‘But, you know,’ Tyler said while they walked on towards the principal’s office. ‘Faolan really isn’t such a bad guy. He just isn’t in control of his anger.’ ‘I noticed…’ Caera replied. They stopped in front of the principal’s office and Kyiana knocked on the door. ‘Come in.’ the voice of the principal sounded. Kyiana, Tyler and Caera entered. Principal Madeira was seated behind her desk. Next to her stood the big, hairy man and on her other side was a man with abnormally long ears. When he walked from behind the desk he showed the body of a horse. Except his tail was that of a peacock and also the wings of one. He came to Caera and walked around her. ‘She doesn’t seem to be a monster. Do you have any abilities, girl?’ He said. ‘Not that I know of, sir.’ Caera answered. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. My name is mister Burak. I teach history.’ And I’m Yuri. I teach self defense.’ the hairy man said. ‘My name is Caera, an orphan girl who apparently is a monster of some kind.’ Caera introduced herself. ‘Did you say orphan?’ the principal asked. ‘So the parents you have now, don’t know what you are either?’ Caera shook her head but then realized the principal couldn’t see her so she said ‘no’. ‘Hmm, this will become more difficult then I’d thought.’ The principal stood up and walked from behind her desk until she was right in front of Caera. She put her hands on Caera’s shoulders. ‘For now, we’ll just let you follow classes with your friend here.’ she motioned at Kyiana. ‘So you can get used to how it works around here. In the meanwhile we’ll try to figure out why you came here and what classes we should let you follow.’ Caera nodded. ‘Well then, now that that’s settled you should go home. Classes will start Monday at 9pm so make sure you go to bed early.’ With that said, she walked back to her desk and took place. ‘Good day.’ she said. Caera, Kyiana and Tyler left the office. ‘Okay so how do I go back again?’ Caera asked Kyiana. ‘You just wait here and I’ll wake you up.’ she answered. ‘We’ll practice going back on your own tomorrow.’ and she disappeared. ‘Okay, see you tomorrow then, Tyler.’ Caera waved at Tyler expecting to disappear like her friend did before her, but she didn’t go anywhere. ‘That’s weird.’ Tyler said. ‘Kyiana should have woken you up by now.’ Caera was about to say something when someone ran in to her from behind. Before she fell the person who ran into her caught her by putting an arm around her waist. ‘Sorry about that.’ a sparkling voice said in her ear. She turned around when he put her back on her feet and she looked into blue eyes as sparkling as the voice she had heard. His short blond hair gave him a young looking face which was currently expressing surprise. ‘New girl, huh.’ he said. Then he looked back. ‘I’d love to get acquainted, but I’m kinda in a hurry. I’ll talk to you later.’ he said while running off. Caera didn’t move. ‘What just happened?’ she asked no one in particular and as she was about to turn around another guy bumped into her. She didn’t even see him coming. Her head hit the ground and she felt a huge weight fall on top of her squeezing the air out of her longs. ‘Why hello there.’ a voice filled with energy said to her. ‘I’m Keegan. What’s your name, beautiful?’ Caera took a few seconds to get the throbbing feeling in her head to ebb away. ‘My name?’ she asked the guy who was still laying on top of her. And mind you, he was quite heavy. The guy nodded and tilted his head a bit to the right. He had brown almost reddish eyes which seemed to be burning with energy, his matching brown, reddish hair and his dark skin were the only differences she could find between this guy and the one who previously had bumped into her. That and his attitude. They were definitely twins but like day and night. ‘It’s get the hell off of me!’ Caera answered trying to push him off of her. Only then it was that he seemed to realize how heavy he must have been for her. He mumbled ‘sorry’ and got up. He didn’t even offer her a hand so Caera just crawled up by herself, holding her head as it still hurt a lot. To be honest, she wouldn’t have taken his hand even if he had offered it to her, but it would have made a better impression on her. ‘Great, another jerk to add to my list of encounters today. Tonight. Whatever.’ she said confused and annoyed by her headache. ‘Hey!’ Keegan shouted offended. ‘You’re brother at least caught me before I fell when he ran into me.’ she said while giving him a glare. Keegan stepped back. If eyes could kill… well then he would definitely… have died long ago. Keegan had a tendency to get people angry at him, unintended of course. He seemed to remember something and asked ‘Where did my brother go to?’ Caera sighed. This guy must be as slow as they can get, she thought. Tyler pointed in the direction the other guy had ran off to and Keegan followed his brother as fast as he could. ‘Okay Kyiana, you can wake me up now. I’ve had my part of encounters today. Jeez only one out of five that actually seems like fun and all guys. Don’t they have girls at this school. And if only one out of five are nice then does that count for the entire school?’ While she was complaining like this she suddenly felt everything around her go black and when she opened her eyes she was staring at the ceiling of her room. She sat up, but quickly let herself fall back when the headache kicked in. ‘What took you so long?’ she asked her friend who was hovering over her with worry written all over her face. ‘Sorry, Nessa suddenly came. One of the little ones had a nightmare and she wondered if we were woken up by his crying.’ she explained. ‘Then she asked me what I wanted for breakfast. It’s 4 am for crying out loud, I mean, I know she means well, but that could have waited till morning right?’ Caera attempted to smile a little, but the throbbing of her head seemed to get only worse. ‘More importantly, what happened to you. You shouldn’t get a headache from projecting. Did you hit your head after I left?’ Caera gritted her teeth as she answered. ‘I got run over by two jerks. The first one caught me before I fell, but the second one, who was the biggest jerk of the two, even fell on top of me.’ Kyiana suddenly shifted to attack mode. ‘Who was it? What did they look like?’ Caera was amused by her friend wanting to get even for her and felt herself relaxing while the pain was slowly becoming less. ‘I think the last one called himself Keegan. They were definitely twins, though they were as different as’ ‘night and day?’ Kyiana finished her sentence. ‘Yea, they’re not really bad guys, especially Wiley, the blonde one. They just fight a lot between them and sometimes, well… most of the times other people get caught up in it.’ Kyiana went back to her mattress and pulled the covers over her. ‘You’re lucky they just ran into you. They could have hurt you with their powers.’ Kyiana turned on her side facing Caera. ‘They’re elementals. Wiley controls water and Keegan controls fire.’ Caera shrugged and yawned. ‘Let’s just go to sleep. We’ll talk again tomorrow.’ Caera never was one to get scared quickly and after what she had gone through tonight, she doubted that there was anything that could scare her.
