efforts paid off. A few feet away from the fence, a little Jorkifin. The foot tall, black furry creature was giving birth to baby jorkies! The curious green eyes of the newborns fluttered open.

At that age, we were absolutely fascinated. But little did we know, even that was fake. They had been bred scientifically with a variety of other animals.