Fly or Fall

Chapter Ten

It turned out two weeks on Omora was far longer than it was on earth, four days longer to be exact. The entire calendar was different. Instead of twelve months with thirty to thirty-one days they had ten months with days ranging from thirty-seven to thirty-six days. The shortest month, Bol, had thirty-four days. And the longest months, Mol and Col, had thirty-eight days each. Hae, who turned out to be Princess Haelyn—Andy really had to get better at realizing when he was talking to royalty—had taken on the responsibility of teaching Andy as much about Omora as she could. In return he was teaching her about Earth.

It was raining; Andy and Hae had decided to have their lesson in the parlour instead of the library today. They sat in a corner, Andy on an arm chair, with a book on his lap and Hae was on the floor, sitting cross legged on the moss green rug, scrolling through Andy's phone. They couldn't make any calls, text or use any of the social media apps but they had pictures and music, it was something.

It had been eleven days since they'd arrived on Omora. Nine days until the Sol comet, which Andy had learnt was named after the month it passes over the world. The month they currently were in, Sol. There had been no news on Layla yet, Andy didn't want to think too much on this. Not only had Nyx promised to find her, the empress had too. He'd trust that, he had to. They were going to bring his aunt back and he and Anna would get back home. In the mean time he'd try to be okay.

"Who's this?" Hae suddenly asked, breaking the easy silence that had fallen between them. She was looking up at him through her too big glasses as she held up his phone. It showed a picture of him and Cedric Morgan. Cedric had a toothy grin, his grey eyes sparkling and his face bathed in light and his fair hair waving in the wind in the perfect way it always did. Andy was standing next to him, his thick curly hair in a bigger dishevelled mess than usual as he scowled at the screen with a puppy licking his face. "Is he your friend?"

"Friend?" Anna raised her head like a meerkat in the wild sensing something of interest. She moved from her spot on the couch on the other side of the room beside Kol and Val. The two royals had been teaching her how to play Hopplings, a game the young prince had created. "It's like a combination of chess and snakes and ladders where all the pieces look like frog," Anna had explained to Andy.

"Can I see the picture?" Anna asked already holding her hand out to Hae.

"Sure," Hae said at the same time Andy said, "No." But, it was too late, Anna had the phone.

"Hey," she said, "this is Cedric Morgan. How do you know Cedric Morgan? And more importantly, why do you have a picture of him on your phone?"

Andy stretched his arm for the phone but she was holding her hand out over her head, the way she'd done with his pencil. "It's none of your business."

"I smell a story," Kol said as he came to join Anna.

"There's no story," Andy said, maybe a little too loud to be believable.

"He's cute," Kol said as he looked up at the picture, propped up on his tippy toes. "Is he your boyfriend?"

Andy's entire face warmed and he choked on air. "N-no!"

"You're blushing!" Anna practically yelled. "Oh my god, is he?"

Andy's chest was tightening as something heavy sunk into his stomach. He should have deleted the picture ages ago but he'd never been able to bring himself to do it. His fingers would hover over the delete button but then he'd look at Cedric's smiling face and he couldn't. He just couldn't. Now his sister was going to make him regret it.

"H-he's... he's just..." he was stuttering.

"Andy you don't have to tell them anything you don't want to," Val said, stepping in. She snatched the phone from Anna's grip. "He's entitled to his privacy," she said to both Anna and Kol before she handed him his phone back and he thanked her. She winked before returning to the other side of the room, back to the game of Hopplings, which Andy was pretty certain she was winning. She'd won the last seven games in a roll.