Nessa entered Caera’s room humming and opened the curtains to let the bright sunlight shine on the faces of the two sleeping girls. Kyiana pulled her covers over her head and Caera turned on her side to face the wall, covering her eyes with her arm. ‘Time to wake up, sleeping beauties.’ Nessa cheered. ‘Breakfast is ready in fifteen minutes.’ she almost skipped her way out of Caera’s room. Caera growled. ‘How can she be so cheerful this early in the morning.’ Kyiana murmured something incomprehensible in agreement from underneath her covers. Reluctantly Caera got out of her bed and walked to the other side of the room where her closet was and the door to her bathroom. Her room and the room of Nessa and Aodhan were the only rooms in the orphanage that had their own bathroom. She quickly grabbed an outfit from her closet and walked into the bathroom to take a shower. She closed her eyes as the water massaged her body. Her head was still slightly throbbing. ‘Next time I see that jerk, fire elemental or not, I’m gonna return the headache he gave me.’ she growled. Feeling refreshed she got out from under the shower, dried herself and put a towel around her wet hair. She got dressed and walked back into her room. Kyiana had just come out from under her covers and tried to put on her clothes. Her eyes still half closed. ‘Breakfast is ready, girls!’ Nessa yelled. ‘We’re coming!’ Caera yelled back. ‘Come on sleepy head, after breakfast you’re gonna have to convince me that what happened tonight wasn’t a dream.’ she said to Kyiana who was balancing on one leg trying to get her pants on. Caera couldn’t help herself and gave her friend a little push, making her fall back on the mattress. She laughed. ‘Sorry Ky, I just couldn’t help it. You were asking for it.’ Kyiana threw her pillow at Caera. She ducked out of its way and laughed again. Kyiana put her pants on and Caera helped her up. Together they went downstairs to have breakfast.
When they entered the kitchen they were surprised with a table full of freshly baked rolls, sandwiches, juice, milk, croissants and all other kinds of delicious food that normally wasn’t there. ‘Did we win the lottery?’ Caera asked, feeling her mouth water from all the smells coming from the table. ‘Well for your 18th birthday we thought we could afford to go over budget a little bit.’ Aodhan explained as he entered the room, hugged her, gave her a kiss on her forehead and walked over to his wife to give her a kiss on the lips. ‘Ugh!’, ‘My eyes!’, ‘Gross!’ were some of the comments that came from the children who were already seated at the table. Kyiana and Caera laughed and took place. Ricky, one of the children who’d recently moved into the orphanage, entered the kitchen. His eyes were red and puffy. There were feathers sticking out of his messy hair. ‘Is everything okay now, Ricky?’ Nessa asked concerned. She walked to the little 8-year old and gave him a big hug. Ricky nodded and his eyes grew big when he saw all the treats on the table. ‘Come sit here.’ Caera said while patting on the chair next to her. As she’d been in the orphanage for as long as she could remember, she could only imagine how hard it must be for children who had lost everything they had. Their parents, friends, toys,… She’d seen it so many times. Children could only pick out a few of their belongings to take along. Most of it was sold to pay off depts and such. Ricky had come to the orphanage after his parents died in a car crash only a few weeks ago. The only living relative he had, was the sister of his mother, but she traveled a lot and no one ever knew when she would come back. And even if she did, there was no guarantee she would want to take care of her nephew. Some of the children were left at the orphanage because the parents or guardians couldn’t take the responsibility of raising a child.
Most of the children have troubles accepting that they are on their own or that they were left behind or, in Ricky’s case, that his parents weren’t coming back. Every night he dreamed about the car accident his parents were in. He says he sees it as if he’s in the car with them, trying to make them stop and go back home, but they never listen. Caera had always felt so helpless in the beginning. She wanted to ensure them that everything would be alright. But it was a void promise she didn’t want to make. The pain of losing parents was something she couldn’t understand as she had never known hers and the two people closest to parents were alive and healthy. She glanced at Aodhan and Nessa and a soft smile showed on her lips. After a while she’d accepted that she couldn’t do much for the children, but try to be the awesome big sister and hope they’d get adopted by loving parents who would take good care of them.
Caera picked a feather out of Ricky’s hair. ‘It looks like an angel has visited you tonight.’ she said. Ricky looked at her, then at the white feather she held in her hand. ‘Maybe mom and dad came to check up on me and make the nightmares go away?’ he said hopeful. ‘I’m sure that’s what happened. They will watch over you so you won’t have nightmares again.’ she said. She didn’t believe in angels, but before last night she didn’t believe in monsters and elementals and such, either. Besides, she thought, if his parents won’t watch over him, I know an angel that will. She watched Nessa cut the rolls for the little ones and couldn’t help but smile again.
