what happened after unlocked

chapter twenty-three ~ midterms

The next week was draining.

Sophie tried reaching out to Keefe every night now, but he was ignoring her. He really was making good on his promise.

The whole school of Foxfire, meanwhile, was preparing for the midterms, Mentors included. In fact, the Mentors seemed more determined for all their students to pass them than the students. There was also the added burden of the fact that everyone had missed out on at least half a year of school.

Sophie was one of the students taking the hardest blows, because the only person who really talked to her was Biana, and she was the moonlark, therefore she had to do a lot more training, check-ups with Mr Forkle, and the occasional Enhancing training with Jensi as well as her ability training at Foxfire.

It was getting so hectic that Sophie could never really find time to do much else. Her life was soon consumed with schoolwork, training, lectures, and more training.

Currently, Sophie was slumped on her desk in Study Hall. She had about ten pieces of homework; all due in the next week, but she couldn't find any motivation to do any work.

What did it matter if she failed her exams?

The Neverseen was the real problem.

Sophie, the moonlark, didn't exist so that she would live her life normally. She existed purely so that she could gain a unique perspective on the world, enabling her to understand the world's issues better than any other being, and fight against any people who wished harm on the world or its people.

Not passing her midterm.

Well...maybe that just had a very small significance right now. But only very small.

"Sophie!" somebody hissed.

It was Linh.

"Sophie...can I just say I'm really sorry? I completely regret what I said before, when we all had that fight."

Linh turned back to her homework, shame flickering on her face.

"Yes."

It was impossible for Sophie to not forgive Linh – Linh was one of the only ones who had broken down after the argument and suffered the worst. She valued her friendships so much; it was painful to watch her sorrow.

It took a few seconds for Linh to glance up, across the desks dividing them, to smile at Sophie. "Thank you," she mouthed, pointing at the supervising Mentor who was sure to see them interacting any second now.

Sophie looked at her one more time before she went back to her homework, but something was nagging her at the back of her head.

There were a lot of reasons she was finding it so difficult to concentrate, of course. The issues with finding Lady Gisela's hideout, getting the alicorns back, figuring out the Neverseen's plan, unlocking the stolen caches, preventing the imminent war from happening, and convincing Keefe to return.

But here were also small personal problems too – the thrift between Sophie and Fitz, the fight that the whole group had gone through, figuring out her feelings, restoring broken friendships, making sure to put as much attention on the ones she loved as the burdens she had to deal with.

Sophie should make a list of all this chaos.

While she'd been thinking it, however, she'd actually written those things down...her mind was wandering and she needed to put it back in place. If she didn't focus now, she probably never would.

So she trained her eyes on the words under her face...but they were so unrecognizable. So disorienting.

She had to fix something, but it wasn't to do with her homework. She needed to talk to her friends.