Heathen Chronicles - Changed

Chapter 5 - The Fine Print

Raven's POV

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"Mmmmm. I don't want to..."

I stretched myself out across my bed then slowly—painfully—peeled the blankets off one by one. I didn't want to get up, and it took me almost ten minutes to fully wake up. I sat cross-legged on my bed and glanced at my new phone; it was flashing.

And here I thought you were just a good dream for once.

I smiled and jumped out of bed excitedly, heading to my bathroom to take a nice hot shower; one that felt long overdue.

***

Hot water trickled down my body as steam rose, forming droplets on the glass door. The sound of water gushing out of the showerhead was like music to my ears—loud and comforting. Each splash was more distracting than the previous one, sending me out of my current life and into my head, where I imagined I was flying over the ocean again, with waves spraying against my face, cool and calming.

I arched my back and closed my eyes, turning my face up to allow the water to run down my front, relaxing all my muscles and joints. It helped me prepare for the events of the day to come. I snapped out of my reverie and finished my shower by rinsing the shampoo out of my thick, black hair and off my body. I couldn't believe how much shampoo was needed for my hair.

With the towel wrapped tightly around me, I hopped back into my room while tugging on my underwear—I always loved black underwear, and the blue lace that covered it was a bonus. Lotion was rubbed into my skin easily, and my school clothes were shrugged on quickly. My mood dropped from "happy-chappy" to "what-the-hell-chappy" when I noticed the atmosphere change around me.

I walked into the kitchen to find all my friends around the table with plates of scrambled eggs and sides of sausage or bacon—or even both. I sat down and dished up a bit of breakfast for myself, eating while everyone stared at me curiously. I took a deep breath to make sure my face didn't show what I was thinking.

What now?

"What?" I asked cautiously.

"Nothing..." replied Xelia with a wicked smile.

"Bullshit! We want to know who -M is," demanded Ntsakela with a devilish smile of her own.

"Ag! You know if I knew, I'd tell you in a micro-second, but unfortunately, I don't," I replied, my own smile mirroring Ntsakela's cheekiness.

The conversation started to pick up from there; all the while, I was sure our laughter could be heard from the hallway. I checked my emails to see if there were any interesting ones other than the usual Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest reminders. A new email popped up as I cleared the rest of my boring messages; this one was from 'Captain S. Reed'.

This had to be from the General's scholarship thing; I had completely forgotten about that.

Dear Miss R. R. Swan,

On behalf of the General and Base Control Centre (BCC), thank you for applying to our scholarship program. We appreciate that you were one of the brave students to put your name down to intern, train, and study in our program. Well done!

...

CONGRATULATIONS! And welcome to the programme! You have been accepted among the many who applied, and we are excited to have you. You will be sent another email with further information.

We wish the best of luck to you. Captain S. Reed.

No fucking way!

"Raven? What is it?" asked Tannah with worry and curiosity